NATIONAL 6 -(Spotlight Weekly)]

Commitment for the Millennium

An NGO led by women takes initiatives to protect the urban environment

By BHASKAR AMATYA

Save the Environment Foundation, a private organization is putting itís commitment and determination to safeguard the environment of Nepal. A private organization run by a group of dedicated women, Save the Environment Foundation (SEF), is striding utilizing their own resources to control the environmental pollution in Kathmandu since its establishment in 1994. The organization has also won the Environment protection Award in 1996.

At this moment when there is garbage and pollution all over the country the organization is taking plausible step. The programs being carried out by the organization in the protection of environment include campaigns against plastic bags, minimize garbage program and campaign against air pollution.

SEF activists with Minister Khadka : Green communitment.

According to Mrs. Chanda Rana, acting president, of Save the Environment Foundation, the organization has published a "Green Book" on "Air Pollution and its impact on Health" in 1996 and is going to publish its revised second edition later this year.

"As in the past it will also award the second ëBest Industry Award For Environmental Concern-2000í in order to make the public aware of environmental protection and industrialization," said Rana. "We are going to build a "Green Park of the Third Millennium", under the project called Project Green Kathmandu, with the assistance of a sponsor in Omnagar on the way to airport and its design has already been prepared," she added.

The organization has done many works toward protecting environment in the past that are worth quoting. It completed, with utmost effort, about 80 percent of the greenery program from Singha Durbar to Guheshwori in order to revitalize the greenery of Kathmandu Valley.

"We have already selected the area in Kathmandu Valley where we are planning to plant and take care of more than a hundred thousand trees during year 2000-2002. Apart from these the organization also plans to make some green belts and parks in Kathmandu Valley and Patan in 2000-2002," she said.

The organization is implementing the "Minimize Garbage Make Compost" program in order to minimize the problem of garbage at source. SEF is also organizing programs to minimize the use of plastic bags through "Keep Your City Clean, Avoid Plastic Bags" program and promote the use of paper bags made by the village women.

"Today the world is waving Good-bye to our Shangri-la image due to our own mistakes in the past and we seek to make the government and general public aware and not to repeat such mistakes again," said Rana. SEF has called upon the government to safeguard Chitawan, a very attractive tourism center that falls under the World Heritage Site, from environmental destruction as uncontrolled urbanization and industrialization is going on increasing in the area.

The necessity of a dumping site in Chitawan is inevitable. All the garbage of that region is being dumped in the jungles of Ramnagar and the Narayani river due to increase in urbanization. "In order to retain the purity of the river and the environment intact the government should provide incentives to the industries to adopt a pollution prevention technology through on the spot surveillance. Apart from these, the government should designate certain areas as industrial areas and ban the operation of industries arbitrarily," said Rana.