Rendezvous with Nature

Dr Monika Koul
It is June 5 again and we are celebrating World Environment Day all across the globe. Connecting People to Nature’, is the theme for June 5 World Environment Day 2017. The theme is the most apt and timely as it implores us to get outdoors and get cozy with nature. It reiterates that nature is beautiful and those who contemplate the beauty of the nature find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. It wants us to understand and cherish the vital relationship we share with nature. To appreciate the beauty and importance of nature one has to feel it, touch it, love and enjoy the interaction. The main idea is that the more we explore nature the more we will take forward the call to protect the Earth that we share.
This Environment Day is a true calling for all of us, especially the young parents and their kids. Why young parents? The answer is the young parents have lots of responsibilities on their shoulders. They themselves are under lot of pressure and stress to cope up with the modern life style and they are bringing up children in secluded spaces away from nature. Nature nurtures in the best possible way but today’s kids are being nurtured in closed indoors with lots of electronic paraphernalia around, which includes gaming consoles, X-boxes, PSPs, mobile phones, I pads etc. There is lot of research going on all around the world to find out the effect of these electronic gadgets on the health and wellbeing of children. Lots of studies have pointed out that children are behaving like zombies; they have lost originality of ideas.
Modern parents are working parents; they are always occupied with something. Even if they are home they are most often active on social networking sites and many a times carrying their work baggage home. Besides, the travelling hassles, travel time from office to home on account of traffic congestions is taking their toll. So there is little time left for them to take their kids outdoors, forget about daily outdoor play time with kids. The only way they get their children the entertainment they seek for is through these gadgets. However, this strategy is having repercussions both on the kids and the environment they live in. So the concern is both the social environment and the natural environment that surrounds us and for which there are commemorations all over in the form of talks, conferences, and plantation drives etc.
This year let us celebrate by taking kids outdoors, to the local parks, to the nearby forest, some natural landscape or a rural region that has some pristine vegetation. The outdoor trip to some natural heritage site, biodiversity-park, a bird sanctuary or a reserve can also be good options if parents can afford both time and money. Researchers have found that outdoor play with lots of kids around in natural areas enhances children’s cognitive flexibility,problem-solving ability, creativity, self-esteem, and self-discipline. Children play with mud, soil, sand, pluck leaves and branches, climb trees, fall down, and rise again.
They fight and then get together if left alone. They learn from the birds, the butterflies, ants,the squirrels and the rodents. It has been found that effectsof attention-deficit disorder are reduced when children have regular access to the outdoors.Natural spaces and materials stimulate children’s limitless imaginations and serveas the medium of inventiveness and creativity. The takeaway point is that when they know how beautiful, resilient and generous the nature is, when they feel that all organisms in nature irrespective of their taxonomic affinities have social life, they grow, they too want to live, they will do anything and everything to protect it. Children have to learn to care for wellbeing of nature, protect the beautiful bounties of it and conserve the resources and the best way they can learn to do that is to connect to it. Pledge June 5 to be a rendezvous with nature.
(The author is Asst. Professor Department ofBotany Hansraj College, University of Delhi)
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