- Michelle Dilhara on the importance of World Earth Day
Friday (22) marked World Earth Day, an annual occasion celebrated since 1970 by the Earth Day Network. Today, World Earth Day includes a wide range of events coordinated globally that engage over one billion people in more than 193 countries to promote environmental protection.
The official theme for 2022 is ‘Invest In Our Planet’. Brunch sat down with Earth Day Network Ambassador for Sri Lanka Michelle Dilhara for a conversation on what Earth Day means and her hopes for Sri Lanka’s environmental future. Michelle is also an actress, author, philanthropist, and climate activist who was awarded the Asia Inspiration Award at the South Asian Youth Summit held in Colombo in 2018 for her contribution to minimising social invisibility through the invisible to visible movement, a solidarity campaign that minimises the social invisibility and social exclusion of marginalised and disadvantaged persons.
Following are excerpts of the interview:
Why is Earth Day an important event to be celebrated?
Earth Day is immensely important to celebrate, now more than ever, because it recognises and reminds us of the harm we have caused to planet Earth, while showing great support across the globe for protecting the Earth and the environment. It’s celebrated every year on 22 April, and this day allows us to become more educated on the current environmental issues affecting our planet and encourages us to take necessary action on these issues to ensure the health of the planet.
In my opinion, if we consider every day as Earth Day, we will be able to minimise the damage we have caused to planet Earth and leave a healthy environment for our future generations. The world today is at the threshold of an enormous challenge where there is an urgent need of limiting the global temperature from rising up by 1.5 degrees.
We exist in an age where air pollution kills an estimated seven million people each year throughout the world. The warmest years in the last 140 years have been 2016 through 2021. Between 1880 and 2021, the average global sea level has risen by 8-9 inches, which is substantially quicker than the previous 2,700 years. Over the previous 171 years, human activities have generated more than 2,000 gigatonnes (about 2.3 trillion tonnes) of atmospheric CO2, resulting in a 48% increase in CO2 content in the atmosphere.
This is far more than the 20,000-year growth that occurred naturally. The climate has been affected as a result of these human activities, causing weather patterns to become unpredictable, resulting in difficulties such as lower harvests, increased floods, droughts, extreme weather, desertification, and the displacement of millions around the world.
What would you say are Sri Lanka’s biggest environmental issues?
Currently we are massively embattled and threatened by negative consequences brought about by both the unawareness and the negligence of the industrial community. Climate change, global warming, air pollution, water pollution, soil degradation, deforestation, and waste management are some of the visible and biggest environmental issues we are facing in Sri Lanka today, and have been facing since the Industrial Revolution that took place in 1760.
What solutions or strategies would you recommend to address these issues?
Undoubtedly, and without fail, we should all place due concern on reducing greenhouse gas emissions sooner rather than later. In order to prevent global temperatures rising to critical levels, the world needs to halve greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade and reach net zero carbon emissions by the middle of this century.
Diesel and petrol-powered vehicles, which use an internal combustion engine created 125 years ago, are currently one of the biggest producers of carbon dioxide emissions. The first and only way to fix this dilemma is to develop an alternative energy source or invest in renewable vehicles. Air pollution caused by mass transportation results in the death of twice as many people as Covid-19 does worldwide. However, if net zero emissions are achieved, CO2 buildup will be halted and the atmospheric CO2 level will be stabilised, thus providing us with a solution for this current global issue.
You’ve been an environmental activist for many years. How did you get into environmental activism?
I was inspired to fight for climate change after hearing Leonardo DiCaprio’s speech at the UN in 2014 and I began my first climate change projects in 2016. After becoming an actress I was able to use all my media platforms to address current global environmental issues and gradually widen my audience.
In 2020, after I was appointed the Earth Day Network Ambassador for Sri Lanka, I started working as an environmental advocate, thereby collaborating with universities, schools, institutions, youth clubs, and embassies to create awareness on climate literacy and conduct physical projects to achieve net zero emissions and carbon neutrality as a solution to the current climate crisis.
What is some of the work you do as Earth Day Network Ambassador?
For the past few years, I have collaborated with universities, schools, and youth clubs to develop a framework with the aim of raising individuals’ climate change literacy by encouraging the youth to have a positive attitude towards climate change, adapting climate-friendly behaviour, engaging in climate-friendly actions, changing their behaviour towards reducing their own carbon footprint, and engaging them as multipliers for climate change literacy in order to influence their family and friends.
I believe that teenagers are the most at-risk generation whose lives will be affected by climate change more than any generation before them. Therefore as the youth, we must take responsibility for dealing with the environmental, economic, and societal consequences of climate change.
Since we are approaching the irreversible tipping points of nature, I focused most of my climate literacy programmes on many dimensions of global environmental change, such as global warming, deforestation, air pollution, extreme weather events, dynamics of the Earth atmosphere and ocean biosphere, decarbonisation, environmental pollution, ocean biodiversity decline, and so on. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak, all the educational institutes, universities, and schools across the globe were forced to shut down. Therefore, most of the programmes were conducted virtually.
Some recent initiatives I have been a part of include collaborating with the University of Colombo (UoC) Centre for Environmental Initiatives to conduct a webinar on ecosystem restoration. In addition, with the aim of raising awareness among the youth on conserving endangered animals, I collaborated with the UoC Faculty of Science Rotaract and conducted a panel discussion together with Ornithologist and Environmentalist Vidya Jyothi Emeritus Prof. Sarath Kotagama, Research Scientist and UoC Department of Zoology and Environmental Sciences Senior Lecturer Dr. Sampath Senarathna, and University of Ruhuna Department of Oceanography Senior Lecturer Prof. Terny Pradeep.
Apart from these sessions, I collaborated with the Sri Lankan university network – University of Peradeniya, University of Moratuwa, University of Jaffna, Rajarata University of Sri Lanka, and Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka – and conducted a series of online sessions addressing climate issues such as global warming, deforestation, impacts of urban sprawl, ocean biodiversity decline, impact of food wastage on the environment, clean energy, transport, land and food systems, and greenhouse gas removal and storage.
For the past few years, apart from online sessions, I initiated several green projects with university students, who I firmly believe are the prospective inventors of the future, to fight against climate change and global warming. I launched my most recent green project with the Uva Wellassa University. This programme was initiated by Vocational Guidance Unit Director Dr. Janaka Siyambalapitiya and Vocational Guidance Counsellor Akila Aushadha Bandara. With the participation of Uva Wellassa University Vice Chancellor Prof. Jayantha Lal Rathnasekara as the Chief Guest, the programme was launched with a tree planting project on the University premises, focusing on the aspect of mitigating global warming and climate change.
Followed by the Uva Wellassa University project, I collaborated with the students from the Sri Jayewardenepura University Faculty of Management in launching a tree planting project on the University premises with the aim of encouraging and facilitating the youth on sustainable mobility, protection of the environment and biodiversity, and mitigating global warming.
Recently I collaborated with the Korean Embassy in Sri Lanka and officially inaugurated the ‘Go Green Embassy’ campaign, with the patronage of Ambassador of the Republic of Korea Santhush Woonjin JEONG. The planting of the national tree of Sri Lanka – the ‘Na’ tree (Mesua ferrea) – on the Embassy premises was done as a symbolic gesture of creating a framework for achieving sustainable goals for building stronger foundations through eco-diplomacy, demonstrating the Korean Embassy’s commitment towards achieving net zero. This project was an ideal way to highlight the Embassy’s ingenuity and leadership in reducing its environmental footprint, increasing the use of environmentally preferred products, water conservation, recycling, adapting electrical improvements such as switching to compact fluorescent lamps, and switching to environmentally friendly products.
I firmly believe that the initiation of such programmes would speed up the decarbonisation, reduce the risk and impact of climate change through carbon management, and eventually facilitate the innovations invented by the university students with actual concern given to the wellbeing of Mother Nature, thereby immensely involving the young generation in the process of healing the Earth, because you will never understand the true importance of net zero until you reach the point of no return.
As an actress who advocates for environmental change, how do you use your platform to build awareness?
I dedicate 70% of my media space, including newspapers, social media, TV, and FM programmes to address the current global issues including environmental issues. Apart from that, as an actress and the Earth Day Network Ambassador for Sri Lanka, I collaborate with universities and schools to promote climate literacy among the younger generation through virtual and physical projects.
What are your hopes for our environmental future?
I hope to create more awareness on climate literacy among the youth within my full capacity. In my opinion, a green revolution is extremely required to take place across the globe right at this moment. I truly believe that those who need to make a change in the world should first initiate the change within themselves, because the more we feel concerned by climate change in our lives, the more likely we are to engage in climate-friendly actions.
