Tribute to a champion

The climate has become hotter, species have become extinct and natural disasters such as floods, avalanches, landslides, cyclones, hurricanes and other natural disasters have become more frequent. Due to our collective irresponsibility and the careless policies of our leadership, the issue of the environment, and particularly climate change due to global warming has dominated other global issues. Now every person seems more curious about this issue. People are now more concerned about this problem because every year is becoming hotter the previous with more natural disasters In today’s world, ‘’Climate change’’, which is a burning environmental issue, is considered as a global challenge. Many prominent personalities such as Pope Francis, ex-vice president of America Al Gore, former US president Barak Obama, ex-UN secretary General Ban Ki Moon and Oscar winning actor Leonardo DeCaprio have been contributing in efforts to counter this problem, both theoretically and practically. Many environmental organizations like UNEP, NDRC, WWF and EDF have been working for decades on environment related issues to try to reverse the trend. On World Environment Day, I want to pay tribute to a person who is an unsung hero of environment conservation. He is the person who brought the concept of environment maintenance in our society. He taught us the lesson of environment protection. He has informed usabout our responsibilities as an actor in protecting our environment. He has educated us the methods ofgetting closer to environment. It has been a decade since he took this responsibility, but still he has the same passion, same commitment and the same zeal. The person whom I am talking about is not an environment expert nor has he received any formal education on the environment. He does not have any strong political or financial backup, the only power he has is his spirit and his commitment. I am talking about Rehmat Ali Jaffar, the founder and Chairman of Chitral Heritage and Environment Protection Society (CHEPS). Rehmat Ali started this organization in 2007 in a small village of Qasumandeh Booni, upper Chitral. For last decade Rehmat Ali has worked tirelessly to create awareness about environment conservation. He went door to door and was involved in one to one interaction with the general public to create awareness about environment. During these years he visited almost all the schools and colleges of Chitral and conveyed the message of environment sustainment. So far, Rehmat Ali has delivered more than two thousand lectures in different schools and colleges. Apart from that, with his limited resources he has conducted many sessions, workshops and conducted walks for nature protection. He has also delivered lectures on the environment to some of the most prestigious institutions like LUMS, IBA, NCA and Habib University. Every year Rehmat Ali is conducting Environment campaigns from Karachi to Borogol and giving a single message of “Clean and Green Pakistan”. Initially CHEPS was a local society but now it is a national organisation. Its members are present in all the four provinces of Pakistan. It has approximately 10 thousand registered members nationwide, whom he calls “green volunteers”. CHEPS under his leadership has dug in more than a hundred thousand new plants throughout the country. Being among the pioneer members of the CHEPS organisation, and working very close with Rehmat Ali, I have learned a lesson that we all are very generous in polluting and harming the nature, but many simply do not care about it. While harming the nature we have harmed ourselves but we do not realize it. We have polluted our air, which we breathe, we have polluted our drinking water and we have polluted the land where we live. We are bound to live on this planet, so we need to take care of it because there is no plan B. People like Rehmat Ali who make us realize the harm that we do are very rare, we need to support, we need to respect them, we need to empower them we need to acknowledge them because they are the real champions of our society, our country and our planet.]]>