REVISITING ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS AND POLICY IN THE COVID

ERA

INTRODUCTION:

It’s very important to understand the meaning of word ‘ENVIRONMENT’.

Because whenever this word comes in the picture people think only about TREES,
PLANTS, TEMPERATURE . Is it correct? No I don’t think so. The real meaning
of word ENVIRONMENT is The Natural world in which people, animal and
plants live. And without any creature this Earth cannot function properly. So it is
very important to think about everything existing on the earth and to protect them
and make laws for them. This problem is becoming very drastic time by time we
cannot overcome by this problem in one day there is a lot of work required in this
issue.

SOME EXISTING LAWS:

By some facts we can say the fight against environment problem started in 1968,
when SWEDAN proposed to the United Nations Economic and Social
Council (ECOSOC) about the human interfere with the environment. UN
conducted a meeting named The United Nations Conference on the Human
Environment was held in Stockholm, Sweden  in 1972. it was the first international
conference on the environment. 

In 1992 the EARTH SUMMIT, also known as United Nations Conference on

Environment and Development (UNCED) , held in Rio de Janeiro. On of the best
conclusion of this summit was an agreement of the CLIMATE CHANGE

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CONVENTION and UNITED NATIONS FRAMWORK CONVENTION ON
CLIMATE CHANGE (UNFCCC)was get open for the signature in this summit
itself and it entered in the force on 21 march 1994.The main objective of UNITED
NATIONS FRAMEWORK CONVENTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE(UNFCCC)
was to reduce greenhouse gas emission and to prevent  anthropogenic

interference with the climate system. This framework sets non binding limits on

greenhouse emission and it also doesn’t have enforcement mechanism.

The parties to this convention started meeting annually from 1995 in

CONFRENCE OF THE PARTIES (COP) to see the progress report to stop the
climate change. In the CONFERNCE OF MEETING,1997 in Kyoto,Japan , a new
protocol named KYOTO PROTOCOL opend up for signature to the whole world
to achive the aim of UNFCCC and this protocol entred into force in 2005. This
protocol was also based on the same principle of UNFCCC but having a different
resposibility. It said that every country has its own way to combat pollution or
climate change because of their economic develpoment. The protocal’s first
commitment period was from 2008-2012 in which all 36 countries participated in
this and tried to reduce their green house gas emission, nine of them helped other
countries to reduce their emission because their emission was greater than their
target. Even by this ,between 1990 and 2010 the total emission was increased by
32 percent.

In the 21st CONFRANCE OF PARTIES in PARIS in 2015 a new agreement made

under UNFCCC to combat this temprature raising problem and this agreement was
named as PARIS AGREEMENT. One of the objective of this agreement is
“Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above
pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to
1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce

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the risks and impacts of climate change”. This agreement also doesn’t have any
force mechanism. These are some very famous steps toward the environment
protection or we can say to stop climate change.

COVID-19:

This virus is very new for the common people but for the scientist it is not, because
this is not a new or random virus that attacked and causing problem for all over the
world. According to reports, in the late 1920 this kind of virus was reported in the
North America and again in 1931 Arthur Schalk and M.C. Hawn presented their
first report on this and they described a new respiratory infection and this had been
mentioned the mortality rate of this infection is very high. But the human corona
virus was comes in reality in late 1960s, in 1961 British Medical Research Council
finds a very unique common cold that cannot be treated by the normal medicines
and procedure and this virus was inactivated by ether. A very large animal corona
virus have been identified but in 2003 a human corona virus has been identified
named SARS-COV, HCoV NL63, in 2004 HKUN1, MERS-CoV in 2013 and
again this virus again comes in picture as SARS-CoV-2 in 2020.

According to researchers this virus again started spreading its wing from Wuhan,
China and it is also said by the researcher this virus started spreading from the
Wuhan seafood market and some of this reports also said that this virus started
infecting human being may be because of bat eating, it is a kind of zoonotic
disease. The first case of corona virus was reported on the 12 December 2019 and
WHO declared it as, a global health emergency on 31 January 2020 and a
pandemic on 11 march 2020.

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CONCLUSION:

By the facts and research we can eailsy say that there are some efforts is being
done on the international platform to tackle this environment problem but it is not
sufficient. We have to take very major steps to solve this problem because our or
any countrie’s development is worthless without the environmental development
and we should remember that we are still living on the earth and we have to take
care of it. This virus has been taken many lives and we don’t how many more it
will take.

Every country is spending a lot of money in their security area, in the development
of their econonomy, for the exlporation of the universe and searching lives on
other planet etc. I am not saying these things are not important but why they are
not giving importance to this environment ? why they are not saving the lives of
the people who are living on this planet?

By some fact we also know that the people of China , Vaitnam, and in many other
countries are eating Dogs, Bats, Snaks, cows,buffalos etc. we all know because of
these, zoonotic disease increasing in all over the world and COVID-19 is one of
the major effect of this. Why are no rules to stop them? Why we cannot beat a dog
but we can eat it? We need to think very deeply on these topics.

Amendments are very important in Environmental laws and policy, not only for a
country but it should be for all over the world because a single country cann’t
change this situation every country have to participate in it and their tight
implementation is also important .

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