Terra Firma

And highlighting the same fact is the United Nations Safe Planet Campaign,which in association with Terre Policycentre and the UNEP OzonAction and Club Vasundhara,has organised a film festival that began in the city at the National Film Archives of India (NFAI) on Wednesday. The two day festival aims at highlighting the negetive iompact of the various chemicals that have been introduced to the modern world in the recent past. Speaking more about the same,Michael Jones Public Information Officer,for the UN Safe Planet Campaign,says,”Picture this,close to 10000 different chemcials have been introduced across the globe over the last 10 years. Of these around 1000 of them conform to the international safety standards. While it might not sound appaling,the fact that they can cause irreversible damage to the human genome structure as well as reduce the level of tolerance and immunity in the future generations is somehting that one needs to be worried about.”

The two-day festival will showcase films such as Body Burden by B Howard,Submission-In defence of Unborn by Stefan Jarl,Eco-Crime-Ozone Killers by Heinz Greuling and Ozzy Ozone that is been made by the UNEP. Speaking more about the Safe Planet Campaign,Jones says that the recently introduced campaign will be a ten year long initiative and will employ directives from the conventions that were held at Basel,Stockholm and Rotterdam. “The campaign basically aims at providing sustainable solutions for various environmental problems that are being caused due to the over exposure of chemicals. Amongst these issues,the problems of newborns being born with high level of chemcials in their body as a result of over exposure to them during the gestation period is something that is a major concern now.”

Jones however does admit that problems related to the environment are different with respect to the various geographical terrains across the globe. “Sound management of hazardous chemcials is something that can be achieved only by proper coordination between the government agencies and the people. This can be achieved when youngsters and students at universities take active part towards taking a firm step in stopping these irreversible changes. If not it is a road downhill to a one way stop to we all know where,” he says optimistically.