Environmentalists welcome new eco clubs but seek to bolster existing ones

TIRUCHY: While environmental enthusiasts have been lauding Chief Minister MK Stalin’s announcement of eco clubs in all the schools across the state, they suggest monitoring the already existing pro-environmental associations to nurture young minds to be environmentally responsible persons. Thus, the world would be in safer hands in the future.

During the TN Climate Summit 3.0 held in early February, Chief Minister MK Stalin, who inaugurated the summit, announced eco clubs to be established in all schools in Tamil Nadu as part of the government’s plan to teach students about climate change and its impact from a young age.

He also announced a policy on climate education that could encourage students to learn about climate awareness in addition to the core subjects.

However, the stakeholders involved in pro-environmental activities lauded the announcement of the Chief Minister about the eco clubs in schools and appealed to the State government as well as the Union government to initiate steps to strengthen the already existing environmental clubs like National Green Corps (NGC), Green School Programme and eco clubs with proper monitoring, appointing full-time nodal officers and coordinators and allocate funds for their routine activities. In many places, the NGOs don the role of coordinators and thus in Tamil Nadu, as many as 22 units are taken care of by the NGOs across the state.

“The NGC has been functioning in all the districts across the state. Each district has at least 250 NGCs and 350 eco clubs with 30 to 40 students in each school. Initially, a fund of Rs 300 per year was allotted in the early 90s and gradually the fund was increased to Rs 5,000 annually. But the sad fact is that the fund has been stopped for the past three years but still, we manage to organise programmes,” said A Gregory of Voice Trust, Coordinator NGC of Lalgudi educational district in Tiruchy.

He said that these clubs promote making children understand the environment and environmental problems, providing environmental education opportunities, making the students aware of the environment, making the children have direct contact with environmental problems faced by the society they live in and making them think of solutions and making the students organise action-based programmes related to environment in their surroundings.

“We organise special events during the environmental day, Ozone Day and Earth Day and create awareness among the public on the importance of a safe environment. We even create awareness through rallies, campaigns, tree plantation drives and street play as the ultimate aim is to make the people aware of the clean environment that would help to maintain the climatic conditions,” Gregory said.

The green schools are promoted with the concepts of refuse, reduce, re-cycle, re-use, revive and rejoice, thus attaining the ‘Engal Palli Milirum Palli’ (Our School Shining School) concept promoted by the state school education department.

“To ensure the proper functioning of these environmental clubs, the government should appoint a dedicated full-time staff on par with that of Physical Education teachers and a full-time coordinator so that they could give more concentration on the foregoing of the clubs,” said S Rengaraju, post-graduate assistant at Raniyar Girls Higher Secondary School, Pudukkottai, who is also the coordinator for NGC of Pudukkottai Education District.

He said, most of the subject teachers are involved as Coordinators of NGC and so, it becomes a challenging task for them since they need to concentrate on the public exam results too.

“If a full-time staff is appointed, the focus would be more appropriate,” Rengaraju stressed. He also appealed to the state government for more training programmes for the students and the staff in charge so that they can play the role of torchbearers of a safe environment.

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