In 1962 Pete Seeger it was who topped the chart with his hit ‘Where Have All The Flowers Gone?’
Pete’s flowers might be different from the floral parts of plants which we cherish so much as ornamentals and even objects of romance.
We are nonetheless constrained to pose the question in our contemporary circumstances as our environment continues to suffer degradation, its flora and fauna endangered.
Our relationship with the environment which is the source or our sustenance is anything but acceptable. Our trees are treated with little or no respect.
We fell them without thinking about replacing them, thereby threatening the survivability of future generations of mankind.
We shudder to think about how future generations would rate us. If they consider us selfish they would be spot on because we have given little or no thought to tomorrow, considering only our immediate needs.
The efforts of cherishers of the environment have been fantastic and admirable but so far these have only been drops in the ocean unable to change the attitude of the majority of us.
A few years ago, there was a public outcry when some trees were earmarked for felling at the Aburi Botanical Gardens vegetation which can boast being around for over two centuries. We are unable to tell the fate of those trees, the matter having taken on the political garb at the time. In our centre spread today, there is a splash about plants and flowers – nature’s gift we have done little to support.
We have observed that but for the homes of elites and offices, we would have long lost some of these beautiful botanical heritages, some of them endemic to our part of the world.
But for the education we have received from environmental crusaders, we can bet, we would have felled most of our trees. The effect of global warming and its causes do not mean a thing to us.
Ornamental trees which used to line our ceremonial streets are not receiving the care that they should have been getting from the relevant state agency charged with this task.
It has been a long time since we heard about the Department of Parks & Gardens.
Perhaps like other agencies, they are fund-starved and so can hardly function as demanded by the statute setting the department up.
The divide between the dual carriageway on Ring Road Central on which green grass were planted to beautify the place is now featuring a crisscross of pedestrian paths used also by commercial motorbike operators.
This is another form of indiscipline we are battling with in the country.
Perhaps people must be educated about why they should not kill the green grass we use taxpayers’ money to plant.