(Earth and Mars)

One is red, one is blue. Both are members of the group of four smaller ?sisters? of the solar system, namely Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. The others are our more distant big brothers, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus.

We, the inhabitants of Planet Earth, move forward very slowly indeed in our comprehension of, let alone the Universe, even our own solar system.

A new step was taken the other day with the first close-up pictures of Planet Mars, our neighbour and sister planet in the system. Admittedly not as spectacular as Armstrong?s historic phrase when he first walked on the moon (?a small step for a man, a giant step for mankind?), but none the less a definite step forward in our quest to understand nature. Going to the moon was like going into our own backyard, since the moon is so to speak part of planet Earth, like Rodrigues is part and continuity of Mauritius. Going to Mars is a quantum leap.

Mars is a different planet, a different world. If inhabited (unlikely as per present-day evidence), these Martians may be asking themselves these questions about us: ?Is that blue planet, our neighbour, inhabited? What are its forms of life like? Are there any thinking beings on that planet?? And of course: ?When will our technology enable us Martians, to travel to that blue planet, so unlike our own red home??

<B>A ?Champ de Mars?, the real one.

That view could be any one of hundreds of inhospitable places on Earth! The desert of Arizona, the Sahara in Libya or Mauritania, the Kalahari in Namibia or the Atacama in Chile, or again the desertic landscapes (minus kangaroos and cactuses) in the dry lands outside Adelaide in Australia! But, in fact no, it?s a field on Mars, a sort of original ?Champ de Mars?

Now I invite you to compare the two pictures, which appear below, side by side. On the left is part of dry, austere, airless and (for our life form) inhospitable Planet Mars and on the right is a view of our blue and green Planet Earth.

<B>Crater on Mars.Seascape on earth.</B>

Only one Earth: the World Summit on sustainable development held in Jo?burg (26th August to 4th September 2002), ten years after Rio, was an event of great importance, a gathering of government leaders, heads of state and experts, in all almost 60,000 people from more than 180 countries. The aim was to find answers to humanity?s most pressing problems: how to save the environment, eradicate poverty, save our planet.

As we all must know, Planet Earth is in a sorry state. The diagnosis of its ills was apparent a decade ago at the first Earth Summit, held in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro: global warming and climate change; sea-level rise; world supplies of drinking water running out; forests disappearing and many species en route to extinction; pollution fouling every corner of the planet, from Antarctica to Amazonia, while poverty and wars are destroying the lives of millions of our fellow humans. thus the only possible conclusion from looking at Mars and other inhospitable parts of the Universe is a firm commitment to save and protect this planet.

Personally, in 1972 (the year of the Stockholm Summit on the environment) I gave up on other scientific pursuits to concentrate on this mission and somewhere along the line, even helped establish a new discipline, that of Integrated Environmental Management. After working with over 100 countries on their Environmental Education programmes, I can safely affirm that saving the planet, as the ONLY one we have to live on, is not a distant, lofty task for experts only. It is, on the contrary, a daily task for every individual as they go about their daily lives. Actions in favour of life and of the environment, however small, add up. Try it today, start somewhere with a few simple environmentally friendly actions: reuse some paper or an empty can instead of throwing it away; switch off an unnecessary light; walk or take the bus instead of motoring; audit your home for any water-leaks and make a repair if need be; given the choice, go for a given item made of natural material instead of one made of plastic. The list is endless; the result will make a difference in the state of Planet Earth in the future!

<B>Dr Michael ATCHIA</B> [email protected]