Art of Living launches Mission Green Earth

New Delhi, Oct 3 (IANS) The Art of Living Friday launched Mission Green Earth, in collaboration with the United Nations Millennium Campaign (UNMC).

The mission aims to help the country achieve Millennium Development Goals (MDG) by working against global warming.

'We should leave a better planet for the generations to come. This is the year when we really stand up and take action,' said Swami Sadyojathah of Art of Living.

The fight against environmental pollution is inclusive of issues like sanitation and deforestation.

Talking about sanitation, Lizette Burgers of UNICEF, who has been working for sanitation in India for the past four years, said: 'I always feel that inside purity should reflect in outside purity and beauty,'

Von Hildebrand of World Health Organisation (WHO) supported her cause and said that sanitation is not only important to keep environment healthier, it is also important to protect our children from diseases.

To fight against deforestation, Art of Living has launched an initiative to plant 100 million saplings in a year.

Many of the city's top schools like APJ School, Saket, Ramjas, Gyan Bharti and DPS, Mathura Road, are participating and partnering in the drive to plant trees.

The panellists also felt that it was time to put regulations against faulting nations to protect environment.

'Industrialised countries thought that we can throw our smoke in the air but now it is coming back to us. We really need to put legal actions against such acts. We are not in a position to let people do it by choice,' Hildebrand pointed out.

Most of the governments of the world pledged to achieve Millennium Development Goals by 2015 so that we have a better world and nobody lives in poverty anymore.