KARACHI - The students and citizens participating in World Earth Day activities have underlined the need to play everyone their due role to keep the planet healthy and environment friendly in new era of climate change. A large number of students and teachers from different schools of city participated in Earth Day celebrations organized by WWF-Pakistan at its Wetlands Centre Sandspit in Karachi on Thursday. The event was aimed at creating awareness about environmental citizenship and year round progressive action. Over 1,000 students from 10 schools of city took part in the activities ranging from arts and crafts, essay competition to beach cleaning, puppet shows, musical performance, environment games and nature art exhibition. The students, majority of them below 10 years, were enthusiastic in nature friendly activities, while most of them vowed to keep continue this practice in routine life as well. A girl student Rimsha Musani of Civilization Public School, who took part in drawing competition and highlighted the electricity shortage through painting, said that we should all conserve energy as country facing electricity crisis. Neha Farruk of same school gave message of vehicular pollution which creating environmental hazardous for citizens. Similarly, the students through their painting highlighted the environmental issues and threat to marine life due to inflow of industrial waste, which destroying the sea. Marym Magsi who participated in beach cleaning at Sandspit said that they have learnt a lot and will continue to apply in their routine life. The students collected the shoppers and other garbage, cleaned the beach. They said that citizens should keep clean our beach because garbage destroys the beauty of sea, besides polluting it. Dr Ghulam AKbar, Regional Director of WWF Pakistan while speaking to the students said that the world today is in greater peril than ever before. Whether we live on the edge of the forest or in the heart of the city, our livelihoods and indeed our lives depend on the services provided by the Earths natural system. 'Yet our demands continue to escalate, driven by the relentless growth in human population and in individual consumption. Our global footprint now exceeds the Earths capacity to regenerate by about 30 per cent. If our demands on the planet continue at the same rate, by the mid-2030, we will need equivalent of two planets to maintain our lifestyles, remarked Dr Ghulam Akbar. Speaking to the event participants, Marriyum Aurangzeb chief of Corporate Relation, Communication and fund raising WWF-Pakistan, said that the event Earth Day-2010 has been celebrated with an aim to usher in a new era of nature conservation, encouraging personal accountability and behavioural change to facilitate sustainable living on our Planet-Earth. However, what is need as we celebrate at earth day is a firm re-commitment from our people to conserve our natural resources that we have been blessed with, she remarked. Altaf A Abro, Manager Conservation Sindh-WWF-Pakistan said that this event was aimed to create awareness and to sensitize among the new generation about environmental issues. The Earth Day-2010 is 40th anniversary as this network is a driving force steering environmental awareness around the world. Meanwhile, lady teacher Rana Mangrio, who teaches at APWA College, said that awareness among the children is must, but a programme to sensitize teachers about environmental issues must be initiated. The most of teachers are unaware about the global warming, climate change and emerging environmental issues which yet come in face to us.