Our beloved green planet has entered a stage and time when our environmental crises and ecological degradation has reached cross roads. The detrimental anthropogenic changes we have facilitated since World War II has now caught up with our lives across the globe. Pressing issues such industrial and agricultural pollution impacting our soil, air, water, atmosphere, nuclear radiation, Climate Change, rapid loss of biodiversity, forests, flora and fauna, anthropogenic wildfires, Menander of global plastic pollution, eutrophication, indiscriminate release of Greenhouse Gases into the atmosphere and accelerated rise in human population has been putting us in front of a global catastrophe. Yet due to local, regional and international politics, the ravaging demands for more and more materialistic needs, never ending greed, selfishness, self-centered egoistic attitude and lack of proper vision we are plunging ourselves to grace danger.

We are failing to realize that our hands are getting tied due to several of these factors discussed above and that we are also running out of time to respond to these critical issues impacting our lives. In other words, we are aware of the dangers of the environmental degradation; but, unfortunately we are suiting at the edge unable to bring all stakeholders on a common platform to act as one in our so called ONE EARTH. But we all know that on the unforgiving grounds of crude realities this ONE EARTH concept is just a paper tiger, without any authority. Our planet is divided into several power camps like G7, G20, P5, SAARC, ASEAN, BRICKS, UN, NAFTA, EU, NAM, Arab League, Shanghai Corporation, IMF, ADB, First World, Third World, developed, under developed and developing nations to mention only a few handful. As such we are unable to take any meaningful and decisive position regarding environmental issues as this is not a mere individual responsibility, but a TRULY collective responsibility.

Nature and nurture helps in building awareness about our fragile environment among the children of our very next generation and our future citizens. At least we could work towards establishing such initiatives to cater to our young minds across the globe from the very early stage; so that they are better equipped than us in making life altering decisions. Through the use of nature based models in nature parks and theme gardens about diverse environmental and ecological issues around us; we can certainly attempt to create sensitivity regarding our environment and ecosystem. We can thus sensitize the minds of our little crusaders regarding our fragile environment. These young individuals are the future citizens of this country to create a better world for all of us.

There has always been an inclination in the human society from the dawn of our civilizations to portray our life through artistic expressions. If we look into our age old historic heritage buildings, castles, gardens and parks based gazebo, large towers, columns, temples, churches, shrines, mosques, synagogues, and related places we could identify many historic architectures in the form of statues, figures and figurines, intricate nature based coral and faunal designs, mosaics, and other artistic depictions of our contemporary life, the world around us captured through spectacular world of art and architecture. In the modern times, these have shaped into our life as theme parks or gardens or roadside or street side architectural ornamentation that is truly awe inspiring.

Therefore, it is a perfect approach to drag the attention of our little ones through life like models or miniature models of ecological themes, animals, birds and other life forms in a comprehensive manner. Several cities around the globe in either hemispheres have designed and established biodiversity and ecology theme parks, fossil parks, dinosaurs park, marine or ocean parks or miniature forests to get our children accustomed to the precious natural resources sensitizing them to be responsive to the environment as a future citizen. We have always lived with the phrase ‘Catch them Young’ as a guideline to train and sensitize our younger next generation about existing socio-cultural manners, to follow our extant religious and social obligations and norms to train them for their future.

This approach of using models to encourage and attract kids to burning global and local environmental issues and concerns is a great tool to shape their mind to train them to become successful environmentally sensitive, future citizens of the planet. Once they learn to appreciate the spectacular diversity abs beauty of the nature; and that every species has its space as our coin habitants of this planet we are much better off for our future. The models depicted here capture the artistic expressions, biological behavior and importance; there by creating an artificial world if nature appreciation. Most children focused nature parks, gardens, trails and educational centers have such beautiful life size or miniature models to teach our younger generation to be appreciative of our forests, biodiversity, ecosystem, and environment. Only through such comprehensive education and awareness building efforts can we train our best generation to be selfless, dedicated to natural issues and in becoming better future citizens. 

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