Back in 29th June, 2014, tropical states report was shared by 12 different leading tropical research institutes. The report highlighted the progressively increasing significance of the tropical regions. In memory of the launch of that report and adopting the resolution by United Nation Assembly A/RES/70/267 in 2016, globally international day of tropics is celebrated on 29th June. This day was devoted to create awareness to the challenges faced by the tropical regions and the solutions which can save them and achieve sustainable development goals.

Defining the tropics as the regions of the earth or we can say the area between the tropics of cancer and tropic of Capricorn or simply saying , the region of earth which lie in the middle of the planet. Tropics covers nearly 36% of earth area, including the areas of north and South America, Australia, Africa and Asia. The Tropics get a lot of sun and only have two seasons: the wet season and dry season.

Certain areas of the tropics like amazon basin receives 9ft rain per year. Some other areas like Sahara desert receives only 2 to 10 cm per year. This uneven distribution in rainfall cause different settlements of animal and plant species in the region. Tropical regions are important as economic exports comes from this region along with this 40% of world population reside here.

As biodiversity is observed in this region, same number of problems are also faced mainly due to anthropogenic activities which includes:

·         Extensive clearing of forests for cultivating crops and polluting the marine ecosystems.

·         Overexploitation of industrial fishing fleets and commercial hunters

·          Disease spread due anthropogenic activities and extinction of species

·         Putting more load on climate change

Keeping in mind above mentioned issues, many animals’ loss their habitat which untimely causing endangered and same with the plants. More people experience undernourishment in the Tropics than other area of the world. This is consistent with the higher levels of poverty in these regions.

The reason to celebrate this event is to create awareness about its importance and the problems which are being faced at all levels and to address these problems. For this purpose, awareness session, walks and fund-raising campaigns should be done to help the undernourished people of tropics and stop cutting native species of plants.

About the Author: Meraj Ahsan Qureshi is a young, motivated environmentalist and socialist, determined to raise the voice of the environment and to serve society.