World Nature Conservation Day

Nature, in the vastest sense, is the natural, physical, or earthly world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the manifestations of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a massive, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are part of nature, human activity is often comprehended as a separate category from other natural phenomena.

The word nature is derived from the Latin word natura, or "essential qualities, innate disposition", and in ancient times, literally meant "birth". In ancient philosophy, Natura is mostly used as the Latin translation of the Greek word physis, which originally related to the ingrained characteristics that plants, animals, and other elements of the world develop of their own accord. The concept of nature as a whole, the physical universe, is one of several expansions of the original notion; it began with particular core applications of the word φύσις by pre-Socratic philosophers and has steadily gained currency ever since. During the advent of the modern scientific method in the last several centuries, nature became the passive reality, organized and moved by divine laws. With the Industrial revolution, nature increasingly became seen as the part of reality deprived of purposeful intervention: it was therefore considered as sacred by some beliefs or a sheer decorum for divine providence or human history. However, a vitalist vision of nature, closer to the presocratic one, got reborn at the same time, especially after Charles Darwin.

Within the various uses of the word today, "nature" often refers to geology and wildlife. Nature can refer to the general realm of living plants and animals, and in some cases to the processes associated with inanimate objects—the way that particular types of things exist and change of their own accord, such as the weather and geology of the Earth. It is often taken to mean the "natural environment" or wilderness—wild animals, rocks, forest, and in general those things that have not been substantially altered by human intervention, or which persist despite human intervention. For example, manufactured objects and human interaction generally are not considered part of nature, unless qualified as, for example, "human nature" or "the whole of nature". This more traditional concept of natural things that can still be found today implies a distinction between the natural and the artificial, with the artificial being understood as that which has been brought into being by a human consciousness or a human mind. Depending on the particular context, the term "natural" might also be distinguished from the unnatural or the supernatural.

Conservation's goals include protecting species from extinction, maintaining and restoring habitats, enhancing ecosystem services and protecting bodily diversity. A range of values underlies conservation, which can be guided by biocentrism, anthropocentrism, ecocentrism and sentimentalism. There has recently been a movement towards evidence-based conservation which calls for greater use of scientific evidence to improve the effectiveness of conservation efforts.

World Nature Conservation Day 2020: We often use the words 'conservation' and 'sustainability' but how much do we follow these in our daily lives? Many of the crises the world is facing today are because of the lack of preservation or the wasteful use of natural resources. In a bid to promote conservation, raise awareness and facilitate sustainability, every year World Nature Conservation Day is observed on July 28. World Nature Conservation Day is marked internationally to spread awareness about the best practices to protect the natural resources as our Earth does not have an unlimited amount of things we need like water, trees, soil etc. It is high time we recognize that a healthy environment is necessary for healthy people and productive society, not only during our lifetime but for the future generations as well.