Protect natural resources that humans can’t recreate: Murmu

President Droupadi Murmu on Saturday inaugurated a two-day National Conference on Environment 2025, focused on addressing critical environmental challenges, policy gaps and sustainable management.

“Our children will face and contribute to environmental transitions on a much larger scale. While families worry about education and careers, we must also consider the air they breathe, the water they drink and whether they will still hear birdsong or witness lush forests,” Murmu said.

She recalled how her father used to bow down before trees and the Earth and seek forgiveness before using them for cooking and agriculture.

She also asked people to ponder if it was justified to destroy natural resources that humans being could not create.

Recounting the early years of her life in an Odisha village, she said her family had to rely on dry wood for cooking due to the unavailability of resources.

“My father and mother used to collect wood. They would then cut them (into smaller pieces) and make them worth burning. I used to see every day that my father would bow down before the logs before chopping them. I used to ask my father, ‘Why do you pray before cutting them?’ He would tell me that he was seeking forgiveness,” the President said.

Murmu said her father would tell her that these wood pieces were once part of a tree that gave fruits, flowers, air and water.

“Now these logs have grown older and dried. Even then, they are helping us,” she said.

The President said her father would also bow down before the Earth before tilling.

“I used to ask, ‘Why do you pray before tilling the field?’ He would say, ‘Seek forgiveness before hitting Mother Earth.’ He would say, ‘The Earth is our mother. What all it bears, whatever products we grow, we are able to do it because of Earth’,” she recalled.

Murmu was born in Uparbeda village in Odisha’s Mayurbhanj district.

The President said while travelling on the road, she noticed small mountains had vanished and, when asked, people would say that they were destroyed to make way for construction activities.

She said many people asked her why people destroyed things that they could not create.

Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav asserted India’s right to responsible growth based on national needs.

“India has met its Paris Agreement green energy targets nine years ahead of the 2030 deadline,” he said, adding that global climate anxiety cannot override the country’s right to secure food, water, energy and quality of life for its 140 crore people.