The year 2019 was officially declared as the ‘International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements’ by the UNESCO to honour the 150-years completion of one of the breakthrough inventions in Science by the Russian Genius, Dmitri Mendeleev.
Also, the year 2019 can aptly be named as the 'Year of Protests' considering the number of protests happening all over the world to protect free speech, to assert democracy, to create environmental awareness and to defy the ruling Governments on various issues ranging from Gun Control to Citizenship Amendment Act.
The release of the Mueller Report and the Impeachment of the US President and the trade war between China is the watershed moment for the people of the United States. The Young Turks for Climate – led by the Greta Thurnberg, the climate activists stormed the streets and echoed their concern for the policymakers and Government to take note and respond.
The world’s biggest democracy India conducted one more general election in this year and the people resolutely elected the Narendra Modi Government again. One of the biggest achievements in India, the Modi Government took the audacious task of abolishing Article 370 thus ended the special status to its troublesome Muslim-dominated state Jammu and Kashmir.
On the natural calamities side, the biggest fire broke out in the Amazon that destroyed millions of hectares trees. Also, the Fire at France’s age-old Norte-Dame Cathedral cannot be forgotten easily.
On the achievements front, when the world released 37 billion tonnes of carbon in 2019, to off-set the greenhouse effect, more than a million people took the mammoth task of planting over 220 million trees in a single day in India and that’s a world record. When the first all-women spacewalk conducted by the US; China landed on the dark side of the moon.
In the science and medicine, we have made so much advancement. The CRISPR kind of gene-editing technologies gives us tremendous hope. At the same time, we have to mindful about how it will be sensitively handled by human society.
The human skulls found across the globe helped us in tracing the origin of human beings. Using the DNA, the scientists recreated the ancient human with craniofacial reconstruction process to discover where we come from and how the different human species moved around the globe in the prehistoric days.
Iran grabbed attention by meddling with the neighbouring country Iraq’s internal affairs and that created tension in the Persian Gulf region.
The release of China, Cables highlighted the human rights violations in the Muslim-dominated Uyghur province of China; Mauritius Leaks also broke out in this year and that exposed a sophisticated system that diverts tax revenue from poor nations back to the coffers of the Western corporation and African Oligarchs. The relatively calm country like New Zealand was in the news for its mass shooting in a Christchurch Mosque, where two gunmen killed over 50 people and wounded around 50 more people.
Screwed by the Federal Trade Commission of the US, Facebook has agreed to pay a whopping fine of $5billion.
In the same year, confused Britain voted in favour of leaving the European Union.
In the year, when the big nations are taking several wrong decisions, in the remotest corners of Amazon forest of South America, Waorani tribesmen of Ecuador fought against mighty corporations and the corrupt Government, recovering half-a-million acres of their land from the big and arrogant oil companies. In the long legal feud, the valiant tribesmen stopped the oil auction and inspired the world through their Gandhian passive resistance way. Furthermore, they dedicated this triumph is for all of life. To quote their words, the victory is “For people around the world. For the jaguars and the macaws. For waterfalls and rivers. For plant medicines, the spirit world, and our ancestors.” We hope, if every one of us has the steadfast resolve like the courageous Waoranians, we can make a better planet for us to live happily ever after, from 2020 onward.
By
Editor-in-Chief