The air that we breathe, the water that we drink, and the earth that we live on and also feed from have been very supportive to our existence as human on this Planet. According to the Bible in Genesis 1:28, quoting from the King James version; “And God blessed them and God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air and every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” This verse clearly explains that the stewardship of the earth has been entrusted into the hands of mankind. Stewardship as defined in the Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary is the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to ones care. This definition therefore leads to my question, are we stewards of our environment? Again according to the Good Book’s (Bible) version of creation, Man was the last thing that God created on earth. From an environmental point of view I believe that some of the reasons why man was created last of all Gods creation are firstly; Man needed all these natural resources to be able to survive on the earth and secondly; God wanted to give man power and dominion over all its creations. However, mankind to a large extent has from time to time abuse the authority that God gave us to have power and dominion over everything on earth. We have also easily forgotten that these natural resources are the backbone of our existence as humans on this earth. As the popular saying goes “If the last tree dies, the last man will die”. Sitting down quietly and critically assessing how fast the world has developed and industrialised, I still strongly believe that despite all the progress that we have achieved in developing our society, modernisation has really had some downturn effects on our society, especially when making direct reference to the pollution and degradation of our natural resources. During the era of rapid developmental progress, we failed to critically take into consideration the ramifications of our actions and activities. If environmental sustainability and stewardship were part of our developmental process, we wouldn’t have found ourselves in the situation that we are now i.e. fighting an ECO Battle. This ECO battle that the world is fighting today is grossly because of our failed responsibilities as stewards of this earth. Everyday our consciousness towards the environment has been derailed by our interest towards making progress in the other sectors of our society, living the environment to its own fate. The little progress that has been achieved can be attributed to the hard work of some few individuals or organisations that are so passionate about the environment. The media reportage on environmental issues have always been very low and usually received less attention, interest and support from society. For instance recent research carried out in Ghana by the National Media Commission indicated that out of 7000 news reports sampled in 2008, Natural Resource and Environment (NRE) represented only one per cent. The result therefore confirms the lack of interest from the general public on issues related to the environment. Today many countries are taking up rigorous measures such as embarking on environmental outreaches and campaigns and enacting environmental laws and regulations to streamline the impact of environmental pollutions activities by individuals as well as organisations. The positive thing about most of these measures is that, they will serve as a tool to drastically cut down on the impact of our actions and activities on the environment. The biggest challenge facing the world today is how to incorporate or integrate these new programs into the daily livelihood of the people. Another major issue that has hampered the progress of this program is the implementation and enforcement of laws to regulate the activities and actions of the people. Developed countries however have made many positive strides in this direction, because their societies have created proper systems to ensure the smooth implementation and enforcement of these programs. However, because these countries are mostly the major contributors to environmental pollution in the world, they are sometimes not committed to signing up some of these environmental protocols and laws been agreed upon and enacted at the international level. With regards to developing countries, the implementation and enforcement of these laws and regulation have always been the major challenge. The law enforcement institutions and systems in these countries are generally very weak and affect the full implementation of all these laws. Finally, quoting Dr Opoku-Boateng, vice president for student life and services of the Valley View University, Ghana, at the launch of 'Ecosys 2009,' an international symposium on sustainable ecosystems in Accra, “human activities are gradually creating imbalance in the ecosystems around the globe which posed great danger for human existence. This calls for rethinking on how countries, institutions and individuals could evolve sustainable ecological friendly ways of dealing with the challenges ahead. An ecosystem that works well is a guarantee for us humans that we can have the best of air to breathe, food to eat, clean and potable water to drink and a friendly environment to operate in". This fundamental expectation of every human being is what we all have to aim at. It is therefore important to keep in mind that a prudent environmental management can only be achieved through a holistic attitude from everybody towards the environment. Until we make environment stewardship the core principle and responsibility of our livelihood, we will continue to fight a loosing ECO Battle in the world. Credit: Samuel Sasu (Ph.D Candidate) Department of Environmental Health Sciences, University Medical Center, Freiburg, Germany E-mail: [samuel.sasu@uniklinik-freiburg.de or www.samuelsasu.blogspot.com]