The Orissa Environmental Society (OES) organised its 40th Foundation Day and award function held here.

The celebration was organised under the chairmanship of its president Dr Sundara Narayana Patro. The chief guest was Director, NISER Bhubaneswar Prof Sudhakar Panda and the chief speaker was former Adviser, MoEFCC, Dr Veerendra Pratap Upadhyay.

Chief guest Prof Panda highlighted the serious current environmental challenges confronting the world and the importance of maintaining the quality of our environment. He emphasized that Odisha needs to be given added attention as regards proper waste management, biodiversity protection, pollution prevention and addressing climate irregularities.

Chief speaker Dr Upadhyay delivered the 10th Prasanna Kumar Dash memorial lecture and spoke on the topic, ‘Environment Odisha: The way forward’. Expressing that the natural environment of Odisha is very captivating, he revealed how gradually its quality is being negatively impacted by industrialisation, mining and other developmental programmes. Sustainable and judicious use of resources, extracting usable materials from wastes and recycling them, conserving the top as well as sub-soil and planting native species need to be given top priority, he added.

The chief guest bestowed with the ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ on educationist and environmentalist Dr Bharat Panda and ‘Dr BC Panda Award for Environment and Science Communication’ on educationist and science-writer Dr Murari Mohan Dash. Dr Sudhakar Kar, Prof Nimai Charan Mishra and Dr Pradip Kumar Pattajoshi were honoured as the fellows of the Society.

Dr BM Faruque, Prof Nirmal Chandra Dash, Prof P Sasi Bhusana Rao, Jitasatru Mohanty and Swadesh Sundar Patnaik were felicitated as senior life members of OES.

Dr Patro in his presidential remarks highlighted the Society's past, present and future course of action, emphasizing that it has been playing the role of a torch-bearer in the environment frontier. At the beginning, secretary Dr Jayakrushna Panigrahi delivering his welcome address opined that while the world is currently distressed with a series of environmental crises, selfless contributions of organisations like the OES carry considerable significance.

Vice-president Dr Lala AK Singh introduced the guests and Prof B Sitaram Patro offered the vote of thanks. Many environmentalists, academics and intellectuals attended the function.