Earth Hour 2023

Despite the world feeling, increasingly, fast paced there are times where special effort has to be made to slow down and take note of the natural order of things all around. This observance of nature, which should be an occurrence for a few hours each day, has been officially recognized every last Saturday in March between the hours of 8:30 pm to 9:30 pm from 2007 in Australia to a global event in the present day. Earth Hour, as it is dubbed, began as a Lights Out event organized by the Australian chapter of the World Wide Fund as a way to engage the locals to take seriously the fight for the environment and the issues it faces. A year after, in 2008, Earth Hour became a global affair with a grand total of 35 countries and 400 cities participating. Every year saw a significant increase in participants until reaching its current number of 190 countries, including Jamaica who joined the movement approximately ten years ago in 2013.

This year in the Jamaican Earth Hour observance was conducted at the Hope Gardens on the 25th of March and was the first one in three years that had a gathering of patrons. As an acoustic concert was the way how Earth Hour was introduced to the masses in Jamaica, musical performances have been a main factor of these gatherings ever since. This year was no different with the likes of 5 Star Celestial, Jamila Falak, Moon, Rica G, Ras-I, Joby Jay, Fantan Mojah and Queen Ifrica as the headliner.

The Palm Drive section of Hope Gardens was transformed into sections of sustainability as most of the materials used for layout were either biodegradable or recyclable. All who were in attendance brought their own containers, after some encouragement by the organizers, in order to limit the usage of single-use plastics in the food and drink areas. As for the actual Earth Hour, while it was not observed down to the minute, all in attendance paid tribute to the effort made by all involved and the world at large to remember to make special efforts to keep the environment flourishing and pollution limited.