The Most Basic
Resource
It
is a measure of our alienation from Mother Earth that, once or twice each
year, we set aside and commemorate an “Earth Day” or an “Environment Day”.
The saving grace is that those of us who do celebrate these occasions
constitute a relatively same class of people. And, at least, we can be
grateful that our lives have not yet become so dissociated from nature and its
processes that we are no longer able to recognize and reaffirm our origins and
the sources of our sustenance.
For most people,
other than those-like the readers of this newsletter-who live in highly
urbanized and industrial communities, every day is an Earth/Environment Day.
Throughout history, the rulers and the ruled, the rich and the poor, the
privileged and the common folk have all lived closely in touch with the cycles
and flows of nature’s seasons. Life was not necessarily comfortable or easy,
and indeed it is only in this century that people throughout the world have,
for the first time, had widespread access to the things that lead to a really
high level of material and physical well being.
Nevertheless,
the problems of poverty, pollution, population and peripheralisation not only
continue to linger, but have now assumed magnitudes they never had before.
There are, on this planet today, more poor and marginalised people, more
degraded places and lost species, and more man made catastrophes each year
than ever before - and the numbers are growing.
Insptie of all
the measures taken by the governments of nations, including ours, towards the
development of their economies, we appear to be losing ground, literally and
figuratively , at least in many countries of the South. Much more has to
bring about the changes needed if society is to attain a better and more
continuing future.
Thus, it is the
issues of Land (and water and all the vital resources without which we cannot
survive) that most of us, the so-called “middle” or professional class - must
now make our own. By our actions and lifestyles we cause the bulk of
environment damage, and must recognize that it needs to be corrected.
The big dams and
thermal power projects, the huge steel mills and coal mines, the gigantic
refineries and fertilizer plants, have displaced millions of people from their
income and livelihoods, destroyed the forests and soils, and led to
irreversible losses of genetic and other valuable resources. Earth Days and
Environment Days remind us that we can continue in this direction only at our
immediate peril.
An Earth Day or
an Environment Day also reminds us that there are many issues of a global
nature which mankind must now increasingly deal with. Saving the ozone shield
that protects us from the sun’s ultra violet rays is one such issue. Avoiding
sea level rises that are likely to follow the rise in the global temperature
that in turn, results from man made gases released into the atmosphere, is
another. More important, perhaps, is the fact that the causes of
environmental problems also include many global concerns, particularly the
stark imbalances that exist in international economy. These are certainly
problems that all mankind including ourselves will have to face soon. But
many of our local environmental problems are even more immediate. It is
imperative for all of us to understand that, in so far as these are our
problems (whoever might be responsible for them), we will ultimately have to
ensure that they are solved - if necessary, by ourselves.
Neither the
problems of poverty nor those of pollution can be removed either by
unthinkingly accepting one type of “development” as the only correct one, or
blindly rejecting another. In a country as diverse as India with people and
resources whose characteristics span a range that is almost global, no single
type of solution can be enough. Our needs will require solutions that are
both big and small, public and private and combine the modern with the
traditional.
Earth Day and
Environment Day help bring in focus these many strands of the alternative
development strategies we now need to explore and adopt - at all levels from
the national to the individual.
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