Play your part

“The first step in being a part of the solution is to not be a part of the problem”.

It becomes very difficult for us to suddenly accept that many of our activities of daily living are problem creators, “I’ve been doing this all my life… my parents have lived their life the same way and so have my friends”. Unsustainable habits and practices are many and they’ve infiltrated so deeply and effectively into our lives that life without them seems unimaginable.

The challenge now for those working on environmental issues to answer one question,” Is it better to concentrate on stopping unsustainable practices or, is it better to allow convenience to prevail and redesign lifestyle to make ‘comfort’ sustainable?” After all, the individual is looking for the ’service’ rather than the item per se, in most situations. For example, in a cold area a family need a ‘warm house’ and dont really mind how their house is kept warm as long as it is affordable, acceptable and available. If someone were to design a solar warmer for that family which would provide warmth in a similar manner as an electric warmer, then the family would accept it because the ’service’ of warmth has been achieved.

Several brands in the market are now coming out with energy efficient alternatives and gives the choice to the consumer. In many cities, rain water harvesting and sewage treatment plants are being made compulsary by the authorities. The question is – will steps like this be enough to answer the problem?

Obviously we had to start from somewhere and with someone. As increasing number of people become more active in their involvment with local and world issues, things may gradually take their course for the better.

Unconscious Capacity and Implied Consent

I have already mentioned in previous posts that the consequences of our actions go well beyond the immediate. I recently read this phrase ‘unconscious capacity’ in an article and I thought it as another apt title for this subject. With our actions we demonstrate our capacity instantly to the ones near us. That is our conscious capacity. The implications of our actions go beyond that.

 

It may be in our capacity to buy wooden wardrobe from the neighbourhood store, but what we don’t know is our capacity to cause deforestation, soil erosion, climate change, loss of endangered species by the same action.

 

By ‘implied consent’ consent I refer to the agreement on the part of the person buying the wardrobe to deforestation and the other phenomena. A person who eats non-vegetarian food in today’s world consents to factory farming, rearing of animals in terrible conditions, reckless handling and transportation of these animals and finally their painful killing through mechanical means.

Of course, for the consent to be implied, the consumer of the product should have adequate knowledge and awareness which is always not the case. In fact it is very rarely the case. The usual thought is ‘if it is in a shop, it is meant to be bought’. The concept of implied consent and unconscious capacity will only be applicable only when environmental consciousness becomes common sense.

 

The challenge is to bring out awareness and raise consciousness. What can be done practically is awareness building. The rising of the consciousness, I feel, is more of an individual phenomenon. Several times people don’t take to the reasoning. Why is that?

 

Communicating environmental message is a matter of great responsibility. The manner, the content, the medium and the occasion have to all be appropriate for effective communication and maximum effect. Sometimes it is scientific fact that does the trick and sometimes it is just bringing the audience face to face with reality. For example there are people who give up non-vegetarian food when they learn about how the animals are treated.

 

In this era where people don’t have time for themselves (time wasted is money lost) and where society defines success the way it does, is there a possibility to expect people to stop, look and listen? The only thing left to do for the likes of me is to continue working and stay positive.

Three beautiful poems about relationship with nature

A poem by the American farmer, environmentalist and poet, Wendell Berry:

 

Sowing the seed

My hand is one with the Earth

Wanting the seed to grow,

My mind is one with the light.

Hoeing the crop,

My hands are one with the rain.

Having cared for the plants,

My mind is one with the air.

Hungry and trusting,

My mind is one with the Earth

Eating the fruit,

My body is one with the Earth.

 

 

Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening by American poet, Robert Frost

 

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village, though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

 

My little horse must think it’s queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

 

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there’s some mistake.

The only other sounds the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

 

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

 

 

 A poem by British poet Gerard Manley Hopkins

 

Wild air, world-mothering air,

Nestling me everywhere,

That each eyelash or hair

Girdles; goes home betwixt

The fleeciest, frailest-flixed

Snowflake; that is fairly mixed

With riddles, and is rife

In every least thing’s life,

This needful, never spent,

And nursing element;

My more than meat and drink,

My meal at every wink;

This air, which, by life’s law,

My lung must draw and draw

Now but to breathe its praise….

Precautionary Principle

This important piece of legislature is worth knowing about. It is a safety valve mechanism which allows us to challenge any developmental initiative on the lines of doubt of negative impacts the initiative may have.

Even though science is growing at an astronomical pace, there are many things that we don’t know and can’t prove. Any new technology or new chemical or new method will carry with it a baggage of unknowns. While there will be enthusiasm to put these new methods into use there will also be questions raised about the probable effects these things will have on health and the environment.

Of course it is not always possible to say with definitiveness what the effects may be. For example, if a safe limit for a chemical was to be established, it would probably take decades of studies to evaluate for disease outcomes in cohorts. These studies have their ethical issues also. Science has its limitations in seeing all outcomes. The realization of each outcome takes its own time.

There are so many confounding factors for health and environmental damage in the world right now that it becomes very difficult to study the impact of one technology or process in isolation. In such a situation the companies producing these new implements use this weakness to their advantage and go ahead with production.

Also, to promote economic growth, several times laws and regulations are relaxed. Companies usually put a lot of money into research and hence they want profits at the end of the research at whatever cost.

Precautionary principle is a legislature which can be called upon in case of a doubt on the safety of a new technology, chemical or method. It gives room for the consideration of ‘un-provable’ negatives aspects of innovations. If sufficient doubts can be aroused then the use of the new innovation can be stalled till such a time that these doubts can be cleared.

One example is can give is the verdict given by the High Court of Kerala, India where the spraying of a pesticide called Endosulphan was banned when adequate doubt was raised about the health effects it caused on the local communities.

The Illusions of Time, Space and Person

Consequences of action seek definability. One knows through experience not to touch a steaming cup of coffee or their hands or lips may get burnt in the process. 

The ramifications of ones actions are not always so definable. If one spills water on the stairway, someone else may slip and fall a few minutes later. But the fall usually occurs out of notice of the person who spilt the water. Hence there is always that bit of carelessness associated with most actions. This carelessness is especially profound when it concerns the broader environmental perspective.

During the last one year, I’ve been to many areas affected by severe environmental degradation, spoken to many activists and experts and also read a great deal about perspectives. 

Most people notice only immediate consequences of actions. Most people are in a position to only notice immediate consequences of their actions. Most people are unaware about the total consequences of their actions. Science itself is unaware of the total consequences of any action. This puts us all in a precarious position. 

I will now demonstrate my points with appropriate examples. 

The Inuit Case Study, Alaska, USA (excerpt from my report on the IPEN conference held in Trivandrum, India in August, 2008) 

The Inuit folk get their main nutrition from the surrounding seas. They eat the meat of the large mammals of the region and the fishes from north pacific. These people have never used any pesticide in their region. Yet, they have the highest levels of pesticides in their bodies. Among the Inuit women, the breast milk levels of POPs (Persistent organic pollutants like DDT, BHC and dioxin) are the highest in the world. This has resulted because the chemicals, being non-biodegradable, are carried through the ocean currents and the marine food chains from seas bordering SE Asia and the west American coast. They are carried to northern latitudes by ocean currents, which eventually bioaccumulate big mammals of the Arctic through the food chain, which then are consumed by the aboriginals of the Arctic. The Inuit representative made a very touching presentation on the sufferings of the Inuit community to the international delegation here.

 The above case study is but one example to demonstrate the illusion of space. The usage of pesticides in Asia has led to loss of marine life in the arctic and also led to congenital anomalies and abortions among pregnant inuit mothers.

The similarity between plastics and carbon-dioxide is their half lives, both being approximately 500 to 1000 years. The consequences of the carbon we emit through our activities now will be borne by several generations after us. They will have to pay for it by struggling for water and food and land (consequences of global warming). Similarly, most of our forefathers defined development as a conquest over nature and natural law; and we are paying for it by living by the same mindset.

The illusion of person is more difficult to understand. The person may be another human or another creature. Very recently, a staff member at the centre I work at mentioned to me that he always does things to help other people; like when he destroyed many bee hives killing over 10,000 bees over a month ago. He claimed that this was in the interest of everyone.

The world population of honeybees has reduced by 40%. That is a terrific statistic. If one were to ask a life scientist the importance of these creatures, the most direct answer would be that they are the reason for our food. All food grains and fruits are the consequence of pollination caused by these busy insects. Moreover, these insects attack only when directly provocated and are nonviolent otherwise, like any other non-human creature. By killing the bees this man has affected food production. In many areas of the world suffering from low yields of food grains, one of the major causes is said to be the dwindling population of honey bees. 

The consequences of global warming will hit everyone but most severely the poor and agricultural community. Water scarcity, changes in insect populations and disease patterns are all in the process of blooming. 

The Buddha proposed very early on in 500 BC that time, place and person are all illusions. If one were to see himself or herself in everything, and everything as an extension of himself or herself, how could he or she attack it? Because anything you attack is an attack upon yourself. In this moment lies all of time. The whole of the universe is your home. This is the principle of ahimsa or non-violence.

The Earth Organism

I’ve already introduced the term ‘Gaia Hypothesis’ in a previous post and I think it is about time we explore a little further into this all important concept.

An easy way to get a better understanding of the concept is to compare the earth as a whole to the functioning of the human body. The human body is composed of several organs and tissues each of which has a specific function. Some organs perform more vital functions as compared to others. For example, one could easily say that the heart is more important than a hand for life.

None the less, every organ is also dependent on other organs and tissues for its functioning. On organ is capable of independent existence. If one organ starts to fail, it reflects on the functioning of other organs.

There are several processes going on in the body – regulation of temperature, processing and cycling of nutrients, respiration etc and these are the processes that keep ‘life’ going in the organism.

The body is capable of dealing with insults to a certain extent without causing any alterations in the condition of the body. The body always tries to maintain the optimum conditions within the body and this process is called ‘homeostasis’.

But sometimes, the body is exposed to such insults that the compensatory mechanisms give way and disease strikes. Let us consider the example of the chronic disease ‘hypertension’. Since a very young age the body a person is exposed to physical, chemical and mental stresses. Initially, the body compensates for these by trying to excrete the excess salts, the blood vessels dilate to keep the pressure under control. At this stage his ‘compensatory mechanisms’ work overtime to keep things working normally in the body. But due to continued intake of improper diet, chemical exposure and stresses of life, the blood vessels, the kidneys and the heart give way one by one and the persons suffers from overt hypertension and is labeled a patient. At such a time the person needs medication to keep things normal. Medicines however can only do so much. If one doesnot take care of his health, he would have to pay a lot for it, eventually with premature death.

Similarly, the earth is made up of organs which are the abiotic components like the oceans, mountains, the air, ice, land etc and also biotic components which include all the plant, animal and microbe species on the planet. The abiotic components affect the life forms and the plants and animals have affected the abiotic components through important events like formation of oxygen in the atmosphere and in the carbon cycle. There are several important processes on the planet which include regulation of planetary temperature, water cycle and carbon cycle.

Each of the components contributes to these vital processes and help in maintaining the homeostasis of the planet. The conditions on earth are of course affected by several celestial events but there are many mechanisms on the planet which help maintain the conditions of temperature on the planet. In fact, the temperature on the planet has varied very little since many million years. The temperature has intimate connections with the amount of greenhouse gases in the air, ocean currents, ice covered area etc.

Since the beginning of civilization ten thousand years ago, man has started to have an effect on the environment. This initially was negligible because the number of people was very small and also the needs of each person were very little as compared to today. With time, there has been a continued rise in the amount of insult man has rendered on the environment. Gaian mechanisms have borne the brunt of damage to natural processes for a long time now. Although several people have been skeptical as to how much human activity can alter things on a global scale, it is more or less now an accepted fact that there have been severe alterations of certain processes like the carbon cycle. This is due to the combined effect of burning fossil fuels, increased population, deforestation, increased material needs, melting of polar ice, cattle farming, release of trapped GHGs etc. According to several respected authorities in the field, this process may have already been altered beyond control and the consequences will reveal themselves over the next few decades. Many effects are already being seen with weather unpredictability, species loss, melting polar and glacieral ice, crop failures etc. A detailed explanation of the carbon cycle and its implications will be made available in my next post.

Could it really be that we’ve caused damage beyond the regulatory capabilities of the earth as a whole? Through the books I’ve been reading over the last year and also the discussions I’ve had with eminent scientists, my doubts have been cleared. Gaian mechanisms  have indeed been overwhelmed. Apparently we’re in a stage where all activity will prove to be ’damage limitation’ rather than cure. Anyhow, damage limitation in itself is invaluable and I feel that one should not give up. Each one should hence work towards sustainable lifestyle.

Excerpts from ‘Wild Fictions’

This is a wonderful essay by Amitav Ghosh. The following paragraphs just give the first part of the essay and I would recommend you to read the entire essay from elsewhere on the internet.

 

Wild Fictions: Narratives of Nature and the Politics of Forests.

by Amitav Ghosh

 

If there is anything distinctive about human beings, as a species, it consists, I believe, in our capacity to experience the world through stories. What then are the tales that animate the struggle over the environment that is now being waged all over the world, but most significantly in Asia and Africa? Here is one such: as with all the stories that follow, the point of reference lies in one of the most important battlegrounds in the current conflict over the meaning and definition of Nature – the Indian subcontinent.

The story, said to have been a favourite of Mahatma Gandhi’s, is called The Indian Hut and this is how it begins: ‘Some thirty years ago, a group of English scholars formed a society in London with the purpose of advancing the sciences and furthering the happiness of mankind by seeking knowledge in different parts of the world.’  

There were twenty such scholars, and in order to better direct their inquiries, the Royal Society gave each of them a book containing 3,500 urgent and important queries. The most learned of these savants knew Hindi as well as Hebrew and Arabic and he set off in the direction of India, ‘the cradle of all the arts and all the sciences’.

After three years of travel, he came finally to Benares, ‘the Athens of India’, where he spoke with many a learned Brahmin and amassed an immense collection of manuscripts. He was about to head back with this rich cargo of knowledge, when it occurred to him that despite having spoken with Jewish rabbis, Protestant ministers, French Academicians, Turkish mullahs, Parsee elders, Hindu pandits and so on, he had not succeeded in clarifying even one of the 3,500 questions he had set out with. On the contrary he had succeeded only in multiplying the doubts that surrounded each of them. It came to his notice then that the most learned of the pandits of India was to be found not in Banaras but in the temple of Jagannath in Orissa. The eager scholar set off at once for Calcutta, where the directors of the East India Company provided a palanquin and bearers to escort him to the great temple. Travelling southwards, the scholar decided that he would not trouble the learned pandit with trivial matters and would limit his inquiries to three questions of the most pressing significance. By the time he was shown into the temple’s inner sactum, he had settled upon the three queries that seemed to him to outweigh all others in significance: By what means was truth to be known? Where was the truth to be sought? And was it necessary always to reveal the truth to mankind?

The pandit had ready answers for all three queries. All truth was in the Vedas, he said, and could only be sought by means of the Brahmins, who alone possessed the secret of the language of truth. As for revealing truth to mankind, why, said the pandit, prudence called for it to be hidden from most, while duty dicated that it be always made known to Brahmins.

These answers so dismayed the Englishman that he cried out in outrage: ‘So the truth must always be made known to the Brahmins, who won’t communicate it to anyone! The truth then, is that that the brahmins are unjust…’

There resulted a great uproar at the end of which the scholar was evicted from the temple and found himself heading back to Calcutta in an even greater state of dejection than before. On the way, while passing through a forest, he and his party were overtaken by a cyclone, blowing in from the sea. They pressed ahead, with the wind and rain raging around them, until at last they caught sight of a small hut that was protected from the elements by hills, rocks, and trees.The relieved scholar was of a mind to head towards the hut, but he could not persuade his entourage to accompany him. The hut belonged to Parayas, they said, members of one of the lowest castes of India, and they would not set foot in it. ‘Then go where you want,’ retorted the scholar. ‘To me all the castes of India are the same.’ So saying he went into the hut and was warmly welcomed by the occupants, a man of gentle countenance and his wife. As the thunder raged outside, the scholar spoke at length with his host and soon discovered him to be a man of far greater intelligence and good sense than any of the savants and pandits he had met on his travels. How had this simple man acquired such wisdom? At length, unable to contain himself, he inquired of his host where his temple lay.

‘Everywhere,’ responded the Paraya, ‘nature is my temple.’

‘And from what book,’ the scholar persisted, ‘have you learnt your principles?’

‘None but nature,’ answered the Paraya, ‘I don’t know of any other.’

‘Ah! That is indeed a great book,’ said the Englishman, ‘but who taught you to read it?’

‘Misfortune,’ answered the Paraya, ‘being from a caste that has an infamous

reputation in this country, I was not able to be an Indian. Thus I made myself a man; rejected by society, I took refuge in nature.’

And as for the issue of whether the truth should at all be revealed to a world which so often rewarded honesty with persecution, the answer was: ‘The truth should be told only to those with a simple heart.’

This, in short, is the narrative of ‘The Indian Hut’, a story published in 1791, by a Frenchman who had never set foot in India. The writer was Jacques-henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737-1814), a novelist, naturalist and philosopher who was both a friend and disciple of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In the course of a varied and interesting life, Saint-Pierre accumulated many disappointments until the publication of his massive, multi-volume work, Studies of Nature which achieved an immediate and resounding success. Saint-Beuve was to say of him later that he had done for tropical nature what Rousseau had done for the Alps. Saint-Pierre’s unabashedly romantic and immensely popular novel, Paul et Virginie, was to earn the admiration of Alexander von Humboldt as well as Napoleon Bonaparte, who is said to have read it over and again in St. Helena. No doubt the novel’s themes of rejection, retreat and withdrawal held as much resonance for Napoleon as the novel’s island setting, which was Mauritius, where Saint-Pierre had resided in 1768. Saint-Pierre’s stay there was to produce what may well be his most lasting work, the Dutch-published travelogue, Voyage à l’Isle de France.

While living on that island, Saint-Pierre joined the circle that surrounded Pierre Poivre, a French naturalist and administrator who had travelled extensively in Asia. As is well known, the unique ecosystem of Mauritius had been seriously depleted by the first Dutch settlers. By the early-18^th century the dodo had already been exterminated and the forests denuded. Recognizing the fragility of the island’s natural environment, Pierre Poivre enacted a series of environmental measures, based upon his knowledge of the traditional forestry practices in China, India, Indonesia, and the Dutch settlement on the Cape.

Although short-lived, these measures, have been adjudged to be some of the earliest state interventions motivated by ecological concerns. Thus it could be said of Bernardin de Saint- Pierre that he assisted at the birth of ecology and environmental activism as we know it today: it is in this sense too that he shared in the authorship of a vision of Nature whose influence was to be felt far beyond his time. Along with his much-admired mentor, Rousseau, Saint-Pierre was both a creator and a disseminator of the romantic vision that was to so powerfully influence perceptions of nature not just in Europe, but around the world: in time Kings, Presidents and citizens were to fall equally under its sway. That Romanticism played an important part in the creation of the first national parks in the United States has been well documented; no less well documented is the fact that American parks like Yosemite served as models for the colonial administrators who created the earliest parks in Africa and Asia. Saint-Pierre’s ‘Indian Hut’ is therefore no ordinary story: it has played a part in shaping and forming real ecosystems, including those of the country in which it is nominally set.

To offset Saint-Pierre’s imagined encounter here is a story about a real English scholar and one of his brushes with Nature in India. The date of the event is July 1850, a mere six decades after the publication of ‘The Indian Hut’, and its setting is Calcutta – or Kolkata, as it has been known since 1998. The river that flows past the city, the Hugli, is subject to the pressures of the tides, and in the past it often happened that a high tide in the Bay of Bengal would cause it to flood the surrounding countryside. Thus it happened that on a hot July day in 1852, the Hugli flowed over its embankments, swamping the lowlying wetlands that surrounded the city. When the waters receded it came to be seen that a school of gigantic creatures had been deposited in a shallow wetland pond. Word of this event spread rapidly and in a few hours, reached the ears of an Englishman by the name of Edward Blyth who was the then Superintendent of Calcutta’s Botanical Gardens. Blyth was a naturalist of distinction and is credited with having anticipated some aspects of the theory of evolution. He corresponded regularly with Darwin who once described him as: ‘a clever, odd, wild fellow who will never do what he could do, from not sticking to one subject.’

Now, hearing of the gigantic sea-creatures deposited by the tide, Blyth set off immediately for the Salt Lakes – a considerable journey from the Botanical Gardens. He arrived to find some twenty whales floundering in a shallow pond. Their heads were rounded and their bodies were black, with white undersides. The adult males were over fourteen feet in length. The water was too low to keep them fully submerged and their short, sharply-raked dorsal fins were exposed to the sun. The animals were in great distress and their moans could be clearly heard.

A large crowd had gathered but somewhat to Mr. Blyth’s surprise they had not killed the whales. He had imagined that the animals would be set upon by the villagers, for their meat and oil. He found instead that many of the villagers had laboured through the night to rescue the creatures, towing them through a channel into the river. Many whales had been saved,. Blyth learned, and those that remained were the last of a school of several dozen.

Blyth chose four of the best specimens, two males and two females, and had them secured to the bank with poles and stout ropes: his intention was to return the next day with the implements necessary for a proper dissection. Before departing, he did everything in his power to make sure that his chosen creatures would not be freed by the local populace.

But a shock awaited him: on returning the next morning, he found that his chosen animals had been cut loose during the night. Now only a few inferior creatures remained in the pond. Not to be thwarted of these, Mr Blyth set upon them at once and quickly reduced them to ‘perfect skeletons’. On examining the bones, he decided that he had discovered a yet-unknown creature, Globicephalus indicus. But a few years later this identification was disproved, so it turned out in the event, that Mr Blyth had spent two days and much effort to no avail.

The text of Blyth’s article makes no mention of the human interactions that resulted in the retrieval of the skeletons. The references from which I have constructed this narrative are consigned to a footnote, but scant as these are, they leave no doubt that the villagers went to some lengths to free the whales. What was it then that prompted these people to exert themselves on behalf of the animals, at the cost of incurring the wrath of an English sahib?

The one thing we can be sure of is that their concerns were not the same as those that might have inspired a Saint-Pierre or a whale watcher of today. Possibly the lake in question was a public fishing ground, owned by a family or the whole village. Perhaps the villagers were dismayed at the thought of their common property being colonized by a school of whales; perhaps they imagined that their carefully tended stocks of fish would be rapidly depleted by the gigantic creatures. These reasons would surely have been enough to lend some urgency to their efforts. Yet compelling as these pragmatic reasons might be, I find it hard to believe that they were not allied also to a certain sense of awe, wonder and even compassion at the sight of the distress of these majestic creatures. Is it possible that there was no talk among the villagers of divine visitations, no stories told of signs from the heavens? I cannot believe that there was not. Such emotions might appear to have little in common with an ecological awareness, but if indeed there is, in cultures at large, as well as in works of literature, such a thing as an environmental unconscious, then surely it would consist in an overlapping of the pragmatic and the poetic, a broad acknowledgement of mutual dependence, in which rights, mutual obligations and a sense of wonder are seamlessly merged?

As in Saint-Pierre’s story, Blyth’s encounter too was probably with Dalits, members of the most disadvantaged castes of India. In both instances the people are unnamed, but there the similarities end: Saint-Pierre’s imaginary scholar converses with an individual whereas Blyth finds himself dealing with a collectivity; where Saint-Pierre’s Indian is a meditative recluse, worshipping in the temple of nature, the people that Blyth meets are of an eminently workmanlike frame of mind: far from sitting back to ponder the wonder that Nature has delivered at their doorstep, they have set immediately to work. What is more, the real English scholar, unlike Saint-Pierre’s imaginary hero, has no interest at all in the natives and their ideas of Nature: to him they are just a nuisance, an impediment in the production of perfect – if misidentified – skeletons. As for the animals, Blyth seems to have had neither the talent nor the inclination for forging any kind of relationship with them. In this he would have been no different from, other eminent naturalists of his period. His famous contemporary, Alfred Russell Wallace once acquired a siamang in Sumatra, and found that the ape would spend hours playing with his Malay helpers while ignoring him. “It took a dislike to me…,” Wallace tells us, in his disarming way, “which I tried to get over by feeding it constantly myself. One day, however, it bit me so sharply while giving it food, that I lost patience and gave it rather a severe beating, which I regretted afterwards, as from that time it disliked me more than ever.”

Despite the differences between Blyth’s narrative and Saint-Pierre’s there are also many parallels and intersections. Where Saint-Pierre imagines nature as a sacred space and a temple, for Blyth it is a ‘field’ in all the varied senses of the word: in other words, it is an area that lies beyond the hearth and is uninhabited by design, so that it may be subjected to cultivation – in this instance as an object of study. Where the visions coincide is that in both, Nature is defined by its exemption from contamination by people: it is as it were, the other of society, a province defined by its exclusion of human sociability. Thus did Nature come to be imagined as an Eden too perfect for the fallen progeny of Adam and Eve.

Let us return for a moment to Blyth. What if, on discovering his school of stranded whales, he had indeed paused to ask the villagers for an account of their actions, as Saint-Pierre’s scholar might have done?

The answer I suspect, would not have been recorded – by either Blyth or Saint-Pierre himself – for it would probably have taken a very different form from the pithy aphorisms that Saint-Pierre accorded to his reclusive sage. Most likely the villagers would have responded by telling a story – a fabulous tale that both Saint-Pierre and Blyth would have dismissed as a characteristically extravagant native fantasy, having nothing whatever to do with Nature.

Ideologies in environmentalism

If one were to read the literature discussing the evolution and history of the approaches to environmental issues, there are 2 or 3 basic ideologies that govern the thought process of human perception about the environment. More specifically, the various outlooks to other living beings are of prime significance in our approach to nature.

A few terms which are to be discussed at this juncture are: Anthropocentricism, biocentricism and ecocentricism.

Each of these are ideologies more than anything else. “Environmentalists” and so called environmentally conscious persons may come from any of these ideologies.

Anthropocentricism refers to keeping the human species as central to all activity. All plan and action will be performed if beneficial to the human species. For example, if a pesticide were to be stopped from usage, the argument would be that the rate of cancer among people is increasing because of the chemical. A certain species would need to be saved because they are essential to control pest populations or because the genetic material may come of some use sometime in the future. In case of man/animal conflict or man/ecosystem conflict, it is man who would be given the preference. It is important to note that the present day environmentalist mostly fall under this category. They fight for environmental causes using the relevant human suffering as a tool for advocacy. According to them, creatures without value for human use are expendable. At many levels, nature lovers would label this approach of ‘human centric’ environmentalism as ’superficial’ or more appropriately ’shallow’. Arne Naess has described this approach as ‘Shallow Ecology’ in his texts of which I will discuss soon in a future post.

In the biocentric perspective, all species are considered to be equal and hence any activity causing any harm to another creature in any way is considered as wrong. This is indeed a more radical ideology and would be hard to digest and accept for most people. If such an ideology were to be accepted, many changes would have to be made to ones lifestyle. Each ideology comes with its share of lifestyle modifications. This one will require the person to give up non-vegetarian food, give up leather, adopt organic food etc. This philosophy is keystone to the Animal Rights movement. They believe that without treating all species the various problems of the human species cannot be solved. Under such a perspective no species would be considered as a pest.

A more holistic perspective would be ecocentricism. Here, the central important is given to the ecosystem with adequate respect to the intrinsic value of non-living elements like air and water. The habitats of creatures are also given importance. Any process that would cause damage to the ecosystem and the biosphere as a whole would be considered as wrong. Therefore human industry and other ‘developmental’ endeavours would need to reorganize accordingly with respect to the biological and the elemental processes of the biosphere.

 

Understanding exponential growth

Growth is a common word, used repeatedly by governments of ‘developing countries’ to measure progress. By growth, one can imply economic growth or population growth or consumption growth. Growth is usually measured at national level by the GDP – Gross Domestic Product, which is the total values of the goods and services a country produces.

Usually in nature ‘growth’ goes through phases, affected by the study species and the conditions prevalent. When conditions for the growth of a species are good, which is, the availability of surplus food, few predators and the ability to reproduce effectively, there is exponential growth leading to the doubling of numbers at very quick succession.

Eventually, the organism will encounter certain checks. These checks may be in the form of depleted food availability or disease or predators. At such a point, the growth reduces. Eventually, after a series of fluctuations in the growth rate, the rate of birth and death of the organisms becomes almost equal and this is the dynamic equilibrium state. Stable ecosystems have dynamic equilibrium among all its species.

Unfortunately, for us and for all life on our planet, humans have found ways to bypass these natural checks. Most governments and MNCs have concluded that positive growth at the expense at nature is the only destiny for mankind. Let us understand further this phenomenon of growth. The following riddle has been quoted in the book ‘The Limits to Growth” which I have reviewed in the Useful leads page. It is a French riddle:

There is a pond in which there are many small fishes, insects and frogs. There are also small plants. A water lily bud appears in the pond. It grows twice its size everyday. In 30 days time, it would have grown to such a size that it will cover the entire pond and destroy all the other life forms in it. On which day will you realize that there is a problem in the pond and hence start taking action?

Alarms will sound when the lily covers half the pond. This will be on the 29th day. This will double on the 30th day to cover the entire pond. Till the 29th day we would not recognize this as a problem. There is always this delay in recognizing problems.

There is a possibility that we’re already late into the 29th day. But we still fail to accept this fact and continue to live by our old definition of growth and progress. To further understand this phenomenon, here is a quote from the same book, “The only result of this particular grow forever policy can only be the extinction of whales and whalers”. There was a time when whales thrived in good numbers in colder waters of the northern and southern oceans. Since the time that the hunting of whales began, their numbers began to decline. It eventually came to such a state that it became difficult to even spot whales. It would seem obvious that one would take a cue from this event and stop, or at least regulate the hunting of whales. What some countries like Japan did is testament to our approach to today’s problems. They made devices which would help them seek whales from their areas of refuge, devices using sound waves and infra-red, imaging devices etc. Therefore the sorry tale continued and whales were persecuted even in the sanctuaries.

Some people have gone on to say that Gross Domestic Product should be renamed Gross Domestic Cost. The loss of Natural capital will indeed be very difficult to recover.

The ’special’ dilemma

During my final year at medical college a professor made a joke “Soon we will reach such a high level of specialization that there will be a ‘Left index finger’ surgeon”. Of course we all laughed at the idea.

Through ever increasing number of ‘experiments’ and ‘research’ there is now so much literature and technique that each subject needs so many sub-divisions which further need more sub-divisions. Many sub-divisions have now become subjects on their own now. How does this affect the environment ( when I say ‘environment’ I mean ‘everything’) ?

A medical physiology lecturer needs a kind of frog which breeds only in a lake in a remote village which borders the Bandipur forest of South India. Students can learn about the functioning of muscle and heart from experimenting on the frog. Therefore the frogs are in demand. The tribal have been displaced from the forest by the government officers in the name of ‘conservation’. For a living they have few options, therefore they catch the frogs for the medical college lab. Due to relentless catching of the frogs (coupled with chemical run-offs of pesticides and fertilizers from farms and also climate change) the number of frogs decrease to such an extent that the lab get fewer by the month. The conservationist blames the tribals for the threatening the species of frogs. Alongside all this, a malaria epidemic occurs in the village after a long time. The local medical officers order DDT to be sprayed in the area and give drugs to all the susceptible people. This decreases the frog population even further.

The doctors donot know about (or are not concerned about) the fact that the frogs are the keystone and indicator species in the ecosystem which keep insect populations under control. They just want the frogs for the experiments. The conservationists donot know that the doctors are the ones creating the demand for the frogs. The tribals just need some money to get some food to stay alive. The frogs disappear and hence the mosquitoes increase creating a situation for malaria. The local medical officers are taught that DDT is the only solution for malaria producing mosquitoes. They’re only worry is malaria. The tribals have to move on to other jobs. The above situation is just a small example I’ve given to show the blindfolds within which each of us are probably working. The definition of the problem at each juncture is different depending on who poses the question.

This specialization business is not just in the academic circle. In every area of enterprise, anywhere from production to consumption there is now a highly ‘evolved’ division of labour. There are so many things to take care of that people are needed for so many jobs. Since the job becomes very specific, the only thing the person becomes concerned about is the input and the output of her/his job. They are not very concerned about where the raw materials come from, how they’ve come and who brought them. They have the raw materials and are expected to make something out of them. Once something has been made from the raw materials, the first level products are taken to the next level of assembly and so on and so forth. After the chain of events, the products reach the level of consumers.

People want cars. The car manufacturer wants the iron and steel, the iron smelter needs the ore. Iron ore is found ususlly in thickly forested areas and hence is a major threat to them. The person who is getting the ore mined wants to minimise his costs to give the best price to the smelter and hence he orders open-caste mining to be done. This destroys the forest. But he gets good customers as the price for his ore is the cheapest. The Smelter uses inadequate pollution control mechanisms to minimize his costs and hence releases lots of chemicals in the air and heat into the rivers. The car manufacturer gets all this and produces a hybrid car and calls it ‘eco-friendly’ and the seemingly ‘conscious consumer’ buys the car to show that he is concerned about the environment.

What are inter-disciplinary sciences? In the realization that people are losing perspective of the inter-relatedness of everything, some forums and academies have opened where people look at subjects from more than one perspective. This ensures more responsible science and also it has become a necessity to take research further.

Holistic perspective. The key ingredient missing in today’s world. Everyone is so busy playing their ‘parts’ that the ‘whole’ becomes irrelevant. It has hence led to a situation where each one doesnot consider the other’s problem to be his own. Each person has his own way of dealing with each problem and feels that there’s no need for a holistic approach. Only with the advent of such a perspective can one hope for the environmental situation to get better. “Only by knowing the whole can the parts be understood and not the other way around” (The Limits to Growth, 1972). Specialists, are they really?