Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Moving beyond the ritual of observing World Environment Day

It is that time of the year, again, when we remind ourselves that we are an intricate part of our living planet.  It is indeed a tragedy of our times that it has come to this: a ritual celebration of being earthlings.  The question we need to ask ourselves is why we need to celebrate our Environment only on a particular day.  What happens on the rest of the days?

If we look around us, and inside our homes and offices, we are constantly reminded of the gross un-sustainability of our current form of existence.  So demanding and extractive of the Earth's natural resources are our ways of living, individually and collectively, that it has now become a serious demand on our formal and informal systems of governance to address how we will shift away from all this; and if at all we can, without seriously compromising our common desire for an consistently improving quality of living (measured largely in possession of material comforts).

The competing demands of providing such a quality of life for all, which governments promise endlessly and fail to deliver, is creating a variety of schisms and conflicts.  This is playing out all around us.

In Bangalore this assumes an immediate cause of concern with the way we throw our "waste" around, especially onto neighbouring villages and in the process creating a variety of public health and environmental nightmares.  It is no different in the way we use and dispose water in highly polluted forms and thoughtlessly even.  As a result, every well, lake, stream and river is comprehensively polluted.  The air we breath is turning increasingly toxic, even allergic, and less said the better about how we treat landscapes and their ecological features (not just trees).

Beyond the urb, our desire to maintain our urbanised way of living is costing million of rural and forest dwelling families their lives and livelihoods.  There is great disturbance in the way we grow food, extract minerals and consume forest resources.  What will all this add up to?

In some ways the answer is already evident in the warming of the globe's atmospheric systems resulting in the rapid melting of polar ice caps and the mountain glaciers:  the short term consequences we are experiencing regularly seem as frightening as the long term impacts predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change about a decade ago.

In the midst of all these global changes, governments everywhere seem incapable of comprehending the colossal nature of the impact of our human activity on our living planet, and in helping determine the outcomes for present and future generations.  While we will continue to struggle with such imperfections in our governance mechanisms, it is everyone's innate objective to be alive and not give up.  Therein lies the possibility for hope.

Action must and should be individual and local, but it would be senseless to assume that this is sufficient to cause positive change.  There has to be collective action at different levels.  We need to do more and it is the duty of this generation to begin this process without blaming past generations.  Only such an attitude will ensure future generations will have at least as good a chance to live a reasonably good quality of life, as we now do.

Again, this is assuming too much, considering the disparities that prevail amidst us in this generation.  War, strife and struggle over resources are so deeply divisive, that the lack of a method to address these conflicts in a humane manner is afflicting not just our administrative and governance mechanisms, but our very lives.

There are no easy solutions, only the possibility of taking important steps forward.  I risk suggesting them despite the possibility of sounding naive.  Conserve water that falls free with rain in every manner possible.  Conserve energy derived from fossil fuel and consume as little as one can intelligently manage. Consume only what is essential and give up a consumerist way of living.  Consume food that is grown locally.  Disregard calls for consumption claimed as the basis for economic growth; such arguments cost us the Earth!  Get involved in all decisions that matter to land, water, air, biodiversity and Fundamental Freedoms, not only locally, but regionally, nationally and globally.  Questioning the impact of one's education and work on our living planet is also not a bad idea.

In addition, it is critical that we politically engage with the idea of "progress" that is so aggressively promoted by governments, corporates and their advertisers, all of which results in the accumulation of monetary wealth in the hands of a few.  Deeply introspect on the consequences of such "progress" on the web of life and future generations and the right steps each one must take will become evident.

For whatever be the amount of money one has, there is still great difficulty to find water for drinking, say in Bangalore for instance.

(An edited version of this article appears in the Deccan Chronicle, issue dated 5th June 2013, accessible here.)

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