Dear Fellow Human Beings,
"Only when the last tree has been felled, only when the last river has been poisoned, only when the last fish has been caught, only then will you learn that money cannot be eaten !"
How do you react to this - devastating fires in the jungles of Indonesia, California increasing pollution in our lovely rivers , the shrinking glaciers and pesticides in our food...? Mere combination of Letters or words ? Or signs of death in distant ? Probably, the latter !
Remember the days of nuclear terror when the Damocles' sword hanged over virtually all living beings .The nuclear bomb captured the reality very dramatically as it was easy to understand the narrow time gap between life and death . Today we are facing a similar question of our survival ,but with a difference . The death is coming slowly , but the death process is already on !
Information from diverse sources gathered around the world adds up to a picture of growing complexity , but of increasing clarity...! There are unmistakable signs of all round deterioration of nature - atmosphere , oceans ,land ,forests ,rivers ,air and all living beings .In a single year about 17,000 Biological species or sub -species disappear from the face of earth , about 26 million ha of forest cover is lost - all just in a single year .About 70 percent of all the available water is polluted and 80 percent of all the diseases are due to polluted water . World Health Organization(WHO) has warned of more infectious diseases in the coming years -worse than dengue .Already cholera , malaria and T.B. are striking back with vengeance . Over the last 20 years ,at least 30 new diseases have emerged . The HIV virus which was unknown a decade ago ,today infects more than 20 million within 5 years . In Delhi alone , the number of children who have suffered from the bouts of asthma , according to a calculation , is 2.5 lakhs !
A scientific report ,agreed to by more than 1000 scientists from more than 170 countries recently says for the first time conclusively that increase in green house gases mainly carbon dioxide , since pre-industrial times(1750) has led to warming of earth's surface besides other climatic changes . The reaction of such a process might just be catastrophic if allowed to continue. Besides this , the micro level catalog of environmental degradation is also revealing . we all know the situation of scarce water for drinking and irrigation is also revealing .we all know the situation of scarce water for drinking and irrigation in our cities and villages. In most areas the water table is receding and yet near the canals land is being water logged and Stalinized. the lessening forest cover on the hills and foothills I causing extreme soil erosion resulting into floods with increasing frequency. The rivers and lakes are being choked and are shrinking . The self regeneration of our ecosystem has come to a halt and only one- fourth of our forests are regenerating. It is opined that most of our future problems will revolve around water and land resources. The bitter fight between the politicians of the states of Karnataka and Tamil nadu and that of Punjab and Haryana over sharing of river waters is a pointer in this direction. All this grim scenario has a common streak. The above tragedies are different pieces of the same puzzle ! For too long, man as the central hero, has been trying to conquer the 'arbitrary' and 'villainous' nature. Our paradigm has been that of Man-nature dichotomy where nature is considered a thing external from us, to be exploited, manipulated and consumed. But is 'nature' external to us ? Is it an empty space in which humans have been placed externally ? The truth is now coming out ! Many scientists are now recognizing that Earths-component systems-the atmosphere, land, oceans, rivers and living beings are inextricably inter wined. In fact they have co-evolved. Nature is not an empty space in which humans have been placed externally. It just does not support life, it is life. Virtually it is non-duality. Instead of man nature dichotomy we have man-nature continuum! And when the nature is being destroyed, we are destroying ourselves. It Is strange that man tries to conquer himself. And our society, economies, values and ethics only mirror this topsy-turvy understanding. Take economy for instance- be that of capitalist and socialist main stream variety. The edifies of these economies is based on the understanding of nature as just a resource for raw materials or as a dumping sinks of wastes. The standard of living is measured by the amount of annual consumption! We think we produce 'goods' only, but is that so? We produce 'bads' (i.e., waste) as well as against our goods which we don't take account of. We think we can 'throw away' these to 'some where else' but there is no such place as 'some where else' and 'there is no away to throw to' Consider the most basic measure(as they say) of nation's economic performance, the GNP. In calculating GNP, natural resources are not depreciated as they are used up. Machinery used in cutting trees is depreciated, not the trees themselves! In India, for every kilo of grain harvesting we are losing 7 to 12 kilo of top soil which takes thousands of years to form and yet grain harvested is reflected in our GNP, the lost of precious soil is not! Is this Development....Or De-Development? For how many more years can we continue with this highly unsustainable practice? In the quest for mainstream development, nature is being taken as a point of departure but never of return. The debate often centers around the division of 'returns' among the workers and the industrialists. The necessary 'returns' to nature for its replenishment have conveniently been forgotten. We are highly discounting the future costs of today's destructive practices, this way we are severely restricting the 'right to live' of our future generations. In fact, we have world from our children and they will never forgive us if we make it increasingly unfit for them.
That is why the concept of 'sustainable e development' is of most relevance now. It is defined as 'an approach towards meeting the needs and aspirations of the present and future generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. It must be remembered that this concept is not just another epithet in the lexicon of development but is an essential condition for our very survival. It is not an option but an imperative. Air and water can no longer be taken for granted! The crisis under lined above is not a crisis of nature. It is a crisis of man's unequal and exploitative relationship with nature. But above all, it is an outer manifestation of man's inner crisis-a crisis of his perception. He has not been able to relate to himself. The gap between his thinking and feeling has increased. Only this way extreme manifestations of evil are possible. But for the separation of his thinking and feeling he might not tolerate the death everyday of 37,000 children under the age of five from starvation and preventable diseases. Man may be able to 'think' intellectually, nature and other beings inseparable form him but he is not yet feeling it. When he cannot feel that, he needs morals, ethics and codes of conduct that 'ought to be' or 'should' be followed to bridge this gap. But these morals and ethics are constantly being outdated and themselves become a barrier to the 'feeling of nature as a inseparable from us', because that feeling has to be very live, of today, of now and cannot come from past, which is dead. Up till now, we didn't feel ashamed in asking pretentiously "if a tree falls in the forest and no person is there to hear it, does it make a sound?" But let us now start hearing the sound of falling trees around us. Let us also feel that the future is not a place to which we are going. It is a place we are creating............." . Please consider this as open Love Letter for all the people who love to live simply with purity of nature and want to change the way we are moving on this earth
Puneet Arora
Freelance Copy writer, Founder of Ecologic Corporation
and Love to writes Love Letters .., To Know more .., Just check http://loveletters.oh-indian.com
