I have begun to wonder lately- do I know soil? Have I held it in my hand for once and never looked at it without feeling it is dirt, but a component of every eco-system? The answer, sadly, is no. There is a difference between being aware of something as crucial as climate change and attributing climate to local environment and its dynamics. Lot of work has been done on the urban jungle and how the anthromes affect the habitat. But very less has been done on how to make people aware of the crucial situation. To us in the developing world, climate change is not the immediate concern. It occupies a sphere of less importance than food, water, shelter, etc. It does not enter our minds that climate change is something that affects us in the very grass root level, something that even democracy hasn’t been able to do properly yet.
When I was studying away from Thiruvananthapuram, it was a relief to come home every time. It was not because I was home sick, but because I loved to see trees lined up along the sides of the road, huge trees that the royal family has planted decades back. The city was green. It was welcoming. It was an urban jungle, but a planned one with the commercial centers packed into exclusive pockets and not spread out. Then our Govt decided that it was time to renovate the city. This in time when the world was ablaze with pre-Cop15 talks. Widening the roads, building larger buildings with western design, etc can hardly be called sustainable development. The Left, the Right and the Centrists all joined hands in applauding this development. Whatever sanity that was left in the city intelligentsia, like the architect Shankar, was accused to be anti-development and called him a 'tree-hugger'. Now, you might be wondering why this blog post now, if I had found the whole episode disturbing then. Because an acquaintance of mine actually posted this status message on Facebook- ‘Was happy to see the changing face of TVM. Much needed change. Wide roads, new buildings, exclusive outlets of some global brands.’.
Let us look at the items of emphasis here. First of all, there is the stress on the much needed change. I would have left it as another piece of ignorance, had not the clause ‘exclusive outlets of some global brands’ caught my eye. He is right. The availability of global brands and consumer items has increased. So has the cost of living. Do these global brands have a major impact on the vast majority of the local population? I wonder if he or anyone who cares more about the former actually cares about the farmer. The answer would most probably be no. There is a notion among the general public that once you cast the vote, your necessity and participation in democracy are over, that there is no further role. Most people take this ‘modernization’ for granted instead of thinking about viable solutions. They think that in order to cater to the growing economy and growing number of vehicles on the street, the roads have to be widened. They think that for the economy to grow, high rise buildings are necessary, which instead of taking the local weather conditions into consideration, follow blind aesthetics.
The main problem in such thinking is that we forget two things- first of all, every society has an ecological footprint. The WWF claims that the human footprint has exceeded the bio-capacity (the available supply of natural resources) of the planet by 20%. The footprint of India is fast increasing, population growth being a major problem. Forests are decreasing in area alarmingly, the various programmes of the Govt for afforestation taking time. Now, the problem with emulating the mainstream western models of development is that this foot print only increases. Developed countries have huge ecological footprints. One of the reasons that our footprint is low is because we have traditionally used eco-friendly mechanisms and given more priority to regeneration. Such a statement does not mean we should regress to traditional economically nonviable energy fuels or methods of habitation. It simply means we need to leapfrog and use novel tools and techniques of development. We need better public transit systems and mandatory car pooling, so that instead of widening the roads for the increasing number of vehicles, the number is reduced to accommodate the regulations. The next option is to make our huge buildings self sufficient. This is the age of science in which scientists are devising better and better technologies to harvest energy; even from human urine (I will not say that it is the only option.). It is the age of designs based on biomimicry and biomorphing. We need to use local sources and local intellectual pools which encourage creative collaboration to understand the systemic problems and tackle them fruitfully.
The second thing that we forget is that we have a rather large young population. We forget that the earth is theirs to inherit. Every parent tries to give the child everything he/she might need. Doesn’t the child need clean air, water and food for tomorrow? I always thought of the food I used to waste as ‘some food’. I also used to think that I possibly couldn’t make a difference to the poor by eating what I didn’t want. That is the wrong approach. It is not the consumption, but the production. I should not cook more food than necessary thus wasting the raw food material, energy and time. It is not a hard habit to inculcate. Nor is the habit of leaving some grains of food and a bowl of water on the balcony for the little birds. I hardly know ten or fifteen local species of plants. My children would know even lesser. Like me, they would consider plants that grow too much in the soil as weeds. Like me, they would most probably wait to buy a pair of gloves to pluck them out because soil is full of germs and it is dirty. Isn’t it time that every concrete forest with a terrace had gardens? Every plant and animal species has evolved in a particular climate rather painstakingly. Instead of importing and cross breeding garden variety plants with prettier flowers, let us have indigenous plants and the beehives harvested and not destroyed. Let us not pave concrete the space around the house. Let there be soil. It is high time we converted the anthromes to consciously include the micro ecosystems that flourish around us.
I consider D H Lawrence to be one of the most boring writers ever. But there are no better words than these, taken from the ‘The Rainbow’ to show the rawness of nature and the complete interdependence of humans with the land and nature.
‘But heaven and earth was teeming around them, and how should this cease? They felt the rush of the sap in spring, they knew the wave which cannot halt, but every year throws forward the seed to begetting, and, falling back, leaves the young-born on the earth. They knew the intercourse between heaven and earth, sunshine drawn into the breast and bowels, the rain sucked up in the daytime, nakedness that comes under the wind in autumn, showing the birds' nests no longer worth hiding.’
I think it is time I actually did something about the garden.
