Environmentalism of a 12th pass out – Aryan Pandey

“We do not inherit Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children”

This native American proverb needs both to be understood and be felt in the depths of our hearts. We literally are in a world of selfishness and unethical desires. The environmental resources that we are enjoying, or more precisely, exploiting, are not our personal property. The upcoming generations too have an equal right on these.

In general, a common man’s life has no space left for environmentalism. All his energy and thought process is centred in earning for him and his family. He is not at all aware of the fact that all the materialistic things he is aspiring for, are gonna be of no worth, if environment exploitation continues at same rate. A majority of individuals take environment as something for granted, not realising the fact that it delivers us with those needs that form the ultimate basis of existence of life on earth. For a majority of humans, value exclusively belongs to those things for which we have to pay. And since, he gets all the environment services for free, he fails to realise what their actual value is. This is not the case for entire human population, but it’s definitely true for a big fraction. The thoughts that a human being perceives are not by birth. The surroundings, society, parents form the deciding factor for the thoughts of an individual. Our society has completely failed in listing environmentalism in properties of an individual.

We are not at all aware of real values of ecosystem services that are taken for granted. Robert Constanza and his colleagues have tried to find out the price of the services that mother nature gives us for free. Research shows that the average price of fundamental ecosystem services comes out to be US $33 trillions. This figure was nearly twice of the global gross national product(US $18 trillions) at that time. We can easily predict the cost of environmental services at present when the global gross national product is above US $80 trillions. Human race has done severe injustice with the nature, and none can save us from consequences.

Very often, we consider rapid population growth in developing countries like India, as the cause of environmental exploitation. But, this is definitely not the case. Obviously, this is a case , but not the major one. The main cause of brutality towards environment is our so-called developed world. Actually, that development has its roots delved into exploitation. It is like a magnificent palace, built by looting the poors. The streets of European nations shine because their wastes are dumped in grounds of Global South. This totally unethical way of development has contributed to both poverty and pollution. This problem is at global level, the local level has its own problems.

History tells us that, in India we find some greatest and earliest activities over the issue of environmentalism. Environmentalism is the “environmentalism of poor” in India. The Bishnoi community in Rajasthan ranks on top for sacrifices for the sake of environment. In 1731, King of Jodhpur, Rajasthan ordered his minister to collect woods for constructing a new palace. The minister, along with workers went to a village inhabited by Bishnois to cut down trees. Bishnois strictly prohibited the king’s men from cutting the trees. Amrita Devi, a Bishnoi woman, showed exemplary courage by hugging a tree an daring king’s men to cut her before cutting the tree. The king’s men, showing their extreme brutality cut down the tree along with her. Her three daughters and hundreds of other Bishnois sacrificed their lives saving trees. Nowhere, we find such a sacrifice for sake of nature. In modern age , we witnessed movements like Chipko lead by Sundarlal Bahuguna. Still, in the sacred groves in Khasi and Jaintia Hills and at several other places people have their religious believes linked to nature. These sacred groves are only shelter for hundreds of endangered species of plants and animals. The problem is, perecentage of such people is very very less. Their efforts remain limited to a particular area. Such sacrifices fail to take form of a mass movement. The main cause being, unawareness of people. News channels find no space for such genuine issues , neither do we. There are a lot of works on these subjects, but problem is language. The complexitiesty in language of intellectuals are not meant to be understood by common men. These writings with their alliterated language, embroidered with technical terminology makes it not reachable for majority. Educated section of the society, should come ahead and transmit the informations in simplified way so that more and more people could understand this severe issue. As far as I can predict, the time is near when humans will forget all the problems like, unemployment, poverty, crime, etc, that are the major issues of present society. The problem will be only and only environmental. You know what, the time you took to finish reading this article, several more hectares of forest is converted into land !!!!!!!!!