Sustainability and our connection to Nature

 

“Mother Nature may be forgiving this year, or next year, but eventually she is going to come around and whack you. You have got to be prepared.”

-Geraldo Rivera

Joseph Drew Lanham, an American author, poet and wildlife biologist quoted in one of his books ‘The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature’,  “I believe the best way to begin reconnecting humanity's heart, mind, and soul to nature is for us to share our individual stories.” "Choose only one master—nature." "Leave the roads; take the trails." "Preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known." This implies Nature is an integral part of human life and eternally inseparable. However, our disconnection is even reflected in the word NATURE: you will often find definitions that describe Nature as “what is not made by human-beings”. But, why do we exclude ourselves from the concept of Nature?

Nature is the planet’s life support system and upholds human welfare and our economy. Nature provides multiple solutions to challenges we face, like reducing pollution, mitigating and adapting to climate change and food security. While this is broadly recognized, we are losing nature at an alarming pace. The fifth session of the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) will connect and consolidate environmental actions within the context of sustainable development and give significant impetus to more effective implementation. This fifth session of the UN Environment Assembly in 2021 will mobilize, motivate and energize member States and stakeholders into sharing and implementing successful approaches and nature based solutions that contribute to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly the eradication of poverty and the promotion of sustainable patterns of consumption and production. The theme therefore calls for strengthened action to protect and restore nature and the nature-based solutions to achieve the sustainable development goals in its three complementary dimensions (social, economic and environmental). As per Mr. Sveinung Rotevatn, Norway’s Minister of Climate and the Environment, who has been duly elected as the President of the UN Environment Assembly, "Nature is the foundation for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Nature is the solution we in many ways take for granted, but that we cannot afford to lose. Building on the ‘super year for nature’ and the strong knowledge base on the critical status for nature, I hope we, in one year, can agree on significant opportunities and changes that need to happen to turn the trend for nature and the Sustainable Development Goals. With more nature, we will live better lives. I look forward to a dialogue with governments and all stakeholders in the year to come about the transformative changes that need to happen to protect and restore biodiversity and the wide range of benefits we all depend on from nature. Let's get started."  

At a time when the world faces a looming crisis because of climate change, the role of nature in protecting the planet is becoming more apparent. A 2019 report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) revealed that across the globe most nature has now been significantly altered by multiple human drivers, with the great majority of ecosystems and the biodiversity they sustain showing rapid decline. UN Secretary-General António Guterres in a message for World Wildlife Day 2020 had rightly said “Humanity is an inextricable part of the rich tapestry of life that makes up our world’s biological diversity. All human civilizations have been and continue to be built on the use of wild and cultivated species of flora and fauna, from the food we eat to the air we breathe. However, it seems that humanity has forgotten just how much we need nature for our survival and well-being. As our population and our needs continue to grow, we keep exploiting natural resources - including wild plants and animals and their habitats - in an unsustainable manner.” Today, the world has come to the threshold of a looming disaster which could imperil the very existence of all the living beings. The only escape route and key to avert this doom is sustainable living.

Sustainable living involves reducing the amount of Earth's resources that we use to help protect it. There are a number of ways we all can do this, including limiting the amount of energy we use, using eco-friendly products and changing our diet etc.  In a nutshell, to live a sustainable lifestyle one should try to have as little of an impact on the Earth as possible, while also trying to replace the resources we do use. At the moment, we are producing resources, using energy and creating waste at a rate which isn't sustainable. This leads to environmental issues, such as pollution and climate change, which cause harm to the environment, wildlife and humans. By making some small changes to your lifestyle, we can reduce our carbon footprint and help to tackle these issues.

Sustainability is the capacity to endure. In ecology the word describes how biological systems remain diverse and productive over time. For humans it is the potential for long-term maintenance of well being, which in turn depends on the maintenance of the natural world and natural resources. Sustainability has become a wide-ranging term that can be applied to almost every facet of life on Earth, from local to a global scale and over various time periods. Long-lived and healthy wetlands and forests are examples of sustainable biological systems. Invisible chemical cycles redistribute water, oxygen, nitrogen and carbon through the world's living and non-living systems, and have sustained life since the beginning of time. As the earth’s human population has increased, natural ecosystems have declined and changes in the balance of natural cycles have had a negative impact on both humans and other living systems. 

 

Sustainability and our connection to nature

Sustainability is said to be a holistic approach of how we can satisfy our needs today without cutting off the same possibilities for future generations. While scientists and politicians refine and newly invent reasonable definitions for this powerful word, we still get lost on our way to the aim – living well without destroying our environment. Interestingly, most people don’t intend to harm nature or species diversity – in some cases they just make the wrong decisions, because of a lack of knowledge about the consequences. We cannot calculate and predict everything that will happen in nature, but if we are aware of the unknown we can still take the responsibility and use the insights we already have to decide what might be best for our environment. The knowledge we already have results from work by thousands of people; we have many channels to communicate; and many ways to know what happens around each one of us on many different scales. It is irresponsible to justify our ignorance by bad management, or too little time or money.

 

Today, people all over the world are standing under an immense pressure to perform, which is increased by media and the available wealth. Many people work many hours per day to earn more money than they need, and to work their ways up to a position where they feel they could have more influence, more power, or more satisfaction. Other people have problems in finding a job, are sick, or are busy with living their everyday life, and they have few options. Either way, nature and sustainability still are a low priority for our society – maybe because we invest our energy in different, more tangible subjects. Though we know that nature and its biodiversity is threatened, we don’t see a direct connection between our activities and mass extinction. This is not because we are bad people, but because we don’t feel the connection. Environmental problems, scientific reports and the warnings of nature herself are far away from us. We don’t know the ecosystems that are most endangered and we cannot visualise the abstract numbers of decreasing species’ richness. We evade the forces of nature, and even the rhythm of day and night by building houses and taking shelter in them, by heating and by using artificial light. Isolation from nature and its services increases, because we are used to buying all-year-round available food, because we can cheaply move our residence and we can choose whether we want to have sunshine or snow in our holidays. And, it is a good invention to slip out of natural processes, so we can live a life quite independently from seasons and natural events. We have created for ourselves a long, secure and comfortable life. Nothing is bad about this, but unconsciously, we have developed an anxiety of nature and its rough laws.

 

Nature has an interest. It wants to live. There are many conflicts between living creatures, and in many cases, the stronger and the most adaptive species or individuals survive, re-iterating Charles Darwin’s theory “survival of the fittest”. We always use our strength and our tools to influence most parts of nature around us. Now, we should acknowledge the interests of nature and instead of forcing our anthropocentric philosophical viewpoint arguing that human beings are the central or most significant entities in the world and put ourselves on top of the hierarchy, we should see human beings as part of nature. Instead of subordinating nature into our life we might try to re-integrate ourselves into nature. We can start doing this simply by using our perception, our common sense and our mindfulness. If our aim is sustainable development, we should give respect to the nature and empathise with it. Therefore, with more consciousness about our direct dependency on a healthy environment, we will be more likely to care for nature and give it the priority it deserves.

 

Are Humanity's dealings with Nature sustainable? What is the status of the Human Person in a world where science predominates? How should we perceive Nature and what is a good relationship between Humanity and Nature? Should one expect the global economic growth that has been experienced over the past six decades to continue for the foreseeable future? Should we be confident that knowledge and skills will increase in such ways as to lessen Humanity's reliance on Nature despite our increasing economic activity and growing numbers? Is the growing gap between the world's rich and world's poor in their reliance on natural resources a consequence of those growths? These are the various questions that plague humanity today and have to be answered by it only.

There is no single environmental problem; there is a large collection of interrelated problems. Some are presenting themselves today, while others are threats to the future. Moreover, the scale of the human enterprise has so stretched the capabilities of ecosystems, that Humanity is today Earth's dominant species. During the 20th century world population grew by a factor of four (to more than 6 billion) and world output by 14, industrial output increased by a multiple of 40 and the use of energy by 16, methane-producing cattle population grew in pace with human population, fish catch increased by a multiple of 35, and carbon and sulfur dioxide emissions by more than 10. It is not without cause that our current era has been named the Anthropocene (the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment). Environmental sustainability is responsibly interacting with the planet to maintain natural resources and avoid jeopardizing the ability for future generations to meet their needs. A walk on the beach or a hike in the woods reminds us that our forests, coral reefs, and even our deserts act as examples of sustainable systems. Since ecological conditions and economic and social systems differ from country to country, there is no single blueprint for how sustainability practices are to be carried out. Each country has to work on its own concrete policy to ensure that sustainable development is carried out as a global objective. There should be no question that Humanity needs urgently to redirect our relationship with Nature so as to promote a sustainable pattern of economic and social development.

“Nature is silent, Nature is healing, Nature is calming, Feel the bliss in the silence of Mother Nature”