The eco-system, nature, environment, and in some way, even life is no longer safe from sharp-thinking and seemingly logical and worldly-wise colonizers today. And if you think that the last ones to colonize us were the British, think again. Look around and you will be able to see the way every facet of nature is made to wear the mask of good economic sense but, in reality, disrupts every life-giving characteristic of our finite planet.
Yes, they too tag themselves as crusaders and harbingers of prosperity. They talk a language where wealth creation waltzes in and gives heart-warming smiles to attract. But the truth is that though the British colonized us only geographically, these new generation crusaders are actually intergenerational colonizers. In a presentation, Bittu Sahgal, the founder and editor of Sanctuary Asia and Cub magazines says that he is fighting his own generation as they are the new-age colonizers who are hell-bent on converting everything into a commodity. Air, water, soil, rivers, seas, lakes, streams, wells, aquifers and even the climate for them are the foundation on which rests infinite growth. They talk of this potential as a vehicle for change. But the truth is elsewhere.
It is the youth, says Bittu Sahgal, who needs to realise that they are the ones who are going to inherit a planet that might be forced to bear the intolerance of global warming, heavy doses of harmful UV radiations tsunamis, and the despair of watching infra-red radiations bouncing off. The youth must be the good crusaders of a modern world.
Saving the environment and saving wildlife are not separate concepts. In fact, saving the rivers, saving the lakes, saving water bodies, saving forests, and saving the eco-system are all seamlessly linked to each other. The truth is that you cannot save the tiger if you cannot save the forest, you cannot save a river if aquatic life there isn’t allowed to survive, and you cannot possibly save the planet if environmental degradation goes on at the rate at which it is going.
There are many examples around the world where a depleted green belt has caused nature to lash back in anger… and there are also examples where nourishing and nurturing nature back to health has created the right balance so necessary for life to survive. The fascinating truth is that nature self-heals itself if allowed to and if encouraged to. This is what the new generation of good crusaders need to realise and act upon. The dolphins, the butterflies, the birds, and even the tigers need to be wooed back and our invasion into the sensitive eco-system needs to take a step back. Disturbing this balance is almost like instigating human-animal conflicts or eco-human conflicts, if that is what matters. Bittu specified that dolphins in rivers and animals in forests are the sort of barometers that tell us a lot about the health of the planet.
Nature comes to us all as an inheritance that must be passed on to the next generation without wounds and bruises. We have no business squandering the value that this heritage carries with it. This is what rightly belongs to the future and must reach it in as pristine a condition as possible. Yes, the world needs their cities to expand and but it is the way we do it that matters. There are always better solutions to opt for and ravaging the wealth of our environment must not be a part of these plans. It is good that 100 Pipers have decided to this series of lectures… and I am fortunate to have stumbled on to this one by Bittu Sahgal. What he is doing by going out and addressing the youth is to give the idea of preserving our environment the right impact… to an audience that has the time and the energy to act and set things right.
Our perspective should anyway be clear. A degraded environment is not going to do the planet any good.
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#TheGoodCrusaders
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Arvind Passey
13 February 2017
