To maintain the delicate balance in an ecosystem and sustain biomes on Earth, living beings remain interconnected within their species, between species and even non-living matter.
A cow in New Zealand can emit methane in its surroundings or an enterprise may burn coal to power its functions somewhere in India, it all may add up and even distribute emissions or warmth across the globe.
Even beyond our concern, this local happening may help in shaping global events like melting of glaciers, intensifying already disturbed weather patterns or unlocking deadly pathogens at our bay.
Nature does it work efficiently even when humanity fails to achieve its targets.
Climate change has become a definite reality and an immediate challenge that cannot be neglected any more. As a result, a sense of apprehension has engulfed every awakened mind today that wishes to save their own planet and home from destruction but not all of them think in the same manner.
After all, the great philosophers have claimed: “The goal of life is living in agreement with nature.”
Though the environmental regulations came around 1970s, the Ecological regard first appeared in human history at least 5,000 years ago.
Be it the Vedic sages praising the nature, wild forests and rivers in their hymns or the Taoists urging a human life to follow and reflect nature’s patterns or the Buddha professing compassion for all the beings or the Prophet Solomon’s ability to converse effectively with animals and studying Science as a divine way to recognize God etc., all speak of a different tale than one we can see of ecological degradation.
The very old Indus civilization of Mohenjo Darro quoted the impacts of pollution on human health and worked on their waste management and sanitation.
Types of Environmentalism:
Apocalyptic environmentalism: This one is based on the belief that earth had already stretched beyond its limits, and stretching even more can possibly lead to larger number of deaths.
Emancipatory environmentalism: It emphasizes attaining the minimum standards of living for everyone by looking at environmentalism through the lens of economic prosperity.
Free market environmentalism: It is based on a belief that the free markets with property rights paired with the kinds of tort law can encourage corporations better than government regulations to work on their production costs, resource use and their conservation.
Evangelical environmentalism: The evangelical Christians take this as their duty to willfully protect Earth and its creatures because of their devotion to being good stewards for the Almighty’s creation.
Preservation and conservation: Many humans have just grown tired of all the damages made to their mother Earth and have now come forward to save it from collapse. However, while we aim to preserve or conserve, we need to understand the difference between the two.
Conservation talks of sustainably managing resources like air, water, soil, biodiversity, fossils etc. Instead, preservation involves maintaining the untouched or lesser contacted areas of the Earth i.e., where a regulated human hasn’t gone with its reason to farm, travel, seek shelter, and expand business.
A few hardcore preservationists across the world fight to protect all living things and their ecosystems despite the dangers they can pose to human lives or an inexplicable cost in achieving this.
While conservation can be in-situ (within the original habitat) or ex-situ (in human-made or artificial habitat), protected areas have been classified under seven categories by IUCN ranging from National parks, Wildlife sanctuaries to protected areas with sustainable use of natural resources.
However, this troubled thinking has even aggravated to a condition called climate anxiety. As per the American Psychology Association (APA), eco-anxiety is “the chronic fear of environmental cataclysm that comes from observing the seemingly irrevocable impact of climate change and the associated concern for one’s future and that of next generations” with symptoms being stress, inability to sleep or nervousness.
Of course, if our deserts are struck with frequent droughts, shorelines get vanished, green can sprout up in the Arctic or Antarctica with disappearing ice, food security dwindling etc, it is a cause of concern but any progress to this cause is impossible without appropriate as well as informed action.
Need for the protection of fragile areas:
Above everything, ecological protection saves lives, not only of humans but every other soul that thrives on the planet. According to a recent Lancet study, nearly 2.3 million premature deaths occurred in India alone in 2019 due to pollution besides a total of 9 million in the world.
It helps stabilize economic prosperity and keep disasters away with improved co-existence. Nevertheless, balanced surroundings can extend efficiency to any ongoing system.
Although we are way beyond taking this planet back to what it was. However, in this UN decade of ecosystem restoration 2020-2030, we can still choose to protect what we have and maybe, halt and restore the planet to its original sheen.
As a part of this strategy, one can take help of the IUCN’s enlisting of protected areas for conserving the world’s natural biodiversity and environment. Why?
According to several scientific studies and research, a total of approximately 8.7 million species of eukaryotic organisms exists on earth but only around 1.8 million have been classified successfully. It simply means that many species would have gone extinct even before their chance came for being recognized or classified and many more are destined to suffer in a similar manner.
An inclusive classification of any surrounding can help in defining and recording the varying needs, aims and concerns it has, based on which the solutions can be provided therein.
Display of conservation and reawakening a sense of eco-awareness:
Based on one’s experience, one can ascertain that demonstration and art can invoke the greatest of feelings in an individual, be it for nation, caste, gender or for the environment. One feel connected in ways beyond comprehension and limitations.
Museums, botanical gardens etc., no longer just serve as monuments of preservation but they have now begun to focus on conservation. Though this can be tricky as all these services come at an obvious cost.
It is however important to understand that these are integral to both sustainable economic development for a nation and promotion of science, education, cultural awareness along with providing a fresh and rich vision to natural and historical conservation.
The words of a museum curator give meaning to it all: “Museums (and other such institutions) hold in one body the diverse physical and intellectual resources, abilities, creativity, freedom, and authority to foster the changes the world needs most.”
These reassert even a greater importance in countries ridden with troubled governments as they ensure natural protection initiatives fall no short of saving the country or lie secondary to narrow or short-term economic-political interests of governments.
Till the moment places demonstrating environmental preservation exist, the world gets its chance to become an environmental-friendly place. It inspires the young minds to see and dream a world full of biodiversity and then compare it with the one they come from and the possible world they are going to inherit.
Acceptance is the first milestone to glory and this simple realization can inspire the younger generation not to repeat the mistakes of their ancestors and learn to live in consonance with their penultimate Mother.
“Work through the problems until you understand it, and in that understanding there comes resolution,” explains a study conducted on similar lines.
Creating an environmentally-friendly citizen: Botanical Gardens
As per the Living Planet Report 2020 there is a 68 percent decrease in the number of mammals, aves, fish, plants or insects from 1970-2016.
A significant portion of this loss suffered is by the plants.
If we are to believe a new study, there is a 60 per cent lower chance worldwide for plants to adapt to climate change. With animal diversity going down, this loss becomes even more difficult to overcome as the former provides food and a way to distribute seeds miles away.
“A key way that plants can adapt to climate change is through ‘migration’ — the movement of the species to areas that become suitable for growth under an altered climate. While adult plants that are rooted down can’t migrate, only their seeds can through carriers,” explains an author and ecologist at Rice University.
And hence the need for their conservation and protection.
These exquisitely wonderful gardens play a central role in the ex-situ conservation of original and primitive plant species (without mutation), exploration of global plant biodiversity and study the trade-offs between traits and plant performance of species.
This role is likely to be expanded with climate crisis hitting even harder, with their scientific functions ranging from restoration ecology to public education, study of a plant specie’s response to global warming and documenting the consequent need for genetic correction or simply alleviate the potential risks of hybridization in a plant species.
There is an ample evidence and study conducted on how the Kunming Botanical Garden in Southwest China has successfully conserved critically endangered, endemic, and economically important plant species belonging to the southern Hengduan Mountains and Yunan Plateau.
A case story from India:
Just 8 kms away from the lovely Nainital exists a guarded attempt of beauty, the Himalayan Botanical Garden.
Spread across 26.9 ha of subtropical forests, it has the potential to offer a collectible experience of several biomes within its protected enclosure.
Housing an appreciable collection of rare flora of Uttarakhand and beyond, including 30 species of ferns and more than 20 species of blooming orchids, 50 species of cacti and succulents and sustaining more than 150 species of butterflies through host plants like Iris under the refuge of Project Butterfly.
The aim has been simple, to conserve the ailing biodiversity, forced migration of moths and butterflies to higher elevations caused by climate change and offer the natural heritage of Uttarakhand to its future generations while the research opportunities for ecologists and scientists continue to flourish providing the right platform for education and learning in a natural habitat.
Was it always the same?
The place is surrounded by graceful oak trees in its vicinity but the land acquired under the HBG was once acclaimed rocky and barren.
With dedicated efforts and loads of fertile mountain soil finding its due placement over this patch, HBG has become an indispensable home for Nature lovers, researchers, botanists, traditional farming knowledge bearers besides a free world for birds and butterflies.
What was once not considered fit for its own survival is now sustaining the lives of many.