The Decisive Decade for Sapiens to Make Peace with Nature
With the green calendar this year focusing on healing humanity’s relationship with the environment, it is now well understood that people’s wellbeing depends directly on the health of global ecosystems. We simply cannot survive without a healthy mother nature. The Nobel Prize Summit earlier last month, precisely emphasized this very idea by repeatedly stating the need for global sustainability as the only viable path to socioeconomic wellbeing.
Organized amidst a raging global pandemic, the summit was convened to promote transformational action within the next decade. This undertaking, which focused on slashing greenhouse gas emissions and reversing the destruction of the environment, also referred over to replacing the GDP with wellbeing indicators, and realizing the environmental origins of the Covid19 pandemic. According to their statement, the reduction of risk of animal borne diseases required a multi-pronged approach that would recognize the intimate connections between human health and that of other animals and the environment.
Last month’s landmark UN General Assembly resolution, the first-ever on transboundary conservation, emphasized nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation. Famously titled Nature Knows no Borders, the resolution also focused on conservation of biodiversity to avoid future pandemics. Other global movements, like the Earth Day, highlighted the need to acknowledge the use of natural processes and emerging green technologies in restoring the climate. And more importantly, the United Nations World Wildlife Day celebrated the livelihoods of communities who rely on forests, and the value of these ecosystems for both wildlife and all of humanity. The focus was once again on the traditional knowledge of communities who have managed forest ecosystems and its wildlife for centuries.
Examples here are countless. But the idea is already well stated. We need to reexamine our connection with wildlife and our indigenous past to leave our children a livable planet. The future otherwise, doesn’t look very pleasant.
All indigenous communities are often found to be sharing a close relationship with nature. Their practices are often very sustainable, and in cases, even imperative to keep ecosystems healthy. These communities today, however, face widespread discrimination, political and economic marginalization, forceful eviction from their native lands, and violation of their basic human rights. They are often at the frontlines of climate change, and are amongst the first to face the direct impacts of a warming world. This is an everyday reality for indigenous communities in every country in the world. And it, unfortunately, is also a heartbreaking truth for tribal populations in India.
India is home to about 700 ethnic groups which constitute the second largest tribal population in the world after Africa. Many of these communities are forest or fringe forest dwellers that are low in income and are dependent on natural resources for sustenance. They rely on rivers for water, forests for wood, grasslands for pasture, and arable soil for food. Consequently, invasive vegetation, loss of forest cover, and loss of indigenous food sources have emerged as direct threats to their overall wellbeing. This phenomenon, is even compounded by climate change that endangers native biodiversity and consequently sacrifices food and medicinal supplies for members of indigenous communities. Under such circumstances, it is the responsibility of local, state, and federal governments to safeguard the environment and protect indigenous people. That, unfortunately, doesn’t seem to be the case in India.
The Indian government, over the last couple of years, has made irrational policy decisions that threaten biodiversity, the environment, and all of India’s tribal communities. Many of these policies, including the extension of coal mining, and the draft Environment Impact Assessment notification (EIA 2020), are contrary to the stated goals and commitments made at international forums, including the Paris Agreement, the Bonn Challenge, and the Convention on Biological Diversity. In particular, the removal of environmental safeguards envisioned in the EIA 2020 will compromise the wellbeing of resident indigenous communities in ancient, forested areas. These policies are definitely not the way to move forward. Rather, programs like rewilding are!
The first World Rewilding Day was observed on the 20th of March, 2021. Initiated by the Global Rewilding Alliance, this annual observation will expand awareness for rewilding. In fact, it has the potential to not only empower millions of people around the world, but to also help them take simple actions that restore nature and help combat climate change. So, what exactly is rewilding?
Rewilding is about drawing lessons from the ecological and human history and using them to shape humanity’s collective future. It is a process where nature is allowed to take over and recreate our ecological foundation. In my opinion, it really is the recognition that human health is inextricably linked to the health of the environment.
The Global Rewilding Alliance is a “Restoration Implementer” partner of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. And it believes that “rewilding” is an idea whose time has come. In fact, according to a recent study, planted biodiverse forests provide comparable carbon sequestration services to natural forests, and “can be preferable ecosystem management tools to fulfill the objectives of biodiversity conservation.” This finding is rather even more testified by the story of a 57 year old humble man who single handedly planted a forest.
Famously called the forest man of India, Jadav Payeng set out to develop an early fondness for the environment when he encountered a neighborhood of lifeless snakes that had died from intolerable heat after a flood had washed them over to a treeless sandbar. Heartbroken and only 16, he planted 20 bamboo seedlings on the sandbar wishing to never see any more dead snakes again. That year was 1973, and he moved beyond the 20 bamboos to stick to his resolve and plant several thousand more trees for the coming decades. Payeng’s planted forest, famously called Molaikathoni, and his commitment, are testimonies to the change we must aspire for. The unique habitat created by him harbors a wide variety of indigenous biodiversity, including several species of threatened megafauna like elephants and tigers.
Rewilding means helping nature heal itself. It is about conserving the last remaining intact natural places on Earth at the same time as recovering the life-supporting functions of nature in connected land-and seascapes. It is about restoring the web of life, from cities to the wildest places on the planet, by taking the long-term view, and embracing natural solutions to environmental, social, and economic challenges.
But it is also about the way we think. At the end of the day, rewilding is really about understanding that we are one species among many, bound together in an intricate web of life that ties us to the atmosphere, the weather, the tide, the soil, the freshwater, the ocean, and every other life form on the planet. It is about thinking creatively and shaping new opportunities for local livelihoods and the wider economy anchored in a more secure future with healthy nature and much higher climate resilience.
The UNEP Making Peace With Nature report draws a pathway for a shift to circular economies and fairer societies that tackles the three planetary crises — climate, biodiversity loss, and pollution- jointly within the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals. The world can transform its relationship with nature and tackle these crises together to secure a sustainable future and prevent future pandemics, the February report stated, offering a comprehensive blueprint for the future.
“For too long, we have been waging a senseless and suicidal war on nature. The result is three interlinked environmental crises”, Secretary-General António Guterres told a virtual press briefing. Blaming “unsustainable production and consumption” for the crises of climate disruption, biodiversity loss and pollution which “threaten our viability as a species”, he informed that “human well-being lies in protecting the health of the planet.” According to him, “[without nature’s help], we will not thrive or even survive.”
The authors of the UNEP Making Peace with Nature report assessed the links between multiple environmental and development challenges. In their paper, they explained how advances in science and bold policymaking can open a pathway towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, and a carbon neutral world by 2050, while bending the curve on biodiversity loss, and curbing pollution and waste. Taking that path means innovation and investment only in activities that protect both people and nature. Success will include restored ecosystems and healthier lives, as well as a stable climate.
Weeks after taking charge, the new administration in the United States rolled out ambitious plans to arrest biodiversity loss, enhance environmental justice, and curb drivers of climate change by engaging all stakeholders at the grassroots. Their vision 30X30 places people at the center of the decision-making process to conserve 30 percent of the country’s land and water by the year 2030.
Last year, the Zero Draft of post-2020 global biodiversity framework Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) had called for protection of at least 30% of all land and sea area to stop catastrophic loss of biodiversity by 2030. And while the convention aims to stabilize biodiversity by the year 2030, it plans to effectively recover fragile ecosystems by 2050, aligning its actions to its vision of ‘living in harmony with nature.’ It all depends on execution, however.
Previously, a disclosure had revealed that member parties of the CBD had terribly failed in meeting their decadal targets to achieve the SDGs. In response, the organization outlined eight transformative changes to ensure human wellbeing and planetary health in the Global Biodiversity Outlook 5, its final report card on progress of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets. This time again, the burden of change will fall upon execution. And as a signatory to the CBD, India’s commitment will also require creation and regeneration of new protected landscapes, and prioritization of biodiversity abundant areas.
Humanity stands at a crossroads with regards to the legacy it leaves for future generations. Our relationship with nature is broken, biodiversity is declining at an alarming rate, and the pressure driving this decline is intensifying.
The World Environment Day next month will mark the launch of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. That theme itself sounds the scary alarm on degradation of nature and the need for remedial action. On one hand, research has also shown that restoration of wild landscapes can achieve a third of global carbon capture targets, and on the other, biodiversity is the only answer to all our sustainable development challenges. Therefore, the message is clear. The decade ahead might be the last opportunity for Homo sapiens to finally make peace with nature. We must act now!
