Inching Towards Apocalypse
Is there a way to stop it?
Most of us out here have watched Carlos Saldanha’s 2011 animated film, Rio. The film, while documenting the strange adventures of Blu, a Spix’s macaw, also reminds us of all the things that are going wrong today. Example? The Spix’s macaw, a blue parrot native to Brazil is believed to have gone extinct. True, there are about 60 to 80 of them living in captivity but we all understand that there is no saving them.
What’s worse is that while we share our opinions on climate change over tea and cake, it does not in any way address the problem. What we are experiencing is the sixth wave of mass extinction since the Mesozoic era. Now, extinction is a natural phenomenon. However, what isn’t is the unprecedented rate at which the different species are dying out.
According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), 99.9% of the critically endangered species and 67% of the endangered species will be extinct within the next 100 years. Research conducted by Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) reveals that over a million plant and animal species are threatened with extinction at the moment. Let that sink in for a minute. The report further indicates that 75% of the planet’s land surface has been significantly altered, resulting in loss of local biodiversity. Needless to say that all of this is man induced and within the next couple of decades, we are looking at large portions of the planet turning uninhabitable.
How did this happen? Well, we did it. 11,700 years since the last ice age, we entered the epoch of Anthropocene, or the age of humans. Popularized by atmospheric chemist, Paul Crutzen, sometime around early 2000, the term has found new meaning in defining the growing impact of our race on the rest of the natural world.
Not convinced?
Remember the time when the fascinating Great Barrier Reef was still a part of your bucket list? Since 2016, the world’s largest coral reef, which was once a vibrant display of biodiversity, has suffered two bleaching incidents, undoubtedly caused by a rise in ocean temperatures, killing over 50% of the ecosystem.
If we are to quantify the ecological losses in just the last half of the century, it will be evident that we humans have been nothing but reckless, selfish and greedy.
To be very honest, even if we are to put a stop to unacceptable activities such as poaching and deforestation, we are barely making any difference. So cocooned are we in the comfort of our two-ton air conditioners, that we refuse to acknowledge that they are a contributing factor to the rise in global temperature. The same can be said for vehicles that run on fossil fuels. According to the International Transport Forum (ITF), the number of motor vehicle on the road is set to reach 2.5 billion by 2050, as a result of which, we are also looking at a staggering 60% hike in carbon dioxide emissions, unless mitigated.
Does that mean it’s already too late? Pretty much yes.
At this point, we cannot alter the fate of our planet. However, what we can do is decelerate the disintegration human civilization. How? Quite simple, plant trees.
Reports from ETH Zurich indicate that forest restoration is the only available climate change solution today. Forest restoration can cut down carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 25%, significantly altering global temperature in the future.
Several afforestation and reforestation projects are ongoing around the world.
Inspired by Noble Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai’s Green Belt Movement, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) launched the Billion Tree Campaign in 2006. Five years down the line, after 12 billion trees have been planted, UNEP formally handed over the management of the program to Felix Finkbeiner’s youth-led non-profit organization Plant-for-the-Planet Foundation. This gave birth to The Trillion Tree Campaign, that promises to plant and protect a trillion trees within 2050. The number today stands tall at over 15.2 billion planted trees across 193 countries.
Meanwhile, the east African nation, Ethiopia, has recently witnessed a massive wave of afforestation. In an effort to meet the Green Legacy goal, conceived by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, volunteers planted over 353 million trees across the country in 12 hours, setting a new world record.
Closer home, the Balipara Foundation, in association with Mahila Shakti Kendra, the Forest Department of Assam, 134 Ecological Task Force, Assam Investment Advisory Society, and Assam State Rural Livelihood Mission planted over 2,84,722 trees in 78 villages in the Balipara district of Assam. This initiative was taken by the organization to celebrate Van Mahotsav, a festival that actively promotes ideas of forest conservation among the masses. What started off as a movement to plant trees on one day every year across India has now turned into a week-long commemoration of nature.
But it is not enough. According to an assessment by the Forest Survey of India, our total carbon stock stands at 7,044 million tons, a quarter of which is in the Eastern Himalayas. We need mass cooperation and many more collaborative efforts like Balipara Foundation’s CommuniTree program to increase the country’s carbon stock, save its rich biodiversity and contribute to global carbon stock in forest biomass which has been reducing by 0.5 Gt annually in the past few years.
Be it at an organizational level, or individual, as long as we recognise the need to partake in such mindful endeavours, we know that we can wash away some amount of our guilt for not having taken ecological preservation more seriously.
But can we, really?
The problem is that forests don’t grow overnight. As much as the need to plant new trees, it is equally important to protect our existing forests. It would probably take more than a hundred years for us to grow a forest that could reduce carbon footprint. Till then, we also need to work towards cutting down the 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide released every year into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels.
Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) announced that to check the rise in global temperatures below 1.5 degree Celsius, we would need to cut down carbon dioxide emissions by 45% before 2030. Truth is, we can’t wait that long. The next 18-months will see a lot of political decisions being made across geographies to mitigate climate change issues.
The only good thing is that there has been a remarkable upswing in public interest towards climate change stories. As more and more people demand a sustainable solution to this growing problem, governments should be compelled to take necessary actions immediately.
We have already lost too much of the planet’s biodiversity to climate change — not to mention our inability to adapt to such changes. About time we take a step back to evaluate the real cost of progress.
Unless we, standing at the brink of extinction, agree to Eliot’s
“This is the way the world ends,
not with a bang but a whimper.”
This article was written for the Balipara Foundation. In addition to special programmes like CommuniTree, the Balipara Foundation is involved in several long-running habitat restoration programmes in the Eastern Himalayas, carried out via its proprietary programme framework, Rural Futures. To know more, visit Balipara Foundation’s official website.
