Sustainability and relationships

Atop development - pic from Delhi's outskirts (c2010)

Every ecosystem has its own ways of survival. No, not just survival but flourishing. Leave ecosystems to themselves and you will see how they flourish without any problem. Bring a ‘civilised’ human being there and their doom will begin.

The tribal people and Adivasis and other communities like them understood ecosystems and respected their needs. They are not allowed to survive, however. Our craze for development drives out the tribals and the Adivasis from their dwelling places and we impose our degenerative ‘civilisation’ on their healthy systems.

In an interview to The National Geographic Traveller [July-Aug 2022], Amitav Ghosh points out the example of the Massai people who have lived in the Ngorongora crater for thousands of years in harmony with the ecosystem of the place. These people are now being thrust out at gunpoint, says Ghosh, by the advocates of development. These ‘developers’ are “using conservation groups under the guise of ecology and conservation, using weaponry to shoot at these people and thrust them out…” Why? Ghosh tells us that “some sort of a company in the UAE, which I bet if you look close enough you’ll see that it’s owned not by an Arab but very likely by an Indian or someone. What they’re doing is that they’re throwing these people out, and they’re going to bring in huge tourism conglomerates, who will bring in urban Africans, urban Asians, and Europeans and Americans.”

Tilting the system in favour of one species is precisely what non-sustainability is about. This is just what human beings have been doing for centuries. Assuming that we are some sort of divine entities or at least creatures with divine sanctions, we lorded over the planet. And imperilled most ecosystems.

Ghosh cites the example of Ranthambore tiger reserve. Earlier people lived in perfect peace with their surroundings there. Now it’s a Disneyfied tourist centre where tigers obviously can’t survive. Human greed has led to the deterioration of many such ecosystems. The recent collapse of a dam near Uttarkashi is yet another reminder to us that we need to check our attitudes towards our planet.

Ghosh shows us a way, an alternative from Botswana. There the agencies of development work with local people. They leave the local people in the forest instead of throwing them out in the name of development. These local people are given the power to decide how others will visit the forest and see their ways of life. Consequently, there are no safari raiders in the forests of Botswana.

The plain truth is that we cannot invent sustainable human communities from the scratch. We need to model them after nature’s ecosystems. How do we do it? We have to make our businesses, economy, physical structures and technologies in harmony with nature’s inherent ability to sustain life. “Sustainable communities evolve their patters of living over time in continual interaction with other living systems, both human and nonhuman,” as Fritjof Capra puts it in his book, The Hidden Connections. Relationships and interactions – that’s the fundamental secret of sustainability.

PS. This post is part of Blogchatter’s CauseAChatter.