Sustainability and Ecoliteracy

Landslide near my village - image from The Hindu

Five members of a family were washed away along with their house the other day just a few kilometres from my village. Such incidents caused by unprecedented landslides are becoming frequent in Kerala. They are some of the consequences of climate change which is itself caused by what we have done to our planet. They are happening not only in Kerala. They happen all over the world.

More than half a century ago scientists warned humanity about an imminent disaster called climate change. In the 1980s many solutions were suggested by concerned scholars and scientists. Lester Brown, one of them, defined sustainability as development that meets our needs without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their needs. Forty years after the world applauded Brown’s theory, the world stands in much poorer shape today. We don’t put theories into practice; we only clap for them.

It is getting late now. We need to start acting with a sense of urgency. Our planet is in deep trouble. Unpredictable cloudbursts and heat waves and other disasters are swallowing entire regions. People are perishing. Certain species of animals are staring at imminent extinction. The earth is dying. How do we save our planet?

We need a paradigm shift. For decades we have been driven by a system, primarily economic, which put profit before people. Profit was apotheosised as the primary virtue by what came to be known as globalisation which was the latest version of gold rush. A few beat the majority in that rat race and became billionaires and multi-billionaires. They were celebrated in the mass media. They became the only worthwhile heroes. They created a new world, one in which a minority grabbed more and more from the majority and appeared heroic in the process.

This system has to change. That requires what is known as a paradigm shift. The system must reorganise itself. The foundation of the system must shift from avarice to magnanimity. From competition to cooperation. From grabbing to sharing.

This may sound like a platitudinous moral science class. The plain truth is that we don’t have too many alternatives. We need a paradigm shift.

People are willing to care and share. People aren’t as greedy and selfish as they are thought to be. Most people, “deep down, are pretty decent,” as Rutger Bregman puts it in his book, Humankind: A Hopeful History. We need to cultivate that decency. We need a system that nurtures that decency. Globalisation is just the opposite of that system.

Some serious thinkers suggested ecoliteracy as a starting point of the new system. Ecoliteracy recommends a new pedagogy. This pedagogy puts the understanding of life as the most important factor of education. Life is about relationships, not competitions and rivalries and multi-billionaires’ lists in halls of fame.

Ecoliteracy demands that the students should be given experience of learning in the real world. They should grow food, for example. They should participate in restoring a wetland. They should create forests. The pedagogy must enable the students to understand the interrelationship between everything on the planet. The flapping of a butterfly’s wings in New York may cause a tornado in Australia. The system is as sensitive as that. The students must internalise that fact first of all. Relationships.

Diversity plays a vital role in those relationships. Uniformity and homogeneity are not virtues. Diversity is the very foundation of resilience in nature. Every single species out of all those millions has a role to play in maintaining the balance of the system. It is a delicate system. Tread softly on it. Students must learn that.

Ecoliteracy teaches students that life, from its beginning more than three billion years ago, did not take over the planet by combat but by networking. Relationships.

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