 Hey you, 'ecoilliterates'!!
Learn from Nature. Learn
from Nature. Learn from Nature.
So many wise men have been saying this for centuries. But this is easier said than
done. As a first step, we viewed the air, water, land, people, animals and plants together
and called it the environment. Then we studied the relationships between all of these and
called it ecology. What next? How about "deep ecology" as the next logical step
forward in bringing us closer to nature? Now, what’s that all about?
Deep ecology tells us that all the living beings on this planet form the web of life
and that we are merely a strand. It doesn’t detach man from the environment like
"shallow ecology" does and clearly tells us our progress depends on the progress
of the entire web.
Secondly, we have to understand that if the human race wants to live as sustainable
communities throughout the earth, then it has to learn critical lessons from the
ecosystems, which are sustainable communities of plants and animals in the first place.
Moreover, the planet’s ecosystems have organized themselves in complex ways so as to
maximize sustainability for more than three billion years of evolution. That’s rich
experience. When nature utilizes mechanisms of problem solving based on chaos, why
can’t we?
Again, easier said than done. But that’s where new maths steps in. For, it is the
only science that can deal with the "chaotic" nature of nature and its complex
ecosystems. While we are still a long way away from applying it and getting results vis a
vis the ecology, we are already making small breakthroughs in other fields, which will
help in the long run.
The first step forward is that we must all become "ecolitereate". Ecoliteracy
can be defined as understanding the principles of organisation of ecosystems and using
these systems to sustain human communities.
We will have to change our educational, business and political communities accordingly
and formulate a set of new principles to govern our world. Air, water and soil are so
precious and yet they are free. Free of cost and free to abuse. Most products do not take
into account the environmental and social costs taken to produce them.
To balance this, it would be a good idea to introduce an ecology tax to reflect a
products true costs. In the long run, this would drive wasteful and harmful technologies
and consumption patterns out of the market. We must learn to do more with less.
Ecology's basic principes — interdependence, recycling, partnership, flexibility,
diversity — will all take us to sustainability.
Nature is not a perfect system of perfect figures and perfect relationships, and yet
the sum of the whole is extremely stable. All we have to do is mimic nature and make our
world just as beautiful.
We must learn to do
more with less. |
