“When the last tree is cut down, the last river poisoned, the last fish is caught, then only will man discover that he cannot eat money.” – Cree Indian wisdom
Biology Professor turned environmental activist Barry Commoner was one of the few who could envision what the world is experiencing now due to shortsighted activities of humans at the time and in the past. He warned the US Government and the scientific community in 1960s and 70s that the world is heading towards an irreversible disaster due to the destruction of the environment without being concerned about the limitations of natural resources. He championed the idea that there is no ‘waste’ in nature and there is no ‘away’ to which things can be thrown.
There is only one ecosphere for all living organisms and what affects one, affects all. Commoner said that the environmental crisis is a global problem, and only global action will resolve it. It has come to a point where the word ‘global’ is in everything we experience these days anyway.
Oblivious to destruction around them
People and Organisations usually pay attention mainly to what is happening economically and politically in their country, and perhaps even in neighbouring countries, before they make their plans for the future since there are so many global factors, directly or indirectly, affecting every decision an individual has to make in his or her daily life.
Even schoolchildren understand that their right to go to school the next day can be taken away by a global condition like a pandemic that has long-term effects on the global economy.
Anyone tuning into any type of media would certainly see or hear something about global warming and its effects on their neighbourhood, at least once a day. The digital revolution of the world is helping people to understand how connected their lives are to all kinds of different activities around the world and how easy it is to access any type of information they need at any time.
The irony is that even the people who understand these connections and dependencies, most of the time, would not see any connection between their lives and floods, droughts, forest fires, deforestation, water pollution, air pollution, spraying poisonous chemicals on their foods and deaths of humans and animals due to environmental pollution and or starvation, as long as they happen in countries other than the one, they are living in.
There are some who are not at all concerned about any of those even if they take place in their own country as long as it is not happening to them. If and when they find out that their lives have been affected negatively by some event that they have not been directly involved with, they expect someone else to do something about it.
Very rarely we find a person who would say: “Yes, I’m that somebody and I will do everything in my power to do something about it.” More often than not, people would say: “I didn’t have anything to do with creating the problem and therefore it is unfair for anyone to expect me to do anything to solve it.”
Wisdom of Chief Seattle
What have all these elusive thinking and behaviour patterns got to do with traditional knowledge, global warming, and the environmental crisis? Well, as Chief Seattle had said: “Human kind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
All things are bound together, and all things connect”. Traditional knowledge can be considered as: a set of accumulated cognitive and perceptive experiences of interactions between a group of people, their physical and biological environments and the production and consumption systems. Indigenous knowledge can also be considered under the same definition especially when it is confined to a specific community or population in a particular area.
This type of knowledge is passed from generation to generation, usually by word of mouth and cultural rituals and has been the basis for sustainable agriculture, food production and a wide range of other activities in many parts of the world.
Being responsible to the world
One of the main pillars of indigenous knowledge that supports the sustainability is ‘responsibility’. Indigenous people generally believe that they are responsible for the well-being of the natural environment around them because it is that environment that sustains their life. This knowledge is built on a vision that sees the world through a set of social and spiritual relations among all life forms in all four kingdoms, mineral, plant, animal and human. If one can understand at least the basics of such knowledge systems, one will never be capable of passing the buck intentionally when it comes to the environmental crisis.
In its seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), agreed at the Summit in September 2015, the United Nations (UN) listed ‘No Poverty’ at the top, ‘No Hunger’ at 2, ‘Good Health’ at 3, ‘Quality Education’ at 4, ‘Reduced Inequalities’ at 10, ‘Responsible Consumption and Production’ at 12, ‘Climate Action’ at 13, ‘Life Below Water’ at 14 and ‘Life Above Land’ at 15 with the expectation of achieving these goals by 2030. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has launched its own Global Citizenship Education (GCED) program which plans to empower learners of all ages to assume active roles, both locally and globally, in building more peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, and secure societies.
Looking at the history of such programs planned and documented and the rate at which the world has been handling these issues throughout the UN years, one would certainly find it very difficult to have any hope of achieving any of these goals just in nine more years.
One silver lining, if at all it can be called that, is that the rich countries, the biggest polluters in the world, the UN, and its affiliated Organisations and even some leading scientists have accepted the fact that it will be helpful, in their efforts of reaching SDGs, to tap into indigenous knowledge whenever possible.
However, one of the major factors they have missed so far is the non-existence or the interpretation of the phrase ‘sustainable development’ within the indigenous communities. While indigenous knowledge embodies the philosophy that being one’s own is a result of the place or circumstances of one’s birth which encompasses being a member of the social, physical, and spiritual enclave of original inhabitants the contemporary world has almost made the phrase an oxymoron.
Indigenous people achieved sustainability by using the resources of the planet in an equitable way. The most important aspect of one’s development is to be able to accept the responsibility of being a part of one’s habitat. One will not be able to think in terms of equitability and or sustainability as long as one can visualise development only in the materialistic sense through which, development of the whole world depends on consumerism coupled with destruction and construction.
The writer has served in the higher education sector as an academic over twenty years in the USA and fourteen years in Sri Lanka and he can be contacted at [email protected] )