A sustainable shift

When I started living permanently in my village named Moutorh (district – Purulia, West Bengal, India), I became interested in how nature can provide practical lessons and answers to challenges I was facing in my own life. During my tenure at the Central Pollution Control Board as a scientist, I visited many hill stations, forests, rivers, lakes, groundwater sources, wetlands, cities, industries, and many more places to assess the level of pollution and its adverse impact on the environment and human beings, as well as to find possible measures to minimise pollution. However, what I observed was the suffering of poor people mainly due to water contamination, particularly groundwater (arsenic, fluoride, and many other pollutants), as well as air pollution.

In the backdrop of my sincere effort to prevent pollution, I can strongly advocate that I did nothing because at that time I did not consider myself as one of the 800 million species and could not overcome a luxury lifestyle. Slowly, after reading many inspiring books, attending seminars, and discussing with Samar Bagchi, who was a real fighter to protect nature and put sincere effort into educating students with his "No cost, low cost" science experiments until his death, I could possibly find a way to spend my life (though it is late at 67 years old) teaching students in my village in contact with nature and practicing natural farming on a small scale.

After spending two years in my village, I discovered that nature had a huge impact not only on my own life but also on the lifestyle of my wife and students. Now I realise that nature is filled with amazing things to teach us how to think more clearly and scientifically, not only related to plants, birds, and animals but also the patterns and tuning into our physical surroundings in all areas of life.

Nowadays, most people in the modern world have lost their innate naturalist intelligence, but human beings are animals at heart. We must be surrounded by plants, birds, and fresh air for amazing beneficial effects on the mind and body. However, the way we are destructing our natural world has led to dreadful outcomes. One example can clearly focus on the loss of biodiversity and its adverse impact on human beings.

In the early 1990s, vultures across India began dying and declined to the brink of extinction. India’s most common three vulture species declined by more than 97 per cent between 1992 and 2007. The vultures fed on the carcasses of cows contaminated with diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory drug routinely given to cattle in South Asia at the time, and were poisoned. That marked the beginning of a far-reaching chain reaction. As vulture populations crashed, cow carcasses started to pile up, and the numbers of rats and wild dogs surged. Dogs became the main scavengers at dumps previously used by vultures. Data suggests that from 1992 to 2003, the number of dogs increased by 7 million. The number of dog bites soared, and rabies infections shot up, causing tens of thousands of people to die each year. In 2006, diclofenac was banned, and vulture populations have slowly started to recover.

Many such examples, with reference to sparrow slaughter in China sparking insect plagues, deadly frog fungus causing malaria spikes, and many more, can be cited to establish the dreadful outcomes of the destruction of the natural system. Wildlife populations are in freefall around the world, driven by human overconsumption, population growth, and intensive agriculture. On average, global populations of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians, and reptiles plunged by 68 per cent between 1970 and 2016.

Despite knowing that nature is declining at an unprecedented speed, we have spent more than decades talking about these declines but cannot do anything to manage it. It really frustrates me. Though personal responsibility is a crucial area, when I speak to my close friends, they say that their individual action does not make any difference. That is absolutely wrong. When I became genuinely worried about the disorder of the natural world affecting my life too much and making me unhappy, I started to involve myself in positive changes such as a simple way of living and providing proper education to the students. Educating students through learning from nature is gradually motivating them to be informed and updated with what is happening in the world. Now the students feel nature as their mother, and they try to find ways to protect it. Fighting for a cleaner planet and a better world has never been so urgent as nowadays. I believe that only the students can make a difference. Now they have clearly realised that the solution is not a difficult one. They have started to reduce their consumption, reuse what they are throwing away, and recycle what they have to throw away.

To thoroughly raise awareness, various initiatives are taking place in my village on a small scale, including composting of household waste, minimising the use of plastic, separating plastics for fuel production (though not achieving 100 per cent success), cultivating indigenous paddy through natural farming without using fertilisers or cow manure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reusing domestic water for gardening, and utilising water hyacinth to create handcrafts. Additionally, I encourage residents to walk, cycle, or use public transport. They bring food in reusable containers, wash them after use to avoid contributing to plastic wrap decomposition, and opt to bring filtered water from home instead of buying bottled water at school. They also prefer pencils over pens for their recyclable wood material and use notebooks made from recycled paper, which may not be as shiny but keeps them environmentally conscious.

While it is challenging to control the rest of the world, it is easier to manage our actions in our own lives. Saving Mother Earth is crucial for students as it fosters awareness about using natural resources wisely and maintaining a healthy balance between nature and human life. In the future, young people can strongly advocate for saving the environment.

Believing in something is the first step to making it real. So, let's start believing in ourselves.

Views expressed are personal