Water scarcity: Nature pays back
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: April 24 , 2014 -
Now the impact is here for everyone to see, feel and suffer.
Our own failure to protect environment and conserve nature is now haunting all of us in the form of acute water scarcity.
Who knows? We may face devastating flood after a couple of months.
One needs only to look back at the history of developed countries or the contemporary challenges being faced by almost all the countries across the planet to understand how mankind exploited nature and how nature is paying back.
It is a tragedy that majority of the people of Manipur have little idea about the crucial importance of protecting environment and conserving nature.
Indeed, forest means life and livelihood to a large section of the State’s population. At the same time, forests are the most fundamental element for clean or healthy environment.
In short, healthy environment needs forests, and mankind needs both forests and clean environment.
Herein lies the crucial importance of forests, leaving aside its economic values.
Perhaps, forest resources are the single largest source of livelihood after agriculture for majority of the mass in Manipur.
But the sad part is, we continue to see forest resources only as fire woods and tree trunks for obtaining timber.
The tendency to disregard or undervalue the public benefits and externalities derived from forest ecosystems, whilst assigning value to the private goods that can be derived by harvesting and over-exploiting them lies at the heart of the ‘biodiversity crisis’ which is fast unfolding in Manipur as elsewhere in different parts of the planet.
Ignorance, economic compulsion and in some part greed are behind unrestrained exploitation of forest resources.
Our people must have certain idea about the roles of forest in environmental protection viz retention of underground water, absorption of harmful carbon emission, balancing seasonal rainfall, prevention of landslides et al but vast majority of the population are still unable to grasp the urgent need of conserving forests or sustainable exploitation of forest resources.
We are rather over-exploiting our forest resources, that too at a pace much faster than the regenerative capacity of our forests.
All the negative impacts of over-exploitation are now glaringly visible. We have witnessed flash floods last year and now we enduring an acute drought like situation. Having said this, we don’t expect our people would stop over-exploitation of forest resources from tomorrow or next month or next year.
State intervention is crucial for conservation of nature. It is in human nature, immediate requirements always precede future security.
What we are doing today is sacrificing the entire future generations for our immediate requirements which are peanuts compared to what is in store in our forests.
But then, how can one value a treasure without knowing its worth?
So let’s start with correct assessment of the importance of forests in environmental protection together with a comprehensive study on their huge economic value.
Time is already running late. The Government can no longer afford experimentation with inappropriate or defective policies.
It must not overlook the fact that a sound policy is as good as dead if there is no political will to implement it in letter and spirit.
All modernisation projects must take into account every environmental and ecological aspect. The classic concept of modernisation defined by the West is no longer applicable.
The State should always keep in mind that the new catchword is ‘Go Green’ whether it is industrialisation or modernisation.
Concerned citizens too should make sustained, collective movements like the Chipko Movement in order to protect and conserve nature.
The Chipko Movement was a peasant movement that emerged in 1972 in response to the effects that ecological destruction (specially deforestation) had had upon the local culture and economy in the Garhwal Himalaya region of Uttar Pradesh.
Resistance was articulated through a variety of non-violent methods including hugging trees to prevent them from being cut down, demonstrations and uprooting of eucalyptus saplings in social forestry plantations.
Saving forests means saving our own future.
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