Why is it so difficult to understand that when we harm nature, when we impact negatively on the earth, ultimately and inevitably, we are harming ourselves too? Our careless attitude towards the natural world has led to the devastation of countless species and habitats. And yet we continue unabated, the human footprint marching unchecked across all corners of the globe. Even the remote Arctic and Antarctic wildernesses, the last wild frontiers as such, are no longer sacred. The modern-day approach to resource management subliminally asserts our right of dominion over the natural world and the arrogant assumption that nature needs managing. Can I suggest that perhaps it is ourselves who need managing?

“There is enough for everybody’s need in this world, but not enough for anybody’s greed.” Ghandi

We seem to have so much, so many things, always accumulating, acquiring. Yet standing back, we seem to have so little. I guess that is one of the great ironies of our modern age, where consumerism dicatates the quality and pace of our lives. The urgent need to accumulate, to have, to own, undermining the essence of just being. In a simple, uncomplicated way that allows time for quiet and reflection, for contemplation and acceptance, for touching the earth and feeling oneself a part of something far greater than the immediacy of our individiual lives.

A human being is part of the whole called by us universe … We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive. (Albert Einstein)

An ecological community weaves together the land, the animals and plants, the soil and water, all intimately dependent on one another within the dynamic web of life. Each species has its own unique and inherent place, an evolutionary path that has determined its standing within the natural order. Each individual, each particle, has its own role, its own place, unique unto itself. It is only through the human lens that the term ‘rights’ have been extended, to protect that which is already protected within its own intrinsic narrative of being. In wild nature, no creature, no species is afforded protection beyond the cunning and capabilities of their own inherent survival strategies, honed over millions of years. Yet for all their ingenuity, strength, perserverence and prowess, regardless of their specialist adapations within niche environments, they are becoming increasingly powerless and place-less in our modern world.

I would like to share a short excerpt from a speech by Vandana Shiva - We need to reinvent our eating and drinking, our moving and working, in our local ecosystems and local cultures. Enriching our lives by lowering our consumption, without impoverishing others. And above all, we need to subject the laws that govern production and consumption to the laws of Gaia; the laws of the planet. The laws of a planet that can give forever in abundance for our needs if we do not allow the narrow minded, mechanistic, reductionist, greed based system of industrialism, capitalism, globalization to make us imagine that to be inhuman is the definition of being human.