ALL LIFE IS INTERDEPENDENT

– PROTECT THE ENVIRONMENT
LAST month, the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer was commemorated. The Ozone Layer is a thin layer of O3 gas in the lower atmosphere which shields the Earth from the harmful effects of the Sun’s ultraviolet rays.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ message reiterates the importance of the Montreal Protocol which was signed 30 years ago with the intent to repair and preserve the Ozone Layer. Referring to the Montreal Protocol, Mr. Guterres said: “It rallies governments, companies, doctors, scientists and citizens to reverse the damage to the Ozone Layer, and this saves millions of people from skin cancer and cataracts each year and helps to combat poverty, addresses climate change and protects the food chain. It also creates new business opportunities and will save the global economy $20 trillion by 2050.”

Protection of the Ozone Layer is only one segment of the efforts being made by modern man to respect, restore and protect the environment. There are other areas of environmental protection such as protecting wildlife, the rivers and watercourses, the soil, plant life and so on, which are focused upon from time to time.
Modern Western Civilisation, from the time of the Renaissance, stressed material development and created technologies which in a very short time made available to the world the highest levels of material achievements ever attained by human beings.
But the price paid for this massive and speedy material development was very high. The price paid was the destruction of the environment putting human life under threat of slow extinction, and negatively affecting the health and material wealth of the population of large areas of the world.
Western Man is only now discovering that all life is interdependent and that if one destroys any part of the environment it will not only affect the welfare of one’s self but of human beings as a whole.

There are numerous examples of this syndrome in the modern world and it would be instructive to look at one or two of them: The Nile River in Egypt sustained the great Egyptian civilisation and provided the population with a fairly high standard of living for thousands of years. In addition to their productive agriculture, the Egyptians harvested a bountiful supply of fish from the waters at the mouth of the River. Then as part of “modern development”, the Government built the Assuan Dam which was to substantially increase agricultural land by irrigation as well as hydropower generation. But that dam upset the ecology of the area in unforeseen ways: The fishing grounds at the mouth of the River now became far less productive since the food which had been brought down by the river and deposited at its mouth was greatly curtailed by the dam and billions of snails began to take over the irrigated areas. The rising waters of the dam destroyed some of the cultural heritage of Ancient Egypt. One of the great treasures, the temple of Abu Simbel, was saved by international donations.

This avoidable destruction to the environment caused by the Assuan Dam has been replicated in other parts of the world. In North America, because of the very insensitive, careless and greedy exploitation of hundreds of thousands of acres very fertile lands in the Mid-West, the famous “Dust Bowl” was created causing thousands to suffer the greatest privations.
Other well-known examples of the destruction of the environment are the Amazon Forests and the reckless killing of animals in Africa for economic gain.
It is only in the 20th Century that it was widely understood in Western Society that all life was one and that all life was interdependent and that if one wantonly destroys any life-form, it will ultimately have an effect on one’s self and on society as a whole. With this understanding, the realisation that destruction of the environment had caused life to be unsustainable in some areas and the quality of life to deteriorate in others, has become far more evident.

Western Societies have taken up environmental protection in all its forms with great enthusiasm and their efforts have been crowned with some success. Unfortunately, the successes so far achieved have been comparatively slow and this leads us to think of what other factors could be added to the Western efforts.

Older civilisations such as the Indian and Buddhist/Confusionist, as well as in many Indigenous cultures, they are probably more aware of the necessity of the balance of nature and the protection of the environment, but their protective measures are manifested by religious sanctions or by custom based on religion. For example, the Indigenous Amerindian culture of Guyana understood the necessity of maintaining a healthy equilibrial balance between man and nature and for millennia lived in harmony with the environment.

Now, with the introduction of mining into those areas where Amerindians have inhabited for thousands of years, the environment has suffered much destruction and cannot sustain the population which once lived there.
It would appear, therefore, that if religious and spiritual values were absorbed into the present rational and material assumptions in the effort to protect or repair the environment, greater success would be achieved.

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