APRIL 22 is Earth Day, and we hear something like the world or the way we live in this world is different now because of the pandemic.
But we have been living differently from the natural order of things. Maria Isabel Garcia’s Rappler blog explains it very well:
“We came from bulldozers, transformer excavators... and over 7.5 billion of us. Over a third of our land surface and nearly 75% of all it freshwater are devoted to feeding humans. Our plastics, our heavy metals, our solvents, have produced 'dead zones.' We did a slow, silent massacre of 60% of the world’s animals since the 70s.”
We may have read that the coronavirus came from bats. But reading further, it is people harming the animals and their habitat, the recent ones so big like the Amazon forest fire, that brought this non-living virus to life by looking at us as a host, and now has us hiding in our homes.
This is an “inequilibrium,” says Levi Sucre Romero, an indigenous leader from the BriBri community in Costa Rica told an international panel on climate a few weeks ago. “The inequilibrium of our planet is not just about climate change, but it’s also about the global economy.”
Romero said the coronavirus “is telling the world what we have been saying for thousands of years: that if we do not help protect biodiversity and nature, that we will face this and worse future threats.”
From Greta Thunberg to Romero, environment advocate to indigenous peoples and every scientist says our Earth is in danger because of how we consume resources and how governments fail to act to regulate consumption.
Is it too late to save the planet? Many say we can still do something. Consume less and wisely. Protect the farms and rivers and the indigenous and farming communities who nurture the Earth. It’s Earth over profit. But not everyone is heeding this call. Like here, Agriculture Secretary William Dar says indigenous peoples should convert their ancestral land into farms.
The Sandugo Movement of Moro and Indigenous Peoples tells Dar: “We have been planting for centuries. Innovations like rice terraces and upland farming show that unlike big haciendas and corporate plantations, we know how to feed our communities while sustaining the health of our people as well as the environment. You need not tell us to “plant, plant, plant.”
What we need to do is to listen to Earth. Breathe and act.