Conversations in the time of pandemic
The once-in-a-few-generations calamity of pandemics has become all too frequent. Zoonotic – species jumping – pandemics are more recurrent in the last few decades irrespective of their origin in domestic or wild animals – or labs. The generation under 35 itself has seen or been through more than three pandemics – the H1N1 flu, the swine flu, and covid-19, in addition to outbreaks of Ebola, Nipah, and avian influenza that is still considered to be a highly infectious disease.
We’ve witnessed a lot in a span of a year;
from revitalisation of nature to our increasing intolerance towards wildlife, from
a 17% drop in atmospheric CO2 levels and two rare cyclonic events
followed one after another up the warming Arabian Sea, from protests against
the recent farm law amendments to protests against mining operations in areas
of rich cultural and natural heritage, from flooding in the plains to crippling
Himalayan river systems – we’ve been witness to all of these even as we tried
to comprehend this calamity of proportions not seen in our lifetime: from
miscalculated attempts to stop the spread to the discovery of a vaccine in
record time, from countless deaths to concerted efforts of strangers saving many
lives, from sanctimonious preaching to international call for aid. We’ve seen
it all: the warfare that never took place and the aftermath that will be felt
for generations, the children who bid goodbye to their parents too soon, the
parents the children could not meet, half-tendered farewells and short-cut
rituals, all within one year.
This is a conversation with myself, someone who belongs to the 65% of India's population. It is time to look at the world
without rose-tinted glasses after this blip. It is time to become uncomfortable.
It is time to act. And there are reasons for it. Through this devastating
pandemic, there are many lessons to learn from. It is time to initiate
conversations around them so that we don’t repeat this in the future, and if it
comes to it, we are better prepared than ever. From all that we’ve witnessed, I
present seven conversation-starters from what I've learned – am learning, and should learn, for someone working in the field of resource use, social welfare, wildlife conservation/biology, natural history - and everything in-between.
#1 Collaborations improve science. At the heart of it all is nature and our relationship with the natural
world. Understanding nature is science. One major takeaway from this
unfolding calamity is this: collaborations improve science. It isn’t rocket
science, I know; some of you might even say it isn’t simple, it is not. Reaching
out helps, what helps more is being on the receiving end and reciprocating. I
cannot think of a bigger and better circumstance than the production of the
vaccine in record time. Multiple government institutions, pharmaceutical
corporations and interested businessmen came together to make this happen –
there was competition as much as there were different ways to beat this
disease. Nature requires collaborations to understand it, to protect it, and to
revive it. If I could end my conversation at this, I would, for the future is
collaborations within the sphere of competitive environments that look at
bigger, better, impactful directions we want to steer our world in, and the
chronic disease we face is of man-made climate change. Just as rebuilding this
world again will require collaboration, reviving and restoration of nature will
be possible only with collaborations. India still has a lot of work to do to
become collaborative – science has been such a cut-throat field of competition
and, if I may take the liberty on my own blog, of leg-pulling, even
collaborations are looked at as divisive. In order to become comfortable sharing
our tiffin box the way many of us did in schools (can you think of a better collaborative
example? – school projects were a disaster, especially for me), someone needs
to lead by example. And this is up for grabs, even today.
#2 Natural calamity contingency plan is
prudent. Speaking of climate change,
collaboration is not the only way forward. These often come with long-term end goals.
The second wave of the covid-19 pandemic caught us off-guard in spite of the
threat we faced in the first wave. I might even go so far as to say that, sans certain
layers of government, we were better prepared in the first wave than the
second, for the way the citizens spun into action to provide shelter and food
to the migrant labours, should be looked upon as a peoples’ movement at
national-scale. We are all witness to how social groups including individuals,
cooperative housing societies, social institutions and organisations mobilised
own resources as soon as the pandemic and the mismanagement hit. Natural
calamities are exactly the second wave of this pandemic. Disaster relief plans are
not prepared with apocalyptic point-of-view, but with a view of healing as soon
as possible. A plan at all levels of organisation – the governments (police,
health, rescue, water, electricity, and social-welfare departments generally
move first, but these plans need to be transparent to be accountable), the
non-governmental organisations (although not mandatory, institutional-level
preparedness goes a long way in welfare work), the academic institutions (for
student support) and the cooperatives (local support such as loan-lending, food
provision, transport), need to be discussed and ratified to strengthen the
resiliency in a rapidly changing world. This natural calamity contingency plan
puts in place protocols for mobilization of resources – financial and on-ground
support – for disaster relief at local and regional levels. I was especially
inspired by how social organisations moved to help those in need – most were ad
hoc, these need to be made more robust. Again, examples should be set up for
others to learn.
#3 Community stakes are raised. The above conversation is so that we are better equipped to help everyone
in dire times, and what I discuss here is something organisations and future
investors should take into consideration, that in a particular region, the
local communities are the main – not just major – stakeholders, irrespective of
whether it is a mine, a dam, a protected area, a resort, or a swimming pool in
your resort, but in your research too. There must always be a voice where
resources – whether air (eg. pollution), land (eg. conversion), or water (eg.
consumption) – are shared with the marginal. That’s a larger issue we still
need to work on. Here, we need to talk about independent, often isolated and
non-people centric projects. In research, even as small a project as
understanding wild animal movement through a matrix of human settlements and
wilderness areas, results should reach to those who share the landscape, in the
language they understand. It is often not feasible for the lack of funds or
logistics, but getting it out there in a public platform is vital to any and
all studies we undertake, for as much as publications are important, so is
translation of one’s findings in a language the stakeholders understand. Paper
conservation (read publications) is growing manifold, hardly trickling down to
the grassroots. It is a challenge for individuals, institutions, and stakeholders
that needs to funnel the findings into communities. With the seeds being sown
slowly by journalism, research communicators need to take the lead, too – and this
needs collaborations.
#4 Independence, transparency, and
advocacy are ‘in’. I started this with
‘collaboration’ – that is, interdependence. Here, independence does not mean working
in cubicles, it means something else and is tied with the second word that
follows it – transparency. Independence means being free of strings – having no
conflict of interests – and being transparent about it. It also means making
your stand clear against justice and injustice – perhaps not in a political way
– but in a way that makes your voice heard. That’s how we can advocate for the
greater good. For instance: so long as people talk about ‘tiger farms’ and not
‘battery farms’ as a whole, we will be lacking hopelessly in our advocacy to ban
tiger farms. Advocacy is often out-of-question if there is no concerted,
collaborative, yet independent voice that advocates for a ban on tiger farms
(or wet markets, or battery farming) with transparency. This is especially a
cause of concern as we move into the next decade – for which dialogue today is
necessary. Do I mean to say that if you eat meat, you shouldn’t advocate ban on
animal farms? No, I mean you should be upfront (transparent) when you advocate
for one – there is no harm in saying I am non-vegetarian, I eat meat that
largely comes from battery farms, but I am against tiger farming - there (this applies to organisations more than it applies to individuals).
#5 Resource reduce, reduce, and reduce is
the only mantra. That time in school when we were taught
the three R’s of a sustainable life, reduce, reuse, and recycle, is behind us.
We missed the bus. Today, consumption in the form of consumerism is rising
exponentially. The duration of how-many-times-one-can-reuse has reduced and
upcycling and downcycling just can’t keep up anymore. This pandemic saw a boom
in e-commerce, that is online shopping, with the country soon to be back to
normalcy, there will be a further boom in e-commerce – and that means increased
consumerism, increased resource-us, and increased discards even as we sit at
home. That ‘footprint’ of us traveling to the mall and back still pales for the
transport of the package we ordered online. The only way forward now is ‘reduce,
reduce, and reduce’: consumption, not population; consumption, not average
person’s personal travel; consumption is the bane of our generation. If you ask
me where to start, we can start with food. But the dialogue is open for an
array of consumables – from bonanza sale of TVs to discardable phones to
excessive packaging. Some consider this to be a personal choice, but that
choice is not personal anymore without privilege. This pandemic has shown us
the true face of privilege – in dire times, it doesn’t work. Taking cues from
it, we must come to terms with our consumption addiction – it applies to all those
who’re reading this (including the one writing it), that if privilege can
afford us a choice, it also puts a responsibility that we pick the just one.
#6 Vegetarianism shouldn’t be mocked and
ethical animal care should be talked about more. There are swathes of farmlands in the Americas feeding livestock that
are then eaten by the populace. In India, growing fodder crop is not a priority
– grown only by commercially-owned dairies, most of the fodder comes from hay,
husk, and forests. Imagining an India that grows fodder at agricultural-scale
is a nightmare for any conservationist, for the land will come from forests,
and forests that still survive free-ranging grazing will be converted into
resource intensive farmlands. Luckily, this scenario is less likely in India
because large-animal meat is not largely consumed. Meat consumption will face
the test of times in the coming future as a low-impact vegetarian lifestyle
unites with animal welfare against battery farms unites with climate change. Like
I said in #4, you don’t have to be vegetarian to advocate for tiger farms, but
you do have to be honest with yourself – after all, it is only perhaps humans
who can weigh one life for another: tiger for a chicken, fish for an egg. In
these desperate times, when community rights to culture – including diet – as
well as animal welfare – ethical animal keeping – are finding a voice, it is
only imperative that this becomes a more mainstream talk of the town. Animal
welfare is intimately related to how we approach conservation. It is denial,
not reason, to say domestic animals are cared-for well in India than the
western cultures. Animal keeping, particularly poultry and fishery, is picking
business fast. The more you cram in small spaces, the more money you make. The
days of traditional ‘desi’ chicken and ‘samudri’ fish are gone – our plates are
full of battery cage animals that are not only questionable in their ethics,
but also to the environment: they give out emissions and pollute in multitudes
of what traditional poultry and fisheries does. This, too, is a personal choice,
some might argue. And it is. I just wish to park it here so that when you decide
upon your eating habits the way I did a few months ago, you talk to yourself first
and then to others.
#7 Water scarcity is the coming
catastrophe. Amidst the tragedy, a small community became
aware of something: India is not a rain-fed agrarian society, it is
groundwater-fed agrarian economy. Green Revolution did not come merely with
seeds, it came with irrigation – irrigation did not come from the clouds, we
tapped the water below us. Over half-a-century later, the revolution has been
successfully feeding the world’s second largest population, as well as
exporting food. Today, many of the wells are running dry well before their time,
the subsurface water levels have alarmingly fallen. Don’t call me a
scaremonger, look at Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia that is sinking because
of overextraction of groundwater that literally once acted as a cushion to keep
the city above the surface of the ocean. Delhi’s recurrent tremors are linked
with increased vacuum beneath the surface left behind by overextraction of
water as well. Agriculture is not all to blame. Human habitations, particularly
urban areas, have increased rapidly. Better living standards means higher
consumption of water. Rapid development often means poor planning – no
reservoirs to tap, nor water tanks to store surface water. The cheapest mode is
tapping the groundwater. Many have said, most subtly, that water will be the
next expensive commodity. Some have even argued against the next war,
initiated, already, by mass migrations of water refuges. It is time we talked
about water the way we talk about land. It is time water conservation and
wise-use becomes a part of manifestos of political parties. It is time we meter
water for industrial use. It is time we discuss all of this as citizens. As
conservationists, it is time to heed the water question – wherever relevant,
especially in socioecology (hydrosocioecology?) – as much as it is important to discuss land tenure,
land sharing, and terrestrial wildlife conservation.
I’m only scratching the surface. There are some conversations you’d agree with, some you wouldn’t – in spite of it this dialogue needs to take place openly. To the 65% of Indians, we’re all at a certain level of life where we can – finally – take decisions. More importantly, we’re at a stage in our lives where we take ours and the future of our world more seriously. Well, there are bigger problems we must converse about – man-made climate change, the economy of the country, the constitution, everything is tied to one another. For our generation, we have more questions to answer and more problems to address than we thought the technology would solve for us (that’s another debate). It’s a fact that pales in front of what we’re going through today. Uneasy times make for uneasy conversations. This is a conversation with myself that many have thought of or are already working on. We have a lifetime left (less than two-thirds?), but with a lot of the ‘undoing’ that remains, this darkest time of our generation will lead us to an intelligible light.
Nice bro
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