By HH Mohrmen
The 5th of June is celebrated every year as World Environment Day with much joy and lots of tree plantation. Then we litter the place with the polythene bags in which the sapling was planted. Celebrating the WED is expected to create an awareness in the people about the threat to the fragile earth but the question is whether the celebration has really had any impact on the people particularly the decision makers.
After reading Bryan Kharpran Daly’s article ‘The shameful plunder’ (ST Saturday May 28) I realized I was not the only one who was frustrated at the way we treat our nature. It seems like all our efforts to communicate to the people about the importance of preserving our nature is wasted. Our MLAs and MDCs (at least those who can read English) look like they hardly have time to read the newspapers. Knowing bah Bryan’s efforts to explore, survey and map the cave system in the state and his untiring endeavour to save them, I can only add that the article is not only a must read for everybody but it is a wealth of information on the subject. The article reminds us of the unique cave system that the state is blessed with and the reason we should be proud of the caves. Bah Bryan is also the only authority in this subject in the state of Meghalaya and I think his article should be preserved for posterity. But like anyone else who is involved in some sort of nature conservation, bah Bryan’s article too is a depiction of that disappointment with regard to the ‘the shameful plunder’ (if I may use bah Bryan’s own words) of the nature by the miners and a government which looks the other way while nature is being looted and destroyed.
The state government’s current policy seems to be mining-centric and not environment-centric; it only caters to the benefit of the miners while the environment takes a back seat and is the last priority of the government.
Can we really depend on the Government to protect our mother nature? From what we have seen in the past, the answer is no. Government after another has failed to come up with any policy to protect the environment. The state government’s current policy seems to be mining-centric and not environment-centric; it only caters to the benefit of the miners while the environment takes a back seat and is the last priority of the government. Has the government done any study on the destruction caused by mining in the state? Has it conducted any study to find out whether mining has really helped to boost the economy of Meghalaya? How does the economic boom (if there is any such thing) fare when compared to the damage done particularly to the environment? Can all the money we create from coal and lime stone mining help pay to reclaim even a fraction of what we have lost namely rivers, forests and our way of life?
But environment is a big issue; it not only deals with the way we manage our natural resources; it is also about our attitude towards everything around us. On the one hand the government is to be blamed for the way it had managed (or rather did not manage) our resources, but can we blame the government for the entire environment problem we are facing now? What have we done to keep our villages, towns and cities clean? Isn’t it true that we still live by the NIMBY (not in my back yard) attitude? As long as it is not in my back yard, I can dirty any lane any park and even someone else’s backyard. This is the attitude of our generation and the generation before ours when it comes to garbage disposal. In Khasi Pnar we say “tang ba lait na kti,” meaning we can throw waste anywhere just so long it goes out of our hands. One of my most embarrassing moments was when I took my English friend John Hewerdine to “u Moosniang” one of Jowai town’s important landmarks. While I told John the folklore about the image of a pig carved on a stone, John was busy picking all the litter that was scattered all over the place. He placed the waste in his pocket and threw the same into the next garbage collection point we found.
I think our children’s attitude towards nature is much more mature than ours. Several friends have told me stories about how their children are teaching their parents about the importance of nature and at times the children were even upset with the way their parent treat nature. A gentleman told me of his trip from Mizoram to Jowai and how on the way back, the driver of their vehicle purposely hit a young leopard and the animal died on the spot. Not surprisingly the tribal hunting trait took over and the elders in the vehicle were all overjoyed with their catch. The only exception was a young man who was upset at what he had seen and remained silent till he reached home. Once home he angrily told his dad, “You were all happy at killing the leopard but very soon you will only see them on screen.” That was the lesson of a lifetime for my friend Allan. One day my youngest daughter returned home from school wearing a long face, I asked her why? And she said, “Today they have murdered many trees in front of our school”. Notice her choice of word to describe the incident; she did not use the Khasi word “pom” meaning ‘cut.’ Instead she used the Khasi word “pyniap” meaning murdered.
We have reports in the press time and again of dorbar shnong organizing community cleaning drives and the efforts of the village to clean the rivers in their area for fear that it might turn into another Wah Umkhrah. All these are good efforts but maintaining the cleanliness of our village, our town and city is not a one day affair. We need to change our attitudes with regard to garbage disposal. This write-up will not serve its purpose if it does not provide us with ideas on how we can change our attitudes towards nature and the environment around us. We have all heard of the famous three “R”s of nature conservation, Refuse, Reduce, Re-use, which remind us of what we need to do when we use stuffs that are harmful to the environment particularly plastics. First of all flatly refuse using materials that we know are harmful to the environment, if using these materials is unavoidable, we should at least make sure that we reduce their use and then to not just dump them but to try to recycle them or reuse them. This can be our small humble contribution to save the environment and more importantly to keep our villages, towns and cities clean and green.
The theme of this year’s WED celebration is “Forest: Nature at your service,” the United Nations has also declared this year as the international year of forests. I think it is time for us to ask ourselves what sort of relationship we and our kids have with nature. When was the last time we ventured out into the forest? A Unitarian Universalist Church in the US organises a year long programme to get kids close to the nature; they organize nature camps, rock climbing camps, trekking etc and the theme of the programme is CRP, connect, respect and protect. The objective is if kids are able to connect with nature they will learn to respect it and then fight to protect the nature. We need to get our kids as close to nature as possible. We also need to generate more forest areas. Our ancestors have a tradition of keeping sacred groves; we can recreate more sacred spaces in our villages, towns and cities by converting our cemetery and cremation grounds to memorial parks. I like Khushwant Singh’s idea of planting a tree instead of setting up a tomb stone on our graves, and why not?
India has also been selected as the host country of this year’s World Environment Day not only because India is an emerging Asian economic tiger, but because the current government’s policy puts a major thrust in environment protection. Recently, in a radio interview I was asked what in my opinion is the threat that awaits the coal mine areas of Jaintia Hills? My answer was water scarcity particularly during winter. The silver lining is that villages can make use of the MGNREGS to make check dams and dig ponds to harvest rain water and plant trees in any available space in the villages. Projects like this will not only benefit the village but it is also in line with the central government policy of reducing global warming. (The author is an elder of the Unitarian Church and a research scholar)