A rchive Date
[ 21-08-2002 ]
Category
[ Science ]
sub-Categoy
[ Ecology ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/CNEWSScience0207/21_suzuki-can.html
We all depend on nature
By DAVID SUZUKI -- CNEWS Science
Wednesday, August 21, 2002
In 1988 while filming a two-hour documentary on the Amazon rainforest, I encountered a remarkable Kaiapo Indian named Paiakan. Growing up as his ancestors had done for thousands of years, he had realized as a teenager that Brazilians were invading his forests for gold, farmland and mahogany, and he decided to fight to protect his peoples' land. When I met him, he appealed to me for help and I got involved raising support to oppose a dam on the Xingu River that would have flooded Kaiapo territory.
He succeeded in stopping it in 1989 with a massive protest that brought together thousands of Indians from different tribes with hundreds of environmentalists and media. But as a result, Paiakan received a number of death threats and in Brazil at the time, Indians were still murdered with impunity. In order to let things cool down, Paiakan asked if he could bring his family to stay with me in Vancouver. I didn't have much choice but to agree.
When they arrived, I settled the family into our home and then proudly took them for a drive to show off our city of gleaming buildings, stores filled with consumer goods and clean streets jammed with vehicles. His response surprised me. After a long silence as he gazed at the sights, he remarked in Portuguese, "Isn't it amazing - all of this comes from Mother Earth!" He lapsed into another long silence and finally commented, "How long can she continue to give all of this?" I was completely taken aback by the profundity of his observation.
Of course, he was dead on. Even in the most sophisticated urbanized area of a megacity, every human being is utterly dependent on the generosity of nature. We are reminded of it daily from the weather reports - heat waves, droughts, floods, forest fires and hurricanes - to the quality of our water, air and food and the spread of diseases like the West Nile virus.
In Canada, 80 per cent of our citizens live in communities of more than 10,000 and more than half occupy the five largest cities. In a big urban setting like Toronto, one can live totally in air-conditioned comfort, from the apartment building to the car stored in its garage to the garage of a downtown business building and the office itself. Often the buildings are directly connected to theatres and shopping malls, so one can live for days and nights without ever actually going outside. Who has to worry about the seasons, time of day or weather conditions?
So we lapse into forgetting our biological nature and it becomes easy to think we are a different kind of species because of our intelligence. After all, what other species has ever created cell phones, computers, jet planes or television? Nor are we restricted to a specific habitat as are most other creatures because we learn to exploit the "resources" of our surroundings in ecosystems as varied as desert, arctic tundra, tropical rainforests, coral islands and prairie grasslands. Having created machines that confer enormous muscle power, we erect structures that reach to the skies, route subway trains far underground, explore the deepest ocean trenches and search for life in other parts of the cosmos.
In forgetting our biological roots, we have lost that sense of connectedness with everything else in our surroundings. We no longer sense that everything we do has repercussions. Driving an SUV in the city, driving five blocks instead of walking, or buying fresh strawberries or tomatoes in winter, all have repercussions for weather and climate around the world, but we aren't aware of them. Indeed, every item we purchase that comes from distant parts of the planet, every economic transaction, has consequences for the planet and all life on it. But few think about it. We forget a simple truth that an Indian from the heart of the Amazon understands - the earth is the source of everything and it is finite.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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