Healthy Environment Supports Development
A long time ago (about 15-20,000 years ago), planet Earth was frozen and covered with ice. Our ancient ancestors, the Homo Sapiens, were alive during that time and survived the extremities. Eventually, the planet witnessed a natural climate change prompted by Earth’s distance from the sun and the carbon cycle, due to which the ice melted and the seasons became stable.
This allowed human beings to enjoy a relatively hospitable environment, which prompted them to cultivate themselves and develop advanced cultures. Thus, they evolved from a hunter-gatherer society into an agrarian civilization, learning to predict the rhythms of the seasons and work in fields to plant crops and domesticate animals. Initially, a timid and scared creature at the whim and mercy of nature and the environment, the human being acquired the blessing to develop, evolve, and grow due to the manifestation of a favorable environment. Even back then, development and environment had a symbiotic relationship.
The so-called primitive people and early society recognized the sacred bond between their development and the environment, due to which they deified various elements of nature and worshipped them piously. The cave paintings, hieroglyphs, stone art, tools, oral mythical cultures, hymns, and religious narratives still carry a resonance of sentiment that connected the primitive human being with the environment.
The equation is simple—in the minds of our ancestors, prayers, worship, rituals, and offerings ensured a balance between human development and environment, whose benevolence furnished human civilization with timely rains, crops, wealth, and material evolution. In short, development occurred due to the health of the environment. Favorable seasons and weather implied material wealth, prosperity, and success.
Development Of Culture & Civilizations
Our forefathers and foremothers enjoyed this success all over the world, and soon the boons of civilization began to accelerate and grow exponentially. Prompted by a caring environment that nurtured their dreams, goals, and ambitions, human beings evolved from an agrarian society into a much more organized—hierarchical form of society with landlords, soldiers, peasants, artisans, rulers, and inventors who kept reshaping the face of society through their intelligence and hard work.
The human being began to evolve—not just in the body, but also in the mind and culture. Our ways of being changed, ideas blossomed into fruitful action, and people began to enjoy a much better quality of life than their ancestors. Now, instead of wasting time running away from predators and gathering roots or berries, people could utilize their leisure time to pursue sublime activities like theatrics, education, construction, and governance.
Civilizations expanded from small towns into cities, which were assimilated into kingdoms and eventually spread into empires. Emperors began conquering more and more land in pursuit of more resources so that the spirit of development and evolution may not come to a stop and so that they may cultivate the resources and develop advanced forms of society.
This kind of expansion and exploitation of resources was not free from conflict, as many nations and empires warred with one another in the hope of claiming authority over resources. Kingdoms and empires rose and fell, then rose again, but the spirit of development never stopped. Human beings continued to mine the earth for resources and transformed her natural materials into products in order to serve human needs and developed advanced versions of themselves. Man had begun to control nature and the environment.
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Domination Of Nature & Environment
Once a part and parcel of the same system, the human being began to dominate nature thanks to the possession of various tools, technology, and knowledge that it had acquired through the process of development and evolution.
So, instead of being afraid of the wild elements like the sea, ocean, forests, and mountains, the human being began conquering everything and set up its societies, cities, and civilization everywhere. We uprooted forests, butchered wild animals, destroyed natural resources, mined the belly and womb of Earth for materials, and began transforming the whole world to suit our needs. In this process, somewhere, we forgot that we are also a part of nature, that things to live and thrive in nature have as much right to exist, develop, and grow as we have.
Unfortunately, the relentless quest for development did not stop or harmonize with nature but continued to brutalize it until we ended up developing advanced forms of society, capable of making products on a large scale, ensuring that the needs and desires of every human were met. The Industrial Revolution arrived.
The Industrial Revolution brought a significant change in the way we developed our societies and set the stage to shape the world that we know today. It transformed the pre-modern societies into modern versions, providing them with large-scale factories, machines, and tools to ensure continuous mass production that could provide employment, material wealth, housing, products, and countless luxuries and amenities to human life. It proliferated the development of modern science and medicine through the development of advanced tools that could gaze far into the astronomical sky and pierce into the deepest regions of the minutest matter. The Industrial Revolution changed the life of everyday human beings forever, but it also caused a great deal of harm to the environment.
Impact Of Industrial Revolution On Environment
The factories that produced the items satisfying human needs were fueled by gas and fossil energy, which spread a lot of pollution in the air. Similarly, chemicals used in the industries were dumped into the water, thereby toxifying it and destroying the fragile ecosystems that thrived within it. In this way, even though human beings developed and advanced their societies, it came at the cost of the environment. The more they grew in industries, technologies, population, and cities, the more resources were consumed and polluted. The delicate balance between environment and development began to topple significantly.
Today, we can feel the brunt and aftermath of this relentless spirit of development in the unnatural manifestation of climate change. It is true that climate change is natural, and planet Earth has witnessed various cycles of change in its long history, but the rate at which these changes occur is astronomical.
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However, presently, these changes are occurring at a very fast rate because they have been fueled (literally) and accelerated by human activities like burning fossil fuels, deforestation, industrialization, pollution, carbon emissions, and expansion of modern cities. In other words, the sacred-delicate balance that enabled our ancestors to begin this quest for development such a long time ago has itself been threatened due to the very pursuit of development. Today, the increment of Earth’s temperature is proof that our development has indeed come at the cost of our environment.
Why Development Cannot Stop?
Even though we human beings have come a long way from the hunters and gatherers that we once were, our development has not been uniform or harmonious. Some societies have developed more than others (often by controlling, dominating, exploiting, looting, and abusing them), and there is immense inequality between people, cities, nations, and entire civilizations.
On one hand, there are people who enjoy the benefit of a cozy bubble bath in a luxurious, marble-ornamented bathtub the size of a large pond; on the other hand, there are people who don’t even have access to sanitized water, let alone for lavish or artistic purposes. The human world, despite being developed, is still underdeveloped in major regions, leading to a lack of education, housing, healthcare, electricity, culture, medicine, and many other necessities.
Despite destroying the environment and achieving magnificent feats, human beings have yet to establish basic aspects of development such as equality, social justice, peace, happiness, joy, and global harmony. Our world is developed indeed, but amidst the shadows of war, hunger, poverty, pollution, and environmental destruction. This is the sad and sorry state of affairs we find ourselves in.
Collective Development Of Nature & Environment
The challenge of the future is to achieve this spirit of development without usurping the delicate balance between nature and society. One cannot relinquish development in the name of the environment, because the world still needs energy to produce food, economic opportunities, housing, and comforts for human beings. However, at the same time, it cannot continue its old habits, because doing so will result in the complete destruction of the environment in the form of climate change.
Thus, our challenge in the present and the future is not just to develop ourselves or to fulfill our narrow interests, but to expand the notion of development and grow together collectively. This means that development should occur not at the cost of the environment, but with its cultivation, protection, and enhancement. It should happen not for a few exclusive groups of people, but for everybody.
The path ahead may be difficult, but there is hope, for the development of humankind can harmonize with the advancement of nature and the environment such that the two look out for each other and cultivate mutual growth. Human beings are, after all, one with nature, and no development should come at the cost of the environment.
