Mother Nature is the greatest of all incredible wonders. It refers to the physical world and everything within it, encompassing all living and non-living things that exist naturally. Each of the features of nature is in itself a wonder. We are deeply, often invisibly, reliant on it. From the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat, nature enhances our well being and freely provides the essentials of our survival.

It underpins our economy, our society, indeed our very existence. In essence, “We are Nature and Nature is us.” In the words of Blaise Pascal: “Nature is an infinite sphere of which the centre is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.” Nature and environment are deeply interconnected with some subtle differences depending on the context. Neil DeGrasse Tyson aptly said: “We are all connected; to each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe atomically”.

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Nature refers to the world’s ecosystems, plants, animals, landscapes and natural resources, while the environment includes everything that surrounds and influences life, including air, water and human made structures. Environment includes not only natural elements but also the conditions and influences ~ both natural and human ~ made – that affect the life and well-being of organisms.

However, when the question of conservation and ecology arises, the two terms are used synonymously. There is no singular universally agreed definition of environmentalism. In this article, environmentalism is used as a general term to refer to concern for the environment and particularly action, including protests, movements etc., or advocacy to limit negative human impacts on the environment. Mother Nature is a common personification of nature focusing on its life-giving and nurturing aspects by embodying it in the form of a mother.

There are many native and indigenous cultures in which humanity is viewed as a part of “Mother Nature”, that maintains we come from nature, and that the natural world is sacred. An aboriginal proverb says “Look after the land and the land will look after you, destroy the land and it will destroy you.” No wonder that earth, more appropriately Mother Nature”, was considered a goddess and supreme deity by pre-Hellenic people and later by Greeks. In modern times, the concept was taken forward in the new Gala-hypothesis. According to this, the earth is a living, self organising system, and there is an intimate relationship between earth’s living and nonliving components.

This is strikingly similar to the Indian concept of the earth being considered as Mother Goddess with even the nonliving parts considered divine. But owing to the illusion of unlimited powers ~ promoted by astonishing scientific and technological advancements ~ coupled with insatiable greed deeply ingrained in the mind, modern man does not consider himself as a part of nature but as an opposite: civilisation versus wilderness, humanity versus wildlife, or technology versus nature. He even talks of a battle with nature. It is also commonly, but falsely, held that for several thousand years we are ‘separate’ and ‘su – perior’ to “Mother Nature”, forgetting the hard truth that even if man won the battle, he would be on the losing side. In the words of E. F. Schumacher: “Until quite recently, the battle seemed to go well enough to give him the illusion of unlimited powers, but not so well as to bring the possibility of total victory into view.

This has now come into view, and many people, albeit only a minority, are beginning to realise what this means for the continued existence of humanity.” Rapid growth of human civilization is colliding with approaching limits to the supply of natural resources provided by Mother Earth on which billion of lives depend. The cumulative impact of surging per capita cons – umption, rapid population growth, human dominance of every ecological system, and forcing of pervasive biological changes worldwide has created the very real possibility, ac – cording to 22 prominent biologists and ecologists in a 2012 study in Nature, that we may soon reach a dangerous “planetary scale ‘tipping point’”.

According to one of the coauthors, James H. Brown, “We’ve created this enormous bubble of population and economy. If you try to get good data and do the arithmetic, it’s just unsustainable. It’s either got to be deflated gently, or it’s going to burst.” Concern and actions to limit negative human impacts on the environment are not new and the roots of which we now understand can be traced back to ancient civilisations. Contemporary environmentalism is associated with the arranged social and political movements that have emerged to promote particular environmental philosophies and practices. The history of contemporary ecological struggles present us with a clear picture of what can and cannot be expected of ecological reform with in the confines of the system.

The publication in 1962 of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, which first raised the alarm on the poisonous effects of pesticides, represented a turning point in the US environmental movement. Soon large sections of the population were waking up to a host of ecological dangers symbolised by DDT, L.A. smog, toxic wastes in Love Canal, the death of the Great Lakes, acid rain, oil spills, the Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown and the clearcutting of forests. The public outcry gained rational pronouncement with the first Earth Day in April 1970 and a torrent of new federal laws were passed to “regulate” the environment. But despite enactment of an increased number of regulations, the overall pesticide problems appear to be worse than it was when Carson published Silent Spring.

The story of insurmountable degradation of the environment is repeated at the global level. However, to all int – ents and purposes, the failure to prevent the increased destruction of the biosphere can be traced mainly to the logic of profit-oriented expansion in a finite world. In 1980, the MIT economist Lester Thurow magisterially wrote: “If you look at the countries that are interested in environmentalism, or at the individuals who support environmentalism within each country, one is struck by the extent to which environmentalism is an interest of the upper middle class. Poor countries and poor individuals simply are not interested.” In a word, environmentalism appears to be a full-stomach phenomenon.

In the West, the rise of the green movement in the 1960s was widely interpreted as manifestation of what is called ”post-materialism.” Contrary to what modern historians might say, it is suggested that the ancient Hindus were the first environmentalists. The Hindu sacred books say there’s no happiness without trees. Moreover, a precocious ecological consciousness was manifest in their myths, folklore and ritual practices, where gods play with animals, where humans attained salvation in the forests and where lowly plants and insects species were treated with reverence. It is also argued that the feeling for nature has persisted into the present.

The environmental wisdom of the Hindu is still embedded in the living practices of peasants countrywide. The famous Chipko movement (1970s) decisively showed the entry by the poor into the domain of environmentalism. Here, a group of illiterate and poor peasants in the Himalayas threatened to hug trees in order to stop them being felled by commercial loggers. Nor was Chipko unique: the 1970s saw a slew of popular movements in defence of local rights to forests, fish, and water resources, as well as protests against large dams.

Hence, in comparison, it is revealed that environmentalism in the rich world emerged after periods of wealth creation, and during their periods of waste generation itself; but environmentalism in India has grown in the midst of enormous inequality and poverty. At Stockholm, the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi made her fabled statement on 14 June 1972 at a plenary session of the UN Conference on Human Environment: “Poverty is the biggest polluter.” But in the same period, women of the Chipko movement in the Himalayas showed that the poor care more about their environment. The movement opened our eyes to the hard fact that it was not poverty, but rather extractive and exploitative economics that were the biggest polluters.

Environmentalism should urge reduction of needs, and increased efficiency of every inch of land, every tonne of minerals and every drop of water used. Years before India became independent, Mahatma Gandhi was asked a simple question: would he like free India to be as “developed” as the country of its colonial masters, Britain? “No” said Gandhi, stunning his interrogator, who argued that Britain was the model to emulate. Gandhi replied: “If it took Britain the rape of half the world to be whe re it is, how many worlds would India need?” In 1958, John Kenneth Galbraith published The Affluent Society, a book which wryly anatomised the social consequences of the mass consumption age. He highlighted the “pre occupation with productivity” in post-war America and Western Europe.

The population in these societies had for the most part been adequately housed , clothed , and fed: now they expressed a desire for “more elegant cars, more exotic food, more erotic clothing, more elaborate entertainment.” Indeed, there can be growth towards a limited objective, but there can’t be unlimited and generalised growth. Permanence is incompatible with a predatory attitude which rejoices in the fact that “what were luxuries for our fathers have become necessities for us.” (E F Shumacher, Small is Beautiful). However, it is important that the environmentalism of the poor ~ building bottom up based on the principle of equity and human need ~ must influence the world.

If the world wishes to achieve sustainable development and combat climate change, it must learn from these movements about the need to share resources. We could hardly afford to forget what our Ishavasyopanishad says: “He who selfishly exploits natural resources to cater to his insatiate greed is actually a thief, because wasteful expenditure of finite resources effectively means robbing others of their legitimate share.”

(The writer is a retired IAS officer)