Hearing the Voice of the Earth
Nature in its broadest sense of the word is not an empty impersonal object or phenomenon. John S. Mbiti
The civilization of the Nile Valley, the longest African civilization at 10,000 years, had an intimate connection with the Nile and studied the stars for 1000 years, creating the first known calendar, the Dendera – Nile Valley Civilization by Anthony Browder.
But now it seems that we have lost or are losing our connection to nature. There is a growing separation between us and the land as more of our population moves to urban centers. This stark departure from African anthropology, which valued our land and its ability to provide food, shelter, medicine, and clothing, is being lost in modernity.
In the 2nd presidential debate, President Museveni described Uganda when he came to power as ‘an enclave of subsistence farmers’, but under his leadership has moved away from primitive agriculture to agro business, providing tons of maize and milk for local and international consumption.
This is progress in political and capitalist sense, but in an environmental sense, modern civilization is threatening our ecological wellbeing, creating mass extinctions, deforestation, and soil erosion, reduction of diversity, and ultimately environmental pollution which threatens our food security.
According to John E Mack professor of psychiatry at Cambridge Hospital Massachusetts in his essay of Species Arrogance the environment is regarded as a thing, an object to be owned, mined, guarded, stripped, built upon, dammed, plowed, burned, blasted, bulldozed and melted to served the material needs and desires of the human species at the expense, if necessary of all other species which we feel at liberty to kill, paralyze or domesticate for our own use. This shift of mindset away from interconnectedness has been informed by the Judeo-Christian theology (found in the Bible) that consists of the idea of superiority, which underlies the thought that humans exist to watch over nature. In the context of the continent, this view was popularized when the colonial and religious visitors first encountered the indigenous populations and regarded their respect for the natural world as pagan, nature worship, or animism. This was the beginning of conflict, for instance, with the advent of private land ownership during colonialism, which pitted Maasai herders who needed large tracts of land to graze their cattle, against Kikuyu farmers who, for the first time obtained deeds to their land and began to erect fences to mark boundaries. As of now, most of the conflicts on the continent are due to competition over the resources of our environment.
Wangari Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement (the Green Belt Movement in Kenya began as a small grassroots project of women that envisioned tree planting as a way to address rural women’s need to access firewood, clean water and mitigate soil erosion), says we need a holistic approach to environmental management which considers the essential components of a stable society and environment. Based on the traditional African stool, whose legs are chiseled at the same time to create ‘balance,’ the legs represent: sustainable environmental management, democratic governance and a culture of peace, with the seat representing society and its prospects for development.
Deep Ecology (a branch of ecological philosophy which emphasizes the interdependent value of human and non-human life as well as the importance of the ecosystem and natural processes) says we cannot just be concerned with economic growth alone; we also have to answer ethical questions of how we use the resources of the planet.
We need a definite reassessment of how our businesses impact the environment. I am not advocating for the turning back of the clock or deindustrialization, but our practices need to have a social and environmental component. Any ‘holistic’ business or government policy needs to conduct environmental impact assessments that explore the environmental consequences and issues, with consultation of public opinion, and exploration of alternatives.
As Professor John E Mack suggests, we need to:
- Develop an appreciation that we do, in fact, have a relationship with the earth itself. 2. Analyze traditional attitudes towards the earth in our own and other cultures that may facilitate or interfere with the maintenance of life.
- Apply methods of exploring and changing our relationship to the earth’s environment that can reanimate our connection with it.
- Examine politics and economics from an eco-psychological perspective
- Actively disseminate those findings to a wider global audience.
As the Native American wisdom states ‘after we cut down all the trees, pollute all the rivers, only then will we discover that we can’t eat money’.
