Be it in Kanha, the Sunderbans or Corbett, too many tigers are still dying unnatural deaths. But why is saving the tiger so important? And how can you contribute?
MINT (Lounge), 25 April, 2009
Before you snigger at yet another tiger story, let me assure you that I understand your point. Yes, it is our national animal and yes, it is quite a sight even in the zoo. But in a country that is wracked by poverty, unemployment and terrorism, does the tiger deserve prime ministerial intervention?
No wonder you just don’t get this thing about the tiger.
The more compassionate among us might spare a thought for it were we not repelled by rabid environmentalists who seem to value all living beings except humans. But for most, the tiger does not make the cut. It does not even make a legal pet. Is there, then, a valid case for saving the tiger?
Years ago, I was with some children at the Dhikala Complex in Corbett National Park. When I asked why they were there, they told me they had come “to see a tiger”. Why tiger? “It’s so big and powerful…even elephants are scared of it…”
At this point, a proud father prompted his seven-year-old to say “We must save the tiger” and a few other children echoed the same thought. But when I asked them why they should do so, even the parents looked foxed.
Suddenly, a tiny girl threw up her hand and said in a sing-song voice: “…because it is the king of beasts”. With a few children protesting “nooo, that’s the lion”, the parents broke into indulgent laughter.
But I had my answer. This whole thing about the tiger is not about the tiger.
Though it is indeed the king of the Indian forests, having won the territorial battle with the Asiatic lion long ago, let us not meddle with traditional titles. What children understand as king of beasts is, in fact, the ecological equivalent of the apex predator or the animal at the top of a food pyramid. In that sense, both lions and tigers are kings.
Common sense tells us that to keep the top block in place, every block down the pyramid must be in place. So a healthy tiger population typically indicates that everything is fine with the rest of the forest. The same is true of the lion, but it can serve as an indicator only for Sasan Gir National Park, Gujarat. The tiger roams much of India’s best forests. So this thing about the tiger is really about the entire forest.
In talking to children, few can match Mumbai-based environmentalist Bittu Sahgal, who runs the Kids For Tigers campaign. Some of his ploys are dramatic. One of his routines is to call two children on stage (usually a boy with cropped hair and a girl with a thick mop). He asks them to bend over, then pours a glass of water on their heads. Then he takes out two white handkerchiefs to wipe their hair dry. He demonstrates how the handkerchief used by the boy gets less wet than the one used by the girl. It’s Sahgal’s way of telling children how forest cover is essential for our water security.
Our forests are the source of 300 rivers and perennial streams; without forests, these water bodies would dry up.
There are many other reasons to value our remaining 64 million hectares of forests. A few years ago, the Centre put a conservative annual estimate of Rs40,000 crore as the value of assets exploited from forests— from biggies such as timber, medicinal plants and salt, to lesser derivatives such as tendu leaves, or firewood. This figure does not include minerals (around 75% of our mines are inside forests), encroached plantations or illegal wildlife trade. A more realistic estimate, based on independent studies, of the annual value of our forest produce would be around Rs75,000 crore.
The thing about the tiger is about protecting this treasure trove, ensuring our water security, and enjoying an annual dividend of around Rs75,000 crore. Anyone who has fathomed this has a very selfish reason to bother about the big cat.
The thing about the tiger is about us.
When I uncovered the local extinction of tigers at the Sariska National Park, Rajasthan, in January 2005, the government’s initial response was that of denial. But later, the Prime Minister’s office, the Supreme Court and the Central Bureau of Investigation got involved. There was a new Central legislation (the Wildlife Protection Amendment Act, 2006) and two new Central agencies (the National Tiger Conservation Authority and the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau). The budget for tiger conservation was increased fourfold to Rs600 crore in the 11th Plan.
Why then are tigers still dying frequent unnatural deaths? Why the disturbing headlines from Tadoba, Kanha, Pilibhit, Sunderbans or Corbett in the past few months? We can blame the lacunae in the system. But on the ground, the biggest threats are habitat loss, conflict with people and poaching.
The tiger is a territorial animal. There are gender concessions as the larger territory of a male overlaps with several smaller territories of females. But no two adult males or females usually share space.
If they are lucky to survive their first two years, tiger cubs leave their mothers and go looking for their own territories. However, these sub-adults (known as floaters) don’t easily find space unclaimed by adult tigers.
At this stage, a floater may kill or chase away a resident tiger or get killed or chased away. If alive, the displaced weakling or the young floater moves towards the forest periphery and may circle the forest till it gets lucky and finds a slot. Otherwise, it may find a patch that connects its native forest to an adjoining forest where it may try to shift. If there is no peripheral forest (known as buffer) or connecting patches (known as corridors) to temporarily accommodate these displaced weaklings or young floaters, the animals run into people. Such encounters usually trigger conflict and the animals are eventually killed or sent to zoos.
In natural circumstances, dispersal and deaths maintain the balance in a tiger population. But external disturbance such as mining or highways or habitation inside a forest reduces the size of the prime habitat (known as core area) and pushes too many tigers towards the buffer. These dispersed tigers are doomed if we allow agriculture, hotel resorts and other human activities right at the edge of the forest, if we cram the animals for space and pushes them into conflict. Over time, this combination of a disturbed core, a non-existent buffer and no connectivity between forests makes a tiger population locally unsustainable. Then, the remaining few are taken out by poachers, as in Sariska.
Poaching tigers is a highly specialized job that only a handful of traditional hunting communities are capable of. Without them, no poaching mafia can run the trade. But while the syndicates make Rs20-50 lakh per tiger, these hunters do the high-risk job for merely a few thousand rupees.
I know several tiger poachers who struggle to support a family of 8-12. When not hunting, they earn less than Rs50 a day if they get work as daily wagers. Their amazing jungle sense is a rare gift but it has little use in our legal economy.
The emphasis of our anti-poaching strategies has been on guards and guns. But guarding thousands of hectares of forests is physically impossible and financially draining. Targeted empowerment of the hunting communities is more feasible and effective. For foolproof protection, we need a carrot-and-stick policy that combines incentives for reforms with strict enforcement.
Most communities living around tiger forests are hostile to the tiger because the protection regime restricts their livelihood options and they also end up as victims of conflict. Such hostility not only leads to frequent retaliatory killings but also allows poaching mafias to make easy inroads. Our conservation policies need to be inclusive and offer these people enough incentives to support the tiger.
We cannot altogether deny the need for forest land to meet the demands of economic growth. But we must learn to distinguish between forests, between what is still pristine and what is already degraded. India’s conservation efforts will remain ad hoc till the government formulates a national policy for land use, decides what percentage of land we can afford to leave aside as inviolate forest, identifies and prioritizes the best forests within that ceiling, and protects the designated areas uncompromisingly.
Forget the government for a while. What can you do to save the tiger? Of course, you do not buy products made from wildlife. Yes, some of you send your children to rally for the tiger. But you can do a lot more:
• As an individual or a small organization or business, you can directly support effective conservation projects. Not only money, your specialized skills could help and you could devote a few weeks a year on the field.
• You can visit a hostel near Ranthambore National Park, Rajasthan, and teach the children of a traditional hunting community, the Mogiyas. A project here (www.tigerwatch.net) also trains Mogiya women in handicrafts, markets the products and employs Mogiya men as forest guides or anti-poaching informers.
• Another project, run by the Corbett Foundation (www.corbettfoundation.org) in collaboration with World Wildlife Fund-India, provides on-the-spot compensation (in addition to the government compensation that usually takes months) for any loss due to man-animal conflict around the Corbett National Park.
• You can choose from other innovative models of change such as setting up biogas plants or subsidizing LPG to cut dependence on firewood. But check if the projects are sound before investing time or money. Typically, any project that does not start showing results by the mid-term is suspect. It always makes sense to visit the project site, even if as a tiger tourist, once a year.
• While holidaying in the wild, you could opt for hotels that follow the ethics of wildlife tourism and generate local employment. Travel Operators For Tigers (www.toftigers.org), for example, is one such international movement that promises a light carbon footprint.
• If you have the power to decide for a big business house, why not trigger a turnaround? Why not buy strategic tracts of private land between adjoining forests, settle the rights of landless people residing or depending on those tracts, and hand over the land to the government to serve as undisturbed forest buffers or corridors?
• You can also just keep it small and simple by saying no to plastic, switching off appliances that are not in use, opting for a carpool to school or work, planting trees in your backyard—every little act that helps your future helps the tiger too.
If nothing else, talk about the big cat once in a while. And tell those who do not get this thing about the tiger.
Jay Mazoomdaar is an independent journalist. He won the International Press Institute award for exposing the extinction of tigers at Sariska Tiger Reserve in The Indian Express.
A Climate For Green Terror
By cracking down on dissent, we are inviting a violent backlash
New Indian Express, April 10, 2009
The shattered windows of the Royal Bank of Scotland, the target of a section of protesters during the G-20 summit at London, did not tell even half the story. The Metropolitan Police managed to “kettle” (pin down to a location) thousands of protesters for hours and claimed that they successfully “minimised the damage”. But the claim did not take into account the cost of tackling the protest itself. The damage to the exchequer was £7.5 million – astounding, considering it took less than £19 million to host the grand summit.
Now, consider the psychological fallout. The kettling of thousands of protestors outside the Bank of England for so long turned the area into a stinking public lavatory. Each and every protester was photographed and identified, in effect, treated like a criminal. At least one British daily put it bluntly: “The thing about kettles is that they do have a tendency to come to the boil.”
In 2005, the famed wetland of Bharatpur’s Keoladeo National Park that gets flooded post-monsoon and hosts thousands of migratory birds in the winter, became stone dry and desolate. Under pressure from farmers who depended on a dam upstream, the state had refused to release water to the park for the second consecutive year. Petitions and protests made no difference and the wetland ecology was on the verge of irreversible damage.
Sitting in an empty hotel lobby in a ghost town which usually bristled with birds and bird-lovers, I could sense the mounting frustration among a few local activists who had joined me. Suddenly, one of them stood up, angry, his eyes glistening, and asked me if I could help him procure a few dynamite sticks. “How many do we need to blast a crack in that damn dam to flood the park?”
To my surprise, he immediately had others backing his idea. No, I did not encourage the plan but, honestly, at that moment, it did not sound too outrageous. Fortunately, a bumper monsoon saved Keoladeo that year. But the term “green terrorism” had come into existence, at least in FBI files, long before 2005.
A CBS 60Minutes show in 2005 brought the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) into the public domain but the “Elves” – as ELF activists are known – were classified as the top domestic terror threat by the FBI as early as in 2001 for causing ecotage (economic sabotage to stop the destruction of the environment). The Animal Liberation Front, ELF’s big brother, was active even in the 80s and together, they have caused damages worth billions of dollars so far.
The ELF first hit the headlines in 1998 when it burnt down a ski resort in Vail for refusing to shelve an expansion plan that would have destroyed the last lynx habitat in Colorado. Since then, the group has burnt down dozens of SUVs and luxury housings and targeted universities for their research in genetic engineering. A gasoline bomb caused the Michigan State University $1.1 million in damages. The University of Washington suffered $7 million in damages when the Elves destroyed its laboratories and archives.
A number of ELF activists have been sentenced, some under terror laws, to jail terms exceeding 10 years but that hasn’t stopped others. Last year, the Elves planted explosive devices to set fire to four multi-million dollar homes in Washington’s Echo Lake.
If a handful of radicals could inflict such damage, imagine the implication of pushing so many thousands towards a doctrine of violence. And this is not just about methods of protest management during mega summits. Our general response to dissent has become confrontational, if not outright brutal. A couple of weeks before this G-20 meet, Greenpeace activists were ruthlessly thrashed by security guards outside the headquarters of Indonesia's biggest logging and palm oil company, the Sinar Mas Group, in Jakarta.
At Chevron’s Parabe offshore facility in 1998, security officers flew in Nigerian military to open fire on villagers peacefully protesting Chevron's destruction of environment and traditional fishing and farming practices. Two protesters were killed, a few seriously wounded and many detained and tortured for refusing to sign false confessions.
In 2004, Indonesian environmental activist Bestari Raden was convicted and jailed on charges of separatism, rebellion and inciting acts of violence for opposing the construction of a highway through virgin rainforest. In April 2006, Filipino environmental activist Elpidio de la Victoria was shot, allegedly by a senior police officer, for spearheading a campaign to protect the Visayan Sea.
In India, one doesn’t need to travel to the hinterland to look for such stories. Sumaira Abduali, a member of Bombay Environmental Action Group, was beaten up by the dredging mafia for trying to stop illegal sand mining at the Kihim beach. More recently, Challa Krishnamurthy of Karnataka, a green activist and advocate of organic farming, was shot dead by hired gunmen for trying to expose how local companies dumped untreated waste on farmland near Bangalore.
But this is not just about law-and-order issues or denial of democratic rights. While atrocities committed by the state or business conglomerates may act as a trigger, the ground for violence is being prepared by a gradual loss of faith.
But when even the best documented cases, presented on foundations of science, fail to defeat ill-conceived projects and policies, can activism be blamed for losing faith in the power of reason? For example, if mining continues against all scientific, economic and ecological rationale in some of the world’s most pristine forests, do we expect green activists to give up the fight because they have exhausted all legal and civil options?
States and masters of global economy have done little to assure the green lobby that they are genuinely interested in dialogue. As a result, protests are already seeking unorthodox expression. If we miss these early signals, green terrorism might soon become much more than FBI jargon. If that happens, it will be a lose-all endgame between the earth and the economy.
The author is an independent journalist and filmmaker. mazoomdaar@gmail.com
New Indian Express, April 10, 2009
The shattered windows of the Royal Bank of Scotland, the target of a section of protesters during the G-20 summit at London, did not tell even half the story. The Metropolitan Police managed to “kettle” (pin down to a location) thousands of protesters for hours and claimed that they successfully “minimised the damage”. But the claim did not take into account the cost of tackling the protest itself. The damage to the exchequer was £7.5 million – astounding, considering it took less than £19 million to host the grand summit.
Now, consider the psychological fallout. The kettling of thousands of protestors outside the Bank of England for so long turned the area into a stinking public lavatory. Each and every protester was photographed and identified, in effect, treated like a criminal. At least one British daily put it bluntly: “The thing about kettles is that they do have a tendency to come to the boil.”
In 2005, the famed wetland of Bharatpur’s Keoladeo National Park that gets flooded post-monsoon and hosts thousands of migratory birds in the winter, became stone dry and desolate. Under pressure from farmers who depended on a dam upstream, the state had refused to release water to the park for the second consecutive year. Petitions and protests made no difference and the wetland ecology was on the verge of irreversible damage.
Sitting in an empty hotel lobby in a ghost town which usually bristled with birds and bird-lovers, I could sense the mounting frustration among a few local activists who had joined me. Suddenly, one of them stood up, angry, his eyes glistening, and asked me if I could help him procure a few dynamite sticks. “How many do we need to blast a crack in that damn dam to flood the park?”
To my surprise, he immediately had others backing his idea. No, I did not encourage the plan but, honestly, at that moment, it did not sound too outrageous. Fortunately, a bumper monsoon saved Keoladeo that year. But the term “green terrorism” had come into existence, at least in FBI files, long before 2005.
A CBS 60Minutes show in 2005 brought the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) into the public domain but the “Elves” – as ELF activists are known – were classified as the top domestic terror threat by the FBI as early as in 2001 for causing ecotage (economic sabotage to stop the destruction of the environment). The Animal Liberation Front, ELF’s big brother, was active even in the 80s and together, they have caused damages worth billions of dollars so far.
The ELF first hit the headlines in 1998 when it burnt down a ski resort in Vail for refusing to shelve an expansion plan that would have destroyed the last lynx habitat in Colorado. Since then, the group has burnt down dozens of SUVs and luxury housings and targeted universities for their research in genetic engineering. A gasoline bomb caused the Michigan State University $1.1 million in damages. The University of Washington suffered $7 million in damages when the Elves destroyed its laboratories and archives.
A number of ELF activists have been sentenced, some under terror laws, to jail terms exceeding 10 years but that hasn’t stopped others. Last year, the Elves planted explosive devices to set fire to four multi-million dollar homes in Washington’s Echo Lake.
If a handful of radicals could inflict such damage, imagine the implication of pushing so many thousands towards a doctrine of violence. And this is not just about methods of protest management during mega summits. Our general response to dissent has become confrontational, if not outright brutal. A couple of weeks before this G-20 meet, Greenpeace activists were ruthlessly thrashed by security guards outside the headquarters of Indonesia's biggest logging and palm oil company, the Sinar Mas Group, in Jakarta.
At Chevron’s Parabe offshore facility in 1998, security officers flew in Nigerian military to open fire on villagers peacefully protesting Chevron's destruction of environment and traditional fishing and farming practices. Two protesters were killed, a few seriously wounded and many detained and tortured for refusing to sign false confessions.
In 2004, Indonesian environmental activist Bestari Raden was convicted and jailed on charges of separatism, rebellion and inciting acts of violence for opposing the construction of a highway through virgin rainforest. In April 2006, Filipino environmental activist Elpidio de la Victoria was shot, allegedly by a senior police officer, for spearheading a campaign to protect the Visayan Sea.
In India, one doesn’t need to travel to the hinterland to look for such stories. Sumaira Abduali, a member of Bombay Environmental Action Group, was beaten up by the dredging mafia for trying to stop illegal sand mining at the Kihim beach. More recently, Challa Krishnamurthy of Karnataka, a green activist and advocate of organic farming, was shot dead by hired gunmen for trying to expose how local companies dumped untreated waste on farmland near Bangalore.
But this is not just about law-and-order issues or denial of democratic rights. While atrocities committed by the state or business conglomerates may act as a trigger, the ground for violence is being prepared by a gradual loss of faith.
But when even the best documented cases, presented on foundations of science, fail to defeat ill-conceived projects and policies, can activism be blamed for losing faith in the power of reason? For example, if mining continues against all scientific, economic and ecological rationale in some of the world’s most pristine forests, do we expect green activists to give up the fight because they have exhausted all legal and civil options?
States and masters of global economy have done little to assure the green lobby that they are genuinely interested in dialogue. As a result, protests are already seeking unorthodox expression. If we miss these early signals, green terrorism might soon become much more than FBI jargon. If that happens, it will be a lose-all endgame between the earth and the economy.
The author is an independent journalist and filmmaker. mazoomdaar@gmail.com
Beyond An Hour Of Darkness
It is easy to switch off lights for the Earth Hour. But it won’t save the planet
New Indian Express, March 28, 2009
WILL you join what is being advertised as the largest global campaign of all time? Well, more than a billion people will when they switch off their home or office lights for an hour at 8-30 pm (local time) this Saturday, “sending a powerful global message that it is possible to take action on climate change”.
Of course, a few billion others have other plans that evening and please do not feel unsure if you are among them. It does not matter. It really does not matter unless you are prepared to mind your unnecessary appliances every hour and every day. Unless you are ready to cut down your overall, wasteful consumption – from fuel to food – and go for a lifestyle makeover. Switching off for an hour is too damn easy, and dangerous.
Tokenism is always fraught with dangers of falsity. But campaigns like the Earth Hour offer individuals a particularly dangerous bargain – great satisfaction at a nominal sacrifice. You switch off for an hour, have fun (maybe by consuming more power listening to musical blasts), and feel good that you have voted for the planet. The next day, and the year after, you may continue guzzling unmindfully since you have already done your green bit in style.
I am not a cynic. But I do not want to fool myself. The Earth Hour campaign is in its third year and claiming phenomenal growth in participation -- from 2.2 million in 2007 to about 50 million last year and more than a billion this week. But where is the proof of any tangible change in the consumer mindset?
Annual increase in the global consumption of electricity is hovering around the double-digit mark since 2005. Sydney, where the Earth Hour movement was famously kicked off in 2007, recorded a 16.56 per cent growth in power consumption between 2006-07 and 2007-08. Even if we discount the huge power demand to keep the city’s water pumps going, consumption at office and public buildings went up by 9.12 per cent in the same time period.
In comparison, Delhi, a “developing” city with a higher population and no history of Earth Hour campaign, records much less annual growth – between 4-5 per cent -- in power demand. What no climate change campaign could have done was achieved by a hike in power tariff and stricter anti-tampering initiatives.
The Earth Hour campaign does make a symbolic point and, more importantly, keeps the issue of climate change in news, coming a day before the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) starts its first 11-day inter-session meeting in Bonn, and a few months before the Copenhagen Climate meet due in December. But, by brandishing figures of participants -- 1000-plus cities and one billion-plus people -- the campaign also raises false hope.
Many of us accept the need to cut down unnecessary, unscientific and unsustainable consumption. Some of us do not. But most of us simply do not care – either because we are too rich or too poor or just inert. The rich-poor divide will be up for debate at Copenhagen. But we must accept that adapting to a low-carbon lifestyle and economy is not easy because of our inertia, if nothing else. This is true for individuals and so it is true for governments.
Honestly, how many of the billion-plus who will switch off this Saturday are expected to make “permanent lifestyle compromises” should their governments make a few necessary or mandatory? Forget feeling the heat of such tokenism, few governments will ever risk green reforms assuming their people are not prepared to accept corresponding lifestyle changes.
While campaigns like the Earth Hour rightly address the issue by targeting individuals, unfortunately, they also opt for the easy way out. I do not think there is any dearth of options for strategising a campaign that could make a real difference. With all the existing resources – clout, funds and volunteers – such campaigns could try enrolling people who would make commitments of cutting down, say, 20 per cent of their energy consumption. Members -- individuals and organisations -- would furnish their bills to show how they have done over a period of time. It is very much possible to log such individuals on a global web register and quantify the change.
Instead of a billion switching off for an hour because it is fashionable, I will any day take even a few million converts making lifestyle changes because they really care. Each of these converts would be an inspirational example to convince more people. Yes, such campaigns would have been hard work and the figures would not have made the glamorous jump from 2.2 million to 1 billion in two years. But over a longer period of time, they would have worked a true miracle that could decisively force governments’ hands. Besides, a community of a billion no-waste consumers would anyway have had an impact on the planet’s future.
Wishful thinking? Maybe, maybe not.
So will I switch off this Saturday evening? I might, I anyway like darkness. You, too, should switch off unless you have a good excuse. In either case, please remember to switch off appliances and engines every time you think possible. That may or may not save the earth, but you will save some money.
Author is an independent journalist and filmmaker
New Indian Express, March 28, 2009WILL you join what is being advertised as the largest global campaign of all time? Well, more than a billion people will when they switch off their home or office lights for an hour at 8-30 pm (local time) this Saturday, “sending a powerful global message that it is possible to take action on climate change”.
Of course, a few billion others have other plans that evening and please do not feel unsure if you are among them. It does not matter. It really does not matter unless you are prepared to mind your unnecessary appliances every hour and every day. Unless you are ready to cut down your overall, wasteful consumption – from fuel to food – and go for a lifestyle makeover. Switching off for an hour is too damn easy, and dangerous.
Tokenism is always fraught with dangers of falsity. But campaigns like the Earth Hour offer individuals a particularly dangerous bargain – great satisfaction at a nominal sacrifice. You switch off for an hour, have fun (maybe by consuming more power listening to musical blasts), and feel good that you have voted for the planet. The next day, and the year after, you may continue guzzling unmindfully since you have already done your green bit in style.
I am not a cynic. But I do not want to fool myself. The Earth Hour campaign is in its third year and claiming phenomenal growth in participation -- from 2.2 million in 2007 to about 50 million last year and more than a billion this week. But where is the proof of any tangible change in the consumer mindset?
Annual increase in the global consumption of electricity is hovering around the double-digit mark since 2005. Sydney, where the Earth Hour movement was famously kicked off in 2007, recorded a 16.56 per cent growth in power consumption between 2006-07 and 2007-08. Even if we discount the huge power demand to keep the city’s water pumps going, consumption at office and public buildings went up by 9.12 per cent in the same time period.
In comparison, Delhi, a “developing” city with a higher population and no history of Earth Hour campaign, records much less annual growth – between 4-5 per cent -- in power demand. What no climate change campaign could have done was achieved by a hike in power tariff and stricter anti-tampering initiatives.
The Earth Hour campaign does make a symbolic point and, more importantly, keeps the issue of climate change in news, coming a day before the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) starts its first 11-day inter-session meeting in Bonn, and a few months before the Copenhagen Climate meet due in December. But, by brandishing figures of participants -- 1000-plus cities and one billion-plus people -- the campaign also raises false hope.
Many of us accept the need to cut down unnecessary, unscientific and unsustainable consumption. Some of us do not. But most of us simply do not care – either because we are too rich or too poor or just inert. The rich-poor divide will be up for debate at Copenhagen. But we must accept that adapting to a low-carbon lifestyle and economy is not easy because of our inertia, if nothing else. This is true for individuals and so it is true for governments.
Honestly, how many of the billion-plus who will switch off this Saturday are expected to make “permanent lifestyle compromises” should their governments make a few necessary or mandatory? Forget feeling the heat of such tokenism, few governments will ever risk green reforms assuming their people are not prepared to accept corresponding lifestyle changes.
While campaigns like the Earth Hour rightly address the issue by targeting individuals, unfortunately, they also opt for the easy way out. I do not think there is any dearth of options for strategising a campaign that could make a real difference. With all the existing resources – clout, funds and volunteers – such campaigns could try enrolling people who would make commitments of cutting down, say, 20 per cent of their energy consumption. Members -- individuals and organisations -- would furnish their bills to show how they have done over a period of time. It is very much possible to log such individuals on a global web register and quantify the change.
Instead of a billion switching off for an hour because it is fashionable, I will any day take even a few million converts making lifestyle changes because they really care. Each of these converts would be an inspirational example to convince more people. Yes, such campaigns would have been hard work and the figures would not have made the glamorous jump from 2.2 million to 1 billion in two years. But over a longer period of time, they would have worked a true miracle that could decisively force governments’ hands. Besides, a community of a billion no-waste consumers would anyway have had an impact on the planet’s future.
Wishful thinking? Maybe, maybe not.
So will I switch off this Saturday evening? I might, I anyway like darkness. You, too, should switch off unless you have a good excuse. In either case, please remember to switch off appliances and engines every time you think possible. That may or may not save the earth, but you will save some money.
Author is an independent journalist and filmmaker
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