Last weekend, Aranyam, Bangalore, hosted a three day film festival with documentaries covering a host of topics ranging from global climate change,species extinction,wild life preservation efforts. It was an amazing effort pulled off by a group of young, energetic,motivated wild life enthusiasts from the city. The films unanimously sounded dire warnings about the rampant human domination over the natural world, current fraility of our entire eco system, threatening its very survival and consequently our own future at the top of the species pyramid.
I have come away from this three day 'necessary' shock treatment with a sense of foreboding, heavy heart and a need to attempt a more pro-active role-to don an environmental cap. Accompanied with these more obvious responses, there has been an under current of unease and discomfort that I am only now coming to acknowledge. It seemed that the burden of these 'unsavoury' human activities were by and large firmly deposited at the doors of the lesser priviledged, marginalised populations of habitants more directly dependent on natural resources for survival and also more threatened by their depletion. Is it really their burden- that they dont poach, fell trees, clear habitats to eke out a meagre subsistence? or are the larger forces that have marginalised them by laying roads, blasting mines, submerging entire valleys by dam-ing waterways, and depleting resources done more damage?
Who are the benifitters of these human developments?? If the poachers along the Indian waterways smuggle thousands of tons of river turtles to Asian markets, then its the economically priviledged that consume the turtles at the other end -who drive this trade. The man at the bottom of the ladder might only make enough to barely feed his family.So, how come the 'poor' get appointed to safekeep our natural heritage? And what is the burden of the priviledged, educated, urbanised, resource consuming?
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