Normally, the slogans and themes chosen for major international conventions, especially environmental summits, are very abstract, which serves the organizers rather well since it means they can point at almost any outcome and say their goal was achieved.
But for once, the theme of a key international environmental summit reflected precisely what the meeting should have been doing. “Nature Knows No Borders” was the theme of the 14th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals, which took place from Feb. 12-17 in the historic city of Samarkand in Uzbekistan.
Nature has never known any borders and, increasingly, human beings have come to realize exactly how interconnected any two remote and small places in the world are, not only with each other but with every other part of the world.
The effects of climate change, and its most destructive aspects in particular, are perhaps the most visible and high-profile evidence of this. However, hundreds or thousands of other incidents occur all around us every day that give an indication of how closely interconnected our world is — but most are ignored as we fail to notice them.
By paying even a little attention to these signals, one can easily see how critical it is to think at a global level, especially when considering important issues such as climate change, pollution or wildlife conservation. And observing the behavior of other living creatures around us, especially migratory wildlife species, whether in air, on land or in water, can help us learn how to deal with the climate crisis the world is facing.
Wildlife has been one of the biggest victims of the human actions that have led to increasing pollution, the destruction of their habitats and the climatic conditions that pose a severe threat to the very existence of species.
Examples can be seen all over the world, including the destruction of forests and unrestrained hunting that has decimated thousands of species to the point where they are severely endangered or even extinct, or large-scale pollution, such as the prevalence of microplastics in our oceans and other bodies of water, which threatens the existence of marine and riverine species.
Though some conservation efforts are taking place in some parts of the world, they have proven to be extremely limited in terms of their effects because, indeed, nature knows no borders. For example, when wildfires ignite in a European country or part of the Amazon basin, they can quickly spread far and wide in all directions.
Similarly, the plastics polluting bodies of water do not respect the territorial boundaries nations guard so zealously, and so the toxicity is killing millions of fish and other marine species every year, all around the world. And, of course, carbon emissions spread not just vertically but horizontally in all directions.
When wildfires ignite in a European country or part of the Amazon basin, they can quickly spread far and wide in all directions.
It is therefore vital that the 133 countries that took part in the conservation summit in Samarkand last week do not take only narrow, nationalistic views of the issues but work together to develop a global action plan that is effectively a seamless network of thousands, or even millions, of local actions taken at grassroots levels, involving villages and the people in local communities who not only know their ecosystems the best, but are the first to feel the damaging effects of climate change.
So far, many of the environmental and climate action plans have been drawn up in national or regional capitals by bureaucrats in governments or international organizations who have little practical knowledge of, and even less of a direct stake in, the effects on the areas they are making plans for.
In addition, the implementation of these plans often suffers because local populations are not directly involved in the decisions and remain either oblivious to the projects, or even opposed to them because they clash with local views on how best to tackle the issues, or simply because they can see the plans are hare-brained and doomed to failure.
It is therefore important that the delegates who were in Samarkand are not only connected with but also learn from their fellow citizens in the very areas they seek to protect.
Another way in which the negotiators who were in Samarkand can gain some real-world, on-the-ground knowledge is, of course, by observing the living creatures they are trying to protect.
Hundreds of millions of birds, land animals and aquatic creatures migrate thousands of kilometers twice a year in search of food and to breed. Over the past few decades they have begun to notice, well before we humans did, that the conditions of their breeding grounds were deteriorating and the availability of food in the places they migrate to was declining. In many cases they have adapted to this, either by shifting to new habitats or by changing the times at which they migrate in an attempt to find the seasonal conditions best suited to them.
There is some data available about these changing patterns but it would be a worthwhile exercise for humans to investigate these changing trends and habits in greater detail, not only to help us play a more effective and positive role in the conservation of species and their habitats, but also to learn lessons from their behavior that is changing as a result of climate change, and the adaptations they have undertaken to their ways of living.
Once again, as is the case in wider conservation efforts, it is crucial that we adopt a dual global and local approach to studying these species to best learn the lessons they can teach us. Firstly, decide on appropriate actions to take at the village level, with the full participation of local communities, then build on these toward efforts on national, regional and global levels.
This might sound like a cumbersome, time-consuming and difficult goal but, unfortunately, it is the only path to survival — for not only ourselves but the entire planet.
Ranvir S. Nayar is the managing editor of Media India Group and founder-director of the Europe India Foundation for Excellence.
Source: Arab news