Zinan Binte Zaman :
June 5 is World Environment Day. United Nations announced the day to build up awareness for protect our environment. The first celebration of World Environment Day took place in 1974, contained the theme of “Only One Earth”. From then this significant day has developed as a platform to raise awareness on the problems facing our environment such as air pollution, plastic pollution, illegal wildlife trade, sustainable consumption, sea-level increase, and food security etc. This approach also influenced the national and international policies of environment.
Following the previous years, the theme for World Environment Day 2021 is “Ecosystem Restoration” and will see the launch of the “UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration”. Ecosystem restoration is a major pre-condition of sustainable development.
To understand ecosystem restoration, we have to explain the term “ecosystem” first. The ecosystem is the structural and functional unit of ecology where the living organisms interact with each other and the surrounding environment including non-living organisms. According to National Geographic Society,” An ecosystem is a geographic area where plants, animals, and other organisms, as well as weather and landscape, work together to form a bubble of life. Ecosystems contain biotic or living, parts, as well as a biotic factors, or nonliving parts. Biotic factors include plants, animals, and other organisms.” On the other hand, restoration means ‘renovation or repair’.
Thus the ecosystem restoration stands for assisting in the recovery of ecosystems that have been degraded or destroyed, as well as conserving the ecosystems that are still intact. Ecosystem restoration can be formed by planting and growing trees, greening cities, rewilding gardens, changing diets or cleaning up rivers and coasts. The target of UN to observe the decade is to build up the generation that can make peace with nature.
Simple put, human race is nothing but a part of nature. But it is a matter of regret that most often we act like masters of nature. We forget that we are also a components of the nature as others. We destroy the natural balance by cutting trees, consuming unnecessary products only for luxury, testing nuclear weapons and so on. Our anthropocentric view is responsible for these types of actions. All such actions hamper the ecosystem.
Ecosystem restoration is a process where the men can play the vital role. We know that the ethics is a study of evaluating human behavior, so ecosystem restoration is very much connected to ethical point of view. Environmental Philosophy as well as environmental ethics deals the evaluation of human behavior to environment. Where today UN thinks about ecological restoration, notable contemporary Norwegian philosopher and environmentalist Arne Naess stated this in 1973 in his “Deep Ecology” paper. He is known as the founder of the deep ecological theory.
According to Naess, as a part of the nature, it is an ethical question for us to how we should live. Ecological wisdom is necessary for this. Deep ecology seeks to develop this by focusing on deep experience, deep questioning and deep commitment. These constitute an interconnected system. In a simplest meaning deep ecological view is the positive deep thinking about environment and application of the thinking.
Deep ecology is a non-anthropocentric approach where the intrinsic value of the nature is recognized. When we recognized the nature as our own, the nature will be more protected. Thus we confirm the ecological restoration as well as the sustainable development for future world.
(Zinan is Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Dhaka College.
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