We are living in an age where “connectivity” is measured in terms of the number of Facebook likes, Twitter followers, and YouTube views.
While such virtual connectivity may help us achieve power, position, and wealth in a materialistic society, it also throws into sharp relief our physical disconnection with nature.
Incidentally, this year’s World Environment Day (WED) theme was “connecting people to nature,” with the WED official website imploring us to get outdoors and into nature to appreciate its beauty and its importance.
What is nature?
When we talk about our surroundings, it obviously includes the natural world. Why, then, is there an increasing call to “connect with nature”? Does it mean we’ve become disconnected with our surroundings or have we failed to respond to the requirements of nature? Does nature really need us or do we need nature?
If we ask what nature is, the answer might seem quite obvious to everyone. We would, however, request the reader to take a second and contemplate the word “nature.” What do you see?
Of course, the answer will vary from person to person but some characteristics like green plants, beautiful rivers, etc are likely to be common.
When we asked our students the same question, most of them imagined nature as green land, or a forest, while some saw their immediate surroundings.
Twenty years ago, images of green, lush undisturbed forests were synonymous with nature. Have modern times altered that definition or are we becoming increasingly disconnected with real nature?
Is nature then, limited to describing only what has been created through the evolution of our planet? Or is it also what we humans have built?
While many will disagree that nature should only include what is natural or what has come into existence of its own accord via the process of creation and evolution.
Many will argue that humans are also a part of said nature, thus isn’t it only fair, that whatever we build is also natural? That question still hangs on a delicate balance that is dictated mostly by individual perspective.
Urbanisation
One might say with good reason that living in an increasingly urban world has disconnected us from nature: How can we connect when we are not living in lush green forests but within a city constructed from concrete and glass, often designed to keep nature out?
Urbanisation began well after the agricultural revolution, turning small riverside settlements and trading posts into townships and, eventually, with the advancement of technology and science, into complex cities with millions of inhabitants.
As cities became more complex, so did the lives of its citizens. With the onset of the industrial revolution, cities became mega-cities, centres of art, culture, innovation and education.
But many cities, plagued by random development and overpopulation have now become undesirable places for human habitation.
There is every reason to believe that many of the environmental problems such as global warming, air pollution, and water pollution are externalities of technology-dependent urban life.
No matter to what extent we become disconnected with nature, nature reconnects with us, often violently, represented by prolonged heatwaves, increasing frequencies of cyclones and hurricanes, irregular rainfall patterns, increased epidemics and so on.
Over time, we have learned that cities are actually heavily reliant on the surrounding natural landscape, from the input of energy and resources to the disposal of waste, to freshwater resources for drinking and sanitation.
A city is thus not an isolated system, but very much a part of nature. Yet those of us living in cities, surrounded by the comforts of a controlled environment, tend to forget this very important fact
A city is thus not an isolated system, but very much a part of nature. Yet those of us living in cities, surrounded by the comforts of a controlled environment, tend to forget this very important fact.
With climate change, losses in biodiversity, extreme effects of pollution and toxins, it has become more important than ever for us to recognise and remember that our survival, be it inside a 50-storey air-conditioned high-rise encased in steel and glass or inside the Sundarban mangrove forest, ultimately depends on the survival and integrity of our natural environment.
Reconnecting
Now comes the most important question: How do we, as urban inhabitants, reconnect to nature?
The answer, we believe, lies in our personal attitudes and behavior. One doesn’t need to go live in the jungles to connect with nature. Simple acts like planting a roof garden, recycling waste, conserving water, going on excursions or picnics to the country-side, helping clean litter from local parks, participating in local cleanup of degraded water bodies such as lakes and canals, taking public transport instead of personal vehicles are all activities the helps us connect to nature.
As urban citizens, we have better access to information technologies which we take full advantage of to maintain virtual social connectivity and even businesses. Can’t we use this virtual connectivity as a platform to raise awareness among citizens on different environmental issues?
What we previously blamed for our disconnection with nature also has the potential to catalyse our reconnection with nature. Like most technological innovations it depends on how we use it.
Cities must be designed to bring nature in, and many cities have been built by city-planners and architects to be garden cities, also known as the Garden City movement, jump started by Ebenezer Howard in the UK as early as 1898.
Believe it or not, Dhaka was meant to be such a city. Ramna and other various parks, lakes and wetlands across the city were meant to be green belts, to be protected and preserved. But how many citizens in Dhaka today will agree that “Dhaka is a green city”?
Ongoing projects of planting foreign Bonsai and other exotic plants in the city are rather useless and as they do not promote connectivity with nature.
Both city planners and ecologists suggest that we should plant local varieties which are culturally and ecologically appropriate. Trees like Krishnachura, Sonalu ,Debdaru, Jarul, Kadam are therefore preferable to exotic Bonsai in tropical countries like Bangladesh due to their wide canopies that not only provide shade to pedestrians but beautiful flowers too.
Those of us living in Dhaka city have a long way to go in terms of connecting to nature, but let us begin by taking small steps into our local parks and walkways around Dhaka’s wonderful natural water bodies.
Apparently it is late, but not too late to protect and promote the last remaining natural beauty of Dhaka that prevails among the pollution and degradation of a hostile urban environment.
Mohammed Abdul Baten and Karishma Sinha Khan are faculty at the Department of Environmental Management in Independent University Bangladesh. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of authors’ workplace.
