No. Environment is far more than plants, animals, land, soil, rivers, lakes, forests, mountains, etc. It includes people, their communities, quality of life, energy sources, cultures, morality, ethics, intitututions, the food they eat, the water they drink and the air they breath, their spirituality, their military arsenals, their policies, laws, legislatures, judicial systems, political parties, political systems, governance structures and quality of governance, health systems, and their quality, eduation systems and their quality, resources and their quality, peace, security, time management, conservation ethic, lingual diversity, ethnic diversity, their economies, etc. Therefore, an environmental ethic that will work in favour of balancing environment and development is not that subserves the growth ethic but that sees environment as consisting of a physical dimension (the ecological-biological) and three non-physical dimensions (the socio-economic, the socio-cultural and the temporal) all intricately integrated and each constituting a quarter of the environment! The way we perceive and manage the environment in physical terms only provides deceptive solutions, which become our new environmental problems for which we are usually short of answers. We must change our mindset and begin to take environment seriously and broadly and begin to manage it as if it matters to the economy and to quality livelihoods of our people.
Posted on: Fri, 11 Jul 2014 04:53:30 +0000