I have been avoiding in getting involved in discussions around coronavirus much because I am in a bubble. Until this blog post.
All I can hear about when we hear the solutions to Covid are : Vaccines and Herd immunity. And definitely vaccines more than herd immunity or personal immunity. While vaccines are a good short term solution, they don’t guarantee prevention of future occurrences of a similar kind. If we are going to continue globalizing and destroying more and more forests at the rate we have been (and only set to increase with population & consumption growth) , the root cause and the risks of a similar global pandemic will continue to exist in the future.
These pandemics spread with the help of an extremely interconnected system of civilization this planet has never seen before. Resilience towards deadly diseases occurring in a certain locality cannot exist in massive swathes of a global population. Discussions around health and natural immunity simply don’t exist. Further destroying forests has brought us close to species we simply don’t live with any more, especially since Homo Sapiens started practicing settled agriculture.
Only and only when we go local in the reliance towards our food, manufactured goods and services such as healthcare, will we be able to have any hope at reducing risks of catastrophic runaway climate change and civilizational collapse like it has happened in the past. Droughts, river direction change and climate change have been the top causes of major civilizational collapses such as Indus Valley, Fertile Crescent etc. Zero-till Regenerative agriculture is the only tool available for us to reverse climate change by capturing carbon in the soil, the largest carbon sink in the planet, arguably.
Investments should be directed towards forest regeneration, regenerative forms of plant and animal agriculture, scaling down this craziness / pursuit of GDP, investing more in renewable energy for cooking (Biogas and smokeless/efficient firewood stoves) and electricity (solar). And last but not the least :tone down the cement and concrete production drastically.
If these investments don’t happen more than the conventional fossil fuel investments, then we are going to have more Covids in the future.
We can redefine and redesign locally economies to value local goods more than global ones. It has been done in the past. It is okay for organic food to be more expensive. We have to stop relying on cheap but scarce oil from the Middle East; and instead, start relying on abundant and nutrient – rich local Cow dung available to conduct agriculture. We need to regenerate forests and reforest our farms. We need to stop grazing our forests dry and grass less. We need to encourage more cycling paths in our cities. We absolutely must reduce air travel. We need to do these and much more.
We are doing some of this so far. Join us or contribute towards our journey any way you can. Please contact me on email or WhatsApp or leave a comment below and we can start a new conversation!
Regards,
Sudhakar
P. S. Banana and papaya circle in progress at our farm – Photo series below
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