Just a thought.....

Yesterday, I had the chance to see the movie "Home" shot by Yann Arthus-Bertrand. Its a movie made with wonderful visuals which make you sit up and think about the impact we are making to the earth. The message is pretty simple, we have to think about the environmental changes and their consequences in the coming years. The movie makes you think, hopefully some of us will act. We have to take a moment and realize that we are all linked, connected, what happens on one end of the planet affects all of us. 

The movie talks about the impact of climate change in Bangladesh. How the low lying areas of Sundarbans are going to bear the brunt of the changing nature in the coming years. Melting glaciers in the Himalayas means more water flowing into the bay. Possibility of water levels rising in the next 20 years in not just statistical jargon but very soon will be a reality. 

There are changes being made in the Sundarbans. I saw the reforestation is one of the priorities but it seemed to me that it was not well thought. Taking down one forest and putting another which does not belong there is not logical. The mangroves can never be replaced by the eucalyptus. The eucalyptus has become a very popular tree, not only in India but elsewhere. Why? because for paper and wood for fuel. 

Endemic bio-diverse forests cannot be replaced by a homogenous foliage. It simply does not 

work. You cannot change the rules of the game. 

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I saw evidence of this in the villages of Satjelia and Kumarbadi. Hundreds of eucalyptus trees had fallen like toothpicks alongside the village roads. These trees in fact damage the soil, nothing grows along side the eucalyptus because of the toxicity in its foliage. It drains the soil of the water - exactly what you don't want a tree to do. Instead of binding the clay soil of the Sundarbans these trees in-fact take the binding factor away. I'm no expert...but seeing the fallen trees told me they were no match for the hurricane winds. Right across the villages where the protected core forest lay, covered with mangrove trees the damage was negligible. The solution seems simple - we need to regenerate the bio diversity that originally belonged to the area. 

Thinking that one tree can be substituted for the other is major folly and scientifically irresponsible.

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There is an effort that is happening locally on the Bali island. The Wild Life Conservation Club there does replantation of the mangroves, they have a small nursery that is nurtured in the Nature Camp. So if you are going to the camp, take part in the process and plant a sapling with your name. 

But those of us who are not going to the Sundarbans, we can do our part. Lets conserve water but planting trees and shrubs which are endemic to the area we are living in. Green lawns have no business in an arid desert...the cacti have their own beauty. Its up to us to make little changes, our individual efforts will result in a collective change. We can do this. 

We can!

The movie is available on you tube till July 14th http://www.youtube.com/homeproject

HOME official website http://www.home-2009.com

-Madhu Reddy