With the Kerala floods right in our face, the wildfires in California and the global temperatures rising every year, who says Climate Change is just a phenomenon. We are in the most crucial times of our civilization where we can either break it or make it. Our survival depends on our actions in the coming decades and our repentance of the way we have lived for the last 300 years on earth.
While we selfishly crave for our existence, we (at Youth Alliance) realize that it isn’t possible unless all of us, especially the present generation of youth can feel, live and breathe the deep understanding of our ecology and look at it from an integrated lens of economics.
Earth Shastra (ES) is a 9-day residential program which explores the relationship between ecology and economics. Our inspiration, ecologist Satish Kumar ji, says ecology and economics both have an origin from “Oikos” in Greek which means home. Ecology is the study of “home” and economics is the management of “home”. Almost all colleges in the world teach economics without the knowledge of ecology and hence we feel, we reached this stage of our environment, where ecology is disintegrated and looked at in silo. All our lives, we are taught to see everything through the lens of economics. How can we use something for our maximum benefit. We have failed to establish a relationship with our environment beyond looking at it as an enticing background for our social media pictures or as a resource for our own modern life.
Hence, one of the main visions of Earth-Shastra is to explore the relationship of self with ecology. Everything that I am is nature, and everything in nature is me. Therefore, knowing and understanding this relationship is important. We explore this at many levels. Beginning with the eternal truth that one exists because of mother earth and all its gifts. We wouldn’t sustain for long if there was no air or water available.
Another level of our relationship is a deep cause and effect of our lifestyle and our choices on the larger natural ecosystem, like the consumption of food, clothing, etc. It not only affects our health but the general environment on the whole too. Like we are slowly becoming aware of the presence of micro-plastics in water. The synthetic t-Shirt I buy contributes to the pollution to the nearest water body on which my community and I depend on, is an imperative yet invisible cycle.
The changes in the ecosystem not only affects me physically but emotionally and spiritually as well.
The processes designed at Earth-Shastra bring forth our theory of change which Gandhi practised, “Be the change you wish to see in the world”. All of us can’t go on to protect the trees in the Amazon forests, but all of us can definitely contribute by not buying a new electronic device every year. To create a change in the outside world one needs a consistent practice on the inside and hence a big focus in ES is inner change and personal actions. We discover and learn the immediate personal actions that one is ready to take and slowly ripple it out to the immediate community and the world. Some of our processes focused on this are self-reflection, conversations, nature connects, open spaces etc.
Another aspect of ES is to be able to move fluidly between the micro and the macro picture. When we look at the health effects of using toothpaste, its essential to be able to zoom out and see what this and similar other activities do to our broader ecosystem. It’s an important skill for changemakers, and we try to develop this through our sessions and intensive discussions.
An important reason to gather 30 passionate change-makers is to gain from collective wisdom. We also use this opportunity to set intentions for the future and build a strong support for our initiatives and our projects for change.
An intention of change is to go from unconscious wrong to conscious wrong, from conscious right to unconscious right. Hence the focus is on building our awareness, building our personal practices, starting small and working towards a big change.
At present we are not only facing an environmental crisis but we all are living in crucial times where we are up against the big corporates, trying to reclaim our lives and our mother earth and modernity is the disease we are trying to cure ourselves from.
This is a call to all the people who feel passionate about doing something for our ecology, come together, let’s create a new narrative for our economic state in our country which looks at ecology first and then economics.