ARTICLE | New Normal
Recover Better With Nature
Personhood Rights to Rivers can help Ranjan K Panda Convenor, Combat Climate Change Network, India
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eduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and abatement of water & air pollution have been two of the major reliefs the Earth has got from the humans’ Covid19 response programmes. As the humans slowed down, the Earth recovered. The challenge now, however, is to retain these gains. Under the current economic growth models that seems almost impossible. We
28 June 2020 | www.urbanupdate.in
have enough excuses to continue with the same greed-driven development that necessarily happens at the cost of ecology. One such big excuse is economic recession leading to huge job losses, never seen in our lifetime. Job losses for humans, right? The issue is, can we sustain these jobs unless we stop growing by destroying Mother Nature? To me, you can’t be sustainable in your growth unless you grow in harmony with all other species on Earth. If Covid19 cannot teach us this lesson, then we can’t learn it ever. That would mean, we have chosen the path to perish sooner than expected. “Time for Nature”, the theme of this year’s World Environment Day is a strong reminder in this regard. In this space, a month before, I had written how global GHG emissions are estimated to drop by 5 percent this year and that would be historic. In the meanwhile further studies have confirmed that the reduction
in annual carbon emissions this year could actually be by 7 percent. A new analysis published in Nature Climate Change has claimed that lockdown measures have contributed to an estimated 17 percent decline in daily global carbon dioxide emissions compared to the daily global averages from last year. This is significant and historic. However, as I had written in my column here just a month ago, this gain is not going to last. Countries have already started unlocking their economies and despite massive calls for a green recovery, things seem to be business usual.Well, Germany and other European countries have made some announcements for green recovery. The UK too is scheduled to announce some green measures in its recovery plan very soon. However, most of these stimuli seem to be aiding to the same kind of economic idea that has actually caused climate change and destruction of nature to an irreparable
