On the week of Synchronicity Earth’s tenth anniversary, Founder Jessica Sweidan reflects on the cultural shifts toward conservation we have seen in the past decade.
Our work on the ground with people, in places where biodiversity is rich and often, the most threatened, is the primary focus of the day to day work we do to deliver our programmes.
But perhaps surprisingly, the biggest challenge we face as an organisation – is not working in the Congo Basin, or in areas like the high and deep seas – it is encouraging people that care, to act.
In the last ten years, we have seen an enormous increase in knowledge and understanding about the environmental crisis – certainly a shift from when we started, when many looked at us rather quizzically! Today, we are all more accepting of the adverse effect that we – as humans – have had. There seems to be a far greater public awareness that the individual butterfly effect that we all have – that every choice we make, every item we buy, or consume, tugs on a thread that is connected to some forest, river basin, coral reef or local person in a far-off country.
And yet with all this knowledge, our overall collective response has been feeble, at best. Sadly sometimes, the most evident concerns are the hardest to fix.
The late novelist David Foster Wallace spoke at a College commencement address a few years ago. He opened with a parable:
“Two young fish were swimming along when an older fish swims by, and says ‘Hi boys, how’s the water?’ The two young fish swim on and then one turns to the other and says, ‘what the hell is water?’”
© Alice Shirley
The point is this: the most obvious, and often most important realities are often the hardest to see and talk about. They are the hardest to change.
The parable is actually of Ewe origin – the Ewe are a people from the coast of West Africa – in the Togo, Benin, and Nigerian region. Expanding upon the meaning, for them, this proverb is also about “taking things for granted” and similar to the saying that familiarity brings discontent.
When it comes to the environment, we often take much for granted. And our familiarity – how we are used to being – has contributed to our inaction.
We are cultural creatures – culture shapes us, and we shape culture. This is the history of humankind: this is our story. Our relationship to nature – positive or negative – is embedded in, intertwined with, defined by and defining our culture.
If we accept a fundamental principle of life – that everything is connected – it follows that we should actively protect the fabric of life – it makes good sense. We shouldn’t be accelerating extinction. It also follows that when we deny the rights of cultures that revere life to live as they have done for millennia, we are doing ourselves a great disservice.