There exists a stark difference between the rates of the biological and socio-cultural evolution of humans. Scientists believe that we are still evolving and adapting, but not any serious breakthrough has occurred for a long time. On the other hand, our socio-cultural evolution has gone faster over time.
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Nearly 10,000 years ago, we developed ourselves to perform agriculture and lead a sedentary lifestyle. And 7,000 years ago, we learnt to ‘write’ which historians believe is the most important feature of a ‘civilized’ society. Of course, not all the communities were on the same page.
The period before we learnt to write (proto-history) is generally associated with the Stone Age. It was a major breakthrough in our socio-cultural evolution to learn to use such tools, as not many species enjoy this prerogative.
The first major civilizations appeared with the dawn of the Bronze Age, which again drew us to a whole new adventure of metallurgy. Iron Age helped us clear the dense forest for settlements across the valleys and fertile plains.
We also established social institutions such as family, kinship, and marriage to regulate our members. Major political institutions such as state, empires, army, and democracy also bloomed with time. To regulate the economy, we created taxation and currency; and to augment them, we established the universities, urban centres, and transport vehicles.
During medieval times, humans explored new landscapes and inhabited new avenues. Not just land, but the ocean also became a centre of power. Some of the architecture crafted in this era still awes its viewers with the same intensity. New technologies and inventions led humankind to unfathomable distances.
Modern times came with some stellar changes in our timeline. The Industrial Revolution increased our potential to the skies and made human capabilities unbound. Today our space probes have crossed the boundaries of the solar system and we are aspiring to develop a “Type 2” civilization, by exploring the resources of our solar system. Nanotechnology has made big tasks appear small, and Artificial Intelligence is doing the jobs that were impossible for the humans themselves some centuries ago.
Researchers are trying to play with the laws of nature, and artificially creating, evolving, and augmenting the organisms to our benefit. But again, our natural biological evolution seems to be so little and trivial vis-a-vis this sea change of socio-cultural revolution. This poses a serious question that is our natural biological evolution being able to keep up with our socio-cultural revolution or vice versa?
Malthus held that the resources grow arithmetically and population exponentially. A similar difference seems to be the case with the evolutions.
Technological Paradox
Everything comes with a cost, and so does the technology. There are several paradoxes created by technology. Although it is supposed to make our lives easier, it also makes them tougher in various ways.
Learning to use new technology is one of them, which becomes even more serious in the case of less advantaged groups. Old people often struggle to adapt to the new technologies coming in every day. Socially or economically disadvantaged groups often lack the means to access, avail, and afford such technologies, which is highlighted by the lockdown and online education.
What seems most paradoxical is that we have created these technologies to save our time, energy, and resources; but on the contrary, these technologies have increased the wastage of the same!
If technology would have saved time since the Industrial Revolution, today we would have been sitting idle! In the modern urban lifestyle, one saves time through tech and then goes to the gym to work out in the saved timeslot. The net time saved remains zero.
Earlier, it was not essential to visit gyms because our lifestyles were such. Today, our biological and socio-cultural evolutions are not synchronised. Our body has almost the same needs which it used to have a millennium ago, but our lifestyles today do not allow us to avail of those needs.
Consequently, lifestyle diseases have increased manifold nowadays. As we know, certain things are a good servant but a bad master. Henceforth, for our very own benefit, we need to stay closer to nature.
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- Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest Finance (LEAF) Coalition, a collective of the United States, United Kingdom and Norway governments, came up with a $1 billion fund.
- LEAF is supported by transnational corporations (TNCs) like Unilever plc, Amazon.com, Inc, Nestle, Airbnb, Inc as well as Emergent, a US-based non-profit.
- The world lost more than 10 million hectares of primary tropical forest cover last year, an area roughly the size of Switzerland.
- Ending tropical and subtropical forest loss by 2030 is a crucial part of meeting global climate, biodiversity and sustainable development goals. Protecting tropical forests offers one of the biggest opportunities for climate action in the coming decade.
- Tropical forests are massive carbon sinks and by investing in their protection, public and private players are likely to stock up on their carbon credits.
- The LEAF coalition initiative is a step towards concretising the aims and objectives of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) mechanism.
- REDD+ was created by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It monetised the value of carbon locked up in the tropical forests of most developing countries, thereby propelling these countries to help mitigate climate change.
- It is a unique initiative as it seeks to help developing countries in battling the double-edged sword of development versus ecological commitment.
- The initiative comes at a crucial time. The tropics have lost close to 12.2 million hectares (mha) of tree cover last year according to global estimates released by Global Forest Watch.
- Of this, a loss of 4.2 mha occurred within humid tropical primary forests alone. It should come as no surprise that most of these lost forests were located in the developing countries of Latin America, Africa and South Asia.
- Brazil has fared dismally on the parameter of ‘annual primary forest loss’ among all countries. It has lost 1.7 mha of primary forests that are rich storehouse of carbon. India’s estimated loss in 2020 stands at 20.8 kilo hectares.
- Between 2002-2020, Brazil’s total area of humid primary forest reduced by 7.7 per cent while India’s reduced by 3.4 per cent.
- Although the loss in India is not as drastic as in Brazil, its position is nevertheless precarious. For India, this loss is equivalent to 951 metric tonnes worth carbon dioxide emissions released in the atmosphere.
- It is important to draw comparisons between Brazil and India as both countries have adopted a rather lackadaisical attitude towards deforestation-induced climate change. The Brazilian government hardly did anything to control the massive fires that gutted the Amazon rainforest in 2019.
- It is mostly around May that forest fires peak in India. However, this year India, witnessed massive forest fires in early March in states like Odisha, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh and Mizoram among others.
- The European Union’s Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service claimed that 0.2 metric tonnes of carbon was emitted in the Uttarakhand forest fires.
- Implementation of the LEAF Coalition plan will help pump in fresh rigour among developing countries like India, that are reluctant to recognise the contributions of their forest dwelling populations in mitigating climate change.
- With the deadline for proposal submission fast approaching, India needs to act swiftly on a revised strategy.
- Although India has pledged to carry out its REDD+ commitments, it is impossible to do so without seeking knowledge from its forest dwelling population.
Context:-
At the recently concluded Leaders’ Summit on Climate in April 2021, Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest Finance (LEAF) Coalition, a collective of the United States, United Kingdom and Norway governments, came up with a $1 billion fund plan that shall be offered to countries committed to arrest the decline of their tropical forests by 2030.
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Why LEAF Coalition?
Brazil & India
According to the UN-REDD programme, after the energy sector, deforestation accounts for massive carbon emissions — close to 11 per cent — in the atmosphere. Rapid urbanisation and commercialisation of forest produce are the main causes behind rampant deforestation across tropical forests.
Tribes, Forests and Government
Disregarding climate change as a valid excuse for the fires, Indian government officials were quick to lay the blame for deforestation on activities of forest dwellers and even labelled them “mischievous elements” and “unwanted elements”.
Policy makers around the world have emphasised the role of indigenous tribes and local communities in checking deforestation. These communities depend on forests for their survival as well as livelihood. Hence, they understand the need to protect forests. However, by posing legitimate environmental concerns as obstacles to real development, governments of developing countries swiftly avoid protection of forests and rights of forest dwellers.
For instance, the Government of India has not been forthcoming in recognising the socio-economic, civil, political or even cultural rights of forest dwellers. According to data from the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs in December, 2020 over 55 per cent of this population has still not been granted either individual or community ownership of their lands.
To make matters worse, the government has undertaken systematic and sustained measures to render the landmark Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 ineffective in its implementation. The Act had sought to legitimise claims of forest dwellers on occupied forest land.
Various government decisions have seriously undermined the position of indigenous people within India. These include proposing amendments to the obsolete Indian Forest Act, 1927 that give forest officials the power to take away forest dwellers’ rights and to even use firearms with impunity.
There is also the Supreme Court’s order of February, 2019 directing state governments to evict illegal encroachers of forest land or millions of forest dwellers inhabiting forests since generations as a measure to conserve wildlife. Finally, there is the lack of data on novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) deaths among the forest dwelling population;
Tardy administration, insufficient supervision, apathetic attitude and a lack of political intent defeat the cause of forest dwelling populations in India, thereby directly affecting efforts at arresting deforestation.
Way Forward
Tuntiak Katan, a global indigenous leader from Ecuador and general coordinator of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities, aptly indicated the next steps at the Climate Summit:
“The first step is recognition of land rights. The second step is the recognition of the contributions of local communities and indigenous communities, meaning the contributions of indigenous peoples.We also need recognition of traditional knowledge practices in order to fight climate change”
Perhaps India can begin by taking the first step.