by Cristina Eghenter - Deputy Director for Social Development at WWF-Indonesia
With the COVID-19 crisis highlighting the crucial importance of a balanced relation with nature and interdependence of human, animal and environmental health, Cristina Eghenter, Deputy Director, Social Development, WWF-Indonesia, argues that learning from Indigenous Peoples is the best way to repair our broken relationship with nature and secure a healthy future for all.
Broken Relationship
The world today is battling an unprecedented health crisis of a scale unforeseen in recent history. The COVID-19 pandemic has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, threatened the very existence of the vulnerable communities and has brought world economies to their knees. Giovanni Reyes, an indigenous leader from the Philippines, during a recent conference, described this current crisis as “nature telling us that [it] does not need us. We are not masters of nature, we are guests.”
While there is considerable speculation about the origins of the pandemic, there is no doubt that this crisis is one of our own making. Scientists have been warning for years that the way we eat, consume and produce is pushing the planet to the brink jeopardizing our own survival and that of our future generations. With the risk of pandemics driven in part by deforestation and massive land use change, the current health, humanitarian and economic crisis is yet another manifestation of our dangerously broken relationship with nature.
Link to the full article: https://impakter.com/how-indig...
