Now I’m positive that many people have come across all sorts of non-fiction writings and documentaries about environment issues. We are always seeing news reports, journals, research articles and varieties of information regarding different environment related topics. But how well do these reports affect our minds? In non-fiction writing, we are usually bombarded with academic jargons, stiff wordings etc that fail to keep us motivated to read more. Is a non-approachable way of writing about these issues help to raise awareness? Or does it only give us empty information and data that we fail to understand?

In a fiction work, we get a limited setting and timeframe, but it successfully manages to engage our minds into the core of the work. We get into the story, we understand the plot and the gravity of the issue the fictional work tries to project to us. Whether we realize or not, different social and political issues are projected through different fictional works we enjoy. Surprisingly enough, environmental issues have very small reflection in fictional works. 

There is a term called “Environmental Fiction” or “Eco-fiction”, basically these sort of fiction works try to interact their characters with the environment in a setting that can be considered in 2 ways- “the present” and “the future” (somewhat similar to science fiction). The narrative from a fictional work is important because it invokes thought, imagination, interest in our minds. If we limit ourselves to just reading articles, journals, newspapers or just documentaries, we may learn a lot of information, but it won’t reach us internally. 

Suppose you see a very pressing environment or climate issue in your country (e.g- deforestation). You have been reading about deforestation everywhere, it's on the news, academicians are writing about it, news channels are making news about it, politicians using it for their political agendas etc. You already realize how important forests are for your environment and understand how it will be extremely harmful to cut down the forest trees. Facts and figures are showing the numbers. You understand the problem of this situation, but many people probably fail to understand the gravity of it. They may unconsciously stop caring about it after a while. This is where the power of fiction works come in. If a fictional work like a novel or movie has reflected the deforestation issue,  even though it does not give factual information, it gives a glimpse of the reality, thus creates an eye-opening opportunity. 

Good storytelling gives us a glimpse of the imperfection of the world we live in. According to author Jeff VanderMeer, fiction is “an organism”, “a living creature”, the duty of authors is to tell a story that makes a reader care. In the present world, with the running Covid-19 pandemic, climate change and environment is a much more pressing issue than it was ever before. While there is a vast amount of environment non-fiction works, we definitely need more representation of this matter in the fiction works for better understanding.

Have you ever come across a fictional work that has featured a pressing environment issue? Please share in the comments.