“Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive, and even spiritual satisfaction.”

– Edward Osborne Wilson

 
In the Hindu epic Ramayana, Hanuman, the divine monkey god, rushes to the Himalaya to fetch a medicinal herb to save Lakshmana’s life. Hanuman carries back an entire mountain full of medicinal herbs, among them the Sanjeevani plant, which saves Lakshmana from certain death. Ramayana as it turns out has for centuries – along with folklores, mythical stories, traditional beliefs, and cultures around the globe – been showing us the value of nature not only for sustaining life but also for the solutions it provides to complex problems and uncertainties. International Biodiversity Day 2020 is being celebrated under the theme “Our solutions are in nature”, and provides the perfect opportunity for us to reflect on, value, and sustainably utilize the restorative and replenishing power of nature. 

Since time immemorial, nature has been the basis of our life, development, and adaptation to change. From catering to our ever-growing demand of food and water to helping lessen global warming by absorbing and storing carbon to enriching our environment and providing a sense of community, nature has been crucial for sustaining life on Earth. Nature not only provides humankind with basic necessities but also nurtures us physically, intellectually, and spiritually. For instance, recent research on the Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku or “forest bathing” – which is just being in the presence of trees – indicates its potential to improve intellectual and spiritual well being. 

Nature gives, but we snatch
Expanding human activities over the past centuries have been exponentially ravaging nature. With the onset of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-18th century, we have made remarkable progress in terms of accessibility to basic necessities, improvement in health and education, and other materialistic services – but the drain on natural resources has been massive. Nature has been exploited beyond its limits and boundaries: almost half of the forest area has been lost, the population of wildlife has decreased by 60%  and a third of the world's arable land has been converted to deserts. 

This burden on nature is resulting in a massive loss of biodiversity. The degrading health of ecosystems and the services they provide not only undermine nature’s ability to support wellbeing and economic growth but also make us vulnerable to different changes, including climate change and disasters. A vivid example of this is the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which is inextricably linked with nature and humans. The loss of biodiversity and destruction of nature is directly linked to most zoonotic diseases, including the emergence of COVID-19, which has brought the world to a standstill and ushered in a period of great uncertainty.

Nature-based solutions are the future