`NATURAL RESOURCES VS DEVELOPMENT Live and let live

The supreme power of the universe has created the man. And for the man, that has created the beautiful world, the beautiful nature. If that has given hunger to man, the same has also given the store of foods to satisfy his hunger. If that has given thirst to man, the same has also given water to quench his thirst. In short, if that has created man, as the man has limitless needs and to fulfill those needs of the man, that has given this beautiful and wonderful nature full of natural resources like green world, water, space, light, air and many more so that his created man may survive in the world. That has given all and everything suitable for the man’s easy existence.

The bounteous and beautiful Nature is the ultimate and sovereign source of ores and raw materials, on which the total structure of development is based. From the basic needs like foods, lodges and clothes to luxurious and extravagant needs like mobiles, computers, cars and bungalows, the man is compulsorily dependant on the Nature. The fuels, fibers, ores and ornaments are dug out and extracted from the Nature. The petroleum products which are the backbone of any nation’s economy are dug out from the natural wells. Other sources of energy like coal, hydro power plants, nuclear fusion by thorium and uranium, windmills and solar energy are the natural byproducts. The bricks, sands, mortars, plastics, woods, stones, glasses and irons are the constituting components in structural buildings. The metals like bronzes, silvers, gold, diamonds, pearls, ruby, crystals and emeralds which leverage the world’s business and beautify the personalities are found in the earthen mines. The marvelous minerals like mica, platinum, cobalt and plutonium found in the womb of the Nature sustain human development. Does the Nature take any payment for such magnificence? Does the Nature complain against vicious practices of man?

We breathe because there is the Nature. We are born and grown in the kind and cozy lap of the Nature. The Nature treats equally to its entire offspring. The natural phenomenons like heat, warmth, coolness, chilliness, fire, water, air are the blessings and boons to planet occupants. The sun, moon, sky, forests, rivers, capes, valleys, mines, mounds and hills and mountains are the storehouse of life. Is the life possible without water? Has man created water? What is the role of man in movement of the air? Does the man originate the air? Can a man survive without air? Does the man pay for water, air, coolness and heat? Has the man got such natural things in wills and legacy by his ancestors? The man is bestowed with beautiful and bounteous world free of cost.

Once there was meticulous semblance and apt harmony between the man and the Nature. The man lived closely in the lap of the Nature. He lived in naturally built caves; shadow of the trees, huts and thatches made of mud and grasses. He wore tree leaves and animal skins. He ate fruits, leaves, stems, roots and small animals. He drank water in pools, ponds and rivers. Then, there was exuberant and optimum amount of natural objects in his surroundings. The fresh air, clean water and sonorous surroundings bewitched his heart and mind. He lived a long healthy life. The Nature showered all her blessings at his door. There was no greed, avarice and conflict between the man and the Nature. The Nature bestowed heat when her man shivered of cold. The Nature gave cold waves, divine breeze and scintillating rains when her man perspired in heats. The Nature offered cooing of cuckoos, song of nightingales, dance of peacocks, swing of trees, chirping of birds, gurgling rivers, waterfalls and rainbows for soothing and comforting his soul. The Nature gifted him vast panoramic dales and valleys over laden with eye pleasing and heart solacing multicolored sweet smelling flowers. The man lived in cozy companionship of his benefactor. 

 But in the process of time, the man became mad of development. He has greedily increased his limitless demands and multifold requirements. From the rustic rural dwellings, he moved towards urbanizing his life. He commenced an era of commerce and industries. He boasted to be called civilized and a superior race. The inception of an age of lust, luxuries and loathsomeness took place. The discovery and knowledge of iron, bronze, silver and gold triggered the speed of transformation from nomadic primitive era of naturality and simplicity to settled civilized era of artificialities, complexities and rivalries. The accumulation and coagulation of the human population at river banks wrote the first chapter of urbanized and organized developments with well designed houses, roads, industries, furnaces, factories, wells, pools, transportations, markets, commerce, jewelries and other infrastructures. The rash and reckless drive to gain power, prestige and property initiated. The brutal battles either for authority or for the supremacy endangered the human race. In all such crazy and callous acts of development, the Nature was hugely and highly overlooked and neglected.

Today, the heinous rivalries and sword edge competitiveness, in the blind race of development, the health of the Nature is speedily eroding and crumbling. The countries are measured on ‘Developed and developing’ scale now. The GDP and GNP are today the pulse of the nations. Upsurge in the Sensex is the barometer of the economy whereas the downfall looms glooms to the faces of investors and businessmen. The gold and petroleum products are treasures today. In the covetous race of establishing ownership on such stores and areas, the conspired conflicts are shaming the whole humanity by its repercussions. The territorial issues pervading in every nook and corner the world, have their inherent intents of dominance over global markets and its economy.

The West Asian countries are inflicted in unrest, bloodshed and terrorist acts. The so called developed and dada nations’ hands are behind it to squeeze oil stores for their own good. Recently China made an artificial island in the great China Sea. The nuclear and hydrogen bombs are tested by developed and developing nations to establish themselves as super power and commanding status.

The rapid and insane trend toward urbanization and industrialization has stabbed pointed and poisonous dagger right in the heart of the natural world. The roads, skyscrapers, vehicles, industries, machines are becoming larger, sophisticated and essential day by day. They now occupy and consume more free natural spaces and diminish the natural resources. It results in more diminish, shrink, endanger and pollute the natural world. The sizes of the cities are expanding furiously. The expansion of cities is such a huge that a person revisits there only after a month, he gets perplexed by seeing the variegated maps, landmarks and designs. The wells, ponds, canals, rivers which have been sometimes lifelines and pastimes of the people are now buried, dried, damped and disappeared. The gardens, forests and natural worlds fed and fostered by such water bodies are now extinct and vanished.

The foolish man started treating the Nature like its master, owner, ruler and authoritarian. He assumes his mastery over all his natural phenomenon and endowments. He plucks the flowers and fruits with the idea that they are under his sole authority. He thinks that he can use them the way he wants. He cuts and burns trees, makes dams and bridges, kills animals and mines out the minerals with the notion that they are all his subjects and subservient. He tames the wild animals like dogs, cats, goats, sheep, horses, bullocks, cows, buffaloes, birds, snakes, fishes and even dangerous animals like lion, tigers, bears and elephants for his foods, entertainment, domestic purposes, commercial purposes and money making. It is quite strange and awkward that the man has started subduing his own creator and source of life. To treat the benign Nature like subordinate servant is the big blunder of man. It’s an open invitation to own end. The Nature is the fellow companion that must duly be revered and respected. Otherwise the man has to undergo an immeasurable loss and destruction. Maltreating the Nature is writing the story of own deaths, dangers and disasters.

The trees have been the most faithful friends of mankind throughout the centuries.

He required woods for making huts and houses. He required woods for fire and fuels. He required woods to make wheels. He used woods to make boats. He used woods in carts and crafts. He depended wholly on trees for all his needs. It’s no exception to say that the early phase of development was triggered by the vicissitude use of such trees. Even today, the trees have big role in industrial and infrastructural development. The wooden furniture is still the axis of attention of the visitors in houses and offices. It will be no wrong to say that ‘Where there are trees, there is life’. The atmospheric structure with componential gases, their proportions and purities are directly due to the abundant trees. The life giving oxygen gas is derived from such wonderful trees. The huge deforestation for the sake of development brings heavy and heterogeneous calamities like global warming, ozone layer depletions, greenhouse effect, pollutions, ecological misbalances, floods, draughts, starvations, depopulations, earthquakes, hurricanes and volcanoes. The biodiversity gets brutally harmed.

As the wood world is getting depleted frantically, and the government has become a bit vigilant to save environment, the overuse of plastic and its items has started in place of woods. This has created another havoc and health hazards to man and his surroundings. The wood is bio degradable and naturally decomposable whereas the plastic is not easily perishable. According to the latest surveys and researches, the plastics have become the biggest killers than any other diseases in the world. To satiate such a sundry population, the plastics are visible and scattered everywhere in ditches, ponds, canals and rivers. They stunt the growth of the grains into plants. The stray animals eat plastics with eatable wrapped and thrown in them. The city seems sordidly shrouded and suppurated by the shit plastics. Methane and other dangerous gases originate in form of fatal fate of man.  The plastic monster is gulping the cities and its people and galloping open on the street. It has become irresistible and uncontrollable. This is all because the unjust and unfair voracity of man to development.

The coals and petroleum products are the roots and backbones of all development. No development is possible without them. In modern urbanized and industrialized century, the development in all government and private sectors of all nations fundamentally depend on such fuels and fossils. Since these sources of energies were discovered, the speed of human development hastened unexpectedly. The overuse and high combustion of such fuels have highly contaminated and endangered the healthy atmosphere by disturbing the natural components and their combinations. The lead, carbon mono oxide, carbon dioxide, CFC and other venomous gases have concentrated in the atmosphere. This has disturbed and devastated the ecology, environment and biodiversity. The newer fatal diseases are spreading. The various species are becoming extinct and rare. The glaciers are melting. The sea level is rising. In spite of international conferences on such critical issues, no unanimous consensus could have been found. To save their economy from slowdown and pace the path of development, all are shifting the onus on others. They all accuse one another to minimize the carbon emissions. The deadly demon frowns upon both development and developing countries, but none of them want to retrograde and retrospect. They all want the highest economic advantage by hook or crook even by suppressing and strangling the throat of benevolent Nature.

Such are the other metals and minerals lying deep in the depth of the Nature. The man tore the chest of the Nature and sucked up its blood to death. The benignant Nature shrieked in sharp pain and expressed its distress in forms of floods, draughts, quakes and plagues. When the pain becomes intolerable, the Nature warns in forms disasters. The ignorant, negligent and ungracious man is bluntly blinded in pursuit of his development.  He does not show any sign of gratitude to the Nature. He is madly swallowing up the blood, muscles, marrows, bones of the Nature by deafening and deadening its breaths and beats. The Nature’s health is becoming hollow and horrible day by day.

The man has started misusing and damaging the natural resources gifted to him by the supreme power. The amount of natural resources like coal and petroleum are being unscrupulously exploited and wasted. No doubt these natural resources are for the man and for the creation. But they are in limit are supposed to serve the humanity from generation to generation. We don’t care about that what the coming generation will do if we destroy the natural resources. We are running blindly towards development and for the sake development and economic benefits; we are damaging the natural resources. The day will come when we shall have nothing to use if such practices continue.

The inebriated and intoxicated man from development has forgotten his ethical duties to preserve the sanctity of his natural surroundings. As having the honor and glory of being the wisest and superior race of earth, he must watchdog his surroundings and resources. If not for other of his fellow creatures and natural world, at least he must save them for himself and his coming generations. As the man bears the child, fosters, educates, marries, deposits and plans about the future of his child, so that the his child may live happily, so he must save the natural treasures for the sake of posterity like an elder. Along with inevitable development, he must devise means and measures to save gifts and grandeur of the Nature for his offspring who are still awaited. Can a father and elder finish away the foods, some by eating and some by throwing and wasting leaving nothing to his children? Can he see his children starve and die?  He must show elderliness by preservation and conservation of the resources in the interest of future children.

Though development can’t be stopped but certain other measures can be followed to stop misuse and blind exploitation of the natural resources. We must adopt the formula of sustainable development. Use the natural resources judiciously to fulfill the need of present generation without compromising the interest of coming generation.