Bharat Prasad
Kohima
We have been living in illusion of comfort and denial with the sense of transcending the material world.
The wealth and comfort accumulated at the cost of life kept us shielded from reality. Suddenly today the shield has ruptured and we find ourselves exposed to the conflict between "Man and Environment". A large body of evidence is beginning to accumulate showing how environmental degradation and human intrusion into the natural habitat is drastically affecting the natural and normal course of life .At times we tend to call such hazards as we are experiencing today as biblical, a thing of the past that happened to people long ago whose lives we can scarcely imagine .Today with increasing frequency it knocks at our door.
Human infectious disease outbreaks are rising in recent years there have been Ebola, Bird flu ,Middle East Respiratory Syndrome(MERS),Rift Valley Fever, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS),West Nile Virus and Zika virus all across the the globe jumping from animals to humans.
The Emergence and spread of Covid_19 was not predictable it was predicted in the sense that there would be another viral emergence from wildlife which would be a public threat --said Prof Andrew Cunningham of the Zoological Society of London.
The coronavirus is perhaps humanity first clear undisputable sign that Environmental damage can kill humans and can kill really fast, and it can happen again for the same reason .Destroying habitat is the cause and restoring it is the solution. Zoonotic diseases such as Covid -19 are linked to human behaviour and rapid urbanisation and thereby bringing people into closer contact with animal species.
The transmission of diseases from wildlife to humans is now a hidden cost of human economic development.
Diseases like Corona virus could be here to stay ,as humanity grows and spreads into places where it previously had no business .We might have got little lucky in the sense with Covid -19 since it's fatality rate is not as high as other health emergencies, which we have seen in previous years and should have taken as clear warning for it's always the human behaviour that causes it and there will be more in future unless we change our approach and attitude towards the biotic and abiotic factors of the environment .
This is not to deny that many intellectual achievements of human kind however they are combined with many cognitive and moral shortcomings, including undue confidence in our abilities to solve problems. In general human respond to pandemic rather than to act to prevent them. We attempt to prevent their spread.
After they emerge and to develop treatments for those infected.
The current crisis demonstrates the folly of this approach .The closest we come prevention is the effort to develop vaccine .But even this sort of prevention is a kind of reaction ,vaccines are developed in response to viruses that have already emerged .As the Corona virus experience shows there can be a significant gap between the emergence and development of a safe and effective vaccine during which time great damage can be done both by the virus and attempts to prevent its spread .Real prevention requires taking steps to minimize the chances of the virus or other infectious agents emerging in the first place.
The separation of health and environmental policies is a dangerous delusion our health entirely depends on the climate and other organisms we share the planet with.
But we are Human!!!
It's entirely possible that even if we are now momentarily awakened, we will soon forget the lessons .There is plenty of precedent for that However given the importance of what lies in the balance ,it is better to risk a little purported insensitivity than to press up an opportunity to encourage some positive changes for us to inclusively survive and also for the generations to come .
