Conserving Bio-diversity
With Cultural Perspective

By Rukmagat Aryal (Avay)

DIVERSITY is the law of nature. Recently, there are concerns world-wide about the loss of bio-diversity along with the loss of cultural values and beliefs. The chemical based modern agriculture, deforestation, encroachment of marginal lands due to population pressure, industrialisation and many other human activities leading to environmental pollution, ecological imbalance, soil erosion and landslides, etc, are responsible for the degradation of bio-diversity. Similarly, Westernisation, globalisation, market-oriented economy and the so-called modernisation are leading to a loss of cultural diversity. It is well understood that the natural environment and cultural environment strongly influence each other, the concept goes beyond bio-diversity towards bio cultural diversity.

Diversity in crops and animals is the reflection of their genetic make up. Due to this, species react differently with different biotic and a-biotic environments and adopt them accordingly and thus make agriculture possible in a wide range of environmental conditions. A diverse and balanced ecosystem is flexible and resilient because there are many species with overlapping functions that can substitute each other. In a more diverse network the patterns and relations are more complex and peoples’ livelihood, specially in rural societies, are enmeshed within these complexities. Isolation of groups and individuals in a society leads to fragmentation and can be a source of conflict. Similarly, isolation and fragmentation in ecological systems can threaten the survival of species and the complete ecosystem.

Bio-diversity as gene bank is important for developing high potential varieties for better crop production at present as well as in future. It has emerged as a major global resource for supplying the raw material for biotechnological innovations. Biotechnology is expected to contribute 30-40 per cent to the global economy in the 21st century. Bio-diversity allows better exploitation of environ-mental variability or niches differentiation and efficient use of resources. It provides diversified products, spreads risks of crops and production failure, stabilises yield, makes production possible with low or minimum use of external inputs, causes less damages to the ecosystem and environment matching the agricultural systems sustainable. Conservation of bio-diversity has therefore been identified as a major issue on both global and national agenda, in sustaining the growth of the biotechnology industries as well as developing new drugs and crop varieties.

The loss of natural bio-diversity goes hand in hand with diminishing cultural diversity. Many rural societies are confronting the loss of bio-diversity and cultural diversity. Rural peoples’ livelihood is built within and upon the natural and cultural complexities and their existence is strongly influenced by their environment. Their social structures and cultures are largely determined by nature and vice-versa. This intricate interrelationship between nature and culture takes us a step beyond the concept of bio-diversity to bio-cultural diversity. Globalisation has contributed to fast communication and greater knowledge about the different societies, cultures and ecosystems in the world. At the same time, cultural expressions like songs, dances, arts, rituals and ceremonies are being forgotten or considered outdated by the younger generations. Priests, traditional leaders, local herbal healers and cultural rules are increasingly neglected or depreciated. Indigenous people are attaching less value to their own cultural context. The market economy and globalisation of material need has resulted in an increased homogeneity in culture and values. In this process the linkages between culture and nature get lost.

Some people blame Westernisation and globalisation as solely responsible for the environmental pollution and the loss of bio-cultural diversity. But it is the attitude of people towards nature and culture which is responsible for such erosions. Westernisation and globalisation may be partly responsible but it will be an injustice to blame them for sole responsibility for such degradation. Westerners have done their best in the time of need through Green Revolution and/or technological innovations. People in the west are also increasingly making efforts to preserve and protect the environment, for example, through stimulating ecological farming, natural farming, organic farming and/or permaculture. Westernisation and globalisation are not straight roads to hell, not to paradise either. So, in spite of blaming Westernisation and globalisa-tion, it would be better to develop one’s own strategy for the conservation of natural and cultural environment to ensure a sustainable ecosystem and continued existence of human beings. Further, globalisation is the need of time; one cannot remain unaffected with its impacts whether good or bad. So, it would be better to cope with globalisation minimising its bad impacts to the possible extent rather blame it and shirk one’s own responsibility.

Bio-diversity conservation cannot be effective simply by collecting and breeding rare species but we must have a holistic concept that comprises the whole spectrum of conservation activities dealing from the in situ conservation with the population, communities and ecosystem, and ex situ conservation involving zoos, botanical and zoological gardens and gene banks. It is a complex process and involves not only maintenance of ecological balance but also protection of environment through reduction of green house gases, control of global warming, protection of forest and conservation of genetic resources. All the plant and animal species are the scenic beauties of the earth.

Once the environment is protected and ecological balance is achieved it should be sustained for the conservation of bio-diversity and derive various benefits at local level. Some ways towards this direction would be the concept of protected areas, buffer zone management, achievement of self-sustaining agro-ecosystem and participatory watershed management programme. A single effort would be nothing and thus it will require an integrated effort of individuals and groups involved in conservation activities including NGOs, INGOs, research institutes and educational institutes. The National Agricultural Diversity Conservation Committee could lead the way in developing the strategies, formulating necessary laws and co-ordinating the activities towards bio-diversity conservation in the national context. All the ways towards nature and bio-cultural diversity conservation must be integrated and based on people’s active participation; all the development based on the strength of the local knowledge, culture and ecosystem, with the openness to discuss and experiment with traditional as well as innovative knowledge and practices.

Diverse agriculture and living with nature is the best way to safeguard the food supply and way of life for the present as well as for the future. Rather than fighting with nature we must strive to adapt to its dynamics. Let us not forget that diversity is the law of nature, to violate any life form is to violate ourselves. Let’s start using the natural judiciously for a safe present and a safe future too. Let’s use these resources with love and respect. Let’s not forget that the earth environment is the interwoven mesh of various components including human beings, plants, animals and other biotic and a-biotic components, and disturbance in any of the components will disturb the whole system. Let’s maintain a harmony with nature for the sustainability of the system and continued existence of human beings in this lovely planet.

The World Of Islam Is No Monolith

By Eric Talmadge

ISLAM in the grinding poverty of Afghanistan is harsh, its justice unforgiving.

For a woman found guilty of adultery, the punishment is death which turbaned religious leaders carry out with stones. For ancient Buddhist statues deemed by the ruling Taliban to inspire idolatry, explosives did an equally thorough job.

In the holy lands of Saudi Arabia, Islam shows another face book, and its accompanying traditions, and all legislation must conform to the Shariah, or Islamic law.

Still, a royal family, not clerics, rules the land. There are limousines in the streets families watch satellite TV in their homes. In the capital, Biyadh, young men in jeans or white robes and women swaddled in black cloaks flock to a glitzy shopping mall to hang out.

As the terrorist attacks on the United States and the response since have shown, the Muslim world is no monolith. Afghanistan’s extremism and alleged ties to the terror have made it a pariah among the leaders of fellow Muslim nations. Even the government of Pakistan, previously one of the Taliban’s only friends, has offered support for Washington.

"There is a contemporary perception of Islam in the west that is misinformed, because many people still believe that Muslims across the world are angry, primitive and fanatical," said Salahuddin Ayub, a Malaysian ustaz, or religious instructor for Muslims.

"But they should understand that there should not be sterotypes, that there is great diversity among Muslim countries in different regions."

Islam was born in the Middle East. But it has grown beyond its origins, physically and spiritually.

In countries around the world, it has been adopted in strikingly different ways. From sub-Sharan Africa to the steppes of Central Asia and the Malay archipelago, the world’s "other Muslims" have endowed it with a stunning diversity – and a complexity born of conflict and compromise.

On Friday in Cairo, worshippers spill out of storefront mosques onto sidewalks just down the street from the McDonald’s. It is a commonplace scene; few give it much thought.

In Saudi Arabia, Christmas decorations, considered blasphemous, are appearing in stores other than U.S-style supermarkets. They include cards designed in Saudi Arabia showing a reindeer and camel rubbing noses.

Even in countries where Islam is deeply established and Muslims are the majority, today’s mixture of cultures and economies, and the looming ideals of Western democracy, present a difficult choice.

The question is asked throughout the Muslim world: How much secularism can Islam take ?

Politicians in Egypt and Jordan have tried to assimilate secular freedoms while co-opting fundamentalists, recognizing their influence over a broad range of people feeling the strain of the demands of modern economies.

But to the fundamentalists, secular policies can rapidly become a threat to Islam, and the swings from one pole to the other continue to reflect that deep tension throughout much of the Middle East, and Muslims throughout the world.

Solutions do not come easily.

In Shiite and Persian Iran, Muslims are grappling with the legacy of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s 1979 revolution that toppled the shah and made Khomeini the first supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Under reformist President Mohammed Khatami, himself a cleric, some of the more rigid restrictions on cultural and social activities in Iran have been relaxed or removed. Women dress more freely and are allowed to sing in public and act on stage, Music concerts have been revived.

The most daring Iranian reformists are questioning whether Khomeini’s successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, should have the supreme political control he now helds, or whether he should be strictly a religious leader.

Hard-liners who want no retreat from their definition of an Islamic state have fought back from a powerful positions – they control the courts and have Khameni’s support.

Mecca and the Middle East will always be at the heart of Islam. But Asia may be where its future is shaped. Here, away from the Arab world, there are other difficulties, and other tensions.

More than half the world’s Muslim live east of Karachi Pakistan, and Asia is home to the four countries with the largest Islamic populations: Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan and India.

In the globe’s most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia, muzzin call the faithful to evening prayers while throngs of the young head to discos for nights of drinks and dance. This year, a woman was chosen president.

Here, too, the pressures on Muslims are intense.

Calls are strengthening in Asia for stricter observance of conservative Islamic ideals. Women in parts of Malaysia have been ordered to wear headscarves, and local Indonesian authorities closed nightspots last New Year’s to avoid a backlash from Muslims in the holy month of Ramadan.

Muslim unrest from Chechnya eastward gnaws at the southern fringes of post-Soviet Russia. In China, which views all religion with suspicion, it is one more ingredient adding to the wrenching transition of a communist giant. For three decades, a Muslim minority in the Philippines has been flighting an insurgency against the largely Roman Catholic majority.

Since the attacks on New York and Washington, Islam in Asia has been reduced in the eyes of many Westerners to a terrorism emanating from the hills of Afghanistan.

But the story of Asia’s Islam is above all one of a faith that swept a continent – by conquest on the Indian subcontinent, by peaceful trade and mysticism across the malay archipelago – and adapted to the multitude of beliefs it encountered there.

At the demographic centre of the Islamic world – Islamabad. Pakistan – female models stream down a runway, the outlines of their bodies clear under sheer blouses.

Working the fashion show audience, Muslim waiters steal glances at the women and compete for the task of carrying refreshments backstage.

In Islamabad lives the divided soul of Asian Islam, split between a religion that imposes ironclad restrictions on the faithful and a more flexible creed that embraces tolerance and diversity.

The backdrop is the enduring struggle of Muslims worldwide to maintain a religious identity and culture while confronting the economic, social and political forces of Westernisation.

This is true both in places left behind, like Afghanistan, and in more industrialised Asian nations like Indonesia and Malaysia.

Predictions about which way the region is headed are precarious. But no one can deny the growing strength of orthodox Islam, despite Asia’s long history of diversity and tolerance.

"Between the more accommodating and modern Islam and the more fundamentalist Islam. I would say the recent gains have tended to be made by the fundamentalists" said Ng Kam Wang, a religion expert at Kairof, a think tank in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

"What you want to ask is whether these gains are permanent, I think the jury is still out." (AP)

Quality Education For Better Tomorrow

By Praveen Khadka

EDUCATION is the key to knowledge. Knowledge broadly defines and includes attitudes and skills which are needed to build fundamental capabilities that a person needs. Knowledge enables one to comprehend, compare, analyze, communicate, and establish linkages between past, present and future, between the self and the world, and to change world for the better.

Information and knowledge play a crucial role in the overall development of the country. Knowledge is equally necessary for the functioning of an individual, society, country and the world at large.

In the present day society, schools have emerged as the prime agencies for the transmission of knowledge though there are many other institutions like family, religion, mass media etc. that impart knowledge. In the past, childern were educated in cultural heritage, by increasing their participation in community work and giving them specific instructions. Today a school is considered to be an ideal agency to impart knowledge because it is a workplace and is taken as the best place to gain knowledge. So schools have emerged as the most significant transmitters of knowledge including attitudes and skills because they help in the formation and improvement of basic knowledge related to the capabilities of the young people. However, these days opening schools, charging exhorbitant fees in the name of quality education has become a common practice. In the government schools, teachers – in many cases - go to school only to collect their salaries. The private schools are no better; most of the teachers are untrained and they are frequently changed. Dishonesty on part of the teachers is common three too. Being the most significant knowledge transmitters, schools should lay a good foundation on quality education. But what is quality education? Quality education means the way of transmitting skills, attitudes, knowledge according to the interest of the children. Each child has to be actively involved in learning process. Quality education means not only to teach new ways but also encourage children to face new situations.

To provide quality education there should be good learning environment. But, what is good learning environment? It includes many things such as environment of school and class and the relationship between teachers and students. The schools should create an environment where the learners themselves engage in the learning process. The school premises should be safe, protective and free from violence and abuses. The environment of the classroom depends upon the relationship of the learners and the teachers. The ratio of teacher and students should be 1: 20. Learning methods should be practical rather than memorisation because learning through interaction, participation, symposium, and activity based learning method helps more than memorisation does. Another important thing is that learning method should be enjoyable.

Education is important for all but is it more so for today’s children because today’s child is tomorrow’s man so that he/she can contribute to the development of the nation and the world he/she is living in. But in our society the large number of parents and guardians are uneducated and unaware of the importance of education. And many of them are influenced by the traditional beliefs that education motivates the children to crave for comfort, luxuries and eventually makes them undisciplined and disobe-dient to their parents, guardians and their elders. As a result, many of them are deprived of the rights of getting education.

Education is everybody’s right but in our society the fundamental laws apply only for the boys, and girls are always neglected from their right to education. Education is valuable as it helps one to get a job open gate to economic opportunities, get a fair justice, but it is not easily accessible to all.

Obviously, literacy is inseparable from oppor-tunity, and opportu-nity is inseparable from freedom and freedom promised by literacy is freedom from ignorance, force, poverty and freedom to do new things, to make choice, to learn, to teach and for fair justice. Literacy provides a framework for developing new vision and it embraces not only the learning needs of adults but also those of children.