Our land, our legacy - the Peter O'Connor column

In the beginning, it was all that was here: The Land. It was dressed out with the mountains, the rivers, the wetlands, the forests and the animals. And that was before We came here.

And by “We”, I mean the very first peoples, not those of us who followed Columbus. Way back then we never destroyed the land. We knew that the land would provide. It would give us our water, our food, our medicines and our shelter. We understood that as long as we had the forests, we would always have clean pure water.

Of all the peoples on Planet Earth, very few of us understand this concept today. But strangely, those who do are at vastly opposite ends of the spectrum which we might call Civilization.

In between, in terms of time, geography and attitude, there stretches a wasteland of people who have been bent upon destruction of Nature, all in the name of Development.

There are pockets of people, whom we refer to as Primitve, who understand the value of the earth as it was first presented to us.

They live deep in the forests of the Amazon, in dwindling parts of Africa, Australia and near the Arctic Circle. They value the land for the trees, for the water, and for the living it still gives them. They represent, in our thinking, the “least civilized” among us.

Then there are others, mostly from North America and Europe, but with little “cells” occurring elsewhere, who have lived at the other end of the Civilization Spectrum.

They have every modern device, they can fly across nations, create massive wars, send people to the moon and back. But they had, in their time, wiped out whole animal species, destroyed forests, and poisoned rivers and the air we breathe.

They represent what we consider to be the most highly civilized people on the planet, in terms of learning to care for each other, and, get this!—for their Environment!

How come?

How did these most highly developed people, few though they may be, actually revert to the tenets still held unchanged by the most primitive and least developed of us?

And what had happened, through all of those years, to all of the millions of people in between, that saw us, as we became more civilized, also become ignorant of the land and its blessings, and take the animals, then the forests, then the water and finally the very stone away until there was almost nothing left?

But more importantly, what was it about those pockets of us who stayed true to an old memory, a tradition still passed on, but increasingly threatened, to know how to live on what the earth provides us?

And more curiously, what happened to those persons who had over the generations taken and mined and cut and bulldozed so much of the natural environment, to replace it with cold concrete and glass?

And what was it that made them change their minds, and realize that a huge mistake had been made, and that we should revert to the ancient wisdom and try to save what we still might of our natural forests and the streams and wildlife that these forests nurture?

The leaders of what we call civilization have come full circle in their recognition that our planet, and for us here in T&T, our land, is as important as it was to our first peoples.

But the “Leaders” to whom I refer are not necessarily the political leaders, not here or in the rest of the world. I am referring to that edge of our society who have seen the real damage which unfettered exploitation of our environment has wrought.

They are leading the so-called First World back into the ideals of conservation and preservation of the natural environment.

We in T&T have a tremendous opportunity to avoid that huge abyss “in between” where mankind ignored and then worked to destroy the natural environment.

We can take a short-cut and join up with the new, the modern, the “first-world-just-like-away” thinking which has come full circle and recognized the value of our forests, the rivers they spawn, our wetlands, the wonderful wildlifeand the exotic florae.

When these newly enlightened people visit our country, they are overwhelmed with our biodiversity, and singularly unimpressed with the Bling we have built in the city.

Specifically, our new government has the opportunity, and I suggest, the duty, to work to preserve our environment, and therefore our land.

They can deliver no greater legacy than the retention of our wetlands, the reforestation of our hills, with the consequent rebirth of our rivers, and the control of our quarrying and development projects.

Yesterday was World Environment Day. Let us make every day Our Environment Day.

Peter's columns also appear in the NEWSDAY newspaper