By Atossa Soltani
As we commemorate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day from the confines of our homes in the midst of an unprecedented global shutdown, it is a perfect moment to go within and reflect on this defining moment for our species.
While news of the death toll and financial loss are distressing, from the planetary perspective, the Earth is getting a break right now. Air pollution is clearing over smog-choked regions. Turtles, flamingos, and other creatures are turning up in record numbers in normally human dominated landscapes. Oil prices have plummeted to below zero and the EU is proposing a Green New Deal for its post Covid-19 recovery. The pandemic is proving that as a global community, we are capable of making swift and radical shifts no matter the financial costs. When faced with a life or death predicament, we have chosen life!
In 1990, I surrendered to a call from the Amazon and committed to being an Earth protector. However, as the life-blind economic system has grown manyfold in the past 30 years, so has the large-scale destruction of the Earth’s natural systems such as the Amazon. The myriad ecological crisis we face ranging from climate chaos to mass extinction, soil acidification, deforestation and desertification are signaling the biosphere’s deteriorating health.
In light of the massive fires that raged in the Amazon last year, 2020 was considered an important year for confronting Amazon deforestation. Sadly, global negotiations on the fate of our climate and biodiversity are now on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic. Meanwhile those logging, mining and plundering the Amazon continue operating. Indigenous peoples of the Amazon fear the spread of the disease in their communities and are calling for all industrial activities in or near their territories to be halted.
My Earth Day 2020 reflections.
Our planetary health and our own health are inextricably linked and part of the same continuum. Given the state of the Earth’s living systems, our future as a species is not guaranteed. What is clear is that our actions over the next 5–10 years will determine the future of life on Earth for millennia.
My prayer for this Earth Day is that we, as a global human community, emerge from the pandemic with a perspective shift to where we see and prioritize both personal and planetary healing over financial health; where we commit to protecting and restoring the true wealth and productivity of the biosphere such as our forests, the wetlands, mangroves, coral reefs, soils, watersheds, rivers, and our climate, etc.; and where our collective aspiration is being good ancestors to future generations, a central teaching of many indigenous cultures. From greening our food systems, to transforming our money systems, our democracy and how we make a living, and how we hold reverence for all life and practice reciprocity, we must ask our communities and ourselves how can we align with the flourishing of the lifeweb?
In our own bodies, our cells serve to keep us alive. Nested in a web of life, humans are similarly cells in the body of a living Earth and thus must serve the planetary organism, our living Earth. On a planetary scale we must choose life!
Returning to what is at stake for the Amazon, we marvel at this most biologically and culturally diverse ecosystem on Earth. The Amazon is a “vital organ” of the Earth, responsible for generating and circulating 20 percent of the world’s freshwater, sequestering carbon and regulating the global climate and rainfall. This rainforest is a primary source of our modern medicines, although less than 5 percent of its plant species have been studied by science.
Within this vast biome, there is a very special bioregion known as the Amazon Sacred Headwaters. The bioregion spans 74 million acres in Ecuador and Peru. It is home to nearly 500,000 indigenous people. I have had the honor of working with an alliance of 25 indigenous nations together with trusted NGO allies to permanently protect this region from an onslaught of industrial extraction projects.
Similar to a Green New Deal, the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative is a holistic indigenous-led approach that seeks to usher in a just transition to an ecological civilization. The vision includes leaving oil and mineral reserves in the ground, reducing onerous national debt, and supporting livelihoods and the wellbeing of all people and all life. This plan offers a model that can help our world avoid climate catastrophe.
If you also hear the call of the Amazon rainforest, please join us. Sign this declaration of solidarity here and donate to the initiative here.
Atossa Soltani is the founder and board president of Amazon Watch and served as the organization’s first Executive Director for 18 years. Currently Atossa is the director of global strategy for the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative.
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Twitter @asoltani
