{"id":85701,"date":"2019-02-19T16:47:45","date_gmt":"2019-02-19T23:47:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=85701"},"modified":"2019-02-19T16:47:45","modified_gmt":"2019-02-19T23:47:45","slug":"how-a-menaced-humanity-facing-a-threatened-environment-turns-to-ludicrous-remedies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/02\/19\/how-a-menaced-humanity-facing-a-threatened-environment-turns-to-ludicrous-remedies\/","title":{"rendered":"How a menaced humanity facing a threatened environment turns to ludicrous remedies ."},"content":{"rendered":"

By Chandre Dharmawardana<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Imagine a space rocket whose controls are taken over by\u00a0 zealots who are driving the rocket\u00a0 straight into the sun due to ignorance\u00a0 of its controls. Mission control detects danger and advises the pilot to correct the course. Rubbish, you technos and engineers\u00a0 know nothing \u2013\u00a0 yes, we are having increasing glare from the sun and it is YOUR FAULT\u201d.\u00a0 But WE KNOW\u00a0 how to command God Rahu to swallow the sun. We are now guided by telluric and biodynamic forces, and by traditional knowledge. Our ancestors flew\u00a0 in wondrous flying machines \u2013 read the Ramayana. The region of Panchaaba\u201d (modern Panjab)\u00a0 was the granary of Jambudveepa and\u00a0 the ancient \u00a0world. Traditional agriculture fed our people who were free of disease and lived to the age of Methuselah. Our ancient engineers knew how to send water even up against gravity.\u00a0 They built a bridge across the Palk straits. Our ancients knew about organ grafting, even creating Ganesh by grafting an elephant’s head onto a human. Didn’t the Mahabharata mention a woman who gave birth to 100 children?\u00a0 This is evidence of advanced reproductive technology and\u00a0 stem-cell research done thousands of years ago by our ancestors\u201d. All this and more were asserted at the annual\u00a0 Indian Science congress in January, 2019.<\/p>\n

The plight of the space rocket heading towards disaster mimics the current state of the planet. The threat of global warming gives only a decade more for corrective action. Even those who are skeptical of man-made global warming agree that the burning of fossil fuels and the resulting noxious emissions\u00a0 must stop.\u00a0 The\u00a0 rapid reduction of biodiversity has perhaps five to ten decades more for corrective action.\u00a0\u00a0 Scientists find\u00a0 that a human-caused sixth mass extinction of species is now underway. Vertebrates\u00a0 on land and\u00a0 sea are threatened globally by\u00a0 human activities. The proportion of insects in decline is twice as high as for vertebrates. The insect extinction rate is eight times faster than for\u00a0 mammals, birds and reptiles (Sanchez-Bayo et al, 2019, J. Bio. Conservation). Insects play a profound role in Earth ecosystems. They are critical pollinators who also recycle nutrients into the soil. Meanwhile, the clogging up of the oceans with more plastic\u00a0 than all the weight of the fish may happen\u00a0 in just\u00a0 three decades!<\/p>\n

What drives this menacing trend? When did this dive towards\u00a0 the apocalypse begin? The menacing trend can be reversed, but not by nostalgically going back to the limited methods of the past.<\/p>\n

How the menace began with the rise of large scale slavery.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This menace began\u00a0 in the 19th century\u00a0 with millions of shackled humans from Africa transferred\u00a0 to the Southern USA, and to the colonies of Europe. Slaves were forced to create a huge monoculture of cotton covering vast territories. The ships of the British empire burning coal brought the US cotton to feed the textile industry of Lancashire and the industrial revolution. British coal as well as other mining ensured complete habitat engulfment by human activity making UK one of the most polluted lands, even today, as shown by the map of soil cadmium in UK\u00a0 compared to continental Europe. Most of the cadmium toxins came from the mining and use of coal.<\/p>\n

We do not have a similar adequately authenticated map for Sri Lanka. However, the research\u00a0 work of Dissanayake, Chandrajith and other Geologists, as well as studies by Levine et al (2016)\u00a0 and Jayatilleke et al (WHO study, 2014)\u00a0 show that Sri Lanka\u00a0 has high levels of geological cadmium even in its\u00a0 virgin-forest\u00a0 soils.\u00a0 Fortunately\u00a0 the soils contain counteracting zinc ions as well.\u00a0 Furthermore, the dissolved (bio-available) amounts are negligible (and well below risk) in Sri Lanka’s\u00a0 water sources.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Salmon\u00a0 used to swim up the river Thames in England\u00a0 all the way to Berkshire, but disappeared by 1833 due to pollution. British agriculture in the UK, and in the cotton, potato and wheat fields of America used traditional agriculture\u201d, using slaves or\u00a0 surfs. Extremely dangerous but traditionally accepted pesticides like arsenites,\u00a0 copper sulphate and cyanide, as well as plant products from Chrysanthemums (as pyrethrins), or Neem-family\u00a0 products (as azadiractins)\u00a0\u00a0 were used in large amounts, as is needed\u00a0 for them to be effective, but hurting the environment.<\/p>\n

The industrial revolution in Europe was also driven on the backs of the colonies and slavery.<\/p>\n

Southern Europe cut its forests for fuel while northern Europe turned to coal as well.\u00a0 Pollutants in European soils consist mostly of high levels of cadmium, arsenic and such heavy metal toxins. These\u00a0 likely came from the coal-powered economies and mining during the industrial revolution. So, although attempts have been made to link soil cadmium with contamination from modern-day mineral fertilizer usage, quantitative modeling shows this to be completely\u00a0 false (see:\u00a0 J. Environ.\u00a0 Health & Geochemistry:\u00a0 vol. 40,\u00a0 p 2739,\u00a0 2018). Pristine forests in the colonies were also burnt and\u00a0 converted to plantations for\u00a0 cash crops and transported to European markets. Transportation of invasive species occurred, further threatening biodiversity.<\/p>\n

The discovery of mineral fertilizers\u00a0 where a few spoons could do the work of many sacks of traditional fertilizer came at the end of the 19th century and amazed farmers. This was quickly followed by the discovery of the Harber-Boshe process\u00a0 in the first years of the 20th century for exploiting atmospheric nitrogen converted to urea. This was probably the most far reaching discovery of modern agriculture.<\/p>\n

The discovery of DDT and modern pesticides.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This extreme assault on\u00a0 pristine environments by habitat encroachment via human activity created enormous mono-cultures of cotton, wheat, potatoes, soya, coffee, tea and tobacco, starting from the 19th century.\u00a0 This\u00a0 inexorable attack on\u00a0 biodiversity\u00a0 happened\u00a0 on a global and\u00a0 imperial scale. Such monocultures\u00a0 became a necessity to feed the increasing populations as well as the labour forces\u00a0 in the colonies, and\u00a0 at home. Governor Ward in British Ceylon realized that the Malabar\u00a0 coolies\u201d\u00a0 (slaves except in name) brought to work in the Tobacco and Coffee plantations will have to be fed. So he turned to the restoration of ancient Tanks (‘veva’)\u00a0 that fed paddy cultivation.<\/p>\n

The discovery of DDT by Paul Mueller in 1939 provided the farmer with the first truly effective and inexpensive\u00a0 pesticide\u00a0 nontoxic to human operatives, even when applied at the large amounts used with traditional pesticides (like arsenites or pyrethrins). However, although only\u00a0 incredibly small amounts of these pesticide were needed, farmers deployed what they were used to, and created the Silent Spring\u201d recorded by Rachel Carson.<\/p>\n

Bambaradeniya\u00a0 writing about bio-diversity in Rice fields states that most biotic communities in the rice field ecosystem are able to react physiologically and\/or behaviorally to the drastic conditions in these temporary wetlands. As they possess the ability to recover rapidly from various disturbances, including chemical inputs, these organisms could be interpreted as biota with high resilience stability\u201d (Bambaradeniya, Ph. D Thesis, 2000). The widely accepted in-soil indicator organisms are the earth-worms (Eisenia fetida and E. andrei<\/em>), the springtails (Folsomia), the mite (Hypoaspis aculeifer<\/em>) and microorganisms that transform nitorgen (Ockleford et al., 2017).<\/p>\n

In contrast, Ranil Senanayke (RS), a\u00a0 Forestry\u00a0 ecologist\u00a0 seems to unreasonably claim that\u00a0 in Sri Lanka the egrets that flock to the farmer’s plough are\u00a0 just resistant species\u201d eating resistant earthworms\u201d.\u00a0 Egrets are not known to become resistant to pesticides. They simply die of them or become debilitated\u00a0 if toxic amounts are consumed. Perhaps RS meant resilient\u201d and not resistant\u201d. If the silent spring\u201d is any indicator of ecological doom, flocking of birds \u201d to eat earthworms and other grubs, are a necessary (but not exhaustive)\u00a0 sign of a\u00a0 live, highly resilient soil ecology. Similarly, Wickramasinghe et al (J. Appl. Ecol. 2003) had used visitations by bats, and also nocturnal insects (2004)\u00a0 to compare the health of conventional and organic farm plots. Such experiments confirm what is a priori<\/em> reasonable\u00a0 i.e., lower-intensity farming,\u00a0 or going right back to a hunter-gatherer approach is best for biodiversity but worst for feeding humanity.<\/em><\/p>\n

It took decades to appreciate the negative long term effects, as well as the power of DDT in eliminating good insects as well as bad insects.\u00a0 DDT itself was banned in 1974 but re-approved by the WHO in 2006\u00a0 only for domestic use.\u00a0 The new pesticides at last freed the farmer from being a slave\u00a0 to the soil as he\/she could now farm thousands of hectares almost single-handedly,\u201d and have time for leisure and life, using pesticides, fertilizers and farm equipment instead of vast amounts of human labour and massive mounds of compost.<\/p>\n

The introduction of these methods, constitute the basics of the green revolution and went hand in hand, albeit often in hindsight,\u00a0 with new legislation to control the use of pesticides. The acute and chronic toxicity data for pesticides, coal burning, industries and\u00a0 mining\u00a0\u00a0 were determined and globally introduced by national authorities.\u00a0 They were guided by\u00a0 the WHO and the FAO data for legislating safe usage of environmentally acceptable agrochemicals. That was mission control\u201d telling the pilots what to do.\u00a0 Ecosystems gradually recovered when these rules were followed.\u00a0 Salmon and sea trout\u00a0 returned to the river Thames\u00a0 by mid 1980s.<\/p>\n

And yet, the fear that pesticides are poisoning the food we eat\u00a0 has increasingly gripped a technologically unprepared public. Low-intensity farming (e.g., organic farming) will require massive habitat encroachment and extensive water resources to yield enough food for everyone, adding to the assault on the ecosystem.\u00a0 Even without such an assault, an\u00a0 anthropogenic mass extinction has arrived in\u00a0 response to\u00a0 an over-populated planet. Given the global magnitude of the problem, the size and impact of the human population etc., returning to traditional agriculture\u201d\u00a0 or organic agriculture\u201d that rejects modern molecular genetics is sheer lunacy.\u00a0 Possible strategies to direct our destinies towards a happier end will be outlined in a continuation article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Chandre Dharmawardana Imagine a space rocket whose controls are taken over by\u00a0 zealots who are driving the rocket\u00a0 straight into the sun due to ignorance\u00a0 of its controls. Mission control detects danger and advises the pilot to correct the course. Rubbish, you technos and engineers\u00a0 know nothing \u2013\u00a0 yes, we are having increasing glare […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chandre-dharmawardana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85701\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}