That paradigm is now described as a giant off-balance. That kind of “development” is anchored on growth-at-all-cost strategies it is extractive as it is consumerist, based on the “money-must-grow” principle. It behooves upon us now to examine the dominant paradigm, in whose name and for whose cause, advancing the common good has been pursued but has only been successful in inflicting massive destruction to the ecosystems, our very means to life. Have the loggers not decimated our forests? Have industries not treated bays and rivers as their waste pits? Have costly agricultural technologies tied-up to the use of heavy toxic chemicals not continuously promoted and practiced though there are more ecologically sustainable ways? And isn’t it that all of these were done in the name of development? In the light of the present ecological disasters we are now experiencing, we should now do some reflections with reference to the above-mentioned warnings that have not been taken heed-of at all. As global warming goes up, insects’ bites will become more fatal. For every one Celsius increase in global temperature, there will be a corresponding 10% reduction in food production. Every day, a thousand hectares of 386-meter high iceberg is melting contributing to the rising of the ocean level. In the Philippines, we have a more precise declaration from a Lumad leader foretelling of an impending disaster if we continue on sacrificing nature in the name of so-called progress, “Only when you have cut the last tree, only when you have caught the last fish, only when you have dried the last river, only then will you realize that you cannot eat your money.”Īn environmentalist from Canada has even a more horrible prediction, “At the rate we are destroying the ozone layer and the world’s resource base and subjecting to extinction some 100 species of flora and fauna every day, what seems unimaginable may become possible, which is, the end of life on Earth.” Soon it will be 2021 but we do not know anymore whether we can reach the 22nd century which is just 79 years from now. Gandhi’s simple statement was, “If man has to be saved from doom, development must be in harmony with nature and not at its expense.” Some four-score years ago during the height of the people’s struggle against British colonial rule in India, Mahatma Gandi’s “Satyagraha” (Love Force) approach to liberate his people from the clutches of Imperialism had manifested a principle that was not given much attention then but is now reverberating through-out the world. There were awesome and amazing happenings in the past worthy of our utmost reflection, more on transformation not only on the changing of the dates but on what really matters: which is on the shift of paradigms and mindset.
But while this may be so, yet, what is of substance is not just the unfolding of events as these may just be meaningless unless we subject them to some analyses and reflections. So many things are happening now-a- days before you can even make a sense out of it, i.e COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, violent extremism, increasing inequities, etc.