TRUTH BE TOLD
KIDS GET IT, WHY DON’T WE?
Children often understand important concepts better than politicians. Image credit: RAJESH RAJPUT on Unsplash.
By DR VICKI BISMILLA
Preserving the Earth’s ecology is something that school children seem to understand.
We hear them talking about bringing litter-free lunches to school, not throwing garbage around the schoolyard, participating in litter-pick-up exercises and even at home many children make sure to monitor their parents about conserving water in the kitchen, or planting native plants in the garden.
So often children understand important concepts better than politicians.
Take for example the damage that was caused to First Nations communities by mining in Ontario. The government awarded a lucrative diamond mining contract to De Beers in 2008. But that led to high levels of mercury deposits in the Attawapiskat First Nations’ land and the rivers in which they fished. The bigger the fish, the more mercury it contained. Pregnant women who ate that fish suffered serious health problems which were transferred to the fetuses they carried. Babies were born already sick from those mercury levels.
In her documentary about the ecological disaster in Attawapiskat, After The Last River, Victoria Lean describes the extreme dangers that the community faces with mercury contamination.
A school in the community standing on contaminated ground had to be torn down and instead of being rebuilt the children were housed in portables nearby.
In 2015 an environmental group, Ecojustice, launched a case claiming that De Beers Mines failed to monitor mercury risk (see here).
At first the case was not heard but it returned in 2016. De Beers was found guilty of failing to provide mercury monitoring data relating to the operation of its open pit Victor Diamond Mine, located upstream from the Attawapiskat First Nation. The Victor Diamond Mine ceased operation in 2019.
The key concern was that the open pit mine located near a fragile ecosystem contributed to high levels of methylmercury, a neurotoxin that accumulates in fish and other food sources that people consumed in the area.
Contrast that ecological disaster with the work of the Malligavad Foundation in Bangalore India. They work in biodiversity to save and rejuvenate public lakes as naturally as possible. They focus on clean water in the lakes and changing the ecology by removing invasive weeds and plants and replanting with native trees and plants along the lakes. They engage communities living along the shores to participate thus learning and earning as they do. They provide data and transparency to their financial sponsors thus creating long-term relationships with the goal of creating adequate fresh water supplies for communities.
Lakes in Bangalore were drying in low lying areas due to sewage deposits and sludge accumulation. Aquatic life, flora and fauna were being decimated due to the methane pollution from the sewage. Anand Malligavad, a mechanical engineer, started researching records left from the Chola dynasty regarding the Deccan plateau when irrigation networks were built. They did not need huge machinery, concrete or complicated tools. They used soil, water, botanicals, and interlinked canals to create catchment areas of clean water. Using this knowledge about how to trap sludge with simple stones and using $100,000 in social responsibility grants and labour donated from his own company, he started the cleanup project.
He used simple methods to de-silt and de-sludge, creating inlet and outlet canal systems. His team reconditioned and created lagoons, lakes, tanks, and wetlands for collecting rainwater. Then using local community labour, they planted non-invasive aquatic plants, shrubs and trees to create natural canopies, thus restoring 35 lakes in Bengaluru, creating water holding capacity of hundreds of gallons as measured by the Groundwater Directorate, a government body. Migratory birds are coming back, and local communities have clean water.
Children in schools here are thankfully learning about the importance of respecting ecology to save our planet.
Hopefully, they will take these lessons through the rest of their lives. If they learn to respect wildlife and ecosystems from a young age they will hopefully preserve, improve, and protect our fragile ecology for the next generation.
They know that the Earth’s natural assets, granted to us by nature, are made up of plants, animals, land, water, atmosphere, and us as human guests on this planet.
Everything we do as human beings impacts nature and contrary to what many conglomerates believe, Earth’s natural resource gifts to us are not limitless.
Resources will dry up if we abuse them.
But to teach little children, rather than scaring them with the stark damage that pollution is doing to our land, oceans, rivers, and wildlife, perhaps the best way is to gently show them how a small positive biodiversity action creates a positive reaction.
As the ancient Chinese proverb goes:
“Tell me and I will forget,
show me and I will remember,
involve me and I will understand,
step back and I will act.”
Dr Vicki Bismilla is a retired Superintendent of Schools and retired college Vice-President, Academic, and Chief Learning Officer. She has authored two books.