A WORD (OR TWO HUNDRED) FROM THE EDITOR

We tend to think of climate change and nature conservancy in local terms and many of us continue to conflate weather and climate. We miss the big picture as we focus on what transpires in our immediate neighbouhoods over short periods of time.

We grumble about a snowier winter, a wetter (or drier) summer.

An insect infestation has us in despair.

You might hear a neighbour joke about climate change after a snow storm in May. “Where’s a little global warming when you need it?”

One might celebrate being able to harvest tomatoes on a balcony planter earlier in the season while another surveys a crop killed by an early frost – in late September.

This past summer, devastating forest fires wreaked havoc on the west coast. Entire communities were displaced, homes lost, lives upended. As Canadians across the country watched in horror, they also experienced a marked increase in poor air quality. As far away as Toronto, the air quality index hovered around 5 or 6, from poor to dangerous, for days. Pollution, we learnt first-hand, travels.

The fires were a stark reminder that something that happens thousands of kilometres away affects everyone.

As Nature Canada’s Director of Campaigns and Policy, this month’s Grant’s Desi Achiever Gauri Sreenivasan is well-positioned to address the issue.

“We find ourselves in a nature crisis,” she says. “It is connected to climate crisis, but distinct. The climate crisis needs quick attention but there are many other drivers affecting nature. We’re seeing an explosion in insect populations, oceans are warming, there’s pollution of our waters and increased salinity. The ecosystem is in collapse around us. Even with global warming averted, our urban lifestyles are having a massive impact on life systems. Nearly a million species are close to extinction.”

Asked for a defining statement on why it is vitally important to protect and conserve nature, Sreenivasan provides the example of the boreal forest.

“It seems like just an area of the country where very few people live, but protecting the Canadian boreal forest from excessive commercial logging and mining is key. It’s not just relevant for the First Nations who live there, their livelihoods and cultural well being, but it matters for the whole planet. Canada’s boreal forest represents 25 per cent of the world’s remaining intact forest, even more than the Amazon rainforest; and stores nearly twice as much carbon in its vegetation and soils as is in the world’s combined oil reserves!” 

Think about what we can do as individuals to help. Reducing our use of single-use plastics? Buying local? Using public transit? Every little step counts. Because the nature crisis is happening all around us, in our very neighbourhoods. And it doesn’t get more local than this.

Happy Diwali!

Happy Guru Nanak Jayanti!

Shagorika Easwar