Everyone sees coronavirus as a disaster, but apparently not the nature. During this pandemic, nature seems to recover better than ever. The absence of humankind and human activity grants the nature more power to recover itself.
For the nature, there is nothing wrong with that. Except, like wise men said, expectation kills. For so long, human has destroyed the nature’s face and take so many resources from it. We have destroyed the nature for so long, that nowadays we don’t even know how the true face of nature is.
However, as our intelligence grow day by day, people start to realize what they have done. Many of us has started the mission to restore nature as much as we can, because we realize that we need it a lot. Many methods like replantation of trees and finding alternative energy has been announced.
However, during this pandemic of coronavirus, all those missions seem like overshadowed. Have you heard about how the restoration of Amazon rainforest recently? Have you heard about how far the Australian forest restoration has been done recently?
Will we continue those missions? Or will we ignore them and forget after this pandemic ends? Here in this article we will talk a lot about it.
Modern Attention
Nowadays, we spend a lot of our days facing our smartphones. Whether it is to communicate with other person, playing games, or reading about the news going around in the world. This is a condition understood by modern mass media companies.
Thus, their mission is now to tell the newest news around as fast as possible. And we seem to enjoy this condition. We flood ourselves with information and drown in what the medias serve us. Thus, we often forget not-less-important news, like global warming and climate change.
We are controlled by our minds, and we now tend to care for what attracts our attention. This pandemic might (hopefully) happen only once in our lifetime, and thus it attracts much, if not most, of our attention.
Such kind of thing also happens to funds and donors, they tend to channel their money to human health, because it is the most important thing right now. This is not a bad thing, indeed. However, during this era, almost all conservation activities freeze.
Environmentalists all over the world scream to make their voice heard, and they still hope that someone will hear them. Indeed, the nature itself has healed itself during the absence of destructive human activities all around the world, but we still need to pay for what we have taken.
An Important Optimism
Does it mean post-pandemic world, where human activities are back, would see even more destruction happens in nature? Even though many experts and environmentalist are screaming their lungs out, they are still optimistic about it.
Experts and environmentalists said that inside their homes, people are secretly paying more respect to the nature. Beccy Speight, chief executive of The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds said that the lockdown has shaped people’s attitude toward nature.
“We’re definitely in an unfrozen moment with being connected to nature. There’s this shift from consumer to citizen and all that goes with that in terms of community, place and sense of where you fit in the natural world and the global world,” she said.
The longing for nature outside, where we can breathe the fresh air as free as possible, has now shaping into a sense of belonging. “There’s a real opportunity to open that door which is tremendously exciting,” said Speight.
In short, even though people are focusing on fighting the coronavirus pandemic, their desire to go out has secretly teased them to love the nature more than ever. In this case, let us ask a simple question: which one do you miss the most, camping out with your friends stuck in a traffic jam?
Random Acts Of Wildness
The Wildlife Trusts, an organization of 46 wildlife trusts all over the world, have their kind of optimism called #30dayswild campaign where people are encouraged to do “random acts of wildness”. The action will take place at June 2020 and this year it will be made suitable with its current world situation.
“Thousands of people taking part in our annual nature challenge, 30 Days Wild! We want you to do one wild thing a day throughout the whole month: for your health, wellbeing and for the planet. That’s 30 simple, fun and exciting Random Acts of Wildness,” the NGO states in the website.
Everyone is encouraged to join this action, and everyone is allowed to join collectively. People can join this individually or with family, in business group, in school group, even with people in their care home all over the world.
Once joining, the volunteers would receive downloadable goodies to plan their #30dayswild campaign. The pack of goodies will contain various items that will bring you closer to nature during this situation, starting from how to bake hedgehog cookies to wildlife photography guide for beginners.
“In the current nature and climate emergency, we’re seeing more people affected by eco-anxiety – feeling overwhelmed by the damage to our environment and not knowing what to do to help,” said Dr Amir Khan, GP and Ambassador for The Wildlife Trusts. “With 30 Days Wild from the Wildlife Trusts you can incorporate some simple nature-based activities into your daily life and feel the benefit.”
Nature As A Boost
People are longing for more nature nowadays, and hearing the news that nature is recovering better than ever during our self-quarantine is a mental boost for all of us. Thus, we cannot deny that at this moment we secretly fall in love again with mother nature.
Right now, we need to focus and concentrate more to fight the coronavirus pandemic, indeed. However, after it’s all over, we need to make sure to ourselves to choose our secret love instead of our boring modern life.
Nature can give us physical and mental health benefits which will help us recover faster after the pandemic. Yes, what we really need more after this battle against coronavirus is a recovery. And green recovery with Mother Earth is the most realistic and simplest way to do it.
“Nature conservation charities need to be part of the green recovery. It’s vital charities are welcomed into a post-Covid-19 recovery program fully funded by a government that grasps that interest in nature which people are discovering,” said Julie Williams, chief executive of Butterfly Conservation.
All those experts and conservationists need is our attention. We just need to keep our love for the nature alive until it is all over thus, we can again fight for the nature better and with more member later. More people are in love with nature nowadays, and we should keep this momentum going.
Sources:
Leave a Reply