Features
Newsday Reporter
Faraaz Abdool believes it’s not natural to turn our backs on nature. And we can find our way back if we start with birds!
Overwhelmingly, our leaders are highly educated professionals, both historically and contemporaneously. Despite this, we are still very much on course for a climate catastrophe. Environmental education remains a hot topic in educational institutions worldwide, but increased levels of drought, famine, and unprecedented supercharged storms have already been notching indelible marks in the rapidly unfolding story of humanity. Clearly, there are significant shortfalls in the global education system we all subscribe to. We continue to parade through the education system, picking up courses to trade them in for letters at the end of a few years – yet we seldom turn our attention to the greatest source of knowledge and information that has ever existed.
Is our nature to learn from nature?
Nature is the governor and overseer of all that births, grows and dies. Every aspect of existence on this living planet is dictated by natural rules and regulations and this is not something that can be condensed to a degree programme. Our current education system consists of parallels to this – the natural world is viewed as a commodity to be harvested, manipulated, traded and ultimately discarded. Such is the system that produces foresters whose expertise is timber, biologists who understand the economic value of a boar shot with a crossbow, and geologists who specialise in finding and extracting oil from the earth’s crust. This extractive mindset, the output of our education system, continues to be the cornerstone of our assault on the very system which gives us life.
For us to chart a new path forward, we need to examine the innards of what has been thwarting planetary progress over the recent past. The most difficult of questions must be posed to ourselves; perhaps something as fundamental as how have other forms of life existed on this planet without destroying it? If we know for a fact that a living thing will not naturally destroy its only home, then we can assume that something incredibly unnatural is happening with us.
We can easily perceive this disconnection with the natural world wherever we look. It has moved from simply staying indoors to avoiding natural – and essential – phenomena such as having patience or accepting uncertainty. Nature-immersion experiences are tempered and tamed for user comfort. Wild animals are often depicted in film as rabid, bloodthirsty beasts intent on kicking our suburban doors in and ending our lives in the most horribly imagined ways. Terrified, we revel in our disconnect from the natural world.
Do we have any hope of relearning what it would take for us to live so that humanity persists on the planet that produced us? It has taken considerable planning and concerted effort to get us to this planetary tipping point – not least of which was the severing of our ties with the natural world. The knowledge may not return instantaneously, but maybe with some rekindling of reconnection, the tides will begin to turn.
Let’s go to the birds
We must look at education radically differently. Children are learning constantly from all that they are exposed to – whether it is our lived examples or an AI-generated video on tiktok. The information we absorb is a direct result of how we spend our time, which governs our thoughts and actions. It is therefore imperative for the first few years at least that we strive to expose them to information and knowledge that will not mislead them. We need to introduce them to the birds.
Why birds, though? This is not a new curriculum, only a different methodology. Our ancestors, and by extension all life on earth, had always taken cues from the environment. From the timing of planning future generations to decisions about whether or not to migrate, our surroundings always told us everything we needed to know. Human life has become more fast paced in recent times and humans now have rapidly depleting attention spans. The defining characteristic of a bird is that it can very quickly fly away, demanding that precious attention.
Birds are magnets of attention, due not only to their fleeting existence but also because there are simply so many different varieties, plumages, and other variations. Further to this, they (most of them anyway) possess the enviable power of flight. They are accessible, can be observed from anywhere, no research or prior knowledge is necessary for one to be able to enjoy a bird, and most importantly, they pry us away from our screens.
In a social environment where everything competes to be seen or heard, wresting control of what we give attention to is akin to regaining freedom. If we can allow children to grow up with autonomous attention, we would be doing them the biggest favour possible. Birds can help us achieve this by being accessible pathways to the nature classroom. If we spend our childhood observing nature, we will learn the natural rhythms which have been in place for millennia. This does not have to involve the full gamut of avian diversity either, there is no obligation for someone who enjoys looking at birds to become an ornithologist.
Birds lead to blossoms lead to…
For instance, if we start with noticing some of the larger species of birds, oropendolas and caciques for example, we may begin to see other aspects of nature. These large, black and yellow birds are common throughout TT and locally known as “cornbirds.” At certain times of year, they flock to specific trees that for a short time are covered in brilliant orange blossoms. While the cornbirds are there, we may notice a variety of smaller, brightly coloured birds also hopping around the flowers. Tanagers, honeycreepers, and hummingbirds. Weeks pass, and the flowers are replaced by seed pods. Now, there are no cornbirds on the trees – there are only parrots. They pick the pods and nibble at the tough exterior to access the encased seeds. With a sudden rush of raucous chattering, they all take to the wing, some of them taking the pods with them – thus helping the tree disperse its seeds. Over time, we would notice this pattern repeating, and we would come to know that this swamp immortelle tree would flower at the start of the dry season, and that it likes to grow in seasonally flooded areas.
Back to the infinite source
Awareness expands for the student of nature, who would then perceive that land dotted with swamp immortelles is land that is likely to be flooded in the rainy season and thus would be valuable to the local water table and grossly unsuitable for a housing development. This is beyond a degree. It matters not how many recycling bins are placed at convenient street corners, nor how often greenwashing terms like sustainability and regeneration are ping-ponged across air-conditioned boardrooms. Applicable knowledge from nature gleaned from unbiased, innocent observation is essential for wise decision-making in trying times, and it is not solely for children. The best of us are lifelong learners, and this is only possible with an infinite source.
