State of the World

On Monday, we were given a lecture by Dr. John Cusick. He is an Associate Specialist at the University of Hawaii Environmental Centre which is attached to our program. Dr. John was covering about the overall environmental issues in general that are becoming a concern of the world today. This include the protected areas, laws and governance aspect, rights and conservation as well as bio-cultural diversity and indegeneous peoples and several others. Among the debate that he brings is the anthropocentric as oppose to biocentric. Anthropocentric is human-centered while biocentric is being centered on nature rather than human. He took and example as what is being said by Scott relating to western environmentalist who came to China and ask the farmers to take care of the environment because they said that the cow's life is more valueable than their children's life. This has upset the local people as they also have the rights to improve their quality of life and why should they sacrifice their future while at the same time the western environmentalist can continue to enjoy their luxurious lifestyle at their home country? How about anthropocentric? How can it contributes to saving the environment?

My idea of environmental movement is that it should be anthropocentric. This is because we want a sustainable development. But what is sustainable development? As define by the Earth Summit in Rio de Jenairo, Sustainable Development is a development that can meet the demand of the current generation without compromising the ability of the future generation to meet their's. Or, we can just say that we want the development to be continous. Why we want the development to continue? Because we want to keep on improving the quality if life of the people. But how can we ensure that the development will not stop? By taking care of our environment and not using our resources more than what can be produce naturally by the mother earth. So, by being anthropocentric, we are actually being closely linked to the environment as well. After all, it is a human rights to have a better quality of life but the attitude is the actual culprit that is destroying the environment. Its the attitude of being greedy, wasteful and ignorance. We choose to be ignorant because we are afraid to face the truth of what is becoming of our future or we could not care less.

In conclusion, being environmentally motivated does not mean to be an extremist or a tree hugger. It does not neccesarily to be in love with the environment. But, to some people it is a matter of ethic and value that we should adhere to. We must be ethical in performing our duties not only to the professional body or our clients but also to the environment as it serve as the base of all the things that is happening around us. We are using it to improve our quality of life so we should be considerate and take care of it. As the Hawaiian idegeneous people says, don't just take, give back.