top of page
abbyinuganda

Reflecting on Conservation in India



A village in Bannerghatta

India has a reputation for being a country of extremes: extreme poverty juxtaposed with extreme wealth; extreme heat and drought juxtaposed with extreme rains or cold; wonderful colour and culture juxtaposed with chaos and suffering. I came to India to experience what conservation practice was like in a different cultural setting (travelling through Bangalore, Kerala and Goa), and it didn’t disappoint. India is a kaleidoscope of the senses and there was never a dull moment – my local colleagues liked to tell me (rather proudly) that ‘India isn’t for beginners’. It was a lesson in being prepared for anything, whether that is snakes falling down through your bedroom ceiling, sleeping on the street with all your belongings because of an admin error, or somehow ending up on a night-time elephant hunt with the president of India’s dog trainer and a Saudi Arabian concierge. I constantly found my extreme lows were followed with extreme highs, in true Indian style.


This theme of extremities certainly applied to the landscape too - it is a stunning country with such a varied landscape: misty tea plantations high up in the hills, lush jungle steaming after rain, waterfalls engorged by the monsoons, sunrises reflected in the rice paddies, beaches scattered with pearly starfish stretching down into the liquid-gold Arabian sea - and I didn’t even get up to the Himalayas, which I was told are vastly more beautiful than anything in the south. However, these beautiful sights were juxtaposed with great abuse and suffering of nature: an incomprehensible amount of plastic trash being burned in huge piles in the forest, thousands of dead fish floating in a poisoned dam where we were surveying for otters, and the air thick with pollution smog in the bigger cities. It was a good demonstration of what we’re up against, but also a reminder of what we’re fighting for.  


An abundance of nature - what we're fighting for

Seeing such a vast country and the extent of the ecological and climactic issues they’re facing did sometimes make our personal efforts to care for the environment seem ridiculously small, and that of the small conservation NGO I was interning with (A Rocha India). One of my Indian line managers told me that ‘anyone who’s been working in conservation long enough will tell you it’s hopeless’. And yet that hasn’t stopped him from dedicating his life and career to elephant research and conservation. Maybe the important thing isn’t the impact you make, but living with integrity and responsibility no matter how hopeless you feel. There were also examples of conservation being done well with real results: whole sections of forest which had been regenerated after an irresponsible fire and were as lush as ever, or farmers whose livelihoods had been turned around by introducing organic farming principles to their landscapes. It was also so encouraging to see other people in other countries doing conservation – it can seem like a lonely fight sometimes, and a long fight (I mentioned to someone the other day that as a 24 year old I’ve never known a time when we haven’t been living under the threat of environmental collapse, and it can become exhausting), but it’s so refreshing to see the positive change and creativity that’s happening in other parts of the world, and as I said before, to experience an astounding abundance of nature that we no longer have in the UK – it helps to visualise what could be.


The A Rocha Field Study Centre

It was also fascinating seeing a different perspective on life and engagement with the environment. We were staying in a rural area where life is so much slower than in the UK: many people spent days on end simply sitting in the field watching over their livestock, and everyday tasks like washing your clothes on a stone or building a fire to boil your tea took a long time and made you mindful of the resources you’re using. There was also a culture of gratitude for these resources – one of the days I was there was a national celebration day for ‘tools’, so everyone painted their cars or tractors or shop windows in bright colours and decorated them with banana leaves. They were also well aware that we share our space with a lot of creatures: during my stay at the Field Study Centre in Bannerghatta we had snakes in the bathroom, the bedrooms and the drinking water tank, dead mongooses dragged into the office by stray cats, flying cockroaches which chased you round the room, butterflies as big as birds, leopard claw marks on the trees just outside, elephants breaking into local farms to raid their crops, and regularly team meetings were disrupted by monkeys unplugging our laptops, stealing food from in front of us, or pulling roof tiles out and smashing them on the floor. I’m sure the roof receded a good two feet while I was there, but the general attitude was that the monkeys had been there first, so have a right to stay. Even though human-wildlife conflict can be a devastating issue in this area and results in regular casualties on both sides, it was inspiring to see wildlife fighting for their place here rather than being pushed into the margins.


We did a 'Walk for Wildlife' in Bangalore

As a Christian I was also interested to see how I would feel God speaking into all of this. India is a very spiritual country, and my time there expanded my views of God and the ways He can speak to us and engage with us. It’s a beautiful culture in which everything is holy or spiritual, from the trees and mountains to the rivers and the cows, and although damage to the environment does happen there, a lot of the circumstances in which it is protected is because of this attitude of its sanctity. As Christians we don’t worship nature itself, but rather its creator, however I do think that we’ve sadly lost sight of the fact that God’s spirit dwells in His creation, and it is made holy by His presence there. There is also the question of whether conservation can come under the umbrella of ‘mission’, but whatever your feelings on that (I discussed mine in my first blog – ‘Reasons to Care’), this internship and the travels around it certainly brought up so many interesting conversations about faith with Hindus, Muslims, Non-Believers, and even Hippies. Unlike in the UK, A Rocha is not a Christian organisation in India (there Christianity is a minority religion subject to lots of governmental restrictions), but I found that conservation is such a good common ground to breaking down barriers between cultures and faiths - if people are passionate enough about the earth’s recovery and encouraging each other to do the same, they’ll accept you whatever your driving force is, and probably be very interested to hear about it. This is why I believe it’s so vital for Christians to engage with environmental issues – we are a people of faith and hope, and that’s what the world needs right now – whether you believe that ‘saving the planet’ should be a priority for Christians or not, being a light for hopeless people indisputably is a priority, and conservation is a field desperately in need of light and hope.


Leaving your own context and entering a different culture, where your language isn’t spoken by everyone, with different ‘rules’ and expectations, different foods, a different climate can be incredibly daunting. India was a true demonstration that ‘the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry’, and even when I had planned safety nets for myself, these could dissipate in the blink of an eye. However, I visualised myself not running into the chaos and danger of the unknown, but instead running into the arms of God, and being fully and completely in His arms is a precious place to be, and one which we rarely allow ourselves to enter. At some point you have to stop trusting in yourself so you can trust in God, and in this time He answered my prayers in such unexpected ways, putting remarkable people in my path to help me whom I wouldn’t have met without first allowing myself to be made vulnerable. He sometimes taught me that He doesn’t necessarily stop bad things from happening, but he will make a way through, and walk it with us. While I was away I heard on the news about the hurricanes in Florida and the floods in Valencia, and was told stories here about the extreme heatwaves in India last summer – climate change is becoming bigger and scarier and feels more out of our control than ever, but it means that as we keep forging into the unknown, we can surrender completely into the arms of God, and that’s the best place we can possibly be: as my favourite Bible passage reads – ‘my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ (2 Corinthians 12:9, NIV)  



  

49 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comments


bottom of page