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The first continuous walk around Lake Kariba, the largest man made lake in the world, slowing down to act fast, following a question.
The Conservation Conversationconversation (n.) |
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Across the world mental health issues are growing, while our environmental space shrinks. Research shows nature is essential to our well being, but in Southern Africa, and many places around the world, conservation areas have been spaces of conflict, not healing.
Spaces where people have been displaced. Spaces where anti-poaching wars are fought. Spaces that are accessible only to a privileged few. We talk about human-wildlife conflict, but what if we talked of human-wildlife healing? What if we stopped framing our environment as a problem, and helped each other to see in it the solution? Crises hold within them spaces for healing as well as destruction. In A Paradise Built in Hell, Rebecca Solnit explores how, while disasters are terrible and horrific for many, those on its edges often feel more generous, present, and connected to others in ways that are difficult to access in daily life. In Zimbabwe, when Cyclone Idai hit Chimanimani, in the east, civilians responded faster and in greater numbers than government and INGOs and across the country people felt their agency and community. As one woman put it, “This disaster is rebuilding the nation, the nation’s heart as a whole.” |
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Solnit asks how we can access this altruism, connectedness and strange joy outside of times of crisis.
But we are in crisis. All of us. Now. We are in a crisis that is unimaginable. We may know it logically, but it has yet to reach us, and perhaps, if we let it, the sense of purpose and connectedness within it would reach us too. |
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What if our joy depended on it?
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Images © Andrew Holme