Nature-Friendly Planning of Humanity s Future-Dialectics and Dynamics of Development Management

Nature-Friendly Planning of Humanity's Future Dialectics and Dynamics of Development Management V R Krishna Iyer SOMETIME back I participated in an international seminar on environmental planning and management, I have been feeling very unhappy about the grave dangers of callous technology intoxicated with epicurean appetites tempting men and women into inevitable doom. My thoughts are pertinent only to the extent that I, a sombre and sensitive inhabitant of the Earth, am in anguish as I behold the lethal prospect of hi-tech corporate power, inflicting on unforgiving Nature, mortal wounds, leading to the Fifth Act of the Shakespearean tragedy of humanity. Karl Marx once made a poignant remark: "Human projects that ignore the great laws of nature bring only disaster". How I wish Marxists remembered the pregnant meaning of this observation when in some Indian stales, they disdain green movements and environmentalist campaigns, drugged by an ignorant craving for industrialism, oblivious of the new dialectic, in our hi-tech world, of the switchover from 'industrialise or perish' to 'industrialise and perish' since, in the myopic perception and insatiable hunger for maximum profit, the MNCs mayhem Nature in their gold rush. To be addicted to the religion of money, rejecting the long-term needs of humanity and its well-being in the biosphere is to gamble with the delicate balance between life and the rest of Creation. The biosphere is a supreme value and so too is the 'noosphere' which is an expression meaning developmental operation guided by sense and sensibility. Biosphere, so obvious a concept foryou. embraces the Earth's surface and atmosphere in which living organisms are found and with which interaction occurs to form the global ecosystem. It is what may be termed biogeochemistry and allied matters. The sphere of life which is the biosphere includes all parts of our planet where life has 'asserted' itself the atmosphere, the ocean and all land surface where life formsexist. Life is the link between the cosmos and the earth and transforms dead matter, using energy, so as to create the material world. Living organisms in the process of evolution continually change. It is in the rapid march of such changes that Homo sapiens emerged amidst forests and beasts. The extraordinary phenomenon of humans with hrains became a marvellous landmark in the story of creation. The ability to use reason was pari of this development of anthropogenesis.