The planet’s health and our health are non-separable.
We can be linked worldwide through the spread of disease, like the Coronavirus, when we invade the homes of other species, manipulate plants and animals for commercial profits and greed, and spread monocultures.
Or we can be connected through health and wellbeing for all by protecting the diversity of ecosystems and protecting the biodiversity, integrity, and self-organization (autopoiesis) of all living beings, including humans.
The Earth is an interconnected web of life. The health emergency we face as a global community is connected to the health emergency the Earth is facing through its steady degradation, the extinction of species and the climate emergency. We call for a holistic and integrated response to the current health emergency. This means making a transition away from the fossil fuel intensive, chemical intensive, industrialised and now digitised paradigm of agriculture and globalised trade. Such a vision stands as the root cause of our current health crisis and only serves to increase our separation from the Earth.
Instead we call for the imperative transition to local, biodiverse, ecological systems of producing and distributing food in order to heal ourselves through healing the Earth. As Navdanya’s experience, together with other Earth-conscious organisations and networks for Seed and Food Freedom have taught us, local, biodiverse organic food systems regenerate soil, water and biodiversity while providing healthy food for all. The biodiversity richness in our forests, our farms, our food and our gut microbiome connect the planet and all her diverse species through the common thread of health. The Earth has sent a tiny virus to help us make a quantum leap to create a planetary, ecological civilization based on harmony with nature connecting one planet as one health.
On Earth Day, April 22nd, Navdanya International, Naturaleza de Derechos, Health of Mother Earth Foundation – HOMEF, with over 500 organisations from 50 countries, networks and individuals from all over the world, launched a Planetary Communique and a call for urgent action where the health and wellbeing of all peoples and the planet are at the centre of all government and institutional policy, community building and civic action.
Download the Earth Communiqué (pdf)
Read and sign the Earth Day Communiqué
Read the news release for the launch of the Earth Day Communiqué
On World Health Day, April 7th, let us remember that we are one Earth Family on one planet, healthy in our diversity and interconnectedness.
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The planet’s health and our health are non-separable.
We can be linked worldwide through the spread of disease, like the Coronavirus, when we invade the homes of other species, manipulate plants and animals for commercial profits and greed, and spread monocultures.
Or we can be connected through health and wellbeing for all by protecting the diversity of ecosystems and protecting the biodiversity, integrity, and self-organization (autopoiesis) of all living beings, including humans.
New diseases are being created because a globalised, industrialised, inefficient food and agriculture model is invading the ecological habitat of other species, while manipulating animals and plants with no respect for their integrity and their health. The illusion of the Earth and her beings as raw material to be exploited for profits is creating one world, connected through disease.
Diseases are moving from non-human animals to the human animal as we destroy the habitat and homes of wild species. We violate the integrity of species just as we manipulate animals in factory farms and genetically manipulate plants through genetic engineering with viral promoters and antibiotic resistance markers.
In the last few decades, non-communicable chronic disease has been spreading exponentially and killing people in the millions. Toxic and industrial food systems are a major contributor to chronic diseases. The risks from infectious diseases, like the Coronavirus, increase many-fold when combined with the comorbidity of chronic diseases.
As forests are destroyed, as our farms become industrial monocultures to produce toxic, nutritionally empty commodities, and our diets become degraded through industrial processing with synthetic chemicals and genetic engineering in labs, we become connected through disease. Instead of being connected through the biodiversity within, and outside us, through a continuum of health through and in biodiversity.
Biodiversity richness in our forests, our farms, our food, our gut microbiome make the planet, her diverse species, including humans, healthier and more resilient to pests and diseases.
The health emergency that the Corona virus is waking us up to is connected to the emergency of the extinction and disappearance of species, and it is connected to the climate emergency. All emergencies are rooted in a mechanistic, militaristic, anthropocentric worldview of humans as separate from and superior to other beings whom we can own, manipulate and control. It is also rooted in an economic model based on the illusion of limitless growth and limitless greed which systematically violates planetary boundaries, as well as, ecosystem and species integrity.
With the Coronavirus, governments are showing they can take action to protect the health of people when they have the will. It is now time for them to take all the steps necessary to stop all the activities which are compromising our health by compromising the metabolic processes that regulate our health. The same activities that also cause harm to the planet’s biodiversity and the Earth’s self-regulating capacity, leading to climate havoc.
The health emergency is forcing us to deglobalize. We can do it when there is a political will. Let us make this deglobalization permanent. Let us make a transition to localization.
Localisation of biodiverse agriculture and food systems grow health and reduce the ecological footprint. Localisation leaves space for diverse species, diverse cultures and diverse local, living economies to thrive.
The Corona crisis, and the response to the crisis, needs to become the grounds for stopping processes that degenerate our health and the planet’s health, and start the process that regenerates both.
Let not the social isolation required in a health emergency become a permanent pattern of separation, destroying community and social cohesion. The future depends on our oneness as humanity on one planet. Let not the cautions of today be cemented into a permanent climate of fear and isolation. We need each other and the Earth to create resilience in times of emergency, and to regenerate health and wellbeing in the post Coronavirus world.
The Coronavirus crisis creates a new opportunity to make a paradigm shift away from the mechanistic, industrial age of separation, domination, greed and disease, to the age of Gaia, of a planetary civilisation based on the planetary consciousness that we are one Earth family. That our health is One Health rooted in ecological interconnectedness, diversity, regeneration, and harmony.
Join the Network for Poison-free Food & Farming: Creating Poison-free Food and Farming – Rejuvenating Biodiversity, Growing Organic – Sign the Pledge
EXCERPT FROM:
Ecological Reflections on the Corona virus
One Planet, One Health – Connected through Biodiversity: From the forests, to our farms, to our gut microbiome
By Dr Vandana Shiva
READ FULL ARTICLE:
A virus, humanity and the Earth
by Dr Vandana Shiva – Deccan Herald, 5 April 2020
At this time of fear & hopelessness , we can always turn our selves to learning from nature and we seed the future. @drvandanashiva #biodiversity #earthfamily #seedsofhope @SwarajAnna @occupytheseed #WorldHealthDay2020 pic.twitter.com/AJF6XvzqId
— Navdanya (@NavdanyaBija) April 7, 2020
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