Creative Understanding of Environment

The environmental issues have only exacerbated

We have outlined many environmental issues like pollution, climate change, water, disease, food, hunger,
stress, crime, slum living and poverty.
These issues can be classified as physical and social. The common practice is to separate and
decontexualize the physical issues and try to solve them individually. Not only is this approach
theoretically wrong but also it has practically failed. All physical environmental issues like climate, food
pollution, disease, slum dwelling, crime, stress, have only exacerbated while we keep spending more and
more money importing machines and creating environmental bureaucratic structures and a plethora of
regulations.

Critical understanding of environment is holistic

The first principle of ecological thinking is that all aspects and forms of life are interrelated and
interdependent. We should look at environmental problems holistically and contextually.
If we consider the problem as only technical we who suffer the consequences of environment are not likely to
apply our mind either to the problems or to the issues because we would consider them too specialized. On the
other hand if we consider environment as a problem of life then we all have an experience of it and can support
or criticize the environmental policies. If we don’t accept things as given or as the last word of science and look
at analyses or solutions in the light of our own experience and the realities we experience around us and try to
see the problems contextually our thinking becomes critical and independent and our understanding deepens.
Critical thinking is looking at concepts and facts in the light of our own experience.

Why don’t we think critically and independently?

History provides us an answer. We were fairly independent people with our own education, revenue
system, social organization and languages before 1757 when East India Company, a Corporation, defeated
Sirajud Daula and took over the control of Bengal. Since then old and new feudal elite were allowed to
keep their privileged position only on the condition they accepted the political, economic and cultural
hegemony of the foreign colonial power. Of these the latter or the acceptance of cultural hegemony has the
deepest effects and most long-lasting social and intellectual transformation.

What is Orientalism?

Today we look at our problems through other peoples eyes. Looking at our problems through other peoples
eyes puts us under the cultural hegemony of others and it might even be that we were toiling at others
problems owning them as our own. The concept of cultural hegemony in which consider others superior,
more knowledgeful and accept whatever we are being told and given to believe is most important to
understand. It not only shuts down our minds because we consider ourselves inferior in the realm of
environment – but also makes us think ourselves inferior in all other realms and become blind followers.
Such cultural hegemony was used in the past to impose colonial rule not only in India but in other
countries as well. Acceptance of the cultural hegemony legitimized the colonial enterprise in India and is
used to legitimize the neo-colonial set-up today.
Such legitimization is crucial for the neocolonial set-up and grounded primarily in culture. Edward Said, the
famous Palestinian-American scholar (1935-2003) who was a University Professor at Columbia and is regarded
as the founding figure on post-colonial theory, considered such legitimizing ideas and practices as mental
slavery and named them as Orientalism (Said 1978). Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999, 2002) called it the “reach of
imperialism into our heads”. Such mental slavery is not limited to the field of politics and economics but
becomes the norm for all thinking in all fields be it environment, education or science and technology.
According to Said the cultural invasion which serves the ends of conquest and preservation of oppression,
implies the superiority of the invader and the inferiority of those invaded as well as imposition of the values of
the former on the latter. That is what we Pakistanis – and people in the Third World countries unfortunately are
not always aware of, and consequently become enthusiastic collaborators in their own oppression.
According to Said the Western colonialists through their writings had constructed the reality of the Orient
(the East) in such a way that it turns out inferior and stands to benefit from accepting the superiority of the
Occident (the West).
To the extent we have become ‘educated’ which as far as social sciences and humanities are concerned,
means we have probably absorbed a great deal of Orientalized knowledge our identity starts producing
negative perceptions about our own traditions and society. The more educated and the more knowledgeful
we are the greater is the despondency in our perceptions. ‘Our dress is not as good, our language is poor
and less respectable than English which is the language of civilization and science, the West has invented
all science and technology, while we are centuries behind, the West is rational, we are fanatics, the West is
developed we are underdeveloped, they are honest we are corrupt, they treat their women equally we
consider them slaves and oppress them, the Afghan and the tribal people are barbarians and endanger
civilization. Such is the Orientalist perception. Are we not Orientalists? If we are then we have legitimized
the Western rule over us without even a fight. Such is the concept of Orientalism put forth by Edward Said.
An understanding of Orientalism is necessary to develop a critical view of and creatively understand the
problems of environment.

Orientalism and environment

How does Orientalism cloud our thinking on environmental issues? Here are a few examples:
Climate change or global warming is an issue 95% created by the West but propaganda has convinced us
that it is our issue and we too should do something about it even when our current emissions are largely the
result of those processes they have been outsourced to us, almost like a servant cooking food for the master
but getting the blame for the emissions. We are also being lived into carbon capture and storage
technologies.
Agriculture. Prior to 1960s our country’s agriculture was based on organic practices but they convinced us
we needed imported hybrid seeds with associated requirements of chemical fertilizer and pesticides
needing three times more water while we sold the 3 eastern rivers on World Bank’s advice to India. Now
the largest part of water, air and food pollution comes from the use of agro-chemicals and the sustenance
of yields requires even longer inputs of agrochemicals. The second wave of agricultural transformation is
now starting in the form of the introduction of genetically modified (GM) seed and industrial agriculture.
Looked at critically it will dispossess the peasants, jeopardize food security by making the country highly
dependent upon imported seed and spread hunger by making the food extremely expensive.
Energy. IMF and WB constrained us 15 years back we should privatise the state owned thermal power
stations and promise not to set up power generation in the state sector henceforth. Today we have the
biggest power crises and sky rocketing electricity prices in the country while profits from IPPs are being
sent abroad creating an economic crises. The power crises has created unemployment helping to increase
crime and the prices of commodities. It is a big environmental crises and has greatly degraded the quality
of people’s life. It has resulted from what we perceived as ‘superior economic’ advice.
Development. Impressed by the glamour in the West and their economic policies we have started to believe
that development is glamorous bank offices, number of cars and big projects, high rise buildings and the
use of heavy machinery and air-conditioning as well as reducing jobs for the sake of “efficiency”. But
development is creation of employment and provision of literacy, education, healthcare and food security
to our people. We are so much blinded by our perceptions that we refuse to see the reality the
consequences of our misconceptions which appear around us in the form of poverty and squalor.
Our current policies are degrading our environment and making life miserable for the largest majority of
our people. We are polluting our air, water, soil and food. We are creating hunger and unemployment for
the people and spreading illiteracy, crime and disease. If we are serious about environment we should
change our Orientalist thinking and perceptions and develop a critical and independent analysis and
policies, rely upon our own people, develop our own production capabilities and change the current pattern
of consumption to reverse the current degradation of environment and the depletion and deterioration of
human resource.

References
Said, Edward 1978. Orientalism, New York: Vintage Books
Shariff, Zahid 2009. Orientalism and Pakistan. Unpublished.