Earth Our Only Home – A Vision

Today the human species have tended to dominate and control the earth system as though they were the only specie present. The human specie is only 0.00000623% of the total living species on the planet. The human race is only one strand a subsystem in the biosphere constituted by plants, animals and micro organisms. The planet earth can exist without human beings but a human being cannot exist without the planet earth and other biota.

Our endangered planet is struggling against an unprecedented assault of resource depletion and species extinction due to pollution and toxic excess. This is further aggravated by population explosion, industrial growth and technological manipulation. The basic elements that sustain life, water, clean air and arable land are all at risk. It is now being acknowledged that the heart of environmental crisis lie moral spiritual and ethical worldviews of alternative cultures that need consideration and validation if we are to survive the holocaust of environmental degradation.

The knowledge systems of traditional cultures and wisdom of indigenous communities that have survived on the basis of an in built environmental ethical code has a vital role to play in shaping our ethos towards sustainability of the planet. The ethics, morality and life-style of nature-based rural communities respond to anthropocentric and biocentric worldviews, that encourage human to human, human to nature inter-relationships on a day to day basis. Their ecological cultural resources need to be explored for novel ways of meeting the environmental challenge today.

Asia is a linguistically and culturally diverse area. What unites the East, Southeast and South Asia is the 120,000 varieties of rice cultivation and its interrelated ecologies. The Shri Kunja is envisaged as a pan-Indian Rural Culture Centre for Eco-heritage and Green Consciousness to promote our common concerns and shared values across the subcontinent.