In a column for Channel i Online, Jebunnesa Chapala writes that soil is being neglected and abused all over the world. Minerals are dug out beyond need for profit; ponds, rivers, canals, beels and haors are filled in; forests are felled, wildlife wiped out and industrial waste ravages the environment.

Excess carbon and greenhouse gases are changing the climate and melting glaciers, she writes. Plastic and factory waste fill and pollute water bodies, leaving the soil dead, barren and foul-smelling, while the insects that keep nature in balance are being destroyed too.

She calls 'land-based education', urged by environmentalists and indigenous peoples, a need of the times: education that teaches a deep and responsible relationship with nature and land, and that soil, water, forest and animals are not separate from us. We should also learn, she writes, from indigenous people who have protected soil, water and forest for generations.

Our food, water and oxygen are all tied directly or indirectly to the soil, where plants grow, flowers bloom and crops ripen, she argues. Neglecting it endangers our own future and wrongs the next generation: will they inherit a green earth, or poisoned air, polluted water and dead soil?

The writer closes with a call to love and care for the soil and protect nature: if the soil survives, nature survives, and if nature survives, so do people.

The views are the writer's own.

Photo: Muhammad Amdad Hossain / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Source: Channel i Online