Culture and the Environment

How many of us think about our effect on the environment?

I think about it every minute of the day, everything that I do from brushing my teeth to throwing away my trash affects the environment. We live in a culture where you have to consume to be an active member.

Well that means that our earth has to produce all the goods and services we wish to consume.

Over time our culture has turned wants into needs. Material objects represent class status and help us fit in. What we buy we do to satisfy society in many ways. Clothes we wear fit us into stereotypes. The technology we buy is often to keep up with new trends. How is our consumer culture affecting the environment?

Our activities from driving to the use of electricity, to our agricultural practices, to our waste management, are contributing to climate change by changing the earth's natural cycles and affecting the natural flow of water, weather patterns, natural resources, animals, and the atmosphere.. By changing these cycles the ecosystems can no longer sustain life effectively and are losing their resources that maintain life.

International Union for Conservation of Nature estimates that

1 in 4 mammals are facing extinction, if the temperatures keep rising over 70 percent of the world's species will be threatened including humans.

During The UN Refugee Agency Climate Change Meeting it was stated “for the first time that climate change is projected to increase the displacement of people over the 21st Century, Climate change will force people into increasing poverty and displacement, exacerbating the factors that lead to conflict”

The UN Refugee Agency recognizes that by not addressing and fixing the effects of climate change we are infringing upon human rights. The UN is worried that the rights of the people being displaced will not be protected as we have seen in SYrian refugees. The refugees may face prejudice, poverty, homelessness, malnutrition, and fear. Many countries do not accept refugees or do not have the government infrastructure to do so. Areas without proper government are going to face a harsher strain on resources and increase in violence.

The UN refugee Agency is creating structures on how to integrate these new people into the places they will be forced to call home. These people will lose their culture, their cuisines, their land, possible their lives, and mainly their identity. Imagining being a doctor one day and the next you are fleeing your country and forced into poverty. Cultures will  have to accept each other, and as we have seen in early US migrations their will be racial, gender, and class issues.  The culture we live in has been built upon infrastructure that are leading causes to climate change. In a way our culture is directly responsible for the loss of other people's habitats.

Most species care about the survival of their own, for some reason our individualistic culture has distanced us from this instinct. We live in a culture where our wants are destroying our natural habitat. We all have to participate to make a change. By learning how to change the way we affect the environment we can begin to protect our species. It is hard to care or see the effects our culture has on the earth because we are so privileged and have so many luxuries. Human rights are being violated due to differences in culture, how we participate in the environment has great effects on the future and even the now of many humans and species. We are consciously able to make a choice to protect the earth and our species it is time our culture incorporates this as a core belief. The earth does not have the ability to limit what we use, but we as conscious humans have the ability to choose what we take.

Sources

Steffen, Alex. 2011. Worldchanging: A user’s Guide for the 21st Century.  New York: Abrams                                                            Publishing.

Marine Frank. The UN Refugee Agency. 2014. “Second Preparatory Meeting of the 22nd     OSCE.Session II : Cross dimensional Impacts of Natural and Manmade Disasters   Population movements in the context of natural disasters”. UNHCR Headquarters. Division for International Protection.

The UN Refugee Agency. “SIDE EVENT UNFCCC WEDNESDAY 3 JUNE, BONN CLIMATE DISPLACEMENT AND THE PARIS AGREEMENT”.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. 2013. “Session 2: International Cooperation and Respect for Human Rights Seminar to Address the Adverse Impacts of Climate Change on the Full Enjoyment of Human Rights”. Division of International Protection. UNHCR Headquarters.