Three Baby Steps to Appreciating Land and Resource Use

It’s a big world, shit happens, and life goes on: just three reasons why people feel that resource use and the industry are out of reach. There’s such a massive disconnect between ourselves and where energy and wood is produced (for example) that it becomes very difficult to imagine having an effect on industry. But the truth is that our requests and complaints have a very small effect on their choices; it is about us as a market and the numbers they see in us. Believe me when I say that things only change when we need more, or we need less.

The other day I realized that we are making a mistake in using a name like “Mother Earth.” It implies that it cares for us, that it is nurturing. Our traditional approach with Earth and mothers is that they care for us, and when it gets old and fragile we care for it. I vote for the compassionate approach.

This is our Baby Earth, and these are some introductory baby steps to appreciating what it gives us.

**Appreciating Our Forests: There’s something to say for ‘seeing the forest for the trees’, but it’s hard to see them as anything but a resource when it comes down to it.

• People travel great distances to use them for recreation, this makes them a resource;
• They provide our cities and landscapes with stability. They provide cooling properties to our disturbed land (roads, buildings and pavement); and
• Alongside their products, they provide us with great need for discussion and citizen action. In fact, they bring people together for protest.

Here’s a bit I picked off the net to bring a factoid into this post: Starbucks uses up to two billion paper cups a year, of which 10 percent is recycled. That is not including the cardboard sleeves served with them, another two billion I would assume. Be weary of automatic consumption.

Overall, the best first step is becoming interested. I went ahead and decided that I have a favourite tree here in my city. You don’t have to be such a nerd, but it certainly helps to be appreciative.

**Appreciating Our Freshwater: Water brings to us what we need, takes from our homes what we don’t need, and flows through us day after day. Water is incredibly versatile, and more limited than we like to think.

Almost everything we do on land will have an effect on hydrology, one of nature’s most important systems. Land relies on water, water relies on land. Everything we do that affects its cycle should be taken into consideration.

**Appreciating Generations: Often, when aboriginal communities (and us that work with and for them) create anything that resembles a land use plan, they use what they call the Seven Generations Plan. Simply put, they are considering every move and its effect on the next seven generations that follow. Most importantly, ensuring that there will be resources to care for seven generations from now – pushing us to do our part in sustainability. As a community, and well versed at small-scale resource use, they are much better at ensuring sustainability.

The key to appreciating generational thinking is realizing that resource use and community are so interwoven that they cannot, and should not, be separated.

One of the hardest things to do is imagining what we will be leaving our children and grandchildren. We do – in a very general way – appreciate that what we affect carries on, but we are such an urban species that we feel individually inconsequential. Our effect on the land though, is entirely en masse.

Being aware of land use is easier as we are (after all) terrestrial creatures, but where water is concerned, we are used to its continual availability through taps and pumps. Try counting how many times you flush, shower, wash, rinse, drink and flush again. Think of the deterioration of a resource that needs to be available seven generations from now.

Think Baby Earth, and know its weak points.