Mother Nature is the greatest of all incredible wonders. It refers to the physical world and everything within it, encompassing all living and non-living things that exist naturally. Each of the features of nature is in itself a wonder. We are deeply, often invisibly, reliant on it. From the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat, nature enhances our well being and freely provides the essentials of our survival.

It underpins our economy, our society, indeed our very existence. In essence, “We are Nature and Nature is us.” In the words of Blaise Pascal: “Nature is an infinite sphere of which the centre is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.” Nature and environment are deeply interconnected with some subtle differences depending on the context. Neil DeGrasse Tyson aptly said: “We are all connected; to each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe atomically”.

Advertisement

Nature refers to the world’s ecosystems, plants, animals, landscapes and natural resources, while the environment includes everything that surrounds and influences life, including air, water and human made structures. Environment includes not only natural elements but also the conditions and influences ~ both natural and human ~ made – that affect the life and well-being of organisms.

Advertisement

However, when the question of conservation and ecology arises, the two terms are used synonymously. There is no singular universally agreed definition of environmentalism. In this article, environmentalism is used as a general term to refer to concern for the environment and particularly action, including protests, movements etc., or advocacy to limit negative human impacts on the environment. Mother Nature is a common personification of nature focusing on its life-giving and nurturing aspects by embodying it in the form of a mother.

There are many native and indigenous cultures in which humanity is viewed as a part of “Mother Nature”, that maintains we come from nature, and that the natural world is sacred. An aboriginal proverb says “Look after the land and the land will look after you, destroy the land and it will destroy you.” No wonder that earth, more appropriately Mother Nature”, was considered a goddess and supreme deity by pre-Hellenic people and later by Greeks. In modern times, the concept was taken forward in the new Gala-hypothesis. According to this, the earth is a living, self organising system, and there is an intimate relationship between earth’s living and nonliving components.

This is strikingly similar to the Indian concept of the earth being considered as Mother Goddess with even the nonliving parts considered divine. But owing to the........

© The Statesman