Forget goals, get back to nature to save planet, says Indian conservationist

Friday, 4 September 2015 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Thomson Reuters Foundation: The way to achieve sustainable development is to reconnect with nature, not by setting international targets that are difficult to understand, according to a renowned Indian conservationist.

A new set of development objectives - known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – is due to be adopted at a UN summit in September.

The 17 goals that include eradicating poverty and providing universal access to clean water by 2030 will use numerical indicators to measure progress on achieving its 169 targets.

“The SDGs are not the real way you can reach anything,” Rajendra Singh told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on the sidelines of a global water conference in the Swedish capital.

“Creating indicators and setting targets that people can’t understand and therefore won’t follow only complicates things,” the 56-year-old winner of this year’s Stockholm Water Prize said.

Working with local residents, Singh has restored water supplies to 1,000 villages in India’s Rajasthan state over the past three decades, reviving the flow of five rivers by integrating modern technology with traditional methods that fell out of use during British colonial rule.

“When our lives are connected with nature we draw from indigenous knowledge, which is also science, but with common sense,” said Singh, often referred to as the “waterman of India”.

“If we make water and rivers available for everyone, we can move forward through the 21st century peacefully and with happiness.”

Singh said that consumer lifestyles that focus on comfort and luxury by exploiting natural resources and polluting the atmosphere “fulfill our greed, not our needs”.

“It’s not just in India or Asia, but the whole planet has changed its lifestyle and lost affection with nature,” he said.

However, all is not lost, said Singh, and people can find happiness by reconnecting with five key elements: soil, earth, water, sun and air.

“We’re doing nothing for nature and our lives are not sustainable,” said Singh, named by the Guardian newspaper in 2008 as one of “50 people who can save the planet”.

“We have to change the way we think and look at things in a different way,” said Singh. “It’s difficult, but it’s not impossible.”