Insight: Don’t Forget the Frog

This is an insight written by Dr. Tiffani Razavi on the recent Bahá’ì Chair for World Peace Virtual Conference – Global Climate Crisis: Seeking Solutions – held on April 14, 2020. 

Remember the cautionary tale of the frog in the water?  As the water slowly heats up, the frog fails to respond to the gradually changing temperature and eventually gets cooked. Had it been thrown in suddenly, it would have jumped out and saved itself, but the slow change offers a false sense of security and ultimately, demise.

It is a powerful warning story because it reflects real human tendencies in the perception of risk. The acute and the catastrophic can skew human assessment and behaviour; we see planes as riskier than cars, and cars as riskier than walking. The horror of a disaster makes us shudder in a way that the gradual erosion of life does not. We shudder justifiably, and sometimes it just seems like too much to tend to the slow loss of vitality and viability that proceeds quietly.

So in the midst of the response to a global pandemic, and alongside tribute to those who accept risk to themselves to care for others in extreme conditions, efforts to understand and mitigate the looming crisis of climate change must continue, as must all essential services.

The Global Climate Crisis conference live streamed last week by the Bahá’í Chair for World Peace at the University of Maryland was a reminder of the spread of knowledge, attitudes and actions needed to confront the reality of climate change. Beyond rising sea levels and pollution, or single-issue approaches, the contributors tackled some of the questions that don’t tend to grab headlines but should grab our attention. The combination of the specificity of presentations, such as the role of land management in the carbon cycle and indigenous energy justice, and their spread both geographically (from the United states, the Pacific and Australia to Cambodia) underscored the complexity of the situation, and brought into focus an interesting underlying thread.

The enduring impression was not one of crisis or catastrophe, but of concerned dedication to deep understanding, not of inevitable physical disaster but of a poignant need to transform relationships – between human beings and the earth, between diverse groups of people whose understanding of the earth and its resources are different both in the past and in the present, between individuals and communities, policy makers and structures of governance – according to a new paradigm. In this paradigm, the world is one body, and all these pieces are its limbs and organs, integral to its overall health. Land, wealth distribution, scientific research, cultural heritage, education, biodiversity – to name but a few – are all relevant.

However, we face a peculiar paradox or irony, Richard Houghton (Woods Hole Research Center) commented, as we look to a future that is “predictable but unimaginable” (not unlike the coronavirus crisis). So how do we manage that paradoxical crisis and transform the relationships that determine the future health of the planet? When asked about the most important understanding that he could convey to the next generation in relation to climate, based on his experience, Houghton smiled and said, “Look how long it has taken for climate or even carbon to enter the vocabulary.” He noted that in the time since the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change got started in 1992 “we haven’t done much”, but “the conversation is different.”  His comment strikes a chord, since conversations are critical to evolving relationships. Where do we go next with the conversation?  “For me,” Houghton continued, “the next step out there yet is to recognize that land, oceans, nature, living things do a lot to help make the planet inhabitable for us.”

It is a direction that implies embracing a more holistic conception of the living planet than has generally characterized discourse and policy making, which seem to stem from compartmentalized approaches to knowledge and education. There is, commented Melissa Nursey-Bray (University of Adelaide), a kind of attention deficit in relation to nature. Addressing this deficit, advancing the conversation and the relationships it cultivates would benefit significantly from the contribution of indigenous populations, as highlighted by both Nursey-Bray and Kyle Whyte (Michigan State University), from opposite sides of the planet.  In the climate change philosophy of indigenous peoples described by Whyte, all relationships – whether with nature and the earth or between communities – are intrinsically reciprocal and mutual, with built-in notions of justice and trustworthiness. In such philosophies, we find the core values that are fundamental to rewriting the global narrative of stewardship and sustainability.

A similar tone is to be found in efforts being made to shape the approach, mindset and active involvement of protagonists – from local farmers to policy makers – in decisions about the Rubix cube-like nexus of water, energy and food security, where, Rathana Nortbert-Munns (CCAFS – Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security) explained, the goal is to achieve coherence by identifying synergies and trade-offs. In describing the role of climate-boundary organizations interfacing between science and policy, Victoria Keener (East-West Center) honed in on yet another illustration of the importance of integrated approaches. Maxine Burkett (University of Hawaii), too, in her examples of some of the implications of climate change for the law in relation to migration drew attention to the interaction between spheres of physical change and human activity.  In all these descriptions and analyses of research and practice, relationships are being redefined according to an evolving understanding of the complex interconnectedness of the pieces of the climate challenge and growing ethical clarity.

That there is a sense of collective movement, integrated thinking and principled action is a source of hope. But hope is not an excuse for complacency. “Timing is important,” read one of Richard Houghton’s slides, “Delays have consequences for climate effects and for making solutions more difficult”.

We are not all experts, but we are all protagonists. Maybe the coronavirus crisis is a prompt to take another good hard look at our relationships with each other, with the earth, with time. And to get that frog out of the water.

You can view the videos of the conference on our youtube page here.

You can find out more about the Bahá’í Chair by watching our video here.

About the Author:

Tiffani Betts Razavi (DPhil. Oxon) is a Visiting Research Professor at the University of Maryland Baháí Chair for World Peace and a senior staff writer for The International Educator. Her research and writing explore people and their environments, the changing nature of work and education, and the conversations that connect observation and insight with practice.

Photo Credit: Steve M. Walker Flickr via Compfight

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