Sustainability is the word of the day. Well, more like the word of the century at this point. Short-term economic benefits have seduced most of humanity into shooting themselves in the foot-in the long-term. Cutting down trees, pumping fossil fuel exhaust into the air, burning plastics and petroleum products, dumping micro-plastics into the sea.
So much so that there is no organism currently on the planet that does not have micro-plastics in their bodies. There are heavy metals in most fish in the seas, consuming too much seafood can give you actual heavy-metal poisoning. Not to speak of the amount of carbon being emitted into the atmosphere that is making the very earth an unlivable hell sooner rather than later.
However, the way the blame of all this is being redirected towards the public is incredibly atrocious. Large corporations are responsible for the lions share of the pollutants in the environment. Still, shifting to impotent paper straws or potentially dangerous metal straws is not the answer for becoming a sustainable society. The aim of this article is not to make an actual impact on the larger problems caused by capitalistic industrialism. The point of the article is to see if people in Pakistan can, on their on level and using the factors under their control become sustainable on the household level. It is very much like the idea of veganism, where the act of changing lifestyles is personal in nature rather than intended for a larger impact on society itself.
However, practicing and using sustainability does have an effect that not many think of-it changes public perception. Children that grow up in sustainable households where the community ritualistically tries to become more at peace with the surroundings and reduce their impact on the planet might in the future become people who can impact the course of the world in the long-run.
This has a lot to do with the idea of conviviality, and it seems best to start the discussion on becoming sustainable on a micro-level with the concept of conviviality.
Sustainability is a goal that has three prongs-environmental, societal, and economic. The idea of sustainabilty is doing something so that it can be done indefinitely. Our current state of the world is far from sustainable. Fossil fuels are going to run out. The fishes are going to disappear from the ocean. Our communities near the coast will drown eventually. Mirco-plastics will saturate the world’s food cycle and result in complete collapse. We have already seen multiple extinctions throughout the globe since the beginning of Industrialization.
To make things simpler, humanity is a man in a locked room trying to burn furniture inorder to keep warm instead of using a blanket. He will eventually choke and die in the smoke. And burn the whole room down along with himself. And unfortunately, the first ones to suffer from humanity’s bad choices are the developing countries that hardly benefit from the short-term capitalistic decisions taken in the First World.
Pakistan remains extremely vulnerable to the impacts of Climate Change. According to the Global Climate Risk Index 2020, Pakistan is ranked fifth in the list of countries most vulnerable to climate change. Between 1999 to 2018, the country witnessed 152 extreme weather events and suffered huge losses equaling USD 3.8 billion. The human impacts of such events, for instance, the heat waves in Peshawar and Karachi, or Lahore’s overwhelming smog, are beginning to have dire health and economic impacts.
But on the micro-level, or the household level, why would anyone want to become sustainable? The answer lies in the idea of conviviality.
Putting it in simple terms, conviviality means the act of or the feeling of pleasentness. What that entails is the idea of going against the effects of capitalism on the human psyche and taking the time to slow things down to enjoy life. This expanded into a movement that was much more practical in nature than the free-love and hippie movements of the 60s.
To be honest, however well meaning, these movements were too impractical to be effective ways of living. Conviviality tries to bring calmness and pleasure into the modern way of life rather than denying it altogether. It is a man surfing on the waves of capitalism with his face in the sun rather than trying to swim against the tide.
And so, bringing sustainability on the micro-level into it, the act of becoming a sustainability is more for peace of mind and principality rather than a hopeless attempt at changing the system.
Energy conservation. This is especially difficult in the sweltering heat in Pakistan’s urban centers. Turning off ceiling fans is an impossibility, turning off AC units is next to an impossibility.
In these cases the only real way to become sustainable at a household level is the adoption of solar power technology. The costs of such systems are continuously going down as technology develops into higher levels of efficiency and demand causes economies of scale to be reached.
Even the Government of Pakistan has taken steps to make this a reality in the near future.
“Under the resource-constrained financial situation, Government of Pakistan adopted prosumers’ approach to harness year-round available solar energy. Regulatory measures were accordingly instituted, and the electricity distribution companies (DISCOs) were instructed to facilitate people in becoming prosumers.” –Rooftop solar adoption among populations – A case from Pakistan
(Iftikhar A.Shahid)
Waste disposal. For anyone with the available resources, they can convert their garbage system and the water waste disposal system into a sustainable one. Rain-water harvestation, low-flow taps, and grey-water harvestation systems can be installed in any household with a roof or a back-yard.
Roof-gardens can be implemented to produce herbs and the like that are needed in smaller quantities throughout the year. This provides fresher bits that can serve more as a symbolic show of an effort towards conviviality rather than one with a direct impact on the environment.
Use of glass-ware instead of plastics. Glass is aesthetically more pleasing than plastic-ware and especially the use of metal or hard-plastic water bottles is still better than buying and using mineral-water products made with cheap and long-lasting bottles. Read about child adoption in Pakistan.
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