On Biomimicry | Nature - Not Just as a Source of Resources, But as a Mentor for Design | 💚

Nature | As Inspiration, Imitation & Innovation

Biomimicry: An Overview

“Literature always anticipates life” said the renowned Irish writer Oscar Wilde, which connotes to mean that, literature often predicts or foreshadows trends and societal issues that may later appear in real life, rather than simply mirroring existing situations.

He had also famously once remarked that, “The nineteenth century, as we know it, is largely an invention of Balzac”. Again, this statement is not just a compliment to Balzac, but also a critical observation about the power of literature to shape our perception of history and society.  

Well, this was way back in the 19th Century.

Now, fastforward to the 21st Century.

Janine Benyus might do a re-quote on this axiom, to say –

“Nature always anticipates Life”,

which highlights the profound capability of the natural world to promote and to nourish life and existence on this planet. 

Biomimicry is the conscious effort to learn from and imitate these successful, life-sustaining strategies from nature that has already been developed and implemented millions of years ago, towards the creation of a more sustainable and harmonious future for humanity.

What is Biomimicry?

Well, the term biomimicry was coined by Janine M. Benyus in the year 1997, in her book titled, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. 

Biomimicry then, is an innovative approach to problem-solving that involves learning from and mimicking the successful strategies found in nature's designs, processes, and ecosystems to create more sustainable and effective solutions for human challenges.

From A Meme to a Movement: Learning from the Genius of Nature

Janine Benyus is the co-founder of Biomimicry 3.8. She is a biologist, innovation consultant, and author of six books. Since the book’s 1997 release, Janine’s work as a global thought leader has evolved the practice of biomimicry from a meme to a movement, inspiring clients and innovators around the world to learn from the genius of nature.

The Industrial Revolution Contrasted with the Biomimicry Revolution

In a society accustomed to dominating or “improving” nature, this respectful imitation is a radically new approach, a revolution really. Unlike the Industrial Revolution, the Biomimicry Revolution introduces an era based not on what we can extract from nature, but on what we can learn from her.

As you will see, “doing it nature’s way” has the potential to change the way we grow food, make materials, harness energy, heal ourselves, store information, and conduct business.

In a biomimetic world, we would manufacture the way animals and plants do, using sun and simple compounds to produce totally biodegradable fibers, ceramics, plastics, and chemicals.

Our farms, modeled on prairies, would be self-fertilizing and pest-resistant. To find new drugs or crops, we would consult animals and insects that have used plants for millions of years to keep themselves healthy and nourished. Even computing would take its cue, says Benyus.

Nature as Model | Measure | Mentor

Before beginning her chapters, Benyus defines the word ‘biomimicry’, and then expounds on the three broad facets of biomimicry – Nature as Model, Measure and Mentor.

Biomimicry - [From the Greek bios, life, and mimesis, imitation]

1. Nature as model. Biomimicry is a new science that studies nature’s models and then imitates or takes inspiration from these designs and processes to solve human problems, e.g., a solar cell inspired by a leaf.

2. Nature as measure. Biomimicry uses an ecological standard to judge the “rightness” of our innovations. After 3.8 billion years of evolution, nature has learned: What works. What is appropriate. What lasts.

3. Nature as mentor. Biomimicry is a new way of viewing and valuing nature. It introduces an era based not on what we can extract from the natural world, but on what we can learn from it.

Nature Knows Best: After 300 Years of Western Science!

This, of course, is not news to the Huaorani Indians. Virtually all native cultures that have survived without fouling their nests have acknowledged that nature knows best, and have had the humility to ask the bears and wolves and ravens and redwoods for guidance. They can only wonder why we don’t do the same. A few years ago, I began to wonder too. After three hundred years of Western Science, was there anyone in our tradition able to see what the Huaorani see?

Hidden Likenesses Among Interwoven Systems: Lessons from Nature’s Notebooks

After decades of faithful study, ecologists have begun to fathom hidden likenesses among many interwoven systems. From their notebooks, we can begin to divine a canon of nature’s laws, strategies, and principles that resonates in every chapter of this book:

Nature runs on sunlight.

Nature uses only the energy it needs.

Nature fits form to function.

Nature recycles everything.

Nature rewards cooperation.

Nature banks on diversity.

Nature demands local expertise.

Nature curbs excesses from within.

Nature taps the power of limits.

This last lesson, “tapping the power of limits,” is perhaps most opaque to us because we humans regard limits as a universal dare, something to be overcome so we can continue our expansion.

Other Earthlings take their limits more seriously, knowing they must function within a tight range of life friendly temperatures, harvest within the carrying capacity of the land, and maintain an energy balance that cannot be borrowed against.

Within these lines, life unfurls her colors with virtuosity, using limits as a source of power, a focusing mechanism. Because nature spins her spell in such a small space, her creations read like a poem that says only what it means.

The last really famous biomimetic invention was the airplane (the Wright brothers watched vultures to learn the nuances of drag and lift). We flew like a bird for the first time in 1903, and by 1914, we were dropping bombs from the sky.

Perhaps in the end, it will not be a change in technology that will bring us to the biomimetic future, but a change of heart, a humbling that allows us to be attentive to nature’s lessons.

As author Bill McKibben has pointed out, our tools are always deployed in the service of some philosophy or ideology. If we are to use our tools in the service of fitting in on Earth, our basic relationship to nature—even the story we tell ourselves about who we are in the universe—has to change.

HOW I FOUND THE BIOMIMICS: Janine Benyus

My own degree is in an applied science—forestry—complete with courses in botany, soils, water, wildlife, pathology, and tree growth. 

There were no labs in listening to the land or in emulating the ways in which natural communities grew and prospered. We practiced a human-centered approach to management, assuming that nature’s way of managing had nothing of value to teach us.

It wasn’t until I started writing books on wildlife habitats and behavior that I began to see where the real lessons lie: in the exquisite ways that organisms are adapted to their places and to each other.

This hand-in-glove harmony was a constant source of delight to me, as well as an object lesson. In seeing how seamlessly animals fit into their homes, I began to see how separate we managers had become from ours.

Despite the fact that we face the same physical challenges that all living beings face—the struggle for food, water, space, and shelter in a finite habitat—we were trying to meet those challenges through human cleverness alone.

The lessons inherent in the natural world, strategies sculpted and burnished over billions of years, remained scientific curiosities, divorced from the business of our lives.

But what if I went back to school now? Could I find any researchers who were consciously looking to organisms and ecosystems for inspiration about how to live lightly and ingeniously on the Earth?

Could I work with inventors or engineers who were dipping into biology texts for ideas?

Was there anyone, in this day and age, who regarded organisms and natural systems as the ultimate teachers? Happily, I found not one but many biomimics. They are fascinating people, working at the edges of their disciplines, in the fertile crests between intellectual habitats.

Where ecology meets agriculture, medicine, materials science, energy, computing, and commerce, they are learning that there is more to discover than to invent. They know that nature, imaginative by necessity, has already solved the problems we are struggling to solve. Our challenge is to take these time-tested ideas and echo them in our own lives.

Once I found the biomimics, I was thrilled, but surprised that there is no formal movement as yet, no think tanks or university degrees in biomimicry.

This was strange, because whenever I mentioned what I was working on, people responded with a universal enthusiasm, a sort of relief upon hearing an idea that makes so much sense.

Biomimicry has the earmarks of a successful meme, that is, an idea that will spread like an adaptive gene throughout our culture. Part of writing this book was my desire to see that meme spread and become the context for our searching in the new millennium,

says Janine Benyus.

So how does nature design?

This takes us to the next book on the subject. And it’s titled, Design Like Nature: Biomimicry for a Healthy Planet, by Megan and Kim.

It’s pretty neat that nature runs on sunlight and water. Humans, on the other hand, use fossil fuels and toxic chemicals. Nature wastes nothing, but humans have left garbage pretty much everywhere on Earth. The great news is, we can change our ways. There are solutions. We just have to ask nature, exhort Megan and Kim.

The Leaf and the Solar Panel

Take something as common as a leaf. A leaf gains its energy to grow from the sun. By studying the structure of a leaf, we can learn more about how the leaf does this. Then we can take our new knowledge one step further and apply it to something we need, such as a more efficient solar panel.

Nylon: The Fibre that Won the War for the Allies

Nylon is a plastic that can be molded into almost anything imaginable, including clothes and toothbrushes. When it was launched at the York World’s Fair, it changed the world. In the News, many countries were fighting in World War II. They needed materials to help them fight the war, and plastic turned up at just the right time. It could be used for lightweight airplane parts, helmets, fuel tanks and flak jackets (protective vests).

Now nylon is everywhere. Kevlar is a super-strong synthetic material similar to nylon used to make such things as bulletproof vests, tires and bike locks. In Adeline Gray became the first person to use a nylon parachute.

Before World War II, parachutes had been made of silk. But because silk came from Japan, one of the Allies’ opponents in the war, it was no longer available. So nylon stepped in. It was considered “the fiber that won the war” for the Allies.

How Do Lotus plants Stay Squeaky Clean?

Imagine you’ve just spilled a big blob of ketchup on your favorite shirt. You wanted to wear it to a birthday party tomorrow. You might be wondering if the stain will ever come out. But what if the fabric designer had first asked how nature stays clean?

Lotus plants stay squeaky clean even though they live in muddy swamps. The surfaces of the plants are rough and allow water to flow off without sticking. The water removes dirt, dust and mud as it goes. By learning more about how this works, scientists can develop products that mimic the lotus plants, resulting in easier cleanup and fewer chemicals.

One great idea already underway is clothing fabric that repels stains from coffee, mustard and, yes, ketchup! Sometimes by looking at a problem in a new way, we can find a better solution. If we observe nature’s genius, we might discover new answers to old problems, just waiting to be noticed.

The Birder and the Bullet Train

Trains in Japan travel fast, up to 185 miles (300  kilometers) per hour. They used to be shaped like bullets to make them aerodynamic.

But there was a problem. When the trains went through tunnels, a wave of air pressure built up in front of them, making a booming sound that woke neighbors and disturbed wildlife.

Engineers were tasked with designing a quieter, more aerodynamic train. One of the engineers working on the problem was also a birder. At a birders’ meeting one day he saw a film of a kingfisher diving into the water beak first without creating a splash.

Kingfishers have big heads and long, narrow beaks that enable them to dive into the water without creating any ripples. This allows them to see their prey as they dive to catch it for dinner.

The engineer realized that the train needed to copy the kingfisher and dive into the tunnels without creating a splash of sound. He shaped the front of the train like the kingfisher beak —and it worked!

The Mosquito and the Nicer Needle

Mosquitos don’t want to be noticed when they bite—if they are, they might get squashed! Over millions of years, mosquito mouths have evolved to steal blood as stealthily as possible.

Researchers have taken a close look at those mouths to figure out how biomimicry could make nicer needles for injecting medicine. The resulting needles are tiny, only one-tenth the size of the usual ones.

They are less painful because they vibrate, like a knife sliding back and forth to cut bread, and the nurse doesn’t have to push as hard to make them break the skin.

Woodpeckers and Shock absorbers

Woodpeckers whack their beaks into trees hard enough to break wood. Humans get a concussion if they are hit just one-tenth as hard. By studying how woodpeckers protect their brains, engineers designed shock absorbers that can be used for such things as helping spacecraft resist impacts from small objects in space.

In a nutshell, biomimicry is an original and powerful response to the ecological crisis. Whereas traditional environmentalism seeks to limit the destruction of nature, primarily through the actions of preservation and conservation, biomimicry seeks to imitate nature in the design of artificial products and systems, to emulate nature in embracing an ecological way of being, and to learn from nature’s hidden reserves of knowledge and wisdom.

Not Just as a Source of Resources, But as a Mentor for Design

To conclude, biomimicry tunes our heads and hearts to the reserves of knowledge and wisdom contained within Nature for the future of our existence.

Biomimicry not only offers a powerful and promising approach to creating a more sustainable, efficient, and innovative future by learning from the wisdom of the natural world, but also encourages us to view nature not just as a source of resources, but as a mentor for design.

Works Cited

Benyus, Janine. Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. NY: HarperCollins, 1997.

Dicks, Henry. The Biomimicry Revolution: Learning from Nature How to Inhabit the Earth. NY: Columbia University Press, 2023.

Megan Clendenan, et al. Design Like Nature: Biomimicry for a Healthy Planet. NY: Orca Books, 2021.

PS: You may want to read our past post on Bioregional Literary Studies HERE on our blog.

Green Colonialism | ‘Colonialism dressed up in Nice Green Finery’ 💜

Green Colonialism | Insights

‘Colonialism dressed up in Nice Green Finery’

#newspaperinlearning #greencolonialism

Social Ecology as the New Philosophy

Global Heating & Extractivism in the Arctic

The Newspaper on Sunday is something that the avid reader keenly looks out for. For in it, are contained some exclusive and highly informative feature articles that hold a lot of significance for the future of academia. On pressing topics that need our urgent attention, and topics that need to be discussed, dialogued and debated prospectively!

One such topic that was discussed on broadsheet in yesterday’s Sunday Times was on Green Colonialism.

Before we move on, let’s first place Green Colonialism in context.

Green Colonialism or Eco-Colonialism

In a nutshell, green colonialism involves developed nations exploiting the resources and labor of developing countries while framing their actions as ‘environmentally beneficial’. 

Also known as eco-colonialism, it refers to the exploitation of the land, labour, and resources of the Global South by the Global North, often under the guise of environmental sustainability or climate action, perpetuating inequalities and environmental degradation, either through resource extraction, land grabbing or climate policies.

Three Book Recommends [from this Blogger] on Green Colonialism

In this regard, I wish to present three seminal books on the subject of Green Colonialism, that would be quite useful for research scholars working in this area.

The first book is titled, Handbook on International Development and the Environment, in which Ragnhild Freng Dale and Lena Gross have written an article titled, “The Arctic: last frontier for energy and mineral exploitation?”

They have a very profound elucidation to offer –

Historically, the Arctic has been imagined as the last frontier to conquer, tightly connected to ideas of manhood, adventure, and survival of the fittest. 

In the last decades, the Arctic has caught new interest as a resource frontier for tourism, trade, energy, and minerals. Climate change has both opened new waterways in the Arctic Ocean and altered living conditions drastically for Arctic communities.

Multinational companies that come to explore for oil, gas, minerals, and wind power, tend to receive the blessing of the nation on which territory the resources are located. 

Indigenous peoples who have occupied these lands since before the existence of these nation-states are yet again exoticised, displaced, or see their land appropriated for industrial purposes.

Politically, the Arctic Council is perhaps the institution that defines which states belong to the Arctic. It includes the eight states of Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Russia, and the United States, and six Indigenous People’s Organizations that are Permanent Participants in the Council.

Industrial development on Indigenous territory

Conflicts about industrial development on Indigenous territory are well known all over the world. These conflicts are not necessarily between the Indigenous population and the non-Indigenous governments or industries, as there – as in all communities – at times exist different, and at times opposing, interests also inside Indigenous communities.

Reindeer herders in Sápmi are a minority of a minority. The same is true for First Nation, Métis, and Inuit members that still rely to some extent on subsistence activities hunting, fishing, trapping, and gathering in Canada. 

These activities, however, have a cultural meaning that goes far beyond their economic significance or the number of people who are directly connected to them for subsistence.

Knowledge Keepers and Language Keepers

People continuing these traditional land-use practices are knowledge keepers and often also language keepers for their nations. 

Any encroachment on the land on which these activities depend are therefore also an encroachment on the material basis of Indigenous culture and language.

Internal Colonialism

The Nordic countries are seen as some of the most egalitarian democracies in the world with fair decision-making and due process for infrastructural development. However, Norway, Sweden, and Finland have a history of internal colonialism that continues in new and different forms today.

The three Nordic countries all treated the Sámi population as inferior people who either should be segregated from or assimilated fully into majority society.

When Norway gained its independence from Sweden in 1905, the cross-border reindeer herding was made difficult, and many Sámi lost their pasture lands when Sámi that were considered Swedish together with their reindeer herds were forcibly relocated from their summer homes in Northern Norway to Sweden, mostly the areas around Arjeplog, Jokkmokk, and Tärnaby.

Mined, logged, dammed and exploited for the gain of majority society

In all nation-states, the northern regions have been mined, logged, dammed for hydro-power, and otherwise exploited for the gain of majority society, often at the expense of land, rights, and livelihoods of the Sámi population. 

Assimilation policies, displacement of communities, boarding schools, and loss of language were all part of the internal colonisation processes, the effects of which continue to this day.

Green Colonialism and Extractivism in the Arctic

A new term that has recently gained prominence in research focusing on Sámi rights in the Scandinavian part of Sápmi is “green colonialism”.

It was coined by Sámi activists and politicians before it was taken up in academia, most prominently by Eva Maria Fjellheim (forthcoming PhD thesis) and Susanne Normann (2021).

The planned “Arctic railway” as green colonialism

Aili Keskitalo, former president of the Sámi parliament in Norway, refers to policies and practices around large-scale wind power facilities, mining for minerals that are needed for the so-called “green shift”, and the planned “Arctic railway” as green colonialism.

Green Colonialism: Colonialism dressed up in Nice Green Finery

She has described green colonialism as “when colonialism has dressed up in nice green finery and we are told to give up our territories and our livelihoods to save the world because of climate change” (The Arctic Circle 2020).

Indigenous lands, rights, and livelihoods are taken, minimised, or endangered

Like other colonial processes, Indigenous lands, rights, and livelihoods important for cultural continuity are taken, minimised, or endangered. The difference is that in the circumstances of green colonialism, this happens under the moral imperative of common good, namely, to fight climate change that threatens the world as we know it.

‘Green Sacrifice Zones’ where acts of violence are rendered as innocuous or necessary

The areas in question become “green sacrifice zones” where acts of violence are “erased, trivialized, naturalized, justified and rendered as innocuous or necessary”. 

These mechanisms of constructing prettifying narratives continue a pattern of colonial Arctic history where forced displacement and domestication of Arctic Indigenous peoples, Indian residential schools, and large-scale environmental destruction for oil and gas extraction are all justified by narratives of the common good like the improvement of life conditions, education, or energy security.

This brings us to the second book on the subject. Hamza Hamouchene, in their book titled, Dismantling Green Colonialism has this to offer –

Renewable Energy Colonialism

Green colonialism, or “renewable energy colonialism” can be defined as the extension of the colonial relations of plunder and dispossession (as well as the dehumanization of the other) to the green era of renewable energies, with the accompanying displacement of socio-environmental costs onto peripheral countries and communities, prioritizing the energy needs of one region of the world over another.

Green Grabbing

Scholars and activists have coined another useful concept: “green grabbing”. This refers to cases where the dynamics of land grabs take place within a supposedly green agenda. In other words, land and resources are appropriated for purportedly environmental ends.

Installation of big wind farms on Agropastoralists’ land without their Consent

This ranges from certain conservation projects that dispossess indigenous communities of their land and territories, to the confiscation of communal land in order to produce biofuels, and to the installation of big solar plants/wind farms on agropastoralists’ land without their proper consent.

Now coming to this feature article in today’s Times of India –

Klaus Dodds, Executive Dean for the School of Life Sciences and Environment at Royal Holloway, opens up on the subject with Srijana Mitra Das.

‘The best way to start is to say the Arctic is no longer reliably frozen — earlier, we could say this region had short, intense summers and long, cold winters where ice was permanent. That became a reliable platform for humans and animals — this is no longer true and the implications are incredibly wide-ranging’.

First, if ice is no longer as stable, humans and animals, like polar bears and seals, can no longer travel over it safely or use it to find food or give birth, as seals do on ice platforms, if the ice is thinner.’ It doesn’t stop there.

The loss of ice is profound. But the same ice is imagined very differently in diverse narratives.

Ice is an Enabler for the Indigenous: A Problem for the Westerner

‘In indigenous cultures, ice has a very special place — it is not considered an obstacle but an enabler. During winter, ice allows indigenous peoples to travel all over the Arctic. Secure ice was integral to dog sledging — there were almost ice highways, trails running across the Arctic, where indigenous peoples could move from one part to another and retain community networks. 

That contrasts sharply with Westerners, who tend to think of ice as a problem, something that needs to be removed to make the Arctic ‘better’.’

‘Now, it’s interesting how all this Western interest in the Arctic pivots around ice loss. Suddenly, Westerners are going, ‘Isn’t it tragic that we’re losing all this Arctic ice and the region is imperilled?’

‘I think this leads to the idea that Westerners are going to ‘save’ the Arctic and indigenous peoples need ‘saving’ — while, in fact, indigenous peoples have shown over millennia that they’re able to adapt to the Arctic when its ice varied. 

Their cultural frameworks contain an extraordinary ability to live seasonally with ice and think of this as intimately connected with land, sea, air and all the living things that depend on it.’

The Growth of Ice Humanities

Studying relationships with ice, says Dodds, who predicts the growth of ‘ice humanities’, reveals a lot. ‘You discover this is far more than scientific. It’s linked to histories, food and water security, identity, sport, culture — even cosmology.’

Dodd terms the ground beneath land ice as ‘the material geopolitics of frozen soils’ in the Arctic. He explains, ‘This largely means permafrost — again, indigenous and Western views on these soils vary. I’d include Russia in this. 

For the former Soviet Union, permafrost was seen as a mysterious obstacle, frustrating the plans of Stalin in particular to industrialise the Russian North and expand agriculture there. An idea formed that the Russian Arctic needed to be warmed, so permanently frozen ground could be thawed and used more ‘productively’.

Difference in Indigenous and Western ‘Ways of Seeing’ the Arctic

Again, a big difference between indigenous and Western — including Russian — views is this idea of making the Arctic a ‘more productive space’. Indigenous worldviews see productivity in the seas and ice there. Frozen land is considered invaluable because you can establish temporary settlements.

In contrast, for Westerners, frozen ground has always been seen as an obstacle, something that must be changed to become more advantageous.’ Dodds adds this casually but it encompasses an entire world of history, ‘There is this constant desire within Western worldviews to somehow make the Arctic something else.’

However, certain groups try to study the Arctic as it is. TE asks Dodds about scientific research in the most remote part of Earth. ‘Until the recent breakdown between Russia and the West following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Arctic was fairly renowned for international scientific collaboration — Western scientists, for example, got access to the Russian Arctic which is 50% of the region. 

Who gets to define sustainability? What are we trying to Sustain?

Science is intricately bound with technology though and the world is now hearing about how the Arctic — and Greenland — offers technological breakthroughs via mineral resources. 

Getting those minerals will involve the same drilling, mining and extractions which have denuded other parts of Earth. Can this region develop its own idea of sustainability? Dodds replies with alacrity, 

‘We must ask — who gets to define ‘sustainability’? And what are we trying to sustain?

Indigenous Views on Sustainability

Indigenous understandings of sustainability will look very different to what Arctic states might envision. For example, in Finland today, the indigenous Finnish Sami want to retain their autonomy over reindeer herding, etc.

However, the government in Helsinki might say, with the Ukraine situation, Europe must end its dependency on Russian energy and increase mining and renewable energy production — and what better place than the Nordic Arctic with suitable weather? Hence, indigenous peoples are complaining these countries are conducting ‘green colonialism’, where environmental reasons are used as a proxy to exert control.’

As the whiteboard behind him remains resolutely icy, Dodds underlines his words verbally, ‘Sustainability can therefore never be divorced from politics,’

says Dodd in this insightful ToI article.

Coming back -

How does Postcolonial Ecocriticism [or Green Postcolonialism] help?

This brings us to the third defining book on the subject of Green Colonialism. Bonnie and Alex in their book titled, Postcolonial Green: Environmental Politics and World Narratives, emphasise on the importance of a new field of study - environmental justice ecocriticism, one of the emergent strains of “second-wave” environmental criticism. They also harp on the growing relevance of postcolonial ecocriticism due to the unselfconscious parochialism prevalent in the existing field of American ecocriticism.

Here goes -

Resistive discourses in Postcolonial Ecocriticism

Within the developing field of postcolonial ecocriticism, critics are increasingly exploring the efficacy of postcolonial literatures and literary criticism to formulate resistive discourses to the economic dispossession, social injustice, and environmental degradation resulting from the continuing forms of colonialism and processes of exploitative global development across the world.

The Converging Critique of materialist and ecologist ideologies

The “converging critique” of materialist and ecologist ideologies draws on Herbert Marcuse’s idea of a revolution that would radically transform not only society but also the relation between man and nature. It carries through Raymond Williams’s statement of the need for a “green socialism” combining ecology and economics into a “single science and source of values, leading onto a new politics of equitable livelihood”, and continues into David Pepper’s call for an “eco-socialism” that unites the struggle for social justice with environmental justice.

Ecocriticism Met with Suspicion

Ecocriticism has been met with suspicion by some third-world intellectuals in Africa, Asia, and Latin America for what they view as a hegemonic, white-centered, Eurocentric discourse emanating primarily from the metropolitan centers of Japan, Europe, America, and Australia.

Yet writers such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Wole Soyinka exercise a “concordant, radical postcolonial and ecological vision” throughout their fiction and nonfiction, while Arundhati Roy, Amitav Ghosh, Derek Walcott, and Edward Brathwaite have all written about and taken positions on environmental problems in South Asia, South Africa, and the Caribbean, thus demonstrating the global relevance and urgency of ecocritical writing.

More importantly, he observes, “we are on the threshold of a new phase in the development of environmental ethics, where a new synthesis is taking the place of the three contending visions [agrarianism, wilderness thinking, and scientific industrialism] of an earlier phase”.

Social Ecology as the New Philosophy

“This new philosophy,” he elaborates, “would take from primitivism the core idea of diversity, from peasant culture the ideal of sustainability, and from modern society (though perhaps not specifically from scientific industrialism) the value of equity”. He suggests that the emerging philosophy could be called, as Murray Bookchin terms it, “social ecology”.

Works Cited

Benedicte Bull & Mariel Aguilar-Støen, Ed. Handbook on International Development and the Environment. UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2003.

Bonnie Roos and Alex Hunt, Ed. Postcolonial Green: Environmental Politics and World Narratives. Virginia: University of Virginia Press, 2010.

Hamza Hamouchene and Katie Sandwell, Ed. Dismantling Green Colonialism: Energy and Climate Justice in the Arab Region. London: Pluto Press, 2023.  

"The darker-skinned a person is, the higher the chances of facing blatant discrimination — in school, college and at the workplace" | Shobaa De 💜

On Entrenched Colourism – II | Shobhaa De’s Solidarity with Sarada

#newspaperinlearning #Sunday

30th March 2025

Apropos Sarada Muralidaran’s bold stance ahead of her retirement on entrenched colourism in civil society, Shobhaa De, a well-known Indian novelist and columnist, has expressed her solidarity with Sarada on the issue of entrenched colourism, in her weekly column featured in today’s Sunday Times.

“When you are a dark-skinned woman, you are invisible,’’ wrote Sarada Muraleedharan on Facebook.

Her post, which hit the headlines recently, talked about how an unnamed visitor to her office commented that her stewardship as Kerala’s chief secretary was “as black” as her husband’s “was white”.

Sarada succeeded her husband V Venu after he retired. Interestingly, this was the first time since the formation of the state in 1956 that an IAS couple had become chief secretaries in an unbroken sequence.

Given this, it’s awful to even think about the toxicity of the comment.

The offender should be named and shamed. But it’s Sarada’s eloquent and evolved response that has won the lady (who retires next month) global support.

“I am a woman… I am dark… I need to own my blackness,” Sarada retorted, saying, “Why should black be vilified? Black is the all-pervasive truth of the universe. Black is…the most powerful pulse of energy known to humankind. It is the colour that works on everyone, the dress code for office, the lustre of evening wear, the essence of kajol, the promise of rain….”

What a classy and classic putdown.

The reason why her post and subsequent interviews attracted so much attention is because the issue resonated deeply with millions of women (perhaps many men, too) who, like Sarada, were made to feel ‘lesser’ for not being fair-skinned. “I have lived for over 50 years buried under that narrative of not being a colour that was good enough. And buying into that narrative,” she wrote.

Who in our fair-skin-obsessed society has not been victimised for not being of the required skin tone? The darker-skinned a person is, the higher the chances of facing blatant discrimination — in school, college and at the workplace. Sarada confesses that as a four-year-old, she had pleaded with her mother to “put me back in her womb and bring me out again, all white and pretty”.

In India, skin colour boils down to one’s caste, she points out. And rightly so.

Caste is India’s shame — an ugly, unacknowledged secret that colours virtually every aspect of life — emotional, personal and professional. It’s the pecking order we pretend not to notice, no matter how prevalent it is. With Sarada, it was her skin tone that led to confusion as people bluntly told her, “You do not look like a high-caste person.”

But her husband does. Guess why? Obviously, because his skin colour is noticeably lighter.

Thank God for the couple’s sensible children who told their mother to ignore colourism and embrace the colour black.

“Who thought that black was awesome. Who helped me see. That black is beautiful. That black is gorgeousness. That I dig black,” she wrote.

Sarada has the strength to write — and live — her own impassioned counter-narrative after decades of fighting entrenched hostility in a society that equates fair skin with privilege and dark skin with poverty. But a dark complexion is still treated like a blight in Indian families, who struggle to find bridegrooms for their ‘savli’ (dusky) daughters and are forced to pay a higher dowry as ‘compensation’.

The birth of fair-skinned infants is celebrated in our country, while darker babies are shunned and frequently abandoned. Fair-skinned orphans stand a far better chance of finding desi adoptive parents than their dark-skinned peers.

In the glamour industry, being fair is considered a natural advantage as lighter-skinned models /actors bag the more coveted assignments. Some of Bollywood’s biggest stars spend fortunes on skin-lightening treatments, thinking of them as wise investments to get ahead in a highly competitive industry.

Even corporate leaders have succumbed to this lure, hiring image consultants who will photoshop their images on social media accounts and project them as ten shades fairer. A recent advertisement featuring a high-powered panel of industry leaders showed all of them looking pasty-faced and whiter than white folks. It is the same stereotype at work — success equals fairness.

Will the next generation be colour-blind? Not unless we, as a society, collectively turn a blind eye to the ‘fairness factor’ and look at one another as we should — a vivid and fabulously multi-toned people. Fifty shades of fair? No, thank you. We proudly own the entire colour palette,

signs off Shobhaa for Sarada!

Well, for more on the concept of colourism –

Alice Walker, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, is credited with coining the term ‘colourism’ in her 1983 book, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, defining it as ‘prejudicial or preferential treatment of same-race people based solely on their colour’. 

Colourism has become a global phenomenon that affects people of colour – a social stigma - where lighter skin tones are often preferred to darker ones.

While ‘colourism’ is the term most commonly used, other terms have also been used to describe this phenomenon, such as ‘entrenched colourism’, ‘skin tone bias’, ‘chromatism, ‘pigmentocracy’, and ‘shadeism’.

Cordially Inviting You... | FDP @ SRM University ❤️

 

FDP @ SRM University, Chennai via Zoom | 2nd April to 8th April 2025 | 6.30 to 7.30 pm

"Kundu Mani was used as a unit of measurement, because of their consistent weight" - Tree Walk @ MCC Today

The Trees are Alive! | Nature Trails Walk in MCC

29th March 2025 | A Report

When an eminent ethnolinguist and a Botanist Came Together for a Tree Walk

Listening to tree and trail connoisseurs is indeed an experience. It ‘modifies your sensibility’. Today proved to be such a day, when you had your sensibilities enriched for the better, in the company of legends. 

The Nature Trails Walk in MCC, started sharp at 6.45 am near the College Bell Tower.

Dr. Nirmal Selvamony, pioneer of Ecocriticism in India, Dr. Narasimhan, eminent botanist, (who also has a few species of plants named after him), Dr. Reji, Staff Advisor of Scrub Society, and Dr. Rufus accompanied the students.

The first stopover was on Principal’s Drive, where Dr. Narasimhan introduced us to the uniqueness of the trees lined up on either side of the Principal’s Drive – of the Bignoniaceae family, also known as the trumpet vine family, known for their beautiful, trumpet-shaped flowers.

They are very shallow-rooted but grow very tall. This is one of the unique characteristic features of rain-forest trees, particularly in South American rainforests. The rainforest trees are so dense, and the trees act as a dense canopy. 

Moreover, these rainforest trees are known for their impressive height, reaching up to 200 feet or even more. These trees have large, flared roots (buttress roots) that extend above the ground, providing stability in the often-soft soil and helping to absorb nutrients from the surface.  The buttress roots provide side-support to the tall trees. (When Dr. Nirmal gently intervened to say – the word buttress is an architectural term that they’ve borrowed!), he averred.

Dr. Edward Barnes was the architect of this campus. He found the birds and bats dispersing seeds, and he allowed such plants to grow! That’s why you find a beautiful scrub jungle in Campus. Barnes recorded every plant that came up. You look up the old College magazines, and you can find how meticulously he has recorded all the plant varieties. Wherever he went, he used to bring back a load of seeds. Those are the plants that have taken shape now, and adorn the campus. So the plants here are not bought from nurseries, said Dr. Narasimhan.

The Flowering Plants of Madras City and its Immediate Neighbourhood is a book written by Pallassana Vaithi Pattar Mayuranathan, Superintendent, Government Press, 1929, where there are empty papers kept between its pages and bound. And in these empty pages, his wife Alice Barnes has written beautiful notes about the College. Both Dr Barnes and his wife Alice Barnes were working together on this. It’s now in the College Library. You just have to ask the College Librarian, he added.

If the Magazines are not available, the British Museum has documented all of this. You can access it there as well. At that point of time, they micro-filmed everything. Now it would have been digitized. Our College Magazines are great historical material, suggested Dr. Nirmal.

“Every avenue has a story. You have to dig it up and tell your friends”, said Dr. Narasimhan.

Dr. Reji added that, yet another interesting point is that, Dr. Barnes was not a Botanist at all. He was a Chemist, who was very passionate about plants.

The Nerum Oleander which is colloquially called the Arali flower is indeed a very poisonous plant. All parts of the plant - including the flowers, leaves, stems, and roots, contain toxic cardiac glycosides, which are poisonous. Interestingly, the fruit of the arali plant is edible, and I’ve also tasted it, said Dr. Narasimhan.

The Arali plant doesn’t need much water too. That’s why it’s planted in the medians of highways, he added.

We also had a look at the Aana Kundu Mani (Kunnikuru in Malayalam) Abrus precatorius also called the Crab eye plant - a slender, climbing herb with peculiar bright red seeds. It is usually found creeping over shrubs, plant and hedges. It is also considered a toxic herbal plant because of the presence of abrin toxin in the plant seeds, said Dr. Narasimhan.

Dr. Nirmal added to say that, Kundu Mani was used as a unit of measurement, because of their consistent weight! In fact they were prized and cherished for their weight, that remained a constant even under varying moisture conditions, due to the water-impermeable seed coat. Hence it was called the jeweller’s weight. I’ve seen it in my father’s office. It was a very small balance.

The seeds were used to weigh gold and other precious materials, with a single seed representing a unit called “ratti”, and eight such seeds were supposed to measure one sovereign, said Dr. Narasimhan.

That’s why the expression, ‘oru kundumani thangam kooda veetla illa’ meaning – There’s not even one ratti of gold in the house, alluding to the poverty of the house.

Pooja added to say that, in Kerala, these bright red manjadi seeds are commonly used to play the traditional board game Pallanguzhi. Dr. Nirmal joined in to say that in Tamil Nadu tamarind seeds were used to play the same game.

Our next stopover was the rose wood, which is called the bastard rose wood, since it is not the original rose wood. In the process he also busted a lot of myths associated with certain trees, plants and fruits.

Dr. Nirmal then added to recommend a book by Ms. Maneka Gandhi titled, Brahma’s Hair: The Mythology of Indian Plants in which she writes about the wonderful world of mythology that has grown around thirty Indian plants and trees.

Then we moved to the beautiful red sanders tree. Usually, the red sanders sports a ‘once-forked’ branch on them, said Dr. Narasimhan.

Dr. Reji added an interesting observation saying that, many architects have made use of the structure of the red sanders for their architecture.

It’s called Biomimicry in architecture, also known as biomimetic design - a design approach that draws inspiration from nature to create innovative and sustainable buildings by studying and emulating natural systems and processes.

I have a friend called Mr. Shankar from Thrissur gives lectures on Biomimicry, added Dr. Narasimhan.

At this point, Dr. Nirmal added to say that, literature students would have been introduced to the area of ecosemiotics, in which biomimicry is a subfield.

Near the Red Sanders, Dr. Nirmal recollected the exact spot as the place where the poetry group called Vanam used to meet regularly. Na Muthu Kumar (late) one of the founding members of the group, was also part of this Vanam, he added.

Vanam published two anthologies – Vaanam Piranthathu (the Sky is Born) which is prescribed in Tamil Departments in many institutions, and available in the College Library, and the next book is titled, Vanam Malarnthathu.

Dr. Nirmal then recited a poem from one of the books, (written by him) on Mullaipuravu – and the ideal location for a family is Mullai, he averred.

Dr. Narasimhan gladly intervened to say that, he had written one such poem in Tamil which was translated into English by Dr. Nirmal. It’s titled, Mannithuvidu Magane. (Forgive me, my son). Someone who listened to the poem found it so profound, that they translated it into Hindi, he said.

“The beautiful river sand in which I once danced, you don’t have them anymore…” goes the poem.

MCC is typical mullai landscape, plains and places with low elevations, while Kurinji is places with high elevation, places where animals graze, said Dr. Narasimhan.

A scrub jungle, said Dr. Nirmal.

So usually places ending with ‘Paadi’ are Mullai region.

Vyasarpadi, Vaniyambadi, Katpadi – where cattle graze, he said.

Kurichi, Alwarkurichi is Mountainous, while words ending in Paakam come under Neithal.

Marutham is a riverine place. Maruthancode in KK District is an example, said Dr. Narasimhan.

To be continued…

The Tree Walk ended with a stroll to the College Cafeteria. 

PS: You may want to read on yet another past Tree Walk we had in Campus 13 years ago, on 28th January 2012, HERE, on our blog.