Springs are Still Silent

Can we make them Buzz Again? 

No other woman ever transformed the way the global community comprehends our planetary ecosystem than the one who grew up in the farm. She was extraordinary catalyst for much needed transformation. A dire need ofthat time and even today!

When her book titled "Silent Spring' was published in 1962, I was living in small village in Satara District in foot hills of Western Ghats of India. That was the exceptional time when the our planet was taking steep surges in consumption of energy produced from fossil fuel. Global coal production was billowing. Yet, amidst that industrial boom, and greedy pursuit of creation of wealth, her distant voice went on to prove to be a clarion call for the protection of our environment.

She was Rachel Louise Carson, a passionate naturalist with conviction that humans should live 'with' the nature and not 'on' the nature. This description of Rachel Carson does not at all define her real story. She was hands-on author. I mean, not a dreamy poet tapping her pencil on her cheeks just to getthe right words. She spent a lot of time exploring around her family's 65-acre (26 ha) farm to get the right message. An avid reader, she began writing stories, often involving animals and insects based on her observations, right from age eight. At age ten, she had her first story published. What mattered to her right from that young age was not just the words, but the messages emanating from her surroundings.

I recall, 1962 was the time when the pesticides like DDT- dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, the new product of the new-fossil fuel-industry of 'modern-era' made their inroads and pests started getting killed. The farmers in my villages were happy! The buzzing from those roaming insects-among them were also useful farmer-friends thatpollinatedmillions of flowers-started diminishing too.Even around my village , in the valleys of Western Ghats of India silence was spreading. Hardly any farmer knew that the pollinating-insects were also getting killed along with crop-destroying insects. Was humanity engaged in genocide? I have no other name for such act that began killing the honey bees and those insects that pollinate to provide us the food that we need! The 'buzz of life' startedvanishing. That explains title of Carson's book, "Silent Spring'! Wandering in her farm she could not hear the usual buzz of the insects and honey-bees! Indeed, DDT like chemical insecticides became Deadly Death Traps-DDT!

What made Silent Spring revolutionary was its timing. In 1962, the United Nations, quite drowned in attempting a geo-political-peace had yet to place ecosystem-conservation or sustainable development on its agenda! The idea of preserving nature as an essential global requirement and cornerstone of global peace was still a distant concept for UN. It wasn't until a decade later, in the 1972, at UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, that such eco-led peace ideas began to gain traction. Carson's work indeed planted the seeds of that global environmental movement.

When I joined UNEP in 1992,30 years after Carson's book, I realised how courageous the work of Carson was. She was talking against powerful lobby of indiscriminate industrial development . It took further two decades for UNEP's global programme to save the ozone layer called OzonAction ,led by me and my team in itsParis office, to make practical headway to prove to global community that environment is critical for our existence and we can all act together if we have policies backed by science. The ozone layer that protects the eco-system on the Earth was getting depleted due to man-made chemicals produced. It took further two decades of the dedicated work of UNEP and other UN agencies, governments and industries to set the ozone layer on recovery path in 2012. And now in 2025, the ozone layer depletion is diminishing.

I feel that though buzzing of pollinating creatures in Carson's farm are yet to restart, this global story of environmental success in restoration of the ozone layer is worth buzzing! Indeed, we have now the huge ever-spreading farms of modern social media for buzzing that story. It is equally important that social media should also buzz to theworld community that westill are struggling to bend the curve of rising emissions of GHGs and bringing down the ever rising warming of the planet.

As we celebrate International Women's Day on March 8th, let us also remember woman-power. Rachel Carson, a farm-girl, created profound transformational impact. Her story is a reminder that while we have come a long way, we still have miles to go. Signals of coming-times are not all hopeful. My Western Ghats of India spread over 1600 kms is still silent! Itis now declared as one of the eight 'hottest of the hot spots' of biodiversity in the world. I would call it ' Dead-Silent Spring'? End