Biophobia – and the need to value nature

Some years ago, when I lived in Hong Kong, I hosted my friend Alan Watson Featherstone when he gave a series of talks on “Restore the Earth’. He mentioned at some point the concept of ‘biophobia’, the hatred or dislike of nature. Initially, I felt uncomfortable with the strength of the word ‘phobia’.

However, soon after his visit an area adjoining the former border to China, which had been left untouched to become a wilderness, had its fate discussed. Immediately corporations jumped in with many schemes, all of which involved concrete, making money and destroying what had become wild, in favour of hotels and factories. It was as if there weren’t enough already and the very existence of wildernesses was an affront.

This got me thinking about biophobia and the ease with which nature can be destroyed and profited from by humanity. I suspect that underneath the urge to build over nature is probably a fear of the unplanned, of the uncontrollable. Nature does not dance to our human tune, it can appear alien, like the ‘here be dragons’ medieval map makers denoted at the edge of our known worlds.

U.S. ecologist David W. Orr emphasizes that biophobia is culturally acquired, a product of modern living that distances people from the natural world to such a degree that they become indifferent to other organisms and antagonistic toward the environment. Nature can be perceived as ‘other’ and thereby can be treated as something that could be cut down, ‘planned’, and built over.

However, the richness of what nature offers us as humans, the intelligence and power inherent in our environment, is a voice needed at the planning table. The realisation of evolutionary perfection in nature manifests itself in seemingly random chaos, and this is something that takes time to appreciate.

Wildness is not just external but also an inner attitude to how we are co-habit with the wild and uncontrolled. One of the joys of the reforested parts of Auroville is the returned flora and fauna, the call of the birds, the flowering and fruiting trees and the thrill when we glimpse larger mammals such as porcupines, monitor lizards or jackals. Awe can steal over us in a dawn or dusk walk through our forests.

Regarding our current travails in Auroville, the push for the city and the manner of its implementation can appear to devalue nature in favour of plans that build over ground realities, defiantly so at times. The crown road is to be a perfect circle, something which does not appear in nature. The first completed landmark of all the road reconstruction is, of all things in Auroville, the building of a car park.

For a while the Central Public Works Department (CPWD) numbered trees by stripping away the bark away. I’ve also noticed a lot of understory pruning in forests, which makes me wonder if it’s a dislike of the unkempt. It’s notable that the first place to be deforested was the Youth Centre, youth usually being the wild experimental portion of our lifespan.

The greenbelt and its work in reforesting a desert plateau has been one of the main achievements of Auroville. It’s inspired many thousands, possibly millions, to re-wild the planet, one of whom is my aforementioned friend Alan, the founder of ‘Trees for Life’. He was inspired by a stay here in the early 1980s to reforest millions of trees in Scotland.

This message has even reached the UN, which has declared this (2021-2030) the decade of Ecosystem Restoration. Humanity is waking up to the vital importance of biodiversity, nature reserves and fauna and flora corridors. ‘Vital’ in both senses of the word, important and full of life. And yet here we are in Auroville, the ‘city the earth needs’, seemingly on the way to returning to the previous paradigm of asserting dominance over nature. For me, a city of the dawn would be one that aspired to combine urban and wilderness in as much harmony as possible.

It’s hard to accurately gauge the effect of biophobia as is so individual. I imagine that some of those pushing hard for the city would affirm their love of nature, but this is a plea to our planners who are in power at present to take into account the richness and life in our restored eco-system, for all our sakes.