Environmental Legacy

Earth Day, April 22, 2003.
Urmas Kaldveer is a member of the board of directors of the Cloud Forest Institute.

Once again we gather both physically and spiritually to remember our relationship with this earth. Each year it becomes increasingly clear that this ancient and utter dependence upon the natural resources of our planet is not understood or honored by the corporate community.
This year it is far more than that. This year we have once again unleashed the four horsemen to ride over the body of our planet and leave behind death, destruction, famine and disease. There is no greater damage that can be done to our natural environment than through the actions of war. Today that action is damaging beyond anything witnessed before.

We must not forget that while we are most influenced and swayed by descriptions of human carnage, the effect of war on the natural environment in today's kind of military actions creates a different carnage. Air no longer fit to breath, contaminated waters and soil. And most heinous of all, thousands of tons of radioactive contamination left behind by munitions using depleted uranium.

The environmental legacy of this war will plague generations of children long after the present belligerents on both sides are remembered merely as minor players in the game of world dominance. Let us remember this Earth Day that the very body of the divine mother is being desecrated and dishonored.