Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore

‘Harmony with Nature should become an ethic’

PHOTO: S. SIVA SARAVANAN

RECOGNITION: A student receiving the degree certificate from Chancellor of Avinashilingam University for Women T.K. Shanmugam at the graduation ceremony in the city on Wednesday. M.S. Swaminathan, Member of Parliament, and Chairman, M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai, (third right) and Vice-Chancellor Saroja Prabhakaran (left) are in the picture. —

COIMBATORE: For every area of human activity, there is a need to develop technologies that can help achieve the desired goal without associated ecological harm.

Harmony with Nature should become a non-negotiable ethic, which is the basis of sustainability science, M.S. Swaminathan, MP and Chairman, M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai, said here on Wednesday.

Delivering the graduation address at the Avinashilingam University for Women, he said the rise and fall of great civilisations in the past had been related to the use and abuse of land, water and other natural resources.

Therefore, sustainability science should hereafter guide all technology development and dissemination programmes.

“Population growth should not exceed the population supporting capacity of ecosystems. Today, over a billion of the human population are living in absolute poverty and destitution.

“Another billion are leading unsustainable lifestyles. Therefore, ethical principles propagated by sustainability science should aim to curtail both poverty and unsustainable consumption of natural resources,” he said.

He called for launching a “Bridging the Yield Gap Movement” using clean technologies. “Our food security must be based on home grown food, so that it is both reliable and affordable,” Mr. Swaminathan urged.

Far from achieving the goal of reducing hunger by half by 2015, 75 million more were added to the hunger trap during 2007, principally due to the rise in food prices. Nearly 30 million of the 75 million were Indians.

There was an urgent need for setting up effective institutional structures for bringing about a sustainable end to endemic hunger, Mr. Swaminathan asserted.

T.K. Shanmugam, Chancellor of the university, said education was not complete unless research was integrated with it. Equally important was the development of leadership qualities among students.

“The present day intolerance and crime in the name of politics, caste, religion and language must find an end. Students must find place in the administrative services and their leadership must help the nation become poverty free, secure and progressive,” he said.

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