Stop all wars, let’s all regenerate the Earth instead
An essay for Earth Day 2024
By Marivir R. Montebon
New York – The call to heal Mother Earth has gone beyond being cliché. It is an emergency act required of all of us. Today, as it is Earth Day, I personally make an appeal to stop all wars to world leaders, and instead focus on regenerating Mother Earth. Rather than funding for bullets and bombs, really, we need to focus our attention together on Earth regeneration and healing traumas (it takes a lifetime) and not escalating wars.
Conservationist art
On the ground, conservationist art has long been taking place.
A few weeks ago, I was showing parts of New York City to a visiting friend Merle Blashke from Vienna. You know, only when you have guests that we locals can discover in our own abode.
Earth Poetica, a giant piece of art by Beverly Barkat, reminding us that we have made Mother Earth a plastic trash bin. (Photo by Merle Blashke)
At the World Trade Center Building 3 where I took Merle stands a spectacular piece of conservationist art, Earth Poetica by artist Beverly Barkat. From afar, the installation of Earth Poetica was an instant attraction to me. It looked like the classic Cathedral stained glass windows depicting green lands and blue oceans. Up close, they were plastics!
Barkat, born in Johannesburg and living in Jerusalem, brought her art project to New York in the spring of 2023. She worked on the installation for three years, collecting plastics from places she’s been to, with some friends sending her plastics as well.
With a personal concern of how the Earth has become a receptacle for plastic trash, Barkat recreated the plastics into a stunning realistic interpretation of the living Earth.
Through her art, she attempted to create a dialogue between nature and people in harmony with one another. Her declaration, “nature will retaliate by destroying humans, humans will not destroy nature,” is a fact we have now seen. Immediate action must be taken to reverse Earth’s speedy destruction, and it calls on all of us to do our share.
It’s amazing how women artists take sustainability into its artistic form. Another artsy conservation effort is created by visual artist Michal Shapiro whose mosaic collection is derived from recycled supermarket Styrofoam food containers.
Michal Shapiro and her artsy conservation mosaics at the Queens College Femina Creativa exhibit.
The framed mosaic pieces are stunning, rendered in yellow, pink, green, and blue. They create a refreshing vision, reminiscent of hope that conservation brings.
Shapiro’s work is among those in exhibit at the Queens College dubbed as Femina Creativa which opened on March 9 and will end on April 29, 2024. You still have time to look at the masterpieces created by women artists.
Earth regeneration
A few moons ago, I had the opportunity to share my experience as a journalist reporting on sustainability efforts. Environmental regeneration, especially when undertaken by women, always excites me. As a writer, it gives me inspiration that the stories I write offer hope for a better future.
At the online forum organized by the Women’s Federation for World Peace – Austria, I shared two inspiring stories of sustainability.
One is the social enterprise called Human Heart Nature which manufactures personal care products from local and organic materials produced by farmers in Cebu, Philippines. It regenerates the Earth, ensures income for the producers, and sells health care products for consumers.
In Cebu, a Human Heart Nature shop is owned and run by my high school classmate Jose Climaco-Marzo. Stories like these are heartwarming and encouraging.
Another one is about permaculture which is being promoted by WFWP UN relations director based in New York, Merly Barlaan. Permaculture is about Earth regeneration and food security. It is a way to counter monoculture which has rendered our lands barren and eroded.
Merly and I have gone a long way in partnership and collaboration. During the pandemic, WFWP produced Merly’s World to promote permaculture, which I directed. We had the podcast running for a year. Now, the WFWP is running its own communications program with young ladies at the helm.
Merly Barlaan starts permaculture in her homeland in Carmen in the Philippines and in her New Jersey home too.
As a journalist, I take passion in writing best practices of communities, also practices that need improvement, pick out lessons learned, and improving in the succeeding community or enterprise efforts.
Sustainability is Earth regeneration and social justice intertwined. When one regenerates the Earth, it necessarily means people, particularly the producers and farmers, act, and benefit from it. In many localities worldwide, farm-based sustainability efforts are taking place.
We writers and journalists could eagerly amplify community and individual action towards sustainability. We are only as good as our news sources are! So, act.
I’m doing my fair share too – shopping for locally made products and buying pre-loved items. I did some permaculture in my apartment and enjoyed my organically grown ginger and onion harvested from my bedroom. Hah!
I reiterate. Let’s heal the Earth and help each other. Stop all wars now. Funding for bullets and bombs should instead go to water conservation, food production, etc. etc. So many better things to do than these senseless wars. #
