IS OUR LIFESTYLE SUSTAINABLE?

I am tempted to pose this question after reading with wide interest a story of an Irish-born economics graduate who lived for a year without spending any money.



Mark Boyle, 30, has lived for the past 12 months as a true 'free-economist' leading a self-sufficient lifestyle in a caravan in Timsbury, near Bath, England glowing his own food and reusing junk that people have thrown away.



Obviously Mark had gone to the extreme, but his lifestyle sheds light and should make us guilt of our own destruction. We've literally abandoned what nature had provided us for free and embrace human influences without realizing the mishaps.



In Africa, 500 years of western domination has had adverse effect not only to environment but also to our well-being. We have been pulling down trees in order to facilitate 'modern' housing, tilling land for damned cash crops not for our consumption and poaching valuable elephants for ivory . Interestingly all of the above depletion of natural resources satisfies our immediate needs, i.e gaining damned money; ignoring livelihood and survival of next generations.



Ironically there's no check and balance of our own actions. For many years human being has been uprooting trees without planting thus endangering the ecosystem. For example, Dar Es Salaam is the third fastest growing city in Africa after Bamako and Lagos. 40 years ago, the area stretching from sinza suburban to University Hill was a dense forest inhabiting indigenous trees that had environmental role of holding the soil in its place. In those forests, a not insignificant amount of water used to be retained on leaves, bark, and in the soil. Of course retained water used to evaporate and then feed other ecological system and thus maintained rainfall cycle. Money has greatly disturbed this environmentally friendly city that the whole area notably Sinza, Mwenge, Mlalakua, and University of Dar Es Salaam is full of residential houses, hotels, shopping mall ( Mlimani City), petrol stations, roads, and other 'modern' facilities. When it rains, much of the water rushes down the slope and is lost for good. We're not only using water but our own life too.

The World will be saved when we imitate, just a little bit of Boyle's lifestyle.