The falcon and the sand

The Peregrine Falcon can fly to over 4,000 feet, these majestic animals are the fastest on earth. Since time immemorial, the Bedouins have used them to look for food and water. However, they release them after just four months, at the end of the winter season. They do not cage them, as they have no pretense of owning them. They belong to Nature.

As I have always said, climate change is indeed the deadliest thing the human race has ever faced, more than any virus. Viruses, like bacteria, are part and parcel of life on Earth but climate change is man-made. While traveling around the desert lands of the Middle East, we enjoyed the clean air, sand and biodiversity. It was totally different from anything we have experienced. We went to the Rub’ Al Khali in Dubai, a 650,000-square kilometer desert preserve also known as the Empty Quarter, and the leaders here value and protect it and the little water it has.

The Bedouins have existed here since 6,000 years before Christ, and these nomadic people move around. They do not stay put and build garbage cities. They consider the desert as two ecosystems – the sand and the water. As with the falcon, perhaps it’s because of the scarcity of water and life that the Bedouin people protect their rare ecosystem.

Yes, there is life in the desert. The animals use the sand to protect themselves. The sand dunes are their home. From camel riding to falconry, they take pride in what little they have. It is here that I learned that falcons are the world’s fastest animals. All along I thought it was the cheetah. Falcons go 390 kilometers an hour and fly up to 4,000 feet. They cover their eyes to avoid stress as the darkness relaxes them.

In Dubai, they have built the world’s tallest buildings. A city out of the desert sand. However, they use drip irrigation to optimize the use of water. They have not forgotten their Bedouin values and heritage.

In contrast to this amazing desert, our country was ravaged by Typhoon Odette before Christmas – one of the over 20 typhoons that hit our country yearly. It hit the big island of Mindanao, where typhoons seldom go. It devastated Cebu, Siargao, Surigao, Bohol and Central Visayas. Lo and behold! Climate calamities are real and more vicious than ever. This will keep escalating so long as we continue to add carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We have not learned from Typhoon Yolanda, which destroyed Tacloban and killed over 10,000 people in one day.

However, we can learn from the Bedouins, who found balance with nature millennia ago, even in a harsher environment. We are in a build build build unsustainable mode, which focuses on development at all costs and at the expense of our planet. Mind you, COVID-19 has caused 50,000 deaths in the Philippines in 637 days while Typhoon Yolanda caused 10,000 in one day. Carbon dioxide has breached 412 ppm when it was just 275 less than 20 years ago. Maybe locking down is a good model to save our planet?

However, it would be better if they just follow the failed UNFCC COP targets. I believe that human greed and the old development model is to blame. Unlike the Bedouins, we used to have over 20 million hectares of virgin forest and all the water in the world, natural gifts that they were never given. However, we did not respect our environment, and have destroyed most of it.

Let us learn from the desert and Bedouin people. We must save our planet or face more severe climate calamities of unimaginable proportions. After all, as the Bedouins have shown, a drop of water can go a long way when you have none.

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Antonio Claparols is president of the Ecological Society of the Philippines.