About a year ago, I chaired a panel discussion with the Polish minister of Environment, Henryk Kowalczyk. I wanted to touch on his emotions a bit, so I gave an introduction that brought Polish nationalism together with environmentalism.
I like to consider myself an ecological patriot - but what does this actually mean?
When one looks up the dictionary, under the term “patriotism” finds definitions such as “Love and devotion to the well-being or interests of one’s country’’ – something which we are even willing to fight for. But in reality our understanding of patriotism has been more complex and goes deeper than the level of the nation-state, also to the level of the local, the natural. Let me give you an illustration through two passages written by Adam Mickiewicz in Pan Tadeusz, the famous Polish epic from the 19th century.
“I longed to pass by in my flight, bird of feeble wing—to pass by regions of storm and thunder, and to search out only pleasant shade and fair weather—the days of my childhood, and my home gardens.”
“That land, happy, poor, and narrow; as the world is God's, so that was our own! How everything there belonged to us...how I remember all that surrounded us, from the linden that with its magnificent crown afforded shade to the children of the whole village, down to every stream and stone; how every cranny of the land was familiar to us, as far as the houses of our neighbours.”
Our devotion to nature is strong. It is an integral part of our identity – not only the national, but the local, the individual too – nature is an intimate, personal place of refuge where we can retreat from the all the bad of the world.
Also, nature is not just some land, it is specific: the narrator’s own land, it is our own land that we love.
And if it is our own, surely, we feel hurt when it is threatened. Today, when climate change turns the fair weather unbearable and unpredictable, when man-made forest fires or urban construction destroy the pleasant shade, and when our fast streams, lakes, waters are all polluted with plastic – we must be horrified.
But environmental patriotism is not just about feeling bad and thinking about it, but also taking action. If we really care about our land, we must fight for it! By protesting in the street, drafting and promoting better policies, changing our lifestyles and shaping our environment to benefit nature, and cooperating, innovating for better solutions.
Today’s main question is: how do we strengthen ecological patriotism among our citizens? In more provocative terms: how can we wage a successful patriotic war against climate change and environmental degradation?