The People Who Will Die for Trees

Martin Goodman's new book chronicles the struggles of the Bishnoi, especially their crusade to save the environment

- Harini Nagendra

We live in times of a polycrisis. All around us, newspaper headlines talk of changes in global geopolitical configurations, while global stock markets and investors brace themselves for a rocky ride. Much less discussed are the other environmental threats looming on the horizon. We hear about climate change, though these discussions are certainly insufficient relative to the scale of the problem that confronts us. But it is surprising—even shocking—to see how little we speak of the global biodiversity collapse that is ongoing around us.

The world is in the midst of the Sixth Great Extinction. A landmark 2024 assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), written by 150 experts representing over 130 countries, presents some sobering statistics. Over 1 million plant and animal species are threatened by extinction—including 25% of well-studied animal and plant groups such as mammals and birds.

Biodiversity received a brief respite during the pandemic lockdown period, when Nilgai entered Noida, peacocks took over the streets of Coimbatore, and wild boars walked the streets of Barcelona. For a brief while, the Yamuna river stopped foaming in Delhi, and the waters of Bellandur lake in Bengaluru, infamous for catching fire due to its pollution, turned blue after decades. But this was a temporary respite. Once the restrictions of the pandemic were lifted, society at large returned to business as usual, and our appetite for driving economic growth in previously unexplored corners of the world led to an accelerated impact on our ecosystems and ecologies.