Biodiversity loss: The silent war we continue to wage

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Dr. Farrukh A. Chishtie

How colonization, industrial expansion, and forgotten indigenous knowledge have shaped a century of ecological decline.

It is often said that the wars of the past were fought for land, resources, and power. Yet one war, silent, relentless, and far older than we acknowledge, continues to this day. It is the war against nature itself, a struggle that began over a century ago with colonization and has since been reinforced by rampant capitalism, industrialization, unchecked urban expansion, and the erosion of traditional wisdom. The battle lines are invisible, but the casualties, forests, rivers, species, and cultures, are all too real and tragic.

A silent war rooted in colonization

The roots of today’s biodiversity crisis can be traced to the colonial era, when European empires redrew the ecological maps of Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Land that was once managed communally, under systems of rotational grazing, sacred groves, and community water stewardship, was seized and converted into “property”, by capitalism-driven colonizers. Forests that sustained generations were declared state reserves. Indigenous communities, who saw themselves as caretakers rather than owners, were excluded from lands they had protected for centuries.

This restructuring of land and knowledge was not just economic, it was ideological. Colonization imposed the idea that nature existed to be exploited, and that progress meant control, extraction, and profit. Timber, ivory, spices, cotton, and minerals became commodities, and the ecosystems that nurtured them were fragmented or destroyed.

Even after independence, many post-colonial states, including Pakistan, inherited and maintained these extractive policies. The colonial forest and irrigation models persisted, turning living ecosystems into regulated “resources.” What began as foreign occupation of land evolved into a domestic continuation of ecological neglect.

The forgotten knowledge of harmony

Before colonization, local communities across South Asia practiced what can best be described as ecological balance as a way of life. In Sindh, sacred trees such as the Peepal and Banyan were protected as symbols of continuity. In Balochistan, nomadic herders practiced rotational grazing and water sharing based on seasonal ecology. Across Gilgit-Baltistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, communities sustained traditional orchards and mountain forests through collective stewardship, which is knowledge passed down orally and maintained through lived connection to the land.

Banyan Tree

But modernity, spurred by colonial legacies and later industrial growth, devalued this wisdom. Indigenous practices were dismissed as “unscientific,” replaced by commercial farming, monocultures, and chemical dependence. The result: soil exhaustion, vanishing pollinators, and declining yields.

Today, as global agencies call for “nature-based solutions,” we are finally recognizing that the answers we seek were already present in our heritage, in the songs, rituals, and rhythms of indigenous life that honoured coexistence rather than dominance.

The new front lines: biodiversity and survival

Pakistan’s biodiversity, once among the richest in South Asia, is now under siege. The wetlands of Sindh, home to migratory birds and otters, are shrinking under encroachment and pollution. The Himalayan ecosystems face rapid glacier melt, threatening countless endemic species. Coastal mangroves, once a vast buffer against storms, have been cut down for shrimp farms and fuel. Each of these losses is more than ecological, it is cultural, economic, and spiritual.

Yet there is resilience. Indigenous fishers in the Indus Delta have revived mangrove plantations. Community women in Thar are re‑growing native herbs once thought lost. Farmers in the Swat Valley are restoring fruit biodiversity by replanting heirloom varieties. These are not isolated acts; they are quiet resistances in the long war for balance.

The path forward: decolonizing conservation

To truly halt biodiversity loss, we must first decolonize our relationship with nature. This means moving away from centralized, technocratic conservation that excludes communities and embracing participatory, place-based stewardship.

• Recognize indigenous rights: Empower local people as custodians, not outsiders, in conservation policy.

• Reintegrate traditional knowledge into formal education and environmental planning.

• Reforest intelligently, with native species that support local wildlife and livelihoods.

• Rethink progress, measuring well-being not by GDP, but by the health of ecosystems.

The “silent war” can only end when we choose peace — not just with each other, but with the land that sustains us. Our task now is not to conquer nature but to restore kinship with it, reviving the wisdom that colonization buried but never truly erased.