Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
This book has a preface by David Attenborough, and it has beautiful photographs of this vast tropical island which show how the balance between humans and other species used to be, and what has been lost.
The first book you’ve chosen is Wild Borneo by Nick Garbutt. Why has it been so important for you?
Well, I suppose I had two childhood influences which made me particularly concerned about environmental issues: Borneo and Wales. I spent time in both places. This one, of course, is about Borneo
and I think it’s a particularly good choice for anyone who wants to see what landscapes looked like hundreds of thousands of years ago.
The book has a preface by David Attenborough, who is a patron of the Optimum Population Trust, and it has the most beautiful photographs. It shows a vast tropical island, the rainforests, the bits that are left untouched, and the human beings and the various other species that live within the forest, sometimes in very ancient and self-contained ways. So if you take a look at this book, I think it will show you what sort of balance there was between humans and other species a long time ago and what has been lost.
Can you tell me a bit about your childhood in Borneo?
My memories of Borneo as a child are very tied up with being near what we called jungle and is now called the rainforest. It was just teaming, throbbing with life, ranging from the most glorious birds to orang-utans. The word orang-utan is actually Malay for man of the forest. So it brings you close to the idea that humans are animals living in this environment. But sadly a lot of the area has been destroyed because of logging and the rainforest is threatened.
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Rosamund McDougall is a policy director for the Optimum Population Trust, a think-tank established in 1991 to examine the impact of human population on its environment. She has been campaigning on population issues since the 1970s. She spent time in Borneo: ‘The jungle was teaming, throbbing with life, ranging from the most glorious birds to orang-utans. The word orang-utan is actually Malay for man of the forest. So it brings you close to the idea that humans are animals living in this environment. But sadly a lot of the area has been destroyed because of logging and the rainforest is threatened.’ If we don’t reduce our impact on the environment by population control the results will be catastrophic, she says.
