Book Review: Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams. 2021. The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times. Celadon Books.
Annavajhula J C Bose, PhD
Former (Economics) Professor, SRCC, DU
Jane Goodall (1934-2025) peacefully exited this world on October 1, leaving behind an invaluable message for humanity through this book.
There are many poems for her, honouring and celebrating her amazing life. I choose the following one by Robert-J.-Tiess:
To you, they weren’t subjects to be numbered,
tagged and logged, footnoted, left behind;
you gave them names, acknowledged characters,
allowed for souls to glow behind those eyes
so you could witness stories deeper than
their primal traits (what we dismissed as “wildlife”).
First chimpanzees, then more like family,
they’d screech and scatter until trust could come
of calm encounters, tenderness, good company,
and then the unexpected empathy
beginning with the humble gift of hands
which gestured friendship, mercy, warmth, regard.
With instincts science cannot prime alone,
and love above control’s conditioning,
you recognized the tools and bonds they forged
—the leaders, rivals, mothers—and their roles,
emotions, language, warfare, rituals
(things we claimed as purely human truths).
You saw more than these similarities:
you championed the grand connectedness,
showed nature’s here, through shoots and roots of Earth
—and us—to be observed, conserved, deserved.
Benevolence becomes your legacy.
May we inherit your humanity.
Without having even formal undergrad education to her credit, Jane Goodall had evolved to be a greatest ethologist and environmentalist and a most wonderful and exemplary human being on this planet. She can be taken as the mother of Hope Studies—It is darkest before the dawn, which means things always seem to get worse before they get better, i.e. even in the worst of circumstances like climate change and loss of biodiversity, there is hope. She says: “Ever since I began travelling around the world in 1986 to raise awareness about the harm we humans have created, socially and environmentally, I have met so many people who have told me they have lost hope for the future. Young people especially have been angry, depressed, or just apathetic because, they’ve told me, we have compromised their future and they feel there is nothing they can do about it. But while it is true that we have not just compromised but stolen their future as we have relentlessly plundered the finite resources of our planet with no concern for future generations, I do not believe it is too late to do something to put things right.”
Hope is ethical actions and engagements on our part to save and improve our world for future generations. “Hope is contagious. Your actions will inspire others. It is my sincere desire that this book will help you find solace in a time of anguish, direction in a time of uncertainty, courage in a time of fear.” Without hope, all is lost. It is a crucial survival trait that has sustained our species from the time of our Stone Age ancestors. This book is her loving invitation to us to hope. And this invitation is backed by her own improbable journey which would have been impossible had she lacked hope. And it is a best reading we can do right now to save ourselves and save this planet from godforsaken humans.
Listen to her, with utmost reverence, on these worst as also best lines, crafted though in the Corona context: “The tragedy is that a pandemic such as this one has long been predicted by those studying zoonotic diseases. Approximately 75 percent of all new human diseases come from our interactions with animals. COVID-19 is likely one of them. They start when a pathogen, such as a bacteria or virus spills over from an animal to a human and bonds with a cell in a human. And this may lead to a new disease. Unfortunately for us, COVID-19 is highly contagious and it spread rapidly, soon affecting almost every country around the globe. If only we had listened to the scientists studying zoonotic diseases who have long warned that such a pandemic was inevitable if we continued to disrespect nature and disrespect animals. But their warnings fell on deaf ears. We didn’t listen and now we are paying a terrible price. By destroying habitats we force animals into closer contact with people, thus creating situations for pathogens to form new human diseases. And as the human population grows, people and their livestock are penetrating ever deeper into remaining wilderness areas, wanting more space to expand their villages and to farm. And animals are hunted, killed and eaten. They or their body parts are trafficked—along with their pathogens—around the world. They are sold in wildlife markets for food, clothing, medicine, or for the trade in exotic pets. Conditions in almost all of these markets are not only horribly cruel but usually extremely unhygienic—blood, urine, and faeces from stressed animals all over the place. Perfect opportunity for a virus to hop onto a human—and it is thought that this pandemic, like SARS, was created in a Chinese wildlife market. HIV-1 and HIV-2 originated from chimpanzees sold for bushmeat in wildlife markets in Central Africa. Ebola possibly started from eating gorilla meat. The horrific conditions in which billions of domestic animals are bred for food, milk, and eggs have also led to the spawning of new diseases such as the contagious swine flu that started on a factory farm in Mexico and non infectious ones like E. coli, MRSA (staph), and salmonella. And don’t forget that all animals I’ve been talking about are individuals with personalities. Many—and especially pigs— are highly intelligent, and each one knows fear, misery, and feels pain…(But)…We can get through the pandemic. Thanks to our amazing human intellect scientists have produced vaccines at record speed. And if we get together and use our intellect and play our part, each one of us, we can find ways to slow down climate change and species extinction. Remember that as individuals we make a difference every day, and millions of our individual ethical choices in how we behave will move us toward a more sustainable world. We should be so grateful for the incredible resilience of nature. And we can help the environment heal not only by means of the big restoration projects but as a result of our own efforts as we choose how to live our lives and think about our own environmental footsteps. There is great hope for the future in the actions, the determination and energy of young people around the world. And we can all do our best to encourage and support them as they stand up against climate change and social and environmental injustice. Finally, remember that we have been gifted not only with a clever brain and well-developed capacity for love and compassion, but also with an indomitable spirit. We all have this fighting spirit—only some people don’t realize it. We can try to nurture it, give it a chance to spread its wings and fly out into the world giving other people hope and courage. It’s no good denying that there are problems. It is no shame if you think about the harm we’ve inflicted on the world. But if you concentrate on doing the things you can do, and doing them well, it will make all the difference.”
The more you know the conservation activism of Jane Goodall, turning countless people onto the wonders of the natural world, the more you will love her madly!—a la The Doors’ song LOVE HER MADLY.
The reference given below is, I think, the best homage to her from the viewpoint of heterodox economics. It posits that “The prioritization of market over nonmarket values of nature is a key driver of the global biodiversity crisis. Recognizing nature’s diverse values in decisions is a fundamental lever for sustainability transformation. While economic valuation of nature has a long history, it has struggled to recognize the full suite of nature’s values, particularly the broad, relational, intrinsic, and shared values reflecting the complexity of human–nature relationships. We explore opportunities to expand the consideration of values within the economics of biodiversity by reviewing conventional and heterodox economic approaches. We argue that integrating pluralistic values requires a relational biodiversity economics that transcends people–nature dualism and seeks the flourishing of life. We synthesize foundations for such a paradigm in relation to worldviews, values, value indicators, and life frames. Our perspective transcends the dominant economic framing of nature as a passive, largely substitutable asset, to also consider nature as place, self, and harboring agency. This helps to overcome the limitations of conventional economic assumptions, better reflects peoples’ lived experiences, and supports transformations toward more just and sustainable futures.”
Reference
Jasper O. Kenter et al. 2025. Toward a relational biodiversity economics: Embedding plural values for sustainability transformation. PNAS. 122 (40). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2314586122
