As always, this issue of Natura is full of bitter and sweet stories.

You will read about Mallah from Chotiari, Sanghar and his struggle to adapt in the face of changing livelihoods. Then you will also read about Nageena who, until recently, was fetching water from faraway places, sometimes making multiple trips to meet daily requirement for her family. She shares her joy with Maryam Inam about how water storage tanks and a pipe system have changed her life. Tariq Mehmood shares his hardships on losing a well-paid job but finding his purpose in developing plant nurseries.

All these stories can be tied down to what the celebrity host and VJ Anoushey Asharaf said in her Voice of Change piece – nature does not need us, we need her. Our lives, livelihoods and society, as we know, only survive as long as nature and her systems run in balance.

But all signs indicate that the planet is not as healthy as it should be and unfortunately karma is already striking back. Humanity has been using plastic and tossing it away without a second thought for decades. But now for the first time in history, we are learning that the plastic we have been discarding, is now in the food we eat. We could be ingesting as much as 5 grams of plastic every week. How this is going to impact our health we have no idea . But as they say what goes around comes around – I would not be surprise if nature has a nasty surprise in store for us.

Sana Ahmed

Twitter: @sa_1_ahmed