Before industrialization, much of the world’s population lived in a society with very low per capita economic growth rates. In the 1930’s with the invention of econometrics, economic growth became a symbol of a modern state, and an aspirational goal of the nation to demonstrate progress in comparison to other nations.
However, sustained economic growth comes with an immense social and ecological cost. There is little doubt that increasing pollution and waste generated by the growth economies threaten the well-being of future generations. Likewise, the overuse of the world’s natural resources is eliminating the possibility of people in the majority world achieving the same levels of income as people in high-income countries.
If the problems of the hegemony of growth are obvious, what is creating a “growth trap” so hard to escape?
In today’s economy money is primarily created through the issuance of loans by the private banking sector. Most of the money circulating in the economy is created by private banks. When a person gets a mortgage to buy a new home, the bank creates a deposit account with an equivalent amount of money in the ledger (no new money is printed). However, this deposit is equivalent to other types of money, in fact over 99% of total transactions by value in the UK are bank deposits! Only a fraction of the money is physical cash created by the state.
The problem with this type of money production is that we need to maintain a high level of loans to have money circulating in the economy. Understanding how money is created in the modern economy, and the role of debt in the process of money creation, helps to understand one of the key obstacles to escaping the hegemony of growth.
At the individual level, dept economy means that people must constantly work more than they consume, to be able to pay back their loans. Having a shorter working week, and earning less, is not an option if one needs to pay back a home mortgage or student loan. It is difficult to reduce private debt in the absence of growth.
Likewise, in the non-growing economy, the country governments struggle to pay down their public debt and may need to cut spending on education, health care or other social services. Particularly low and middle-income countries, with large debts issued in foreign currency, are often unable to invest in public infrastructure without taking more loans.
In the worst case to manage their loan payments to international creditors, they must resort to privatising the state assets such as electricity production or drinking water, exposing these “public goods” under speculation of private markets, and making them too expensive to most of the people in the country.
If all loans would be paid back, there would not be money in the economy.
Dept drives growth, which in turn is necessary to avoid financial crises. High levels of public debt mean that growth is the only option to manage the loan without hurting the people living in the country. Likewise, high levels of private debt mean that people have no option other than to continue to contribute their labour to the growth economy.
However, in the current financial system, private banks continue to issue new loans for profit, without any consideration of whether these loans contribute to the economy operating within planetary boundaries or advance equality and social justice.
And while banks and asset mangers cash in profits, the circle of more debt and demands for more growth goes on and on and on….
References
Escaping Growth Dependency – Why reforming money will reduce the need to pursue economic growth at any cost to the environment by PositiveMoney
In the capitalist world, tourism is a commodity, a consumer good to escape life’s worries, a getaway from the everyday mundane wage-earning reality, and a highlight of a few weeks of annual leave. Once packaged as a commodity, we also demand that it delivers what the wrapping promises. “A worry-free time with good food, sun, and easy access to a few Instagrammable destinations to share with friends and family.”
But there is a deeper meaning for travel beyond what a holiday package can offer. This deeper meaning is rarely met if the starting point is to define tourism as a commodity. If the travel were a pilgrimage, a lifelong learning journey focused on exploration and making new connections, it would start to resemble a different animal altogether.
If the purpose of the travel would be an inner practice of meeting and experiencing culture, environment, and people, it would mean staying on the often-uncomfortable edge, experiencing something different from your familiar surroundings. Travel - a pilgrimage into your life on the planet earth shared with others.
And as a pilgrim, you would not be looking for luxury and comfort because you did not travel there to consume what “they” or the place can offer, searching for the cheapest and most authentic experience from an online app. Instead, you would be there to learn about yourself, reflect on your reactions when meeting the new, and practicing seeing “them” as equals with mutual wonder and reciprocity.
The world of uncommodified tourism is not a one-way street where only you can go and take what is available; it is open to travel in both directions. In this world, you are equally aware that “they”, however different and a little nerving, may come to see you at your home, even at an unexpected time, when you welcome them with open arms and prepare a feast of reunion.
In summer 1998 the Finnish Forest Administration hired me to support an inventory determining the potential Natura 2000 areas under the EU Habitats Directive. I was excited about the opportunity and eager to explore the uninhabited forests of Eastern Finland! My task was to identify biodiversity rich sites and gather information that would contribute to a selection of areas for conservation.
I got a light blue Toyota car and maps to navigate the logging roads in Lieksa and Ilomantsi, two remote municipalities in the Eastern Finland. During the days I was alone, and, in the evenings, I met with my fellow workers in the lodging provided to us in camping sites and forester huts.
It was a summer filled with mosquitoes in wet gullies and intense sun in the apocalyptic sites of “final felling”.[1] I also met some bears, and while they must have seen me, I only saw their steaming excrement, coloured blue from the berries (Vaccinium myrtillus), or hastily plunged yellow chantarelle stems (Cantharellus cibarius).
When I close my eyes to look back to the memories of summer 1998, I can see two sites in front of my eyes.
First is a lush grove with northern wolf’s-bane (Aconitum lycoctonum) and tall ostrich ferns (Matteuccia struthioptera) and translucent green leaf mosses. It was a tiny green paradise, and I can still hear the water flowing in the creek beneath my feet.
Second is a steep hill with intimate quality of majestic beauty, a few pine trees clearly over 200 years old mingled with younger birch, aspen and rowan. I remember ticking the box of cultural significance and shading the site in the inventory map as a “high conservation value”, frantically looking for something in the list of threated species. To my disappointment, despite the variety of shrubs, flowering plants, and interesting fungus of rotting tree trunks on forest floor, nothing was on my list.
I was a young botany student and my inventory list included mainly plants, but I also looked for signs of small mammals, such as droppings of Siberian flying squirrel (Pteromys volans) that would guarantee the further investigation of the area. Unfortunately, bear was not on my list of key inventory species, I would have loved to tick that box.
A few weeks after finishing the work I got a phone call from my supervisor; she was excited to tell me all the areas that had been accepted to the list. There were several from my list that had made it to the second stage!
The lush green grove was among them, situated in the middle of the otherwise less impressive commercial forest estate, but it was now among those, which could possibly be protected within Natura 2000 new conservation sites. I smiled, and then something darker surfaced from beneath of my belly. With a slightly shaky voice, I asked her: “What about the site shaded with a high conservation value, the beautiful southern slope with old pine trees?”
I could hear her scuffling through her papers, trying to locate the site I was talking about. After a pause, she answered, with a slight hesitation in her voice: “No, that site is not here, unfortunately, it did not make it to the list for further investigation.” After this she again congratulated me on the good notes, and how we had done extremely well, with so many new sites proposed. There was a click, the call had ended.
Who holds the history when the one who has seen it is gone?
Now after 30 years when I close my eyes, I can still smell the pine resin, it is like encountering an old friend after a long time. In my imagination these same pine trees shaded children in the forest herding the cows, in the young independent country of Finland at the start of the century, or a soldier during the second world war stopped to admire the view opening from the southern slope during his advance. Perhaps, a few centuries earlier, the ancestors of these trees provided encouragement for the hunter searching for an elk to serve as dinner to her clan. And then, when I open my eyes, I remember that these pine trees, my majestic friends, are no more there.
These trees were “too old”, not a prime quality timber for construction, clearly over the official recommended final felling time. However, if they did not make to the Natura 2000 list, I don’t think there was anything to stopping their commercial use.
“The fibres of conifers, such as pine and spruce, are long and spaced apart. Because the long fibres give the pulp strength, softwood pulp is often used for products that require durability. Coniferous wood also increases the absorbency of the product, making it suitable for applications such as paper towels, baby nappies and other hygiene products.[2]”
Maybe these pines ended up as pulp and paper for packaging the goods we buy at the supermarket, or as nappies, or as toilet paper.
We humans categorise and classify, put some species in the list of threatened, vulnerable and endangered, making them scarce and more “valuable”, and some on the common list of trivial and prevailing, and thus exploitable. We make decisions to conserve or utilise based on the arbitrary boundaries of modernity on what is valuable and what is not. Is that the best we can make?
________________
References
1] Up to very recently Finnish forest management guidelines suggested clear-cutting/final felling of trees at the end of the “cultivation” period, which included ploughing the ground, which turn the forest floor into treacherous swales and heaps.
Scene: two people meet at the old railway station in the place of “hay and water.”
A: Train is late again today; would you like to have a cup of coffee while waiting?
B: Yes, why not. No, I don’t take any milk. What do you plan to do with this place? What will it be? (Q1)
A: I don’t know. What would you like it to be?
B: Hmm. So, you are going to live here then? (Q2)
A: No, this is not our home.
Some more inaudible chatter…. people conversing may move inside and walk through the empty rooms…they return to the front of the station at the end of the conversation. Then, a train arrives.
Q1 = the most common question; everyone is asking this (41/43)
Q2 = many are asking this (28/43)
Q3 = some are asking this (Note: only people with urban background) (7/43)
*Ref: Bateson, G. (1972) Steps to an Ecology of Mind - Metalogue: “… a conversation about some problematic subject. This conversation should be such that not only do the participants discuss the problem, but the structure of the conversation as a whole is also relevant to the same subject’.
In her article titled Toward a Queer Ecofeminism Greta Gaard (1997) argues for the need for increased understanding of the value of queer theories in the ecofeminist discourse on heterosexism. The hierarchal up-down thinking that places men up and women down in a patriarchal system cannot be tackled simply by reversing the order with a direct corrective and calling for equality for all, but by cultivating a deeper understanding of the dominant logic behind the tendency to group people in categories based on their gender, class, ethnicity, socio-economic status, and sexual orientation. Queer(ing) the degrowth ecology means a new viewpoint into the patriarchal modes of the economy.
Timothy Morton in his book The Ecological Thought, 2012, argues that environmentalists have done a similar conceptual error to capitalists while imagining that there is a Nature “somewhere out there” that needs to be protected. While capitalists have regarded nature as an externality to economic growth, the environmentalists have tended to perpetuate the same dualist thinking, viewing the role of a man as a saviour of the fragile (and feminine) nature. This has created confusion about our place in nature and solidified our common understanding of the heteronormative rules of reproduction and relationships.
The same confusion is commonplace in the phenomenon of drawing strict lines between “human” and “more than human” world. Our bodies are living environments to a broad range of microbes that evolve quickly, swap genes, multiply, and adapt to changing circumstances. These micro-organisms help us in absorbing nutrients, breaking down toxins, and replacing damaged cells with new ones. They are part of “us” and without them, we would not be. Boundaries of people and other animals blur when we realize the deeply interconnected nature of bodies with other living beings.
Queer ecology challenges traditional ideas regarding which organisms, species, and individuals have value, and helps to see the problematic nature of capitalist economies that divide humans and more than human beings into different groups depending on their “economic productivity” and whether they are “contributing to” or are taking out and thus “draining” the economy. While interrogating our conceptions of how nature works, and our place in the ecology, we ask whether our conceptions of how the economy works and our place in it, have been misplaced.
Ecology is weirder and queerer than we might have made to believe. The conventional thinking of the gender binary is more an exception than a rule in the living ecosystem, and heteronormative concepts of reproduction start to crumble with a closer look at actual relationships between living beings. Morton (2012) reminds us that majority of reproduction is asexual and heterosexual reproduction is a late addition to an ocean of asexual division. Most plants and half animals are sequentially or simultaneously hermaphroditic; many live with constant transgender switching. While only some of the animals are hermaphroditic, bisexuality is prevalent in the animal kingdom — including courtship, affection, and parenting among same-sex animal pairs.
Similarly, Brigitte Baptista, director of the Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute in Colombia, points out in her vivid TED talk (April 2018) how our quest to understand the nature through a scientific method has led to breaking the ecology into parts of unrelated items that we have grouped in different categories. While providing accurate descriptions of the individual parts of a system, these specimens lack the gender identity formed in relationships with others. At the same time, we have made our own assumptions and possibly false interpretations of how these parts relate to each other.
The patriarchal dualism in traditional philosophy and hegemony of growth imposed by the mainstream economic thought, are deeply interwoven. Capitalism was built on the foundations of pre-existing patriarchal systems, with a social hierarchy that placed a certain group of men above others, enabling the devaluation of the work of other people, and making it socially acceptable to create exploitative relationships that fuelled wealth accumulation. On a deeper level, this was possible because of the splitting of certain groups of people into different categories and the upholding of gender and social norms that made it possible to keep these categories separate.
The metaphoric iceberg (Figure 1) illustrates the interrelations of the money economy and non-paid spheres that lay below the surface of our current social imaginary of the economy. The tip of the iceberg, representing the money economy, would not float if not being supported by a much larger base from which it draws its existence. Although nonpaid care work, and the regenerative capacity of the ecosystems, are prerequisites to create (and accumulate) capital, we tend not to see them as integral to the concept of the economy.
In her lecture Queer(ing) Ecology (Apr 12, 2019 SAS) environmental philosopher Margret Grebowich draws from the thinking of the Australian philosopher and ecofeminist, Val Polumwood (1939-2008)). Quoting Plumwood’s words…, the nature must be seen as a political rather than a descriptive category, a sphere formed from the multiple exclusions of the protagonist-superhero of the western psyche, reason …1 she points out that if we continue to see people, and other species, in specific categories: “some men”, “other men”, “some women”, “other women”, “some disabled”, “other disabled”, “some animals” etc. we always leave someone out (Figure 2).
She concludes that we need to find other ways to deal with the domination than categorizing people into those who are included and those who are excluded. When the splitting on continues there is always someone outside the rights granted to the others.
Queer(ing) the degrowth ecology means a new viewpoint into the patriarchal modes of the economy. We have built an economy on the false premises of separation, seeped into imaginary categories of groups of people who fit in and those who are left out. A closer inquiry into living systems may reveal that what we have been taught to believe is “natural” might be a myth of the modern world.
References Ambler, L., Earle, J. and Scott, N., (2022) Reclaiming economics for future generations. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978 1 5261 5986 1 Dengler, C. and Lang, M., 2022. Commoning Care: Feminist Degrowth Visions for a Socio-Ecological Transformation. Feminist Economics 28(1), pp. 1-28. Dengler, C. and Strunk, B. (2018) The Monetized Economy Versus Care and the Environment: Degrowth Perspectives on Reconciling an Antagonism. Feminist Economics 24(3): 160–83. Gaard, G. (1997) Toward a Queer Ecofeminism. Contributors: Greta Gaard - author. Journal Title: Hypatia. Volume: 12. Issue: 1. Publication Year: 1997. Page Number: 137 Morton, T. (2012) Ecology Without Nature (page 65-71), in Theory on Demand #8 - Depletion Design: A Glossary of Network Ecologies, Ed. Wiedemann, C., Rossiter,N. and Zehle, S. Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam 2012 ISBN: 978-90-818575-1-2 Morton, T. (2012) The Ecological Thought, Harward University Press ISBN 9780674064225 Plumwood, V. (1993) Feminism and the mastery of nature. New York: Routledge. VIDEO: Queering the Ecology, Margret Grebowicz, School of Advanced Studies, SAS, April 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_JyQPdYeBs (link retrieved 11.6.2022) VIDEO: Brigitte Baptiste, Nada más queer que la naturaleza, TEDxRiodelaPlata 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJC1fsaCbnI (link retrieved 11.6.2021)
The Buru Quartet illustrates that the works of the modern-day heroes, in their imperfections, are not stories of personal glory. These moves are acts of love that create cracks for those to come. In that work of learning and play, we are no longer individuals but knots in a chain of change.
Two interests were coming into confrontation – Europe which had lost its moorings because of the Great War, and the Natives, who were discovering themselves for the first time. And these Natives were not armed with swords and spears, nor with patriotism, and don’t with religion either. Today their weapons were nothing else but speech and pen.
In 1918 the Dutch East Indies, a land we now know as Indonesia was in the making. The Buru Quartet written by the Indonesian literary Master, Pramoedya Ananta Toer is a remarkable saga from the late 18th century to The First World War period illustrating the outlines of the colonial struggle through the eyes of two opposing, but equally forgotten, individuals.
The book, written in the first person, has two protagonists. Raden MasMinke,[1] an early antagonist of colonial rule is the central figure in the three first volumes of the saga. The story follows him as a medical student and then as a journalist, exposing the contradictions he sees in western ideals of freedom and personal liberties with the continuing oppression and “ignorance” of the Natives. The House of Glass is the last volume of the tetralogy. Then focus turns from Minke, a shining light of the Native awakening, to another western-educated “Native”, police chief Pangemanann, whose duty is to arrest Minke as the enemy of colonial powers.
In this last volume of the Buru Quartet – House of Glass, the reader finds herself perplexed to face a more nuanced picture of the institutional workings of the oppression. It is a surprising turn. The protagonist of the last volume, the police chief Pangemanann, is the very instrument that holds the colonial system in place, spying on the workings of the Native uprising. However, as opposed to his task of keeping Raden Mas Minke under his control, he himself regards Minke as his personal “hero”. Pangemanann is a great admirer of the principled and “free” individual, under his surveillance.
Once again, I would have to meet him [Minke]. So, we would no longer just be playing chess against each other from afar. He had never surrendered his principles he has just lost his freedom.
The period from the late 18th century to the early 19th century described in the book created conditions for the growth paradigm and capitalist economies today. The hegemony of growth is built on the colonial expansion and extraction of wealth. South-North critique of economic growth relies on and reproduces relations of domination, extraction, and exploitation between the capitalist center and periphery. While the regions under colonial rule, such as the Dutch East Indies, were colonized in the physical sense, with borders and administrative arrangements, relations of domination are reproduced by the global capitalist market economy up to date, fortified by institutions that create conditions for the hegemony of growth.
What is interesting in the narrative of the Buru Quartet is the illustration of the workings of an institution required to create conditions for this extraction and expansion. There is not a clear line of power between the periphery in the South and the capitalist center in the North, but in fact, the continuity of the system is upheld by the relationships between individuals who protect the system from opposing forces and allow the accumulation of wealth to perpetuate. These individuals like the police chief Pangemanann face a double bind. At the personal level they disagree with the goal of the system, but at the same time continue to uphold and fortify its workings.
At the end of these notes, I wrote: A Servant of the Government! Somebody who is always responsible to the government and feels responsibility to the government, such people never accept responsibility themselves, except to ensure their own security and enjoyment…. And as an official I also had a typical personality of an official. I stamped as forbidden, immoral, and heathen everything that was in conflict with loyalty to the government of the Indies.
Even if he clearly sees his own role in protecting the institution of power that leads to the suffering of his countrymen, he is incapable to move the course of the boat and continues to conform to the rules of the game. He feels trapped in the institution that gives him exceptional wealth and status, compared to his countrymen. In fact, what he most fears is losing his face towards those he loves, his role as the breadwinner and husband, and the continuity of the education of his children through Dutch East Indies administration funds.
The story of the Buru Quartet is deeply humane, revealing the person trapped in the institution that provides him personal identity and worth, but destroys his values and moral standing. A cultural critique of economic growth produces alienating ways of working, living, and relating to each other and nature. This critique is not only applicable to the period of modern-day economies, but to various institutional forms of oppression. The stickiness of the intuition to resist change comes from relationships between individuals that receive their identity from acts that fortify the organization.
While Pangemanann in his desolate role, sinks deeper and deeper in the mud of colonial powers, begging for acceptance and reconciliation, he is also aware that the very system that he is trying to orchestrate, is changing in ways that are beyond his control. Even if individuals placed under his surveillance might not be able to achieve their full potential in leading the revolution, their contributions leave marks in the soil, which are picked up by the next generation.
….the government which we came to know only through feeling its action, was nothing more than the manifestation of the supreme power, yet it was still a power wielded by humans, and human error was in turn an essential feature of human’s own imperfection. And my children, this younger generation, paid more heed to the human character of the government – in other words, the things that weren’t right, its weakness, its mistakes.
Without revealing too much of the plot, I can point out that in the end the police chief Pangemannan, the protagonist of the last volume of the Buru Quartet, also makes a significant personal contribution to the national uprising in Indonesia, albeit for reasons beyond his control.
Book Review: House of Glass - Pramoedya Ananta Toer, English Translation 1992 - The quotations above are derived from the last volume of the Buru quartet House of Glass. Buru quartet, first released in 1979, but only officially in circulation since 1999, is well known and loved literary classic in Indonesia. It is also a deeply controversial book that reveals the struggle of courageous individuals involved in the independence movement and beyond to build a democratic nation; a project that is still very much in making. As a critic of the military dictatorship, Pramoedya Ananta Toer was detained with other political prisoners on the island of Maluku during the New Order Regime of Suharto (Suharto’s authoritarian government was in power from 1966 to 1998). Pramoedya narrated the story of Minke and Pangemanann to his fellow prisoners to provide entertainment to the mundane daily routines of the detention camp. Pramoedya Ananta Toer ‘s work was censored in Indonesia until mid-2000. While still officially banned in Indonesia, the Buru quartet became a popular reading among the student protest movement in the 80s, and particularly its two last volumes provided material to reform-minded citizens and activists to study the dynamics of the uprising.
Katja Pellini is an international development cooperation practitioner from Finland and studying Master’s Degree in Degrowth in Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. She has lived and worked in Indonesia 2013-2017.
[1]Raden and mas are titles held by the members of the Javenese aristocracy, Minke was a son of a Bupati - Native Javanese official with noble blood, appointed by the Dutch assistant resident to administer a region; Bupati is up to date the leader of an administrative unit/regent in a modern day Indonesia
Preparing for Christmas eight years after, I reposted this story on the Yolanda storm in the Philippines 2013 - a slightly shorter version of it was published in Plan International Finland blog a month ago. With the ever-increasing weather shocks interlinked to a warming planet, it is not a story from history only but a reminder of what is to come. (warning….this is in Finnish)
Lauantaina yhdeksäs marraskuuta 2013 Dumagueten kaupungissa, Negros Oriental saarella, Filippiineillä, aurinko paistaa kirkkaalta taivaalta. Puuskaisesta tuulesta, joka riepotteli kadun varren palmuja eilen, ei ole tietoakaan. Olen kantamassa täytekakkua ulos, kun BBC:n toimittaja soittaa: ”Miten teillä menee, oletteko kunnossa?” En tiedä mitä vastasin. Vaikka käytännössä koko kaupunki, jossa silloin asuimme, oli suljettu, mitään erityistä ei ollut tapahtunut. Myrsky ei ollut yltänyt meille asti. Nyt myrskyn jälkeisenä päivänä juhlimme tyttäreni seitsemänvuotis syntymäpäivää ja pihallemme oli kerääntynyt joukko lapsia ja aikuisia.
Toimittaja ei anna periksi: ”Mitä uutisissa sanotaan? Mitä olet kuullut muilta saarilta?” olen hämmentynyt, koska kuulen hätää hänen äänessään. Aamulla kuuntelin uutisia, joissa kerrottiin, että kolme ihmistä oli menehtynyt eilisessä myrkyssä. Kaikki kollegani oli evakuoitu Leyten saarelta jo päiviä ennen, joten tiesin että heillä ei ollut mitään hätää. Minulla ei ollut muuta tietoa.
Hayan supertaifuuni, tai Yolanda hirmumyrsky kuten paikalliset sitä kutsuivat, iski perjantaina kahdeksas marraskuuta Filippiinien itä rannikolle. Yolanda oli Filippiinien historian tuhoisin myrsky. Se ei vain rikkonut tietoliikenneverkkoja mutta myös tiet, sillat ja lentoliikenne Taclobanin kaupunkiin, jota myrsky riepotteli pahiten, olivat poikki viikkoja.
Kokonaiskuva tuhoista valui hitaasti filippiiniläisten, ja meidän, maassa asuvien ulkomaalaisten, tietoisuuteen. Ihmiset keräsivät tietoa ensin sosiaalisesta mediasta, kansainvälisestä mediasta, ja vasta sitten tuhojen laajuus alkoi hahmottua virallisten kanavien kautta. Kun BBC:n toimittaja soitti, olin autuaan tietämätön siitä, mitä Filippiineillä oli oikeasti tapahtunut edellisenä päivänä. Juhlimme syntymäpäiviä, samalla kun Taclobanin kaupungin edustalla, vain 300 kilometrin päässä meistä, ajelehti tuhansia ruumiita meressä.
Filippiiniläiset ovat tottuneet ja osaavat varautua hyvin vuosittaisiin hirmumyrskyihin, mutta Yolandan voimakkuus oli niin suuri ja ennennäkemätön, että siihen ei oltu varauduttu tarpeeksi hyvin. Laitakaupungin korttelit ja rannikolla sijaitsevat kalastajakylät kokivat täydellisen hävityksen. Taclobanin kaupungin paikallishallinto ja peruspalvelut romahtivat, vain 70 kaupungin työntekijöistä tuli töihin katastrofin jälkeisinä päivinä verrattuna 2500 ihmisen työvoimaan, jotka tavallisesti vastaavat hallinnosta, kouluista ja terveyspalveluista. Monet heistä kuolivat, loukkaantuivat, menettivät perheensä tai olivat liian traumatisoituneita pystyäkseen työskentelemään (1). Kaiken kaikkiaan myrsky kosketti yli 16 miljoonaa ihmistä, joista 1,9 miljoonaa menetti kotinsa. Plan Internationalin video kuvaa myrskytuhoja, sekä työmme tuloksia, vuoden kuluttua myrskystä.
On selvää, että myrskyriskit evät jakaannu tasaisesti, vaan lisäävät entuudestaan syrjityssä asemassa olevien, etenkin tyttöjen, lasten, vammaisten ja naisten, haavoittuvuutta. Köyhillä on vähemmän mahdollisuuksia turvautua tai hakeutua suojaan kuin niillä, joiden kodit on rakennettu kestämään. Siksi, varsinkin köyhälistökortteleiden asukkaat eivät halunneet Yolandan aikaan jättää talojaan myrskyn lähestyessä, koska he tiesivät kokemuksesta, että vähäinen omaisuus kevytrakenteisissa taloissa lentäisi helposti taivaan tuuliin tai tuhoutuisi rankkasateessa täysin.
Vuoden 2013 jälkeen Filippiineille on iskenyt ainakin kaksi yhtä voimakasta, tai vielä voimakkaampaa myrskyä kuin Yolanda, mutta menetykset ihmishengissä eivät kuitenkaan ole olleet yhtä suuria kuin Yolandan aikaan. Ehkä evakuointi toimet ovat olleet Yolandan jälkeen tehokkaampia, ja ihmiset ovat oppineet olemaan enemmän varuillaan. Voi myös olla, että nämä myrskyt ovat kiertäneet suuret kaupungit. En kuitenkaan usko, että köyhyys tai eriarvoisuus on merkittävästi vähentynyt. Kaupunkien laitamille kohoaa yhä uusia kevytrakenteisia taloja, ja niitä ilmestyy myös ”ei kenenkään maalle” lähelle jokia, jotka tulvivat rankkasateiden aikaan.
Ilmastonmuutoksen vuoksi sään ääri-ilmiöt tulevat lisääntymään ja osa myrskyistä on edellistä voimakkaampia tai tulee eri aikaan kuin tavallisesti. Vain viikko sitten luin Surigao myrskystä, yhdestä historian voimakkaimmasta trooppisesta syklonista, joka kuitenkin täpärästi väisti Filippiinit ja heikkeni trooppiseksi myrskyksi tuoden rannikolle rankkasateita ja puuskaista tuulta, mutta aiheuttaen vain vähän tuhoa (2).
Vuonna 2013 Yolanda myrsky ei yltänyt Dumagueteen asti, mutta aiemmat myrskyt olivat koskettaneet myös syntymäpäivävieraidemme elämää. Joulukuussa 2012 Pablo myrskyn aikana, kotiapulaisemme toivat omat tyttärensä meille turvaan, kun myrsky riepotteli heidän kotejaan. Sillä kertaa kotiapulaistemme talot kestivät Pablo myrskyn voiman, vaikka monet heidän naapureistaan menettivätkin osan katosta, tai talojen päälle kaatuvat puut rikkoivat rakenteita. Nyt tytöt istuvat puutarhassa odottamassa täytekakkua, jota kannoin pöytään.
Syntymäpäiväpöydän ääressä istui myös kymmenkunta tyttöä Batang Calabnuganin perhekodista kaupunkiin laskevan Banica joen yläjuoksulta. Nämä lapset olivat asuneet lähes vuoden hätämajoituksessa, sen jälkeen, kun joulun alla vuonna 2011 Sendong myrskyn jälkimainingeissa perhekodin sisälle tulviva vesi tuhosi talon alakerran ja puutarhan täysin. Tulva aiheutti valtavat taloudelliset vahingot ystäväpariskunnallemme, Batang Calabniganin perhekodin perustajille. Kesti kauan ennen kuin he saivat kerättyä riittävästi rahaa korjaustöihin. Vasta vuoden kuluttua Sendong myrskystä, ja satojen talkootyöllä tehtyjen korjaustuntien jälkeen, tytöt olivat päässeet palaamaan ”kotiin”.
Näille köyhistä perheistä lähtöisin oleville tytöille oli löytynyt tukijoita Euroopasta. Italialaiselle kansalaisjärjestölle tehdyt yksityislahjoitukset takasivat heidän mahdollisuutensa koulunkäyntiin heti myrskyn jälkeen, ja vapaaehtoiset auttoivat perhekodin korjaamisessa. Näiden tyttöjen koulunkäynti ei keskeytynyt, ja he pääsivät palaamaan turvalliseen perheenomaiseen asumismuotoon.
Tätä toista mahdollisuutta ei anneta kaikille maailman tytöille myrskyn jälkeen. Yhä useampi tyttö kohtaa ainakin yhden elämää ravisuttavan myrskyn, joka uhkaa heidän perusoikeuksiaan, oikeutta koulunkäyntiin ja oikeutta turvalliseen ja terveelliseen asuinympäristöön. Ilmastonmuutoksen vaikutuksesta se myrsky, joka myrskyalttiilla aluilla, kuten Filippiineillä, on ollut osa luonnollista vuodenkiertoa, tulee muuttumaan yhä vaikeammaksi kohdata.
On helmikuu vuonna 2016 ja
sataa kaatamalla. Olen matkalla luennolle ja myöhässä. Näin jo kotoa
lähtiessäni taivaalle kerääntyneet mustat pilvet, mutta ajattelin, että ehdin
kyllä bussiin kuivin jaloin. Erehdyin.
Pakenen taivaalta solkenaan
valuvaa vettä suojaan lähimmän talon terassille. Talon väki tulee tervehtimään
yllätysvierasta, ja perheen tytär tarjoaa minulle riisikakkuja. Terassilla pitää
huutaa saadakseen äänensä kuuluviin sateen jylinän yli, mutta ketään muuta kuin
minua ei tämä erikoinen tilanne näytä häiritsevän. Ehkä siksi, että kenellekään
muulle terassilla olijalle tämä ei ole mitenkään erikoinen tilanne. Laitan
viestin luennon järjestäjälle, että joku muu saa tänään esitellä luennoitsijan ja
huolehtia aikataulusta. Viestiini vastataan hymiöllä; Jakartassa tämä on
arkipäivää. Tunnin myöhästyminen ei ole mikään ihme, ja tavallisin syy on
liikenneruuhka, tai tarkemmin sanottuna tulva tai jokin muu este tiellä.
Jakarta on 30 miljoonan
ihmisen megakaupunki Kaakkois-Aasiassa, ja se vajoaa. Nopean kaupungistumisen
myötä vapaana olevat alueet on asfaltoitu, eikä sadevesi pääse imeytymään
maahan. Pohjavesivarannot eivät uusiudu, ja kun vesi johtoverkosta ei riitä,
ihmiset pumppaavat vettä omaan käyttöön laittomista porakaivoista. Maanvyörymät
ovat rankkasateiden aikaan yleisiä, monin paikoin kaupungin perusta on tyhjän
päällä tai jo vajonnut meren pinnan alapuolelle.
Pohjoisissa
kaupunginosissa hylätyt teollisuusalueet, pysähtyneet rakennustyömaat ja virastotalojen
tyhjät kuoret tervehtivät vierailijaa. Vaikka pilvenpiirtäjät vielä
kansoittavat keskikaupungin, näihin pohjoisen kaupungin kortteleihin ei enää
rakenneta neljän tähden hotelleja, yritykset eivät investoi uusiin liikerakennuksiin
ja asuttujen talojen seinät vihertävät trooppisessa ilmastossa. Hökkelikylien asujat
ovat sopeutuneet siihen, että kaupungin palvelut ja viemäriverkosto eivät yllä
heidän kotikaduillensa, eivätkä koskaan tulekaan yltämäänkään.
Sade omassa
naapurustossani on muuttunut tihkuksi, ja lähden kahlaamaan kujille kerääntyneen
likaisen veden halki kohti omaa kotia. Kaupunkia halkovan kanaalin molemmin
puolin polviin asti yltävä vesi haisee, jätevesi on sekoittunut tulvaveteen. Liejussa
kelluu sandaaleja, muovikrääsää ja puun kappaleita. Kiipeän jyrkkää rinnettä
ylös kuivalle maalle. Olen takaisin omalla kadulla, ja maailma ympärilläni
muuttuu. Tien molemmin puolin seisovat rivissä trooppisen puutarhan ympäröimät kauniit
valkoiseksi rapatut talot, talojen pihoilla yksityiset uima-altaat ja
autotalleissa autonkuljettajien puhtaana pitämät katumaasturit. Yksi niistä on
meidän kotimme. Riisun jo terassilla tulvavedessä rapautuneet liejuiset housut.
Niistä ei enää ole työhousuiksi. Kylpyhuoneessa
harjaan kuurausharjalla ja pyykinpesuaineella jalat puhtaaksi polviin asti, tavallinen
saippua ei riitä poistamaan iholta viemärinhajua.
Me Kemang Timur V:n
asukkaat olemme ylemmän kerroksen väkeä. Meille tulva on totta, mutta sitä on
helppo paeta. Alemman kerroksen väki, naapurimme kanaalin molemmin puolin, asuu
alueella, joka alkaa, kun virallinen tie kotimme jälkeen päättyy. Kartassa tällä
alueella ei ole teitä, taloissa ei ole numeroita eikä niiden asukkailla ole osoitteita.
Siellä asuvat perheet ovat kuitenkin hyvin todellisia. He maksavat vuokraa,
tekevät töitä ja heidän lapsensa käyvät koulua ja leikkivät kaduilla. Joskus,
jos säätiedotus lupaa yöksi rankkasateita, perheiden moottoripyöriä pysäköidään
meidän kotikadullemme turvaan.
Laitan kahvinkeittimen
päälle ja avaan tietokoneen. Onkohan tulvasta jo uutisoitu? Mikä on tilanne
muissa kaupunginosissa? Mikään kanava ei kerro tulvista, siis ihan tavallinen rankkasade
Jakartassa. Uutiskynnys ei ylity. Kuitenkin tiedän, että naapurini
kuivattelevat vielä useita viikkoja tulvan tärvelemiä tavaroitaan. Näiden todellisten perheiden tytöt ja naiset tuulettavat
sohvia, sänkyjä, vilttejä ja vaatteita, joita ei voitu, tai ehditty, nostaa
turvaan kaduilta ja kotien lattioilta. Ennustan, että aurinko kyllä kuivaa
tavarat, mutta viemäreiden haju ei sohvista lähde kulumallakaan.
Ilmastokestävyys
tai resilienssi (eng. climate resilience) tarkoittaa tietoista ja ennakoivaa
kykyä sopeutua ilmastonmuutokseen, toimia joustavasti häiriötilanteissa sekä
toipua ja kehittyä niiden jälkeen. Se on haavoittuvuuksien vähentämistä ja
sopeutumiskyvyn vahvistamista. Ilmastokestävyyden ydin koostuu sosiaalisten,
taloudellisten ja ekologisten näkökulmien samanaikaisesta huomioimisesta.
Some resilience
skills are for keeping together what already is, while some are for moving
forward to what could be. This is a third part of the blog I started a few days
ago if you did not read the first go here
or the second go here.
In psychology, resilience is about responding to a multitude of risks, not to an isolated incidence. Specific risk factors can not be looked at in isolation from other risks, and the effect of a risk factor depends on its timing and relationship to other risk factors. Resilience skills in psychology can be broadly divided into three categories.
Resilience skills at the individual level, which are also related to personality, temperament and cognitive ability,
the resilience that comes from social capital and relationships of an individual with other people;
and resilience related to broader environmental factors and institutions (safety, access to life-supporting services etc).
I learnt that while small amounts of stress are good for building resilience, ongoing stress over a long period can result in lifelong physical and psychological consequences. Stressful experiences during critical periods of brain development in infancy and young childhood are particularly detrimental. This sounds quite straightforward.
Then I delve a bit more on the current research on advance neurobiology. It is fascinating to read how environment is changing physiology of an individual even in a lifetime to respond to adversity! We can map out epigenetic changes, such as DNA methylation and histone modifications, which change gene expressions; preparing the individual for future responses to environmental challenges.
How to connect the psychology of resilience back to the idea of composting?
Fear, doubt, self-hatred and resentment cause resistance for unlearning. If composting and letting go for a change is a vital resilience skill, it is a not a surprise that psychology articles that I did read during this journey, place the self-esteem and sense of control over one’s own life as central resilience characteristics. Conclusively, it does not help to make people who have suffered trauma feel that they are victims of the circumstances, at least not at the personal level.
As a matter of fact, the people that have felt, or are in it just now (be it a climate-related disaster, pandemic or a political conflict), are the real experts of resilience. People who are already profoundly merged in the decay of the modernity, and absurdity of the current development paradigm, are finding alternative ways to nurture life. Remarkably, even in terrible circumstances, people show resilience, a “lust for life”. What this could this mean in practice?
In this podcast episode, Vanessa Andreotti narrates her work with the indigenous communities in Latin America. She used the deep adaptation group practises on “a social collapse” derived from Jem Bendell’s work on deep adaptation. The response of the indigenous community that Vanessa is working with was telling. - What? Are you asking us to imagine what would happen when the so-called “essential” services collapse - if a gasoline station runs out gasoline, or if there is no electricity in the grid, or shelves at the food stores are empty? Some felt offended that this was a picture of a collapse of civilization. - But it is our life now. And we are coping with it, we have to, and we ARE finding ways to live.
I find this insight fascinating. These communities who are in the midst of it all are the best experts to teach resilience skills. It might be helpful if we (who are not so adversely affected by the multiple crises of our globalized world) would pay more attention to what is emerging in these communities. The following anecdote, which I also heard from Vanessa, helps understand this wisdom. “The water needs to be at least knee hight before we can learn to swim; it is no point of practising at the water that is only reaching up to your ankles.
Are
you looking at out of the box or inside the box?
From the
perspective of a global society these lessons from psychology might be
counterintuitive, would we not need to pay attention to vulnerability, to map
out and recognize the systemic inequality and suffering that our Western hegemony
and destructive economic system is imposing to those exploited?
Yes, collectively,
we need to address the historical burden of inequality. Still, answers how to
approach that question might be very different from the ways that we think
problems are fixed.
Indigenous
communities involved in the work of Vanessa’s collective gesturing towards decolonial futures are clear
that if relationships are not healed, are not grounded, we will end up more
killing and destruction. In contrast to regenerative transformation for the
whole of humanity, people will turn inwards, to fight to protect their families
and loved ones from the increasing violence. That insight feels right to
me.
And
indeed, more and more thinkers, artists and activists are paying attention to
relationships and what happens in “a liminal space” in
between. One of the leaders of this thought is a systems thinker, writer and
educator Nora Bateson. What I
particularly like in her theory is that instead of searching for something
outside the current system “to replace the system” we ought to look inside the
system. How we, as warm bodies and intelligent organisms, are in our
relationships with other parts of the system. Her concept of warm data is not a
map of connections that can be drawn on a piece of paper because it is only
perceived when being part of a system and participating in it.
While what
is emerging from that thought feels quite blurry at the moment, I’m very excited
to participate in a warm data lab process myself. I hope to pen down
some reflections from experience in my next blog. Stay tuned.
