Title: Bob's editorial for Environment magazine
Friends:
Below is my draft editorial for Environment magazine drawing on the experience of the reality tour. References will refer to previous magazine articles. Comments especially from folks who shared the Carasque experiences are welcome but note I am already over size limits of 575 words.
Have a good holiday,
And a special thanks to Katie and the translators of the UNES transcript as well as a chance to share the pictures with the family.
Bob
Is there a global environmental divide?
Robert Kates
Environment magazine has consistently sought to expand our knowledge of environmental problems, issues, and movements in the developing world. Last year, for example xx% of our articles were based on research related to developing countries. For this editor, at least three important ideas stand out. 1. There is no real north-south divide in caring for the environment. Environmental concerns are universal (Dunlap xxxx). 2. But the nature of these concerns may differ. (McGranahan xxxx) In poor countries and for poor people the immediate necessities of clean water and sanitation and the risks of local and indoor pollution as well as natural hazard vulnerability may dominate their concerns. 3. People everywhere need to both think and act globally and locally. In a globalized world environmental problems, issues, and movements—all have local, national, and global dimensions. In this issue, Maria Rodrigues, tries to disentangle the complex relationship between local, national, and global movements concerned with rain forests in Brazil and Ecuador and dams in India.
All of these points were brought home to me on a recent trip to El Salvador as part of a local Maine delegation investigating the impacts of free trade on the economy and the environment. In San Salvador we met with a major environmental organization Unidad Ecologica Salvadoreña (UNES), a 17 year old group of some 30 member organizations and universities. With programs in public policy, gender, local sustainability, institutional capacity building, and risk, readers of environment would find UNES familiar. But the concerns do differ. For example, major risks are from earthquake, landslide, volcanic eruption and flood made worse by absence of land use planning and failure to enforce building codes as well as more familiar risks from pesticides and pollutants. While active in 100 communities, UNES also grapples with transborder and global issues such as pesticide residues on imports from neighboring countries, genetically modified seeds, or highways solely designed to serve free trade areas being built in ecologically sensitive areas.
But it was in the village of Carasque (pop. 300) nestled in the high mountains along the Honduras border and a long-term sister city of Bangor, Maine, that we came to appreciate the depth of environmental awareness and concern. Carasqueños have a difficult time and their staple crops of corn, beans, and sorghum can no longer compete with imports. Younger men leave on a perilous journey to the United States and their remittances are the largest single source of income in El Salvador.
But the bright drawings of the school children speak of love of their land and the need to protect it. On a steep hillside an elderly farmer shared his experimental learning as he turns his hectare of land into an organic agro-forest farm filled with at least 30 different trees, fruits, and crops. Half a world away from the Israeli center of drip irrigation innovation, we marveled at his system which uses bamboo as well as recycled intravenous drips from the local clinic. Later that day we met with the water committee trying to realize a long term dream of potable water for the village. An NGO representative urges them to create a revolving fund for replacement and repair and to meter water and assess households by the water used. The villagers, whose communal labor will install the system, know about the struggle against privatization by Bolivians in Cochabamba, and worry about such market-based approaches (Olmstead 2003). Local need and a global debate fuse in Carasque. The real global environmental divide may be along the communal-market divide.
