Are the Gods Angry?
In indigenous cultures around the world, native people do not link floods, droughts, rising sea levels to the effects of climate change or deforestation. When they are forced to struggle for survival or migrate, they blame an angry God. “God is punishing us,” they say to those who reach out to help them.
In the Central Pacific, a relocation lottery is offered to residents of the 33 island states that make up the Republic of Kiribati. The 75 families who win the annual lottery set up by New Zealand, are offered legal, permanent resident status. They are able to relocate to higher ground. Most islanders, however, don’t know anything about the lottery and so look to the sky and wonder why the gods are angry.
In the Gambia, Senegal, Mexico, and northern Canada, the story is the same. Changing weather patterns that have no historic precedent are disrupting the lives of traditional people. For the Inuit living close to the Arctic Circle, there are now weather related disruptions in hunting, fishing, and caribou migration.
In a win-lose world, someone’s loss is another person’s gain. As the Arctic ice melts and new mineral resources come to light, the Canadian Government is trying to ignore the agreed upon Rights of Indigenous People. They want to be the first to claim rights to minerals extracted from this far northern land.
At one of today’s UNFCC side event called World Forest Day, the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) passed out a booklet titled: Do Trees Grow on Money? It turns money on its head to showhow money is both the driving cause of deforestation and the force that can save it. Case studies illustrate how corruption, political instability, military activities, underestimation of financial risk, high turnover of government staff, and a drive to maximize financial returns from “assets” (that is, a forest of two-by-fours) all degrade attempts by non-profit organizations to establish forest protection policies.
In a win-win world, the focus is on mutual benefit. Sunday, I’ll take a field trip to the island of Nusa Penida. Although the island is famous as a scuba diver’s paradise, I’ll be touring it’s newly inaugurated Renewable Energy Park. The park hosts the first wind farm in Bali. It’s new solar energy systems supply electricity to the grid, power a water purification system, and dry seaweed for food for local residents. A biofuels facility transforms cattle and pig dung and converts it into biogas.
Tomorrow, I’ll share insights from this visit.