Economic and environmental trade-offs

As I look around this country going through an economic transformation, as I begin to get to know my surroundings a bit, I observe this trade off. This country is beginning to boom – beginning. From the big business and foreign investments all the way down to the individual coal makers, the environment is being slaughtered. Mainly what we have around Voi is the small scale business, where people are able to collect local resources add a value and sell it to make a living. We have people who cut down trees, treat the wood and sell the charcoal for cooking. We have people who dig these massive ditches collect water and bake bricks. Both of these are resulting in massive amounts of erosion, decreasing soil quality, and are contributing to desert encroachment-just to name a few issues. I don’t really know enough about environment and local ecologies to be able to get into the details, but its serious here. Do we condemn people and tell them to stop these practices? What if it means that they are unable to feed themselves and their families? What if it means another generation without access to secondary school? In a country with a 7% growth rate last year, millions are living in poverty and little is being done about it. So for those that are industrious enough to find a way to make it-should we turn a blind eye and allow them?

Crazy difficult questions. If we think about it, most industrialized nations have gone through a period of environmental exploitation to get to where we are today (hell, we are still doing it!). Have we learned our lessons? Have we learned any lessons? Where we are today, a place where we have lost a great deal, and stand to lose a great deal more(in terms of our environment) all in the name of economic growth and power, do we feel it has been worth it? Is it our place to tell people they cannot grow at the same rate we did, they cannot feed themselves, because we have the benefits of hindsight and maybe we have learned a few lessons? I don’t have the answers, just the questions for now.

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Interestingly, shortly after finishing journaling about this, I read an editorial in the daily paper addressing the environmental woes of Kenya. The man was asserting that the church, more the mass conversion to Christianity and the throwing away of old tradition, is to blame for the environmental state of Kenya. Essentially (for those who don’t know) many of the old traditions, animism especially, have a devout respect for the earth and its elements. Inanimate objects like rocks and trees were respected as living spirits. People sacrificed to the earth and their ancestors that walked it before them. They would never imagine cutting down a tree just to sell it off.

This is what I love. Everything is connected. Economics, religion, environment. Its huge. Ignoring these connections is where many programs - developmental, social, political, economic- anything - go wrong.