Publications
Women Taking Charge of the Environment
National Conference, 6, 8 of March 2005
Organized by
The National Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism
Breaking out of the box – New designs and radical approaches challenging current environmental practices
By Nirmala Nair (Director ZERI-Southern Africa)
Women have been taking charge of their environment for ions, from time immemorial.
We have ample proof of that in history, religion, archaeology.
Women even now are directly in charge of running the `natural affairs’. The only difference is that while in the past our role was respected, upheld in the traditional societies, now our role has been de-valued, despite all the clamor we make for women’s right. Perhaps, perhaps, we need to think, again , did we really want to be part of the paradigm that is any way excluding us? Don’t we rather work towards a paradigm shift, where by new values and new ethos have to be reconstructed, reformulated and regrouped.
The whole issue of women taking charge of our environment is precisely stemming from this need to redefine the current paradigm, to reconfigure current environmental practices.
We cannot just be caretakers of a paradigm that we do not believe in; that we did not create, that was not part of a consultative process. How can we have a buy- in a paradigm where technocratic approach to environmental practice is superseding all time.
Technocratic approach to development is what has resulted in the state of the globe today. Massive dependence on technology that serves only a few, technology that is not affordable, not accessible and becomes obsolete even before it leaves the factory door. Then the investors and the scientists ram it down our throat to recoup the money that is invested in such technologies. No one consults us, but we must pay the price, with our bodies, our lives, our children’s lives and our environment.
We had ways of working with nature, nature power, nature medicine; we had ways of working with weather and sensing the weather, we had ways of dealing with illness everywhere, illness of plants and crops, animals, children and people. We worked with our bodies and spirit, spirit of nature, spirit of environment. There was power in our work as well as humility. We worked as healers and nurturers. We carry the genetic programming of being the healer and nurturer of body mind and soul, of our inner environment and out environment.
Recent history, especially with the advent of industrialization, a shift in powers took place. Convergence of patriarchy, church and modern science. This powerful convergence later made potent by the colonial take- over and the emergence of globalization rapidly eroding the power of women; the role of women in the wider environment as well as within our own home steads.
Globalised agenda, agribusiness agenda, multinational’s agenda foreign aid agencies clamoring to sell their expertise and technologies (that are becoming redundant in their own countries) became the agenda of our own sisters and brothers, very stupidly very ignorantly swayed by greed and instant self gratification motives. These agendas get packaged in policies with attractive names like ‘sustainable development,’ It does not mean anything. It only brings sustainability to those who are selling it (as consultants…as expertise, as government officials whose coffers get filled by multinationals)
(By the way it is this attitude of ours that has shamefully brought South Africa down from the rank of 77 to 93 in the global environmental index report in just in the last two years). It has two sides to the coin, while many countries are trying to `better’ their lot in terms of environmental sustainability, we are unashamedly and with all ignorance cow-toying to multinationals rather than our own people …)
Scientific revolution that got men inventing and mixing potent cocktails of nerve gas has now metamorphosised into pesticides and insecticides. We must now pay for these insecticides, pesticides and other persistent pollutants mimicking our hormones and wreaking havoc in our bodies.
African women in particular have been suffering from this double edged sword of progress and development. Ever changing food habits are wreaking our bodies. We don’t want any scientist to tell us that our health is declining every decade; we know it from our own diseased bodies, decreased energies. We are devoid of our vitality and health and well being all around, still some of our sisters in the women’s movement think it is middle class issue to focus on health issues, or looking after our own bodies. We have succumbed to the `rights agenda’ with no right to stay healthy, no rights to a healthy environment.
What can we do; what can we do…
While we may proudly hang on to all the legislative strides and other structural evidence of progress and development in new South Africa, can we promise ourselves that we look to a future that is not stolen from us; that we work for a future - not poisoned air and poised earth and poisoned water; we look to a future where our GNP is guided by healthy people and happy people, we look to a future where trade is determined on the basis of what its impact is on people’s health and the health of our environment.
This is the paradigm shift that we must pledge to work towards.
Primary driving force towards such a paradigm shift is in the ability to think out of the box. Can we take that challenge, to move out of the comfort zones, to move out of what media and outsiders tell us how we look, what we must eat and what we must wear, how we must conduct our lives.
Begin once again by observing nature. How nature has survived the onslaught of us greedy humans, the youngest arrogant species on this planet. Even the cockroach has been on this planet longer than us; the earthworms have survived million of years…we the youngest will not survive that long…
Can we have some humility learning to understand what co-evolution with nature means?
We women are more designed to do that anyway, do you know that we have many more neural connections between our left and right half of the brain. So we can juggle foraging for food as well as making sure our little ones are safe; we can truly multi task and learn simultaneously.
Our bodies are designed just differently, so let us honour them take charge of our bodies are taking charge of our environment. The environment inside is a true reflection of the environment outside.
When we understand true meaning of co-evolution with nature, we will not need landfill sites leaching into our soil; we will not need PCBs wreaking and mimicking endocrine disrupting hormones in our lives; we will not need genetically modified food killing us softly; we will not listen to the experts, who try hard convincing us that GM foods is safe, when our personal experience proves otherwise.
A new kind of feudalism is on the rise, a feudalism that is not based on chiefdoms of the past, it is new feudal lords who peddle in the market place both the invaluable natural resources and the life of all organisms thriving on this planet has become a commodity in this market place, with a value and a barcode..
Real sustainability comes from having a way of looking at the world where every single thing is connected, interconnected. And ingeniously being able to create as many inter connections as possible, like the stellar planet in that creation of a networked mind set, intelligence lies in the future of sustainable environment that we women must manage co-creating the future, take charge.
How can we as women influence the paradigm shift and introduce the radical technologies needed for challenging the current environmental practices.
First and foremost: Taking charge of environment has become very technology oriented. We need technology, but a technology that is designed after the primordial designs of nature.
Go into any forest, do we see a landfill site, do we see a compactor truck. No. We human created the notions of waste, we created technology then to deal with our waste. What we don’t see does not exist. So in the typical urban design fashion, we don’t see the waste we generate, it is whisked away once a week by nifty compactor trucks to some unknown destination of landfill sites.
As our cities bloat, so does our landfill sites. We have reached a situation of perilous crisis; we have no idea what to do with all the waste.
In ZERI, the global network that I am part of, we consider waste as a resource. Just like the forests that does not require a landfill, but works ingeniously, co-creatively transforming waste into nutrients for many kingdoms that thrive on the forest land, we in ZERI work with all possible waste, not with just a limited understanding of recycling, waste minimization etc. All these while good in themselves, does not challenge in the first place the ways of modern day living, nor does it deal with waste in a fundamentally transformatory. Waste recycling, clean production etc does prove very costly in the end, we need to rethink fundamentally our production process.
There is also no technological quick –fix that is going create over night solutions for the last couple of hundreds of years of obsessive industrialization of a particular kind that we have been witnessing – without fossil fuels and related energy we would not have been able to come this far. Now we are on the brink with the end of the fossil fuel energy looming large in our own life time.
I challenge the urban planners; can we create cities that are like verdant forests, cities with no landfills????and affordable energy solutions that are not dependent on fossil fuels.
A child who is able to see that she can make electricity with banana peels and egg shells will never believe in our current energy strategy. A child who can see that all the garbage we eat is also producing our packaging materials will laugh at the notion of landfill site spewing methane and polluting our environment. Capturing methane from the landfill site for carbon credit is not going solve the problem, at the same time, it creates the notion that landfill sites are okay, and it is generating money for us.
This is typical technocratic solution, most of the time created by men in suits behind the desks and behind the clinical labs, often not in touch with reality.
A small project that ZERI Southern Africa is involved with in HoutBay, Cape Town is creation of bio-plastic from kitchen waste. The idea is that eventually there will be no waste going out of Hout bay. All waste will be processed and recovered locally through various small enterprises.
To conclude, what we need to do first and foremost is get real with our research agendas. Who is calling shot at the national level, who voices are heard when Department of Science and Technology decided on research agenda, Who pays for CSIR’s research agendas. Can we engage at that level? Actively decided that national research agenda is able to reflect our demands and our design needs.
No one technology is able to solve all the problem, we need a multitude of technologies, we need to make sure that science and technology is there to serve our basic needs through simpler solutions that are accessible and available to all without creating dependency on the few experts.
It is also not justified to focus on technologies that come from Northern countries because most of these are developed to save labor. When millions are searching for a job and millions more will enter the job market looking for an income in the years to come., we cannot import technologies from other countries that do not offer us solutions of how to create more jobs.
Globally there is a new emergence; even the men are abandoning their world. I mean the sensible ones, the ones who are acutely aware that how fast we are destroying our planet. The ones from the heart of the powerhouses, NASA, Fortune Five hundred, Club of Rome. These men have begun to realize it is time for deep change, in ethics, in business, in governance, in science and technology in short these emerging consciousness is embracing the sea of humanity, transcending the petty battles of egos, skin colour; bank balance, brands;
This is a new humanity on the rise, a deep humanity, a convergence a groundswell of people proud to be who they are, proud in their roots and yet reaching out, seeking new synergies; seeking to create a new world not lined up neatly in silos of colour and victimhood.
We women are playing a key role in this emerging and transcendent world. One day we will look back to this day, when we consciously set our intentions to change the current paradigm, challenging the current paradigm of sustainable development to co-creating a world that is richly rooted in diversity and abundance of life – working in co-evolution with nature meeting basic needs of all. © 2005
