Subject: (none)
From: [email-masked] (Charles Benbrook)
Date: 23 Jul 1994 17:17:38 -0000
Newsgroups: alt.sustainable.agriculture

To SANET From: Chuck Benbrook Re: Posting on Ecol-econ

     Richard Salvador is a PhD candidate in Hawaii, from a small
island in Micronesia.  His posting speaks of his efforts to study
and advance sustainable development in his homeland.  It reminds
me of sentiments felt by many advocating change in agricultural
production methods in this country.  Have we become so used to the
gap between rhetoric and actions that we no longer question it?
     Think about the line in his last paragraph -- "...the
structure of power that makes it possible to advance those ideas."
While the need for and practice of biologically based sustainable
production systems, and associated methods to build soil fertility
and manage pests with minimal ecological disruption have advanced
steadily in the U.S., indeed profoundly in the last decade in some
major cropping systems/regions, the institutions and
constituencies that generally make up the "conventional"
agricultural community have solidified their control over the
policy process and fiscal priorities, and used a host of public
laws/regulations/ processes to raise the cost and difficulty of
change.  Action recently completed on the FY 1995 budget is yet
the latest confirmation that the "more things change the more they
stay the same".  Why?  It has something to do with the structure
of power, which in turn reflects, indeed is fueled by, the flow
and access to money -
- both income from the sale of food, inputs, services, and public
benefits in the form of direct subsidies and tax benefits.
Conventional ag inputs generate over $15 billion in annual income,
a percentage of which is diverted to political activity and
promotion of industry interests.  In the political arena, whether
we like it or not, money talks and... the sus ag community and
biological pest control industry have a few cents to spend to
match a thousand dollars.  No wonder things are so seemingly
grid-locked.
     There are hopeful signs.  Farmers are discovering that
conventional systems are costing them money, and are shifting
business elsewhere.  The change is real, al beit slow.  New
leaders in Congress are sincerely contemplating change.  Check out
Cong. Richard Durban's (new chair, ag approps. subcommittee in the
House) excellent piece in the latest issue of the Journal of Soil
and Water Conservation (pages 339-342, July-August, 1994).
Despite Cong. Durban's openness to change and differing
priorities, the bill produced by his subcommittee varied only
modestly from those in recent years.  While influential he too
must work within contemporary political reality, a reality no one
person can change quickly nor long ignore.  For the same reasons
farmers and sus ag advocates now recognize it is vital, on the
farm, to look at dynamic interactions within an ecological
paradigm,  I continue to believe those in the sus ag community
seeking change in public policies need to focus more energy on
understanding and influencing the basic "ecological" principles
and cycles of the political process.  In the 1990's it is not
enough to have solid science, careful analysis, and the broader
public's interest on your side.

     Richard Salvador's message --

Topic No. 8

Date: Fri, 22 Jul 1994 01:47:24 -0500 (CDT) From:
[email-masked] To: [email-masked]
Subject: Message from Micronesia (105 lines) Message-ID:
<[email-masked]>

DEAR ECOL-ECON:

I AM FORWARDING THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE AT THE REQUEST OF A
COLLEAGUE IN
THE PACIFIC. I BELIEVE HIS VIEWS ARE HIGHLY RELEVANT TO THE
DISCUSSIONS
IN WHICH WE HAVE BEEN ENGAGED.

--STEPHEN GUASTELLO
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

>From:     IN%"[email-masked]"  "Richard Salvador"
21-JUL-1994 To:  IN%"[email-masked]"

Hello and aloha to everybody (from Hawaii): I regret to inform you
that despite my continuing interest in sustainable development for
the small island developing States, I have not found enough
funding to come and attend the conference.  I am currently a PhD
student at the University of Hawaii and I am from the small island
developing State of Palau (soon to gain its "independence"
supposedly from the United States in October of this year).  While
I am not discounting the value of sustainable development as a
concept and as a compelling idea whose time has come--I raise the
same issues that the small island developing States (including
many Third World, developing countries raised in Rio) raised at
the recent U.N. Global Conference for Small Islands in
Barbados--namely the funding necessary to implement sustainable
development.  While much of the debate centers on the
responsibility of developed nations to agree to fundamental
provisions on appropriate mechanisms for technology transfer,
capacity building and human resource development, my own
experience as a third worlder struggling to match my aspirations
with essential funding has been met with resistance and
indifference, perhaps more subtly because of clear languages
expressed on these issues.

Ever since 1947 when the U.S. forced out the Japanese from the
Pacific Ocean and incorporated Palau and the rest of Micronesia
into a UN Trusteeship political system with it being the sole
"Administering Authority," and bound itself to advancing the
political and economic sufficiency of the islands, U.S. federal
assistance has been negligent.  In all of Micronesia, it has
produced only less than 4 PhD's, and none in Palau.  I tread a
lonely path that no one from my village has trod.  I saw and
experienced a great feeling of euphoria in Barbados when the small
islands met, but that quickly turned to disappointment when key
institutions here in Honolulu like the East-West Center, the
partly federally-funded program Sea Grant at the University of
Hawaii and many other have turned a blind eye to aspiring island
(sust. dev) professionals.  So much for capacity building and
human resource development.

Much of the claims of global warming and global climate change
will have dramatic effect on low lying islands and atolls which we
call home; many of earth's biological diversity is entrusted to
our care, and our traditional patters of resource management and
village involvement in those "development" processes are
threatened because of expected sea-level rise, corral bleaching,
radioactive waste dumping in our ocean backyards, etc, etc.  But
our challenges are consequences of events and processes
originating from outside our region, namely industrialization in
the developed world.  When the Cold War ended, the developed world
of America, the former soviet Union, Germany and others were stuck
with tons and tons of nuclear-warheads, spent nuclear fuel and
other highly polluted radioactive wastes.  What better plan than
to ship them to Kalama Island off of Hawaii, to Micronesia, and/or
to Palau and "remote" islands of the Pacific where it's out of
developed nations' "sights," and "out of their mind" and
conscience.  Much of these have already taken place. If developed
nations' obsessed scenarios of potential catastrophic global wars
and/or global calamities were suspended long enough to consider
the wars that have been already waged against small peoples out in
the Pacific, they would be appalled at the purposes and objectives
of their "sustainable development" debates.  Exclusive debates, I
must admit.  The inhumanity of "sustainable development"
discussions taking place around the world, but particularly within
developed nations, is not seen long enough to be understood
clearly how it dehumanizes peoples who have for centuries lived
off of, and close to the rhythms and natural processes, of the
Earth.

Michael Redclift's charge of moral absolutism against those who
resort to their own moral convictions as poor substitutes for
thought needs to be qualified in terms of where the debates on
sustainable development is being developed (in his 1987
Sustainable Development: Exploring the Contradictions, Routledge).
Because for many third world (traditional) communities, the
advocacy of the benefits of environmentally-sound "development" is
based on historical certainly, not advocacy based on blind moral
convictions.  The charge of moral absolutism has tended to
originate from the criticism of, and therefore the reaction to,
sustainable development, not necessarily originating from third
world (traditional) communities whose "sustainable development" is
historically linked to the natural rhythms of the earth;
"sustainable development" is employed here for lack of a better,
more fitting metaphor employed in the past.  In this sense, the
reaction to sust. dev., and the charge of moral absolutism
(originating from the west) has portrayed itself as a sort of a
contented cynicism which is antagonistic to real change.

I wish you all success in your deliberations.  Remember that my
academic and intellectual interest in sustainable development is
an established and well chosen activity.  I wish to do as Redclift
does, by his subtitle: explore the contradictions, not only in the
soundness of the idea itself, but in the structure of power that
makes it possible to advance those ideas.  Historically, my
familiarity with a certain area of the world has quite
disappointed me.  However, I wish to remain optimistic and do all
I can to advance, as I said, an idea whose time has come.

Mahalo nui loa (thank you very much) in Hawaiian. Aloha
pumehana--ahui hou. Peace,

Richard Salvador, MA PhD Candidate University of Hawai'i at Manoa

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