Global Climate Change and Niger (written March 2008)

Hot dry dusty sand, a world where spirits and humans live assembled in the same gaudy, mocking stew. Life is subdued, due in part to the saturation of the air and earth, even, of the meditative tones of Islamic practice. Yet I think, too, life is subdued because life is barely hanging on, and to expend too much is to lose it all.
I am thinking about the man I saw sitting on the corner of the road in Niamey, as I'm waiting at a stop light. He has dwarfism, and his body was not made to help him in this world where men, women and children need their bodies to serve them and each other through the day. He is sitting on the ground near a number of people begging roadside, and on several sheets of smudged and worn graph paper, he is working out complex math problems.

Some people seem stretched up to the rooftops while other have been squashed or pulled into twisted shapes. There is a circus of life on the streets, yet everyone is moving or not moving purposefully, every one has a task, has something to accomplish for the day. Camels lope through the streets with heavy burlap sacks, burdens of sand strapped across their backs, goats meander, and people work. The work of people is to survive.
It feels we are living at the edge of the world, the edge of the world as it was, looking out into the future, vast in the Sahara, where our existence is slight and secondary.
~~~~~

Niger is the country of our planet’s first global warming refugees. As the forests and water sources disappear, and the desert creeps in claiming more and more land, I sometimes feel as if I am looking out into the future of our planet, a snapshot of our lives in 25-50 years of accumulated global climate change. I can’t help but ask, what can we learn from the Nigeriennes?

Most news outlets show us that the image of Niger, a stamp of the country’s identity encapsulated, is a starving, skeletal child, malnourished, a victim of drought or, if the coverage is more sophisticated, a victim of economic trade systems, rising market prices, and poorer conditions for livestock and harvest. Yes, malnutrition and health, food and water accessibility are major concerns for Nigeriens (within a much more complicated situation), yet Niger is much more than this simple image. Niger is a country where its citizens are dedicated to staying and making their nation stronger, healthier. The streets of Niamey are not teeming with beggars—almost everyone on the streets seems to be moving with a purpose, engaged in a task at hand, working hard to create opportunities to make life better.

In the 1980’s Niger established a national solar energy center to make use of one of their greatest resources, the sun. Sustainable development agencies are constantly working to find ways to incorporate PVCs and other alternative and sustainable energy systems into their overall programming. A high level of attention is being placed on disaster mitigation, prevention, and preparedness work, working with regions to develop contingency plans—rather than the usual humanitarian community’s tendency to react only once a situation has become severe and alarming (and visible to the international community).

I heard some Canadian missionaries complaining about the black plastic bags permeating the town dump outside of Niamey. Yes, it is true, the plastic bags are a problem (and I do my own part to avoid using them), but frankly I have seen much worse, and for a country coping with such extreme poverty, they have done a good job, as collective individuals, at keeping the waste and refuse to a minimum. There is a NGO that works to collect and recycle the dreaded black plastic bags into infrastructural building materials and other products that must be long-lasting and sturdy. Most people separate out their organic/bio-degradable garbage and bury it (some even apply a form of composting to gardens), and much of the remaining garbage is burned (not ideal, but within the infrastructural and finance constraints, this is the current solution). What is left for the dump is mainly mulch and black plastic bags. Plastic bottles are re-used continuously, and resold on the market, which contributes to economic development. Compare this site outside of Niamey to our better-hidden dumps and landfills in the United States, and again, there is something to be learned about using everything you have, re-using it, and being careful about waste creation and disposal.

Nigerien villages and pastoralist/nomadic societies have been continually and increasingly challenged to adapt to the earth’s changing landscape, to shift and move entire communities in search of water, food, a means for survival. The pressure to survive is increasing as the rains have not been falling in the same regular patterns as have been dependable for farmers and pastoralists alike for generations upon generations.  Traditionally non-nomadic agriculture-based villages are finding themselves forced into the nomadic or semi-nomadic life, as a matter of absolute necessity, seeking water, seeking food, seeking sources of income and means of livelihood  elsewhere.

People are forced to find new ways to function to survive, and while supporting that process, opportunities also offer themselves up for learning, for thinking about the way our entire planet can prepare for the changes we are experiencing.

This outlook can be very frightening when we consider the accelerated rate of global climate change, with the planet’s tempests rolling over us at an alarming rate, the common phrase in emergency after emergency becoming, “I’ve never seen things this bad before, in all my years,” or “worst/highest/strongest levels in documented history” with every hurricane, every flood, every massive earthquake and tsunami.
We could very easily fly into a panic and sound the alarm bells until we stroke out, or fall into a despair, become overwhelmed and give up, we can shut down and move into denial, or we can start to think about how we are going to move forward, in the healthiest manner possible, into this changing, new, and unknown future.

Niger offers us a case study to learn from the Nigeriens and the international agencies within Niger, how we can better move into our future.

By all means, slowing the past and preventing progression of global warming is an urgent and pressing priority, and our investments in the Kyoto Treaty and other collective treaties and mandates, in developing solid infrastructure based on solar, wind, and other alternative energies (bio-fuel and electric cars, for example) while making changes in our lifestyles—walking, riding bikes, carpooling, using less, making more of what we have, investing and engaging in local organic food systems, incorporating eco-friendly energy systems into our homes, etc. as we can afford….all this should be done from the most global to most intimate levels of our lives. Simultaneously, we must recognize that not only is change coming, but that change is HERE, it is happening now, and we cannot duck our heads in the sand and hope it will magically repair itself. We need to learn NOW how we will cope, as societies, as a globe, as individual families, with our potential future, in order to direct its development with intentions for health, peace, harmony and balanced with the Earth.

Global Community Healing: The Inner and the Outer are the Same

I created this blog in order to initiate a discussion around the challenges for healing in our lives, from the most immediate and intimate levels of self-family-community, out to sweeping regional and global levels as our living planet, and thus humanity, faces greater threats and changes than we've imagined in our known history of existence. Potentially, it is also my hope that this forum for resource sharing, discussion and exchange, may serve to springboard a new form of organization, one that grows from seeds of mutual respect, of shared concern and compassion, whose originating structures are based on the connection we share with one another, the responsibility we share for each other, the planet, our children and all life forms, and future generations to follow.

I have had discussions with many of you about the current structures of international development and humanitarian work, international institutional financing, aid delivery, and approaches to poverty alleviation and community "development." So much of those systems has been founded on the very (often racist and classist) structures which contributed to the creation of such inequity and suffering we now experience; for example, the systems created through Bretton Woods and WTO were not intended to alleviate suffering and facilitate local community health and growth-- they were intended to exploit to the fullest extent possible and then discard. For many of us working in international and national humanitarian and development agencies, it may sometimes feel that we ourselves are being exploited to the fullest extent, and then discarded. It may feel that the institutions in which we operate are creating barriers to what we believed were the originating intents and missions of our work: social-economic-environmental-political justice, dignity, respect, education and opportunity, health and well-being. When working to rebalance inequities and support and honor the dignity and Rights (civil/political/social/economic/political) of all human beings, why would we structure our work and systems upon the same engines created for mass exploitation and accumulation, expediency and profit at the expense of lives and the health and opportunities of generations of our descendants? [I'd like to point out that I don't think it is the individual management necessarily responsible for those experiences; the systems and structures, the global institutions have an energy and timeline--a life force!- of their own. Having been in upper management positions myself, it is clear that certain energies are slippery and powerful, beyond your grasp, and you may be lucky if you can only redirect and slightly improve their directions and flow.]

I am opening a kettle of worms, but this is what I'm asking us to talk and think about. YES it is easy to identify all the problems, all the brokenness and negativity in our world and work.
The question, the true challenge is, can we start over, clear the boards and begin organically with more appropriate systems of local, community, regional, and global healing, built from our shared wisdom and knowledge, honoring what each person has to bring to the table, learning from each other while we teach, and thus heal?

I have seen too many people in our work burn out, self-medicate with alcohol or other substances, become workaholics or machine-like while shutting down all other aspects of themselves and their lives, or just give up and start the search for a less-stressful, decently paying corporate job. In fact, many people I know expect that there will come a time when they will leave the work of building healthy communities, advocating for human rights and social justice. It is viewed as an inevitable.

The work of our lives should not chew us up and spit us out. We should be in this for the Long Haul. Our work should feed our spirits and our psyches, not just our mouths and wallets; and we should be able to connect our deepest spiritual selves with the application, manifestation, and meaning of our work. We cannot contribute to healthy societies if we ourselves are not healthy and whole. We cannot expand the numbers of people who see themselves as a part of this movement, as contributors to an energy for healing and positive transformation, if we cultivate an air of exceptionalism, the cynical toughened warrior who sacrifices so others don't have to give more than a passing thought, or maybe an occasional online donation to some non-profit or NGO.

HOW DO WE EVOLVE?
"Evolve or perish!"

This post is subtitled, "The Inner and Outer are the Same!" In many spiritual practices and faith traditions, it is believed that any separation between the spiritual realm and the physical/material realm is merely an illusion; in fact, the divisions we make with ego and separation, "mine and yours," identity and time, do not exist. The divisions help us function and evolve in this material realm, but do not wholly reflect our deepest truth. In Buddhist and Hindu and many other spiritual practices, we are all One, we are of the same, we are each other, there is no distinction between inner world of dreams and outer world of driving one's car, between "us and them," between mind-body-spirit.

I find these ideas very interesting and relevant when thinking about the work of a healthier world, the work of so many NGOs and INGOs and non-profits, the work of community activists and mobilizers, of all of us. I've had colleagues tell me sometimes they felt their work was "soul-killing." If we do not honor, protect, and work from our spirits, our souls, our psyches (or whatever language one might be more comfortable using), then our work and our lives are seeded with something poisonous rather than nourishing. How do we make a shift, honor ourselves and each other in the root, process, motive, and operations of our work, of our connections to community and to each other?

I have a lot more to say and to ask. I've been thinking about these subjects for a long while, dedicating a lot of time, energy, self-introspection and research over almost 2 decades now. Yet, before moving forward, I would like to hear what others have to say. I ask that all posts be respectful and delivered in a manner of cooperation and constructive intent. It is not a requisite that we always agree, nor should we; conflict is the opportunity for growth, self-discovery and change!

I encourage your contributions, resources, links, opinions, research work, or whatever else you may wish to bring to the table!
Welcome, my friends.