The Green Revolution and Rio
Repost This ArticleIt has been many years of writing in the Sri Lankan media of the stupidity of the so-called Green Revolution that successive governments in Sri Lanka aided by their ‘knowledgeable ‘ scientists and bureaucrats have promoted. As it has been pointed out many times, the only winners in this deadly game were those who sold fertilizers, agrochemicals and the politicians and bureaucrats who received kickbacks from this lucrative trade. But the price that we pay as a nation is heavy, last year the fertilizer subsidy alone was over 50 billion rupees. Yet this same mob will now go to Rio to crow over what a wonderful job they have done for our nation and for the world. One supposes that being a Sri Lankan in Sri Lanka today is much like a North Korean in that country. The view of the public is totally disregarded, only the so-called ‘leaders ‘have the brains and the vision’ to take us forward. I wonder what they will make of other world figures like Prince Charles of England whose statement to Rio+20 conference confirms what we the members of the public have been pointing out for so long. He states that:
“We continue to ignore the painful lessons of the so-called ‘Green Revolution’ in India by intensifying our food production methods in such blinkered, chemically and technologically based ways, the land an d the oceans are now both beginning to fail.”
There was scientific evidence to show that the risks and potential consequences could no longer be ignored, he said.
“Like a sleepwalker, we seem unable to wake up to the fact that so many of the catastrophic consequences of carrying on with ‘business-as-usual’ are bearing down on us faster than we think, already dragging many millions more people into poverty and dangerously weakening global food, water and energy security for the future.”
Of course our bureaucrats might say ‘What does he know about Sri Lanka’ and the politicians might say ‘who does he think he is to lecture us? We are the almighty leaders and we know better’. But we ordinary Sri Lankans know when the emperors have no clothes, irrespective of their pompous strutting.
So we go to Rio, having made our farmers totally dependent on the ‘Green Revolution’ approach, Burning more fossil fuel than ever before to increase our GDP and planning for massive constructions that require huge amounts of Carbon Dioxide expensive concrete and massive amounts of fossil fuel or their up keep.
At Rio, the mood of the attending delegates reflected the disillusion of the attendees. “We don’t need the heads of state here, frankly,” Pat Mooney, executive director of ETC Group, an Ottawa-based environmental organization stated, “Quite honestly the grandstanding around some of these treaties, was nonsense and we knew it was nonsense at the time.” Hank Venema of the Winnipeg-based International Institute for Sustainable Development stated: “The expectation was that a lot of formal top-down multilateral agreements are going to pave the way, no one believes that any more, The hope is basically that the bottom up, the regional initiatives, the local stories, can be scaled up and replicated,”
The 100 or so heads of states attending Rio have all kept their delegations to an absolute minimum to demonstrate their commitment to reduce recourses keeping them as low as possible taking only the experts who could contribute to the debate. Guess which country is the exception? Yes we have the traveling grand thamasha that has all sorts of people whose only expertise is in being ‘yes’ men. Further, It was lost on no one that while President Barack Obama, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel flew to Los Cabos, Mexico, for the G20 summit of the world’s biggest economies this week, none of them wanted to make it to Rio.
So what will the Sri Lankan delegation to Rio do? What will they propose? Will they have a position that attracts global attention as the one taken by Bhutan? What ’local stories’ do we have? Or will we feed them our grandiose ideas of growth and DGP increase at any social and environmental cost? For this is what we in Sri Lanka have been made to believe in. Api Wawamu, Divi Neguma and all such programs that have been implemented ostensibly to improve our lot, have done nothing more than mire us into further addiction to the ‘Green Revolution’ package of dependence on fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. While the quantum of production might increase it is only because of external energy into the production system. Not only are these inputs increasingly expensive, they are also damaging to our health.
The tragedy is that while there is a frightening increase in Cancers, Renal failures etc. in the rural population there is also a similar rise in Diabetes, Asthma etc. in the urban population. There is enough evidence that these ills are brought about by avoidable environmental toxins, however, there is hardly anyone to discuss and challenge these issues at the national level. None of this will of course be presented in Rio.
Julius Cesar once famously said ‘panem et circusenses’ when asked how he could control the people. Translated, it means ‘bread and circuses’. Give the people something to eat and provide circuses to entertain them and you could do anything, the people will not care. In today’s context it means a rice packet (maybe kaum) and commercialized Cricket. As J.C.Weliamuna points out, even that is dished out today with anti democratic nepotism to make it truly Sri Lankan in style.
The statement of Prince Charles that “by intensifying our food production methods in such blinkered, chemically and technologically based ways, the land and the oceans are now both beginning to fail”, if looked at with the latest data released by Scientific American on Ocean pollution globally, should make us pause (see map). The Ocean around Sri Lanka is ringed with heavy pollution, much more than India, Africa or South America. This red halo around our island is indeed a cause for alarm. This year the fishery off Trinco failed for the second time.
Google Earth screenshot of A Global Map of Human Impacts to Marine Ecosystems, courtesy National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis
We are an Island nation and all of the abuse that we foist on our land will eventually wind up in the ocean around us. We need to find a way out of the ‘Green Revolution’ trap that we have been pushed into. We need to look at the toxins that we are exposing our population to in a critical manner. We need to protect the quality of our drinking water, so that the next generation will not be forced to pay for their drinking water to preserve their health.
Until we decide to get out of the fossil addiction trap ourselves, until we place a high value on the health of our people and control the cavalier use of toxins in our food production, no Rio will help us. Tragically, all that our Government seems to want to do is grandstand about ‘development’ and borrow money to fund their white elephants. When will we learn? When will we stop being the willing fools to the multinational corporations and lenders? In Sri Lanka a colloquialism for fools is ‘Gobbaya’ maybe that is what we have governing us, the Gobbayas of Sri Lanka or GoSL.
Background information
What exactly is the point of this article? That “Green Revolution” sucks? Okay, then what to do about it? The author doesn’t tell us exactly what to do about it. If he did, some new information must be conveyed.
Consider the following statements,
“We need to look at the toxins that we are exposing our population to in a critical manner.”
Reverse the statement, and you get,
“We do not need to look at the toxins that we are exposing our population to in a critical manner.”
The reversal sounds abnormal. So the unreversed must be normal. If it is normal, no new information is conveyed.
Another example,
“We need to protect the quality of our drinking water, so that the next generation will not be forced to pay for their drinking water to preserve their health.”
The reversal is,
“We do not need to protect the quality of our drinking water, so that the next generation will not be forced to pay for their drinking water to preserve their health.”
The reversal is abnormal. So the unreversed is normal. Nothing new is conveyed. This article is full of such platitudes, well intentioned though it might be.
Dear Sharanga,
The point of the article is in the map. Pity that you could not see it or appreciate its meaning. It shows that Sri Lanka is the worst ocean polluter in the region. But then, ‘there are none so blind as those who will not see’. It might be a good thing if you thought of getting a good education. It could help with vision and clarity.
Dear Ranil,
My education? Oh, don’t take it personally that pointed out to you that rules that govern the evolution of DNA doesn’t work at any higher level.
About this article.
The point in this article is in the map? What does it say anything other than that “green revolution” sucks? Pointing that out might be enough in a newspaper article, but not in a thoughtful comment on a online public forum.
You don’t have a vision. Or rather, you have a vision but you don’t have details; specifics. I’d be perfectly happy if you said “We need to reduce the toxins level by 50% that we are exposing our population to by reducing substance X import by 23% and substituting the use of substance Y with substance Z.” Instead you say, “We need to look at the toxins that we are exposing our population to in a critical manner.” yeah, as if we didn’t already know that.
In fact if you don’t have any real vision, try to restrict yourself to only stating facts. What can we possibly do with a statement like “We need to look at the toxins that we are exposing our population to in a critical manner.”, other than applaud it?
http://groundviews.org/2012/04/17/a-vision-for-our-nation/
Dear Ranil,
For one thing, if that link provided us details as to how to counter the failure of green revolution, you should’ve put it in the article itself.
Unfortunately, that article too is very much like this one. The vision is grand, except there are no specifics, only far off ideals.
Consider,
A land where the rivers flow clean.
A land where citizens can breathe the air without being poisoned.
Reverse them and see how ridiculous they sound. That’s how you know you’re just stating the obvious. That’s how you know you’re just writing platitudes.
Anyway, judging by your last response to me on “Price of Inequality” thread, you have clearly started to hate me. So in order to avoid futher antogonizing you, this will be my last comment on this thread.
Why is that environmental impact assessment of rampant sandmining and tree-felling is not done in the army-occupied North?
One the contrary, the few young activists speaking against environmental carnage have been murdered in the last few years. I was told that nearly 20 years ago an old man hugging a tree objecting to cutting down trees by the army was shot dead.
Foreign donors are also asked to do ethnic impact assessment of their aid after finding that decades of conflict-insensitive aid has been exacerbating conflicts in recipient countries.
It is very strange that successive governments have been using Sinhala colonisation schemes in Northeast Sri Lanka to change its demography as a way of tackling the demand for devolution of power by Tamils. It continues to go at a much faster speed under the present regime.
Wherever there is oppression, there is environmental carnage in addition to socio-economic carnage:
http://www.lakbimanews.lk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5164:madhu-plundered-contract-obligations-ignored&catid=35:news-features&Itemid=37
Systematic destruction of forest reserve continues
IT is pity that you mingled the writers ideas with
“”"”army-occupied North,Sinhala colonisation schemes in Northeast, demand for devolution of power by Tamils”"”". And so on.
it is Diversion away to the subject,
this is asole responsibility of all Sri Lankans.
SRI LANKA BELONGS TO US,
TO all RACES, SINHALESE MUSLIMs, BURGERS MALEYS> CHINEES,THELIGU GIPSIES,too.
NOT TO THRE RULING JUNTA FAMILY.
THE article gives some information and message to the masses of sri lanka.
[ including to So called DRs,[ MSC PHD DDT TNT with two horns], and Law degree holding, glob totting, bogus, pompous,[sitting on their brains] politicos, AND PIMPS. Who did nothing at Rio, but wasted our money].
To understand and to get ready for future.
at least sombody must give a clue to act soon
LAXMY, And/ Or other friends Pls google the below topics.
you may find much details,
[Science, February 15, 2008], [ National Oceanographic Data Center.]
[Conservation Biology, October 2007.] ,[Marine Impacts KML ].
thanks
seruvila senarath.
Folks, please look at what Aung San Suu Kyi spoke at London School of Economics on 19 June 2012:
“Investors must take responsibility for the results of the business that they do inside our country. It’s not just environmental consciousness, but also consciousness of possible long-term results.”
Social, economic and environmental ecology are intertwined so much !
Dear Luxmy,
Myanmar is lucky to have an enlightened leader, I hope she will guide that nation away from the type global irresponsibility that we are demonstrating. The map above suggests that Sri Lanka is the worst country in the entire region to affect the Indian Ocean in such a negative manner. At time when regional and global responsibility is demanded, this map suggests that we have disregarded such responsibilities. I totally agree that oppression brings environmental carnage in addition to socio-economic carnage. It is also clear that it is the selfish and greedy who drive such oppression.
Ranil
I’ve just bumped into this and thought it’d be of interest to you. Pl pardon me if you’ve already seen it:
http://www.grli.org/
All along I’ve been tremendously appreciating the input by Ranil on this website. I was a Biology teacher and mortified by the apathy of many science (and other) teachers towards the whole issue on our environment.
But our attitude in one aspect very much affects other aspects too. The over-protracted ethnic conflict exacerbates our environmental problems.
What exactly is the role of Central Environment Agency in our system?
http://www.thesundayleader.lk/2012/06/24/expanding-saltern-destroys-mangroves/
Expanding Saltern Destroys Mangroves