Crucible For Survival: Environmental Security and Justice in the Indian Ocean Region

Chapter 5: Earth Security in the Indian Ocean Region: Food, Fisheries, and Biodiversity

75 5 Earth Security in the Indian Ocean Region food, fisheries, and biodiversity melissa risely and timothy doyle Driving out from the center of Johannesburg through its suburbs, we were confronted—as every traveler there inevitably is—by the stark reality that the postcolonial world of Africa is clearly divided between the haves and have-nots. It is impossible to over articulate this split between worlds. It is as if travelers from the wealthier parts of the city enter through portals into separate states of existence. It is almost impossible to fathom that these two states of being exist alongside each other, that they are part of the same planet, let alone the same city. But no matter how prepared, each time one confronts this dichotomy it remains a shock, and on this occasion our transition from city center to city periphery was no different. Centuries of imperialism, slave trading, and a plethora of first world get-richquick schemes have left vast parts of Africa in a dire condition, leaving most to live a level of unimaginable poverty. This poverty exists, increasingly, in cities. The shanty towns in and around Johannesburg are appropriately named and are indicative of all such towns across the IOR. Like most cities in the IOR, huge populations arrive every day on their doorsteps. These cities are ill-equipped to deal with this immense movement of people, the magnitude of which has never before been witnessed . As a consequence, entire cities are forming outside the established cities. Bandung in Indonesia, Mumbai in India, Bangkok in Thailand, and Johannesburg in South Africa all share this fate. These cities outside cities have little or no established infrastructure. There is often no access to energy sources. There is often no sewage system and running water, with no basic separation in the waste stream, with human waste draining to nowhere, flushed along with storm water as it tries unsuccessfully to seek the sea. Housing is marginal—the shelters in these shanty towns consist of discarded iron, propped up and weighed down with old tires and patched up with plastic shopping bags. These are places of disease, crime, suffering , malnutrition, and death. But what drives rural populations to these “hells on earth”? There are many answers to this question. But one thing is sure. Many leave their rural existence not for the promises offered by global markets, but because of their lost ability to subsist on their ancestral lands. Increasingly, the still dominant peasant lifestyle of most people in the IOR is under threat. When people are forced to leave their rural lives and move to the big cities, they not only lose their ability to subsist, but they also lose their sacred links to the land of their families and ancestors; they lose their meaning systems and their song-lines; they become landless and rootless. It is usually the men who must leave their family abodes in search of work in the cities on the edge of cities. And those that are left behind—women, children, the elderly —largely fend for themselves. In this manner, people face the desperate periphery of existence, battling with ever increasing malnutrition and food shortages. With the emergence of so-called free markets there has been increased pressure on communities and governments to involve themselves in agriculture on a far larger scale. This was illustrated vividly during a visit to a farm that had attracted considerable attention due to its ability to attain sponsorship from a large donor consortium that included the World Bank. This farmland, just five years prior to our visit, had not been “improved,” with most of its land surface still covered by native vegetation. In the last two years, the trees and other habitat had been removed and replaced with a large crop of jokobi. This crop is not for local consumption, as we were to discover, but had been planted as part of a bio-diesel melissa risely and timothy doyle 76 Figure 5.1. Food sovereignty banner of Bangladeshi activists at the 2004 World Social Forum, Mumbai, India. Source: Joel Catchlove. project. This guaranteed the national government a large number of carbon credits, which it could sell off to first world polluters who had already achieved their omissions targets. The situation is outrageous, considering that it took place in a nation that has profound difficulty in feeding its people. On our return to Australia, we were...