Last night in
Sao Paulo I heard Gro Harlem Bruntland speak, invited by the BANCO REAL, a Brazilian bank that is leading the financial institution pack in implementing sustainable development.
For those who don’t know Bruntland’s name, she led the UN World Commission on Environment and Development in the mid 80’s in the search for win-win-win rather than zero sum solutions to economic growth, social justice among a growing population and environmental integrity. They held hearings around the world (not in the US as here there was no support) and published 20 years ago the watershed OUR COMMON FUTURE which brought forth the global conversation about and conversion to sustainable development. She went on to head the World Health Organization and participated in the UN Commission on Global Threats.
I encountered this report in 1989 at the Globescope Pacific Assembly – the first US hearing on it – and it changed the direction of my life. I learned there from the UN and NGO glitterati that the biggest driver of unsustainable development was the level and pattern of consumption in North America, but, given our economy’s addiction to consumerism, that problem couldn’t be touched with a ten foot pole. Yet there I was, in the back row, knowing that Joe Dominguez’s financial program had, for a decade, helped thousands of Americans lower their consumption by 20% and have a better life. I was on a mission!
Needless to say, I was thrilled to have the chance to hear her assessment 20 years later.
Overall, she was firm, clear and determined. Given how deep we are now into unsustainability, I found her measured positive outlook inspiring – if only for the dignity of it.
She started by talking about Al Gore and the IPCC winning the Nobel Peace Prize (in her country) 10 days ago. Gore, she noted, awakened the conscience of the world. The IPCC demonstrated what a respected international institution, working steadily for years across boundaries and cooperatively, can do in creating change. She seemed to be saying need morality, good science and resolve to change in these times of threat.
She then reviewed other recent Nobel Peace winners – Wangaari Mathai, Shirin Ebadi and Mohammed Yunus – pointing out that now Peace in this world is far beyond simply resolving conflicts, but has to do with environment, human rights and closing the gap between the rich and the poor. Peace is now connected to every issue facing us – they are all connected. She also pointed out that these three laureates mobilized women for peace – and the essential role of women as both the victims of “man-made” crises and the strongest voices for a more whole-system way forward.
She went on to talk about her roles after the WCED. As the head of the WHO she participated in the first global convention on health regarding tobacco. Having worked on both UN and US government consensus documents that involved hours of debate over every word only to have the final reports gather dust, doing nothing to change anything in the short term, I have sworn to never again pour months of my life into such apparently useless palaver. Yet hearing her I saw that work from the view of a woman and bureaucrat who stakes her life and reputation and hope for the future on building institutions with good governance practices that can, over time, with patience and resolve, move the world steadily towards justice and sustainability. I could see that forming commissions, developing clear principles of operation (respect, transparency, fairness and such), developing clear objectives/targets/timelines, engaging the research community in providing high integrity, accurate information, issuing recommendations that are then monitored and hopefully resourced – all of this slowly moves the human enterprise towards comprehensive solutions. In short, I admired and went to school on her maturity, patience and reason.
She told the story of the WHO’s response to SARS. She called the outbreak a ‘sharp, short shock’ and as such it mobilized a collaborative effort across normally competing governments and labs which, in 6 brief months, eliminated the threat. This story showed how human systems, once mobilized to address a clear threat, are capable of miracles.
In her view, Global Warming is such a whole system shock that must be addressed. It creeps upon us so response has been too little by a very long shot, but now the sharp short shocks of Katrina and the IPCC report and the Stern Report and the rapidly melting glaciers and ice caps has the world on alert. She recounted her work on Global Threats that showed that there is no such thing as an isolated threat anymore – that terrorism for America is not isolated from starvation or environmental refugees or droughts. We are in an interconnected world and Global Warming is the perfect expression of how we need shared solutions to this biggest threat to our collective survival.
She recounted as well the story of smokestacks in the industrializing UK. Health officials showed how the smoke was affecting the health of the villages around factories so they solved the problem by building taller smoke stacks. The villagers’ health improved… however the downwind countries like Norway were now feeling the effects. A great deal of debate and demands and denials ensued until the science minister told Margaret Thatcher that beyond a shadow of a doubt the downwinder’s claims were correct. She could no longer assert the science was equivocal and not be caught with her knickers down. Soon she promised to reduce sulfur by 30%. In other words, Bruntland was showing us again and again how solid science coupled with consistent pressure from public and private sectors coupled with democratic processes can and will solve our problems.
But, she absolutely added, we haven’t a moment to lose. What is now different is that we know that we have a global warming problem. That debate is over. Even Bush, she said, has changed some of his tune this last year (though with great restraint she did not add “but not enough by a long shot”). So we must mobilize the world community to face this threat while strengthening democratic institutions.
On the face of it, this was nothing new, nothing bold, nothing dramatic. But as a wise global grandmother she was taking us all by the ear and sending us upstairs to wash our faces of lies and clean up our dirty hands (our actions).
THE RETURN OF THE FEMININE
This message so resonated with insights I had over the weekend in Florianopolis. Three days ago I engaged in an all-night ceremony with musicians and singers chanting and praying and seeking visions for their lives, supported by the most amazing lightening and thunder storm that sent buckets of purifying rain down upon the hut we were in. Pachamama, Mother Earth, they said, was calling us. The phrase “longing for limits” came to me in the night as I contemplated the very global, interconnected and seemingly out of control problems that Bruntland feels we can address through good science, good governance and good will. Our Western Enterprise looked to me like children – boys mostly – out of control on a playground, exhausting themselves, engaging in ever more destructive games, sensing danger but unable as a gang to stop themselves. A sort of Lord of the Flies scenario but instead of sticks and stones we are playing with weapons and wealth and carving up the spoils of the earth while ignoring the obvious longer term consequences. Deep inside, like spent children, we know we have to stop but as long as the frenzy continues, stopping seems more dangerous than keeping on. I could see that the mature feminine – the mother or grandmother – needs to bring her full compassion coupled with stern rebuke, saving the boys from their mounting violence by telling them they must stop, come inside and go to bed. Now! Some aspect of humanity must call a halt to the dangerous games and men in gangs are notoriously unable to stop themselves from collective evil that no one of them would ever commit on his own. Mob violence unleashed. Only the grandmothers – the mature feminine – can call these boys to account. Only the grandmothers can forgive them their excesses – knowing they themselves are heartsick, spent and lost - while making them face the consequences and clean up their damage.
Many these days recognize that the feminine – be it in women or men – is the antidote to the hyper-masculine domination of the earth and her peoples. Women are finding in themselves new strength to confront the wrongs without vengeance or fear. Women are finding their voices, singing sweetness as well as saying in no uncertain terms what must be done. Women are exercising the power of the mature feminine, unmovable yet full of love. Women are the creators and preservers of life. They care for the family. The steward the resources so all the children flourish. They are wired for whole system thinking and connectivity – the very qualities that Bruntland in her own way both demonstrates and calls for. The woman knows how to hold, contain and constrain with fair, no nonsense love. I could feel in myself, in this most warm and feminine place – Brazil – a call to be in my own way a grandmother to my rowdy tribe of guys. And I got from the gathered group a profound reflection of this same energy I carry – of warmth, compassion, love and clear calling to account. These don’t feel like marching orders. These feel like rocking orders. Like gathering in with love those I might touch through my words and actions, making them safe and also making them look at, mourn and correct the messes we’ve made.
OTHER CONVERSATIONS
The evening before this powerful ritual I spoke to a dozen people about consumerism and the YMOYL approach to recovering from this powerful addiction. These days, as I pay more attention to the complex issues around Peak Oil, I see how oil has been our binge food of choice. It has enabled this massive expansion beyond our social and biological limits. I used to see credit cards - unsecured debt - as the biggest enabler of excess but I now see below that the gush of oil through the human enterprise and of course, the ideology of 'freedom as no limits' as key components.
A fascinating dialogue ensued between a sociologist and an Earth Mother artist woman. It was about Bolivia. In his view, a social and political approach is needed to the wealth gap to lift the poorest people out of poverty. He cited Bolivia where apparently the poverty is comparatively profound. He had statistics to prove it. The artist, who had traveled extensively in Bolivia, begged to differ! In her view, the subsistence way of life there supported rather than inhibited people's survival. To her, the culture was rich, the communities strong. To him, infant mortality was high and diets were restricted. It showed me again how our worldviews influence our strategies for 'fixing' what is clearly going wrong globally. Were these people my artist friend saw as rich impoverished? It reminded me of my first trip to Latin America when I had an opportunity to take take a journey with a shaman in Ecuador. A sociologist would have judged his family and tribe in the worst condition possible - all sleeping on one platform bed in a hut without walls, the children dirty, the women clearly serving men who lounged around 'doing nothing.' Yet within the space of the ceremony was the richest, more lavish experience of the divine one could ever imagine. One way I resolved that incongruity - and still do - is to ask myself, an educated and relatively well off westerner, to use my knowledge, capacities, intelligence, skills and connections to make sure the way of life the Achuar prefer continues to be available to them. To make sure they have the money to send representatives for their interests to international meetings, to make sure their stories are told in ways that bring respect and protection to them. And all the while, making sure i am open to what they have to teach me so that my life can be ever more beautiful and useful and humble.
Then, on my way back to Sao Paulo from Floripa I was stuck in the airport waiting for two hours, fortunately by a young man who spoke flawless English. He's a middle class Brazilian who has taken to studying and playing the stock market to better himself - a real critic of central government planning (that's spelled corruption, by the way) and a real booster of the free market's capacity to create wealth and well being. He gave as an example iron mining in Brazil, a major extractive industry. He criticized the locals for their resistance to the big corporation engaged in mega extraction. If they aren't getting enough money, well, it's their leader's fault for filching it, not the corporation's fault since they are being quite generous with the local people. I told him two stories from my own experience. First, how the American military, when negotiating treaties with Native Americans, had to first rearrange the Indian's culture of decision making since they had no leaders who were empowered to negotiate with the hierarchical army - they decided as a community using consensus. Eventually the army had to find those in the tribe most willing to sell the others out for a price, name them chiefs and having them sign papers that held up in hierarchical American courts of law. And so the West was lost to those who lived there. The other was how tribes in Ecuador are successfully resisting the oil companys' claims on the oil under their parts of the jungle. To whom do resources belong? To the people who live in the land, or to corporations with money to exploit whatever resources there are wherever they are? The young man smiled at both stories. "Of course you are right" he said. Here again are the clashes of cultural norms that reveal very different stories about fairness and the good life. I am ever with the question of a way forward that has integrity.
IN SAO PAULO
These next few days I will give several talks in and around
Sao Paulo to large groups of people. I now have copies of the Portuguese translation of YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE in hand; it is beautiful … and I can even read it. I hope to mobilize my masculine capacity to make waves with my feminine capacity to make hearts melt – we shall see.
How can we bring the world together across all of the traditional boundaries that have divided us to address the issue of climate security for ourselves, our children, and future generations?
One thing we all have in common - even if to different degrees - is technologies based on science. All the time since the renaissance and indeed much earlier too , the aim of science has been to understand nature and so to control it. That dominance over nature is what all nations are following; and while it hase done so much undoubted good - most of us would not be here today without it - it has also brought us to this brink of wrecking life on earth. Take farming as an example: fantastic progress in green revolutioon and breeding new varieties based on the science of fertilisation of crops. Alongside this has been another science; that of the life of the soils and the fungal and bacterial associations with plants and their nutrition. This science has been largely neglected in application. There is no purely scientific way to choose between the two scientific appproaches - the first to overcome and short-circuit natures’ mechanisms, the other to harness them. To make this more popularly appreciated, I am proposing that we need another name for the second science, to contrast with conventional science. And I propose ‘convivial science’, meaning ‘with life’. Since this word has so many other connotations, maybe someone can come up with another. Meanwhile I am writing up this argument more fully.