Old and Unnecessary Roller Coasters: The Environmental Kuznets Curve

It doesn’t take more than 5 seconds on a jeepney to imagine the kind of environmental improvement that could be made through efficiency gains in the Philippines. The switch to gas from coal, for example. Or even installing 4-stroke (as opposed to 2-stroke) engine in the uncountable trikes which zip about this country like great swarms of motorized bumblebees.

This is precisely the thinking behind what is known as the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), which posits that all economies follow a pre-determined roller coaster ride of relative pollution levels.

Beginning at a point of relative poverty, a developing country’s pollution levels increase until, at the top of the bell curve, greater efficiency, concern for environmental degradation, and the cost of pollution abatement relative to the utility of continued pollution combine to bring about a cleaner economy.

So things are supposed to get worse before they get better, but might it be possible to take a short cut? What if, instead of switching from coal to gas, we moved to renewable energies; and instead of upgrading engines, we installed bicycle lanes? We could cut across our graph, like so:

Having one’s environmentally-sustainable cake and eating it too. But I would be remiss not to point out that, as a Westerner, I have an enormous vested interest in this outcome. Like the children’s game “King of the Castle” there’s not room for everyone at the top of the pollution curve, and a source of much climate negotiation disagreement has been the disinclination of those on top to either step down from their perch or help others up.

Let’s daydream for a moment, and pretend that, since I’m in the development field, I might actually be able to help the Philippines develop (momentarily leaving aside the larger question of whether that would be an inherently good thing). If I succeed in my ultimate goal, I will eventually be clotheslined by the fundamental problem facing international development: if the EKC represents an inevitable path, then it is almost certainly also true that not everyone can become “developed”. What happens after I single-handedly raise the quality of living of the Philippines’ population of 90 million to become equivalent with that of, say, Oakville, Ontario? And then, since I’ve apparently acquired God-like powers, I move on and do the same for China’s 1 billion people.

Now we have a good chunk of the global population perched on the top of the castle, enjoying the equality that one cannot – in good faith – say that they do not deserve. Here we take our lesson from the eminent philosopher Seuss, whose hatted cat clearly demonstrates the unsustainability of massive balancing acts.

Given that the NGO for which I work has the word “sustainable” right in its name, I feel that professional considerations alone should be enough to give me pause before flicking my magic wand in that particular direction.

But then where are we? If development isn’t an option, and neither is the status-quo, what course of action is left to the Philippines’ of the world? How can we achieve the holy trinity of sustainability, development and equality?

If an easy answer were forthcoming, then Copenhagen would have just been a giant excuse for world leaders to spend a week daring each other to ride on the world’s oldest roller coaster.

Even with my acknowledged self-interest in this outcome, I think the EKC shortcut represents the least-unappealing option open to those countries to the left of the curve, but only if those countries on top are willing to meet them there.

Am I dreaming in technicolor? You bet your Filipino fish sauce I am, but I’ve seen this movie, this movie and also this one, and I know how important it is to know what I want the world to look like in case I ever develop super powers.

Raising Money for the Environment

I've been writing a work plan for my next six months at the City Environment and Natural Resources Office (CENRO). It includes the following primary projects:

1. Implement a solid waste management system in two of the city's barangays (neighbourhoods of approx. 10,000). We'll need to take this project all the way from the formation of a council, to the passing of an ordinance, to the implementation of the plan.

2. Sewerage and Sanitation (oh yes). The city recently mandated that every septic tank in San Fernando needs to be desludged every 5 years – I need to figure out how to make that happen, and how much money needs to be collected.

Additional side projects (as if one could ever tire of septage) include a study of residual and hazardous waste in junk shops, a recycling project in schools and a composting initiative.

Here's what I've accomplished so far:

1. Learned the names of more than half my co-workers.

2. Figured out how to express, in Ilocano, the basic concern that my hovercraft is full of eels (Napno iti igat ti hovercraftko).

So it's been a productive first couple weeks.

One emerging theme is that of money. There are some rich individuals in San Fernando, but the city itself is not exactly rolling in cash.

We spent a good deal of last week trying to figure out what kind of septic tank desludging fee we needed to level against the city's 25,000 households in order to raise the 3 million pesos required to build a new septage treatment facility. Water quality problems led to the city's recent pronouncement that every septic tank in the city needs to be desludged every 5 years. Without the infrastructure to treat so much waste, the money will need to be raised quickly in order to begin construction of a new facility.

To contextualize the 3 million peso figure a little bit: the average city worker makes roughly 10,000 pesos per month. Three million might not break the bank, but it's nothing for the city to scoff at.

On the weekend, a friend and I were out with San Fernando's richest Bucla (the Tagalog term for a particular type of feminine gay man). We were inspecting her¹ doll collection, when there came an enormous WHUMP!

I spun around to find that she had slammed 1 million pesos down on the coffee table.

I said something incredulous to the effect of “what are you doing with so much money”?

“Spending money, sweetie. You're coming for dinner, aren't you?”

Given that the most expensive dinner in the city costs less than 400 pesos, the stack of 1 million seemed moderately excessive, but the point of this anecdote is to illustrate the divide between rich and poor within San Fernando.

The city's relative poverty is going to inform how we approach all of our environmental projects. Whereas moral and ethical factors drive environmental sustainability within Canada, economic concerns are paramount here. Nobody takes a lot of convincing to recycle cans and bottles for which they receive money, but something like composting, with no immediate financial benefit, is a tougher sell. The most common means of disposing of waste – though illegal – is burning. Providing a financial incentive to instead segregate and recycle waste is going to be a big challenge.

But not as big as cleaning these stupid eels out of my hovercraft.

1Ilocano does not differentiate between male and female pronouns. As a result, the Bucla use them interchangeably.

The Post Where I Indelicately Use an Analogy to Compare a Minority Group to a Tropical Lizard

Like a 3D painting, San Fernando shows more of its depth everytime I look at it. I was shocked when Friday's boxing event featured two designated “gay boxing” cards. Dressed in full drag, the combatants clearly had no formal training, but easily had the best time of the night. The crowd loved it.

A Lady Gaga impersonator came into the ring and did a dance during the intermission. The crowd loved that too. I was enjoying it as well, all the more so after the vice-mayor leaned over and asked me “Have you met him? He works for the city library”.

These are the outer layers of San Fernando's attitude toward its LGBTQ population.

Further down presents increasing shades of grey.

Locally known as “the gays,” the mayor refers to them as the “third sex”. Locals will casually remark “look, a gay!” in the same tone that one might exclaim, “look, an iguana!”

And just as everyone likes iguanas, enjoys having them around and goes to see them in zoos, so “gays” are generally liked, and 5000 people showed up to see them at the Miss Gay San Fernando Universe pageant.

But you wouldn't want to bring an iguana home to meet your parents, and you certainly wouldn't want to be one, no matter how much fun it is to watch them crawl around on stage. The “third sex” implies an equality which is not, in reality, more than a thin layer deep.

The crowd at the Miss Gay pageant seemed to feel that it's okay to enjoy such events, but only to a point; there was something in the volume of laughter that suggested a cautious distancing and perhaps an element of derision. It would appear that, for all of the superficial acceptance, gays, like iguanas, remain spectacle.

Which is too bad, because neither gays nor greys deserve to be lumped together.

The Mayor and Me (Or: How White Privilege Taught Me the Art of the Left Hook)

I've had the tremendous fortune of arriving in San Fernando during the annual city fiesta – a two-week long party and all-around good time.

Friday was boxing night.

I hadn't really gone into the city, at that point, except in a work-related capacity. I was standing outside the central plaza where the event was to take place, when a security guard from inside pushed through the crowd, pointed at me through an even larger crowd and offered me a seat in the (still empty) VIP section.

Surprised, I told him I was waiting for friends (the truth). Friends arrived an we tried to sit in the corner somewhere, but were quickly accosted by a gentleman whom I was later able to identify as the mayor's personal bodyguard.

In Canada, one is usually able to determine which offers it would be rude to decline, and which it is not really expected that one will accept. The offer of a beer is probably genuine, but the offer of one's house (after several beers) may not be. I still struggle with this distinction here, but it was clear in this instance that the request fell under the former category, so off we went to sit front and centre next to the mayor, the vice-mayor and Manny Pacquiao's trainer.¹

Then there was the boxing. I'd never seen a live boxing match before, but the conceit of unearned privilege had me discussing the finer points of the left hook with the vice-mayor, as if I could possibly have done more in the ring than just bleed. Maybe whimper a little.

The following night, another Canadian and I were whisked around a crowd into an event without so much as a cursory glance at our tickets (which were free to begin with). On the rare occasions I've been given VIP treatment at home, I've lived it up like I were the Prince of Monaco, because I know that my limousine will turn back into an oversized gourd at midnight, and I'll be back in the cheap seats with the rest of the suckers.

The problem is that the cost of the cheap seats at home can pay for a whole heck of a lot over here. I don't want to be given the key to the city, for several reasons:

1) I haven't done anything to deserve it.

2) The people in San Fernando's cheap seats don't live in nice suburban houses. They're hungry.

3) The specter of neo-colonialism follows me around like an over-protective parent; escorting me through the poorest parts of town and ushering me into VIP seating.

4) Part of my purpose here is to encourage the participation of marginalized groups in environmental activities, thus decreasing their relative marginalization. I see some pretty easy conflicts of interest on this count.

No problem: I'll just implement a solid waste management plan in a couple of communities, and the entire city, if not the better part of the country, will surely be immediately hoisted out of poverty.

In the interim, a quick bout with Manny Pacquiao should be enough to keep me (permanently) grounded.

1Possibly the most famous person I've ever met, now that I think about it.

Languages: Lots and Lots of Languages

The usual binary language choice I face while travelling is the following:

A) Learn the local language.

Or,

B) Fail to learn the local language, thus resigning myself to weeks or monthly of bumbling indelicately and obliviously through a foreign culture, like a delirious sea lion performing Swan Lake.

But the Philippines is – to understate things slightly – an interesting place. Depending on who you ask, there are between 110 and 175 separate languages spoken in the Philippines. I am perhaps fortunate that my choice here is limited to two of them.

It's going to be a difficult decision to make. Ilokano is the local language here in San Fernando, and is spoken by perhaps 8 million people in the world. Tagalog, on the other hand, is one of two national languages, and claims 22 million native speakers, while being understood by 55% of the population.

It's simple enough on the surface: according to the current interns, Tagalog is the language spoken in meetings, and the resources to learn it are plentiful. If I learn Tagalog, I'll stand a decent chance of being understood anywhere in the Philippines (whether you agree that that would be a good thing or not).

It might be a bit strong to suggest that Ilocano is dying, but the vultures are already circling. One of the previous interns here has become extremely invested in language preservation. He shares an anecdote in which he addressed a young child in Ilocano, only to find that his parents had made the decision not to teach the child the local language; he spoke English and Tagalog instead. Increasingly, upper class families in the region are making this decision, opening up the first cracks in the stability of Ilocano as a vibrant language.

So, sigh, I'm left to make a philosophical decision, and I already know that I couldn't make any other choice.

My insightful partner recently quoted Wittgenstein on the subject of language: "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world". A lost language represents a lost way of knowing, thinking and understanding the world; all items for which I believe in increased, rather than reduced diversity.

None of this is to say that I will actually succeed in learning Ilocano, but fueled by my residual guilt over having failed to properly master Dutch, I'm going to give it my best shot.

Vegas would give the sea lion better odds.

Mangoes and Other Dangers of Excess

With so many things to feel guilty about as a Westerner in a developing country, I’ve been casting about for things I can feel good about. My chief candidate at the moment: mangoes.

I love mangoes, but since mangoes don’t love -30 degree temperatures, they tend not to grow in Canada. In order to acquire them, as a Canadian, one needs to import them from overseas and I find it difficult to justify enjoying a fruit with such an enormous carbon footprint. It’s sort of analogous to melting the arctic ice with a blowtorch; one mango won’t make all the difference, but it doesn’t seem the right thing to do. Anyway, the Philippines is reputed to produce the world’s best mangoes, and I intend to consume them until I start to look like one.

But over-exuberant mango consumption isn’t the only way in which I will be tempting fate. No, I will also be learning how to surf. And how can I not? I’m living 200 metres from one of the best surfing beaches in the Philippines. San Juan is, in fact, a town populated primarily by surf bums. I suspect that my new home’s sleepy nature will provide a welcome antidote to the nearby barely controlled chaos of San Fernando City, where I will be actually working.

In theory, I’m supposed to be working on community-based waste management projects in several of San Fernando’s unserviced districts. For the moment, however, I can hardly envision a future in which I am able to navigate San Fernando’s chaos, let alone harness it.

Predictably, I haven’t been helping my own chances of survival. But in my own defence, I was brought up to believe that when the mayor personally invites you on a bicycle race, you accept the offer. And if that race happens to consist of a 5 hour climb up a mountain in the searing heat, then you plan your funeral with dignity and grace. He gave me a mug with his picture on it; how could I say no?

I admit that I was feeling a little pressure to please, since the first thing I saw upon entering the city was a welcoming poster with my name on it. But I suspect they would have evicted me anyway after I ate an entire season’s worth of mangoes.

Coming soon: context for the mayor’s declaration that “with the modern times, even fish can now have their own condominium”.