Humane Equity

He scratches deeply into the dry earth with his chieftain’s stick, his exasperation nearing the surface, and crumbles a handful of desiccated soil into my own palm. His fingers trace the groove in the ground where only a decade ago he could have show me the moisture that would have seen his farming community through the dry season. We squat together under one of the few remaining Mahoganies in Eastern Uganda, upstanding more because of its function as a village courtroom than as a thing of magnificent beauty, and he recounts the changes he and the other Iteso people have been experiencing over the past years. The long rains that used to begin in March with the regularity of an automaton, now splutter into life in mid April, almost halving the length of the wet season and leading to food scarcity and water shortages. “Most of the villagers eat only once a day. They eat their cassava before they sleep because it means they have energy in the morning to go out and dig their farms”. He also tells me his wife spends most of her day collecting firewood for cooking, walking further and further afield as a consequence of the expanding sugarcane plantation that now borders the village, a village that was previously surrounded by a cool, dense forest. He knows things are changing but can’t quite explain why. He understands the injustice of the commercial land-grabbing by the plantation but doesn’t yet grasp the injustice of the changing climate. To explain that my own indiscriminate sugar purchasing, and my country’s historic insistence on burning fossil fuels, are both directly responsible (though not wholly responsible) for his children’s now pressing hunger was not a prospect to savour. Climate change, from the capital conference halls to the village courtrooms, makes for some awkward conversations.

This awkwardness and its consequences are radiating from the minimalist meeting rooms in Copenhagen. The current reluctance of industrialised countries to provide sufficient funds to help the emerging world cope with unavoidable loss and damage from climate change is one such example that is generating distrust, which in turn is breeding dysfunction. The principle obligation that the more powerful countries have to broker a fair deal with those less fortunate (and more affected) is not contentious, while their actual unwillingness remains anathematic to the Africa Group, the Association Of Southern Island States and the Least Developed Countries. Numerous analysts furiously speculate on their keyboards that the developed nations are obstinate in their dominance; it seems they won’t have the control wrested from their capable hands by the emerging powers of China and India. The devaluing of this responsibility is epitomised by the potentially clairvoyant omission of the Maldives from the enormous white globe in the centre’s main atrium. The industrial politicians and the globe-makers appear to be in agreement as to the importance of equitable treatment.

If we humans, the most ingenious and creative, cannot cope with the changing environment or treat each other with inherent worth, then what is the prognosis for our fellow characters in the natural drama surrounding us? If some of our most idyllic lands can slip quietly beneath the ocean while we also facilitate the starvation of our own species, then how much more will the animal and plant life be forgotten? If we rely on flawed governance to guide us then I fear we are very likely to be party to (and maybe part of) the 6th mass extinction the Earth has experienced. And yet there is always hope. Despite the iniquities, imperfections and apparent inhumanity of some of the world’s decision makers, the people are not without power. We make our own decisions about lifestyle. We’ve also seen sizeable demonstrations across the globe this week, and although the global consultation that this problem really requires has yet to happen, civil society has enacted unprecedented change in the past. We must let our past inform and ensure our common future, and I’m sure Messieurs Wilberforce, Ghandi and Luther-King are waiting in eager angelic anticipation.