The Environment and Politics: Green Governance – by Anne Marie Dalton
Mongolia left reeling from the loss of livestock
In March 2010, my husband and I visited Mongolia as part of a Canadian International Development project on which I had worked for the past seven years. As the last of my working trips to Mongolia, it was a bittersweet one. Mongolia was reeling from the loss of up to 10 million of its livestock animals. Most reports of the loss explained the dzud, the combination of a drought over summer followed by severe cold and a blanket of heavy snow over the pastureland. This year is almost as tragic—800,000 animals reportedly lost by January 2011. Climate change is affecting an already fragile environment. Not only was there a tragic and painful death of so many animals, but the livelihoods of hundreds of herders was at stake. In a country already struggling to re-establish itself as a nation, secure a quality of life for its citizens and deal independently with an aggressive globalization of the economy the tragedy was even deeper. Where would the herders and their families now find a livelihood. For many, if they survived, it meant a life in near squalor as squatters in the capital city of Ulaanbator. Mongolia is rich in minerals and, as such, has already attracted an international corporate presence. For the most part, however, very little benefit has come from mining activity to the traditional herders of rural Mongolia.
At first glance, the tragedy seems a natural one.
At first glance, the tragedy in Mongolia would seem to be a natural disaster. Politics can only respond to such disasters, one might opine. The local people, however, gave indications of a greater knowledge. There were comments, such as “too many animals to start with,” and “the animals are not suited to our climate,” and “too many goats.” A closer examination of the Mongolian situation paints a more complex picture of local and international politics, governed ultimately by an increasingly globalized economy.
Traditionally, Mongolians were nomads. Herders and their families roamed the country with their herds and settled near oases to feed their animals. While it was always a difficult and challenging life on a near-desert landscape, the herders were skilled in knowing how large a herd the land could accommodate, just when and where to pasture their herds, and when to move on. Under the communist rule of the Soviet Union, the nomadic life was managed and regulated as to where groups moved and in what order. However, when Mongolia gained independence in 1990, the country opted for a democratic capitalism. Simply put, the land was up for grabs and with some regulation herders were awarded land on which to live and raise their animals.
The gift that didn’t work out so well
For the Mongolian herders and others who accepted land but who had no experience in herding, the situation did not prove too beneficial. The increase in cost of living and other factors resulted in rural settlers not being able to make a living, so they increased their herds. Often they acquired goats and other cattle not native to Mongolia and ill suited to the harsh conditions and fragile environment. Globalization increased both the desire for a wealthier lifestyle on the one hand and a loss of valuable land to mining companies and other global investments. Local environmentalists are fighting back, but so far global investment seems to have the upper hand.[1] And climate change has a more devastating effect where living conditions are already quite vulnerable. The results are an increasing environmental problem and a struggling people.
Too many similar stories can be related from around the world. Politics, economics, and environmental concerns are closely intertwined. On the negative side, whereas the global economic system represents the exponential expansion of human greed, global politics appears to be perversion of human will. As the recent attempts at Kyoto and Copenhagen have indicated, the governments of many of the richest nations have neither the will nor the power to stem the neo-liberal tide of economic globalization for which in large part the environment, especially of the poorer nations, bears the heaviest toll. On the more hopeful side, the lack of courage at the national levels may well have provoked more local initiatives, such as the Urban Environmental Accord signed in San Francisco on Earth Day 2005 or the Earth Charter Movement initiated as an interreligious movement. Politics has many expressions.
The critical question: what do we mean by “green governance”?
If politics is primarily the articulation of how we humans want to live together and govern ourselves in a way that allows room for the rest of creation, then the critical question for our time must be what we really mean by truly “green” governance. For religious groups concerned about social justice, compassion and creation, this question asks about the public face and political edge of what we believe. In the foreword to a series that examines responses to the ecological crises from different religious perspective, Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim speak of the aims of their project (multi-religious conference and publications): “To articulate in clear and moving terms a desirable mode of human presence with the earth.”[2] Likewise, Larry Rasmussen speaks of the necessity to “try to find, in practice and policy, those incremental changes that slowly build toward sustainable communities…”. [3] Finally, speaking for and to the World Council of Churches, Aruna Gnanadson claims, “We [World Council of Churches] need to situate our efforts to care for the earth in the context of the word being done now of challenging the project of globalization and the trail of unsustainability it leaves behind.” [4] Considering the case of Mongolia described above, these are all prophetic words; the consequences of generally ignoring them are being borne out there as well as elsewhere.
Beyond words, many religious groups are calling for more accountable policies and practices as well as initiating effective change at the grassroots level where all effective governance begins.[5] It is at this level, more than any other, that religious groups can connect their theology to plans of action—the political edge of ecological praxis. Because of the contemporary global reach of economic activity in any place on the planet, local political activity is no longer merely local. As is the case with Mongolia, resources anywhere are subject to the political policies and practices everywhere; Mongolia could well become the world’s mine! As Vernice Miller-Travis has written, “Isolating issues doesn’t work because nobody lives like that.”[6] And further in the spirit of George Myerson, who wrote, “nothing is ecologically innocent,”[7] so too nothing is politically innocent. We carry awesome responsibilities. Religions have traditionally preached the moral inclusiveness of all our decisions and actions. Now more than ever before these responsibilities must be translated more concretely into political power if tragedies such as that of Mongolian herders are to be avoided.
[1] Cf. http://www.utne.com/Wild-Green/Mining-Companies-Want-a-Piece-of-Mongolia.aspx
[2] Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, “Series Forward,” Religions of the World and Ecology (Harvard University Press and The Center for Religion and Ecology) This series was published over a number of years beginning in 1997. The Center has since been re-located to Yale University. The Forward is published in each of the volumes.
[3] Larry Rasmussen, “Global Eco-Justice: The Church’s Eco-mission in Urban Society,” Christianity and Ecology (Harvard University Press and Center for Religion and Ecology, 2000), p. 526.
[4] Aruna Gnanadson, Listen to the Women! Listen to the Earth! (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2005), p. 104.
[5] See Anne Marie Dalton and Henry C. Simmons, Ecotheology and the Practice of Hope (New York: SUNY, 2010), esp. ch. 7, “Living As If.”
[6] Vernice Miller-Travis, “Social Transformation through Environmental Justice,” Christianity and Ecology, p. 570.
[7] George Myerson, Ecology and the End of Postmodernity (Cambridge, UK: Icon/Totem Books, 2001), p. 70.