THE UNESCO
CourierApril-June 2018
Welcome to the Anthropocene! 2220-2285
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the heroes to come
As you begin reading After all, humans began to exert pressure this April-June 2018 issue on the environment over 10,000 years ago of the Courier, you are – since their sedentarization and the invention of living in the Phanerozoic agriculture. For others, the Anthropocene started eon, the Cainozoic era, with the industrial revolution, in the eighteenth the Quaternary period century. Still others view the beginning and the Holocene epoch. of the Anthropocene as coinciding with These are all subdivisions the release of the frst atomic bomb in 1945. of our planet’s geological In spite of these disagreements, all but a very timescale, to which a new bar few acknowledge that in the last half-century, will probably soon be added the state of the planet has deteriorated more – the Anthropocene. rapidly and more dramatically than ever The Earth entered the Holocene before. There are gigantic amounts of plastic (from the Greek “entirely” and “recent”) on beaches and in the seas; an unprecedented more than 10,000 years ago. But human development of new substances that are activities have had such a signifcant and covering the Earth’s surface and which are generalized impact on the planetary system that, rarely recycled; soils that are overfowing with for the past few decades, scientists have been fertilizers; increasing acidity of the oceans; Marine debris football, part of wondering whether we should be speaking unprecedented levels of pollution; the erosion the PENALTY series by British artist of a new epoch. To describe this new epoch, of tropical forests; the disruption of ecosystems; Mandy Barker. the American biologist Eugene F. Stoermer initially the massive extinction of species and a drastic © Mandy Barker (mandy-barker.com) coined the term Anthropocene (from the Greek loss of biodiversity, and global warming at an “human being” and “recent”), popularized in the alarming rate – the list goes on. early 2000s by the Dutch atmospheric scientist Who is to blame for all this? “Humans!” is and Nobel laureate in chemistry, Paul Crutzen. the resounding reply of most scientists. Since then, it has stirred up endless debates in the It remains to be determined whether we scientifc community and caused a great deal of – the world’s rich and poor – should all bear angst among those who have heard about it. the same burden of responsibility. There are It is now up to the international community of some who blame, above all, the capitalist palaeontologists, geologists and stratigraphists system created by the West, and speak – in particular, the International Commission of the Capitalocene or Occidentalocene. on Stratigraphy and the International Union Are we all heading for a catastrophe? The voices of Geological Sciences (IUGS) – to determine of doom are prophesying the end of the world! whether there is indeed a new geological epoch Concepts like Chthulucene and Thanatocene or whether the Anthropocene will go down in are being put forward to warn us that there is future encyclopaedias as a philosophical construct a monster on the loose, that death is stalking aimed at alerting humans living in the twentieth us. Some more moderate experts are just and twenty-frst centuries of the threats their as concerned about the indecision, and activities posed to the planet. therefore, inaction, of our decision-makers. “It seems as though humanity is being lethargic While awaiting this verdict, the scientists continue – waiting for the end of the flm, when the to argue, plead and quarrel. How should we date heroes arrive to sort everything out, and we can the beginning of this hypothetical new epoch? all live happily ever after,” as one of the articles In other words, how long have we supposedly in this issue concludes. been responsible for a process that could prove fatal for our planet? For some, the Anthropocene Meanwhile, the debate rages on, the solutions is just another name for the epoch that we call are slow to come. The Courier takes stock the Holocene. of the situation.
The UNESCO Courier t April-June 2018 | 3 Contents
WIDE ANGLE
7 Anthropocene: the vital challenges of a scientifc debate Liz-Rejane Issberner and Philippe Léna
11 Dipesh Chakrabarty: Humans are a geological force Interview by Shiraz Sidhva
15 The unbearable burden of the technosphere Jan Zalasiewicz
18 The little frog that lost its lustre Karla Jiménez Comrie
20 Climate change raises confict concerns Caitlin E. Werrell and Francesco Femia
23 The view from Dominica: Anthropocene or Capitalocene ? Andreas Malm
26 Francis Chateauraynaud: Stop the catastrophist discourse ! Interview by Régis Meyran 6-29 28 A lexicon for the Anthropocene
30-37 ZOOM
An ordinary day in the life of Qello Ignacio Marín and Katerina Markelova
4 | The UNESCO Courier t April-June 2018 38-49 IDEAS
We, the servants and tenants 39 of Earth Souleymane Bachir Diagne
Creolizing the idea of humanity 42 Mireille Delmas-Marty
A missive for youth 47 Abdourahman A. Waberi
54-62
CURRENT AFFAIRS
50-53 55 Athens : Books everywhere Anna Routsi
56 Filling the cultural vacuum Lucy Mushita OUR GUEST 58 Young Africans: Reinventing politics Bibi Russell: Finding magic in fngers Hamidou Anne Interview by Krista Pikkat and Jasmina Šopova 60 Listen to the voice of the lake Chen Xiaorong
THE UNESCO 63-66 COURIER IS 70! Attending the school of free thought Roberto Markarian
The UNESCO Courier t April-June 2018 | 5 Wide angle
Welcome to the Anthropocene! Wide angle Wide
The Vitruvian Man in copper. The crew of the Greenpeace icebreaker Arctic Sunrise help artist John Quigley recreate da Vinci’s iconic sketch of the human body on the Arctic sea ice, 800 km from the North Pole. Made using rolls of copper, this huge image is the size of four Olympic swimming pools. The Melting Vitruvian Man is an appeal to world leaders to take urgent action on climate change.
© Nick Cobbing / Greenpeace
6 | The UNESCO Courier t April-June 2018 Wide angle Anthropocene: the vital challenges of a scientific debate
Liz-Rejane Issberner and Philippe Léna
The term Anthropocene was coined to take into account the impact of the accelerated accumulation of greenhouse gases on climate and biodiversity, and also the irreversible damage caused by the over-consumption of natural resources. But do we need to turn this into a new geological epoch? While the debate continues among scientists, solutions have yet to be found. We are, in efect, witnessing a collective form of Greenpeace
/ denial – the result of a naive faith in progress, consumerist ideology and powerful economic lobbies. © Daniel Beltrá Aerial photograph documenting deforestation in the northern The term Anthropocene appears in Other research, started in the 1950s area of Pará State, Brazil (2013). the titles of hundreds of books and and based on samples of ancient ice According to the French newspaper scientifc articles and in thousands from the Antarctic and the present Le Monde, Brazil reduced of citations. Its use in the media also composition of the atmosphere deforestation by 84 per cent between continues to grow. Defning Earth’s – analysed at the Mauna Loa observatory 2004 and 2012 before it started most recent geological epoch in which in Hawaii, United States – have revealed to increase again. human actions have started to provoke an accelerated build-up of greenhouse biophysical changes on a planetary scale, gases (GHG), essentially carbon dioxide (CO ). In 1987, the Intergovernmental Panel the word was coined in the 1980s by 2 American biologist Eugene F. Stoermer They proposed that the beginning of on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up to and popularized in the early 2000s by this new epoch should be symbolically set evaluate the impact of these phenomena Paul Crutzen, the Dutch atmospheric at 1784, the year in which Scottish inventor on climate. scientist and winner of the Nobel Prize James Watt substantially improved upon in Chemistry 1995. The scientists noticed the steam engine with new inventions The Great Acceleration that these changes were leading the Earth – it also corresponded to the beginning system away from the relative equilibrium of the Industrial Revolution and the use By pooling this data, in 2009 and again it had known since the beginning of the of fossil fuels. in 2015, environmental scientists Johan Holocene, 11,700 years ago. From 1987 to 2015, a vast, Rockström (Sweden), Will Stefen (US) multidisciplinary research project, and their colleagues at the Stockholm the International Geosphere-Biosphere Resilience Centre drew up a list of the nine Programme (IGBP), collected a mass planetary boundaries that it would be of data on anthropogenic changes dangerous to cross. to the Earth system.
The UNESCO Courier t April-June 2018 | 7 Wide angle
Four of these boundaries have already been crossed – climate change, vegetation cover, biodiversity loss and extinctions (the Sixth Extinction) and biogeochemical fows – with phosphorus and nitrogen cycles playing a particularly crucial role. They also showed that all available indicators on the consumption of primary resources, energy use, population growth, economic activity and biosphere degradation, skyrocketed after the Second World War. This period was dubbed the Great Acceleration. Other observers have even spoken, since the 1970s, of a period of hyper- acceleration. These trends are believed to be unsustainable. Metaphor or real geological epoch? There seems to be a consensus that several parameters of the Earth system have recently © Guillaume Bression - Carlos Ayesta (www.fukushima-nogozone.com) started to develop beyond the spectrum of the natural variability of the Holocene Bad Dreams, part of a series by – it is now more or less accepted that photographers Guillaume Bression and After all, who’s responsible for crossing the term Anthropocene be used, to specify Carlos Ayesta in the no-go zone around the biogeophysical boundaries if not changes that are of human origin. A handful Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power Western humans and a particular of scientists have nevertheless decided to go plant, in 2013. The artists, from France socio-economic system? This has beyond using the term metaphorically or as and Venezuela, chose to use transparent led to several alternative proposals – a practical, interdisciplinary reference tool. plastic to depict radiation, which is both Occidentalocene, etc. Others, such as They have proposed that the Anthropocene, invisible and odourless. specialists in global or environmental just like the Holocene and the Pleistocene, history, feel that there is no ontological should be elevated ofcially to the rank of discontinuity and that the exceptional geological epoch. nature of Western growth The AWG is therefore suggesting that (the Great Divergence) will have to be An Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) the change of epoch should be in 1950, repositioned in the longer term. has been set up to present this proposal the year in which various chemical According to them, humans have always to the International Union of Geological constituents and plastic particles of – or at least for the last 40,000 years Sciences (IUGS). But for a new epoch to be anthropogenic origin began to appear in – had an increasing impact on their named by stratigraphers, there has to be sediments. This is also the beginning of the surroundings. They have contributed, an observable and universal rift between Great Acceleration. In any event, a possible for example, to the disappearance of the sedimentary layers of two epochs. failure to recognize the Anthropocene American and Australian megafauna. Although the presence of anthropogenic as a geological epoch would in no way Some researchers are thus arguing for carbon has been noted in sediments invalidate the scientifc use of the term as a long Anthropocene, with sub-periods, since the 1850s, this is not considered it stands today. to be sufcient. such as capitalist industrialization The concept of the Anthropocene has (1850-1950) and the Great Acceleration. sparked several controversies in spite of Most, though, recognize the need to its brief existence – the term itself has been abandon a linear and deterministic vision queried. Historians and anthropologists of historical time. have questioned the reference to anthropos, the generic human being.
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The emergence of the concept of the Anthropocene confers upon them the responsibility of explaining how human societies have been able to provoke changes of such magnitude to the modus operandi of the planet, and what diferentiated impacts they will have on the world map. The social sciences and humanities should be developing and acquiring new subjects and knowledge to respond to the questions raised by this new epoch – including natural disasters, renewable energy, the depletion of natural resources, desertifcation, ecocide, widespread pollution, migration, social and environmental injustice. The slow and feeble reactions of politicians – and of societies in general – to climate change, is also astounding. A mathematical analysis of networks of citations has shown that in scientifc articles on the subject, there has been a consensus, since the early 1990s, that climate change exists. Given that the crisis is worsening, it is hard to understand why eforts to reduce GHGs have been so half-hearted. What obstacles Since the end of the Second World War, Collective denial are preventing international negotiations several scientists have warned of the from being more efective? Besides the non-generalizable and unsustainable Why are we refusing to see this? intentionality of these so-called obstacles, character of the Western economic model. There could be a number of reasons: there is no doubt that communications No boundary had yet been crossed, a blind faith in progress and development between science and society are sluggish, and humankind had consumed less – in other words, in a system which at least when it comes to the climate than one planet. But the process had increases available wealth indefnitely question. To address this, the IPCC has been set in motion. In the early 1970s, – and a belief in the capacity of science adopted a new approach for its Sixth the situation worsened, the warnings and technology to solve all problems Assessment Report (AR6), designed to multiplied, and the scientifc data and negative externalities (like pollution, raise awareness among the general public, accumulated. On both these occasions, for example); powerful interests that not just decision-makers. a historical change of course would beneft from this process and carry out have been possible. It has become more intense lobbying; the media takeover difcult today. of the minds of consumers, creating Overcoming deadlocks a hunger for individual consumption, One of the stumbling blocks of the as much for comfort as to set oneself apart Anthropocene is that to tackle it, the and be recognized. delicate subject of environmental justice has It is surprising that the human and to be addressed. Climate change will amplify social sciences have avoided this issue the existing risks, and create new ones, for so long, given that it will determine for natural and human systems. Yet these the future of humanity. Besides being risks are not distributed equally, generally anthropocentric by defnition, afecting disadvantaged individuals and these disciplines believe that the groups the most. But it is not easy to fnd feld belongs to the natural sciences, a satisfactory solution to this problem, par excellence. given the heterogeneity of countries in terms of their level of development, size, population, and natural resources, etc.
The UNESCO Courier t April-June 2018 | 9 Wide angle Greenpeace
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© Mandy Barker WHERE? – No one wears a watch, What’s more, the human ecological This is exactly what leads us to the a visual interpretation of the journeys footprint has already overtaken, by ffty deadlocks that usually arise in international plastics make, the time it takes for per cent, the planet’s capacity for negotiations – the search for culprits that them to degrade, and their impact on regeneration and absorption, and eighty then dissuades countries from making the environment. It features plastic items per cent of its population lives in countries commitments, for fear of compromising collected from islands of the west coast whose biocapacity is already smaller their economic growth and their jobs, of Scotland (United Kingdom). than its ecological footprint. A country or antagonizing powerful interests. The like Brazil (and other countries on the solution that was reached in the Paris American continent) still possesses a Agreement, signed on 22 April 2016, It seems as though humanity is being large biocapacity surplus, even though was to ask countries to make voluntary lethargic – waiting for the end of the flm, it consumes 1.8 planets. But twenty-six commitments, rather than impose criteria when the heroes arrive to sort everything per cent of its GHG emissions are due established on a planetary scale. This out, and we can all live happily ever after. to deforestation. A signifcant part of its means each country commits to meet ecological footprint comes from exporting targets for reducing its emissions in line primary products, which is the reason for with what it considers to be viable. Liz-Rejane Issberner (Brazil) is an a large proportion of this deforestation. This approach has helped to overcome economist and senior researcher at The competitive globalized system tries to deadlocks and to make action possible. the Brazilian Institute of Information in fnd supplies at the least cost, encouraging But it has also created a tangle of Science and Technology (IBICT) and extractivism in many countries, and land- assessment criteria that complicates professor at the Postgraduate Programme grabbing in others. comparisons between national eforts. in Information Science (IBICT with Even if it were possible to suppress all Also, in spite of its universal character, the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro). carbon dioxide emissions in high-revenue the Paris Agreement does not provide for Philippe Léna (France), is a geographer countries right now, it would still not sanctions against countries that default and sociologist, and emeritus researcher be enough to reduce the global carbon on their commitments. This is a sign of the at the French National Research Institute footprint and meet the limits imposed weak governance of the climate question for Sustainable Development (IRD) for the biosphere until 2050. In other which, in the absence of an institution and the National Museum of Natural words, in spite of the considerable mandated to carry it out, is incapable of History (MNHN), Paris. diferences in the size of their economies prevailing over the economic interests of and their reserves of natural resources, countries and enterprises. all countries need to try to remedy Submerged under contradictions, the most pressing problem of the dilemmas and ignorance, the extremely Anthropocene – by drastically reducing serious environmental issues of the their GHG emissions. Anthropocene are not getting the required level of priority on national and social agendas.
10 | The UNESCO Courier t April-June 2018 Wide angle
Humans are a geological force
Dipesh Chakrabarty, interviewed by Shiraz Sidhva
While modern technological advances have allowed us to fourish as a species, we may have catapulted ourselves out of the Darwinian evolutionary scene. Human beings have acquired the role of a geological force, capable of stalling an Ice Age – and possibly driving another Great Extinction of life in the next 300 to 600 years. It may not be easy, but, argues historian Dipesh Chakrabarty, it is not too late to change course. © Gideon Mendel (gideonmendel.com/submerged-portraits)
Francisca Chagas dos Santos in Rio Branco, Brazil, March 2015. You have said that anthropogenic The more I read into climate change Photo from the Submerged Portraits explanations of climate change spell science and eventually, into geology series, one of four parallel elements of the collapse of the age-old humanistic and biology, the more I realized that the Drowning World project started distinction between human history how late we have come in the history in 2007 by South African photographer, and natural history. Could you elaborate? of evolution. And that, not accidentally, because complex creatures like humans Gideon Mendel, which highlights Until recently, we have thought of human can only come very late in the story of our vulnerability to global warming, history purely in terms of recorded history, evolution. The planet developed life and through the personal stories of victims. which goes back a few thousand years. its conditions changed to eventually help A pre-history adds a few more thousand sustain complex multicellular forms of life. years. But climate change science has This realization jolted me out of my habit required us to think about the place as a modern historian − mainly of modern of humans in the history of the planet South Asia and the colonial period. since they appeared. Because you had to Normally I used to deal with a world understand what the planetary processes that was not more than 500 years old were and how the planet has managed – the news of climate change altered that. to keep in place, not just the climate, which is friendly to us, but also oxygen at Like many historians, I used to think twenty-one per cent of the atmosphere for of the natural world as a backdrop, almost six hundred million years. where the main actors were human. The assumption within which many of us worked − that what matters in human history is what humans do to one another − didn’t seem untrue, but it seemed limited.
The UNESCO Courier t April-June 2018 | 11 Wide angle
A lot of history told two stories − how humans eventually came to free themselves from the constraints placed on them by nature and natural causes; and how humans came to think of freeing themselves from the oppression of other humans. As I have become aware now, the history of our evolution plays a very signifcant role, even in our short-term histories. For instance, humans cannot ever make any objects that we handle without the assumption that we have opposable thumbs. This is a matter of a very slow evolutionary history, which we usually take for granted. So we would talk of what kind of swords the Mughals produced, or what kinds of knives were used in Baghdad – assuming that there’s always a human hand capable of holding or wielding these. © Gideon Mendel That hand also has a slow history, which is Joseph and Endurance Edem with the history of evolution. their children, Bayelsa State, Nigeria, Could you explain your thesis that November 2012. What do you mean when you say humans the history of capital must be crossed exert a geological force today? with the history of the human species? Human actions are now changing Several historians of the long term People who study capitalism don’t the climate of the whole planet. have suggested that, as we developed study evolutionary biology. But if they Taken together, we wield a kind of force a big brain and developed technology, did, they might fnd a species called that is so great that it can change the usual we began to grow at a pace much faster Homo sapiens that was once able to cycle of Ice Ages followed by interglacial than the evolutionary pace. The argument invent a modern industrial society or periods – a cycle of, let us say, 130,000 is that if we acquired deep-sea fshing capitalism, or whatever you want to call it years. We have somehow acquired the technology at the pace at which − that became its strategy for taking over role of a geological force − thanks to our evolutionary changes usually happened, the whole planet, and dominating life on it. pursuit of technology, population growth, then the fsh would also have had time The spread of human beings all over the and our capacity to spread ourselves all to learn how to avoid our dragnets. planet has only been possible in the last over the planet. But we developed so much faster, few thousand years. Capitalism is not as that our ecosystem didn’t have time to So far we have thought of human beings old as us, but if you look at what happened readjust. It’s a fascinating idea that this one as biological agents, because we do things with the coming of big sailing ships, species has kind of catapulted itself out of to our environment and to ourselves, and then steamships, you can see that the Darwinian evolutionary scene. And it we carry diseases, etc. We now have to the continent of Europe itself distributed is having such an impact on the history of scale up our imagination of the human its population all over the world. life that many biologists say that we might − we are actually changing the face So couldn’t one argue that capitalism was be driving the Sixth Great Extinction of life of the planet. It’s not just its face we’re the strategy for the species to take over in the next 300 to 600 years. changing − one of the places of the planet the whole planet? Now that does mean that human beings have transformed, the diferentiation between rich and poor and where our transformation will remain people, I agree, but both the rich and the for the very long term, are the coastal poor are members of the species. sea beds − through deep-sea fshing, mining, etc. We can no longer separate the biological agency of humans from their geological agency.
12 | The UNESCO Courier t April-June 2018 Wide angle
Never in the history of biological life on this planet have we had a species that managed to spread itself all over the world (that happened thousands of years ago, long before there was mass poverty) as humans have, and that also rose to the top of the food web in so short (in terms of evolutionary time) a period. If we do manage to improve the lives of seven billion, or eventually, nine billion people, the pressure on the biosphere will only increase. However, this is not an argument in favour of not improving the lives of the poor. What I have tried to show in my work is the implication of most human beings’ desire to industrialize and modernize. Take the examples of Jawaharlal Nehru (India), Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt), Julius Nyerere © Gideon Mendel (Tanzania) and other Third World leaders Anchalee Koyama stands in food waters of the 1950s and 1960s. They all wanted to Your remark that “the poor participate in the Taweewattana district of Bangkok, modernize their countries − not as people in the shared history of human evolution Thailand, November 2011. who were just fascinated by technology, just as much as the rich do” has been but because they thought it was the ethical critiqued by some of your colleagues. thing to do. The reason Nehru wanted to The point is that Indian and Chinese Could you explain? build dams was mainly to grow more food arguments in defence of the use of coal (through irrigation) and save people from I am as perplexed by Andreas Malm’s and other fossil fuels (though this is being dying in famines. response to some of my propositions somewhat mitigated by the falling price that I thought were pretty much of renewable sources of energy) in the The focus of political thinkers since unexceptionable, as he is by my interest of moving people out of poverty, the 1970s has been on human rights and statements. I think the way he interprets acquire their signifcance from the fact that on the fourishing of every individual my quote in his article (see page 24) is these are extremely populous nations and human, irrespective of the numbers. a little misleading. It gives the impression the number of poor people concerned is Climate change and the attendant scientifc that I had suggested that the poor very large indeed. propositions came at a time when we were are immediately as responsible for carbon enjoying precisely those things that climate The history of population, I suggested, emissions as the rich. scientists say may imperil our existence belongs to two histories at once: in the long run. I have never made such a claim, the history of modernization, public for everyone knows that the poor do not health programmes, modern medicines, How much is globalization responsible emit as much greenhouse gases as the including antibiotics (in the production for this? rich, and that only a handful of nations of which fossil fuels play a role), We have globalized in the last thirty are responsible for the major portion of the eradication of pandemics, epidemics, or forty years, and this has been made anthropogenic emissions of these gases. and famines, etc; and the history of possible by increasing the technologies of So that is not the point. the human species. How could one connectivity. We all like the fact that we can deny that even poor humans belong to communicate with our loved ones across the species Homo sapiens? Don’t poor the globe on a daily basis, or that we can people have opposable thumbs? Are they fy across the world in a matter of hours not part of our evolutionary history? to explore other countries or do business there, or to visit friends and family.
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The globalization story means that we have actually come to love what could lead to our geological end − the capacity to impact the planet on a massive scale. But in terms of our life experiences, we see it as a condition for human fourishing. There’s a natural inertia in us, born out of historical attachments – to institutions, family structures, globalization – and all we Now that we are aware that we are not the How we get there is the most difcult are capable of thinking of is our immediate masters and owners of nature, what kind of question today. It’s also very hard in future. Humans think in terms of seventy to stories do you suggest we tell? today’s world to tell people not to travel, or not to avail of the benefts of new eighty years, of three or four generations, I think we should no longer tell stories technologies like smartphones, which at most. This makes it very hard for us to of human hubris. I think the older story, we know deplete rare-earth materials. come together and act in a synchronized that we are controlling nature, was a It is important to acknowledge our manner to fght climate change. We see wrong story. The story we should tell is contradictions − between what we desire how difcult climate change negotiations that here is a planet, which luckily for us, at the moment and the knowledge − under the United Nations Framework developed complex forms of life. We came we have on climate change. Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to be here, and now we know that there − have been. Besides, every country is also is a planet-wide climatic system, that We need to have a diferent kind of society invested in its own development agenda. planetary processes − the geobiological – we cannot sustain the current kind of and chemical processes − are important to capitalism for the next 100 or 200 years. our survival and to the survival of complex It’s not wrong to delegitimize consumerism life. For instance, if you destroy soil, it takes and re-educate our own desires. And it is millions of years to regenerate. our responsibility to keep up this message, at universities and schools. So we should defnitely be less profigate, we should somehow fnd a way of living You have said that a crisis is a good time for where we live, rationally, intelligently, and renewed creativity. not consume so much. We also need to As the crisis deepens, so will the creative fnd some rational, democratic, non-violent responses to it. I think there will be and poor-friendly ways of bringing the charismatic leaders who will break the population down. shackles of consumerism and inspire us, Lucas Williams at the hunting grounds of as Mahatma Gandhi once did. the Lawshe Plantation in South Carolina, United States, October 2015. Dipesh Chakrabarty (Australia and United States) is a historian of Indian origin. He is the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor in History at the University of Chicago, in the United States. He is the author of, among other publications, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Diference (Princeton University Press, 2000; 2008) and “The Climate of History: Four Theses,” Critical Inquiry, 2009. © Gideon Mendel
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The unbearable burden of the technosphere
Jan Zalasiewicz
In the geological blink of an eye, a new sphere has emerged, and is evolving at a furious pace. Weighing thirty trillion tons, this is the technosphere. It includes a mass of carbon dioxide which is industrially emitted into the atmosphere – the equivalent of 150,000 Egyptian Pyramids!
The Earth that sustains us may be considered in terms of diferent spheres. There is the lithosphere, made up of the rocky foundations of our planet; the hydrosphere, representing our planet’s water; and the cryosphere, Like the Anthropocene, the technosphere comprising the frozen polar regions and is controversial, not least because of Technofossil (Samsung E570), a pretend high mountains. The atmosphere is the the role – and constraints – it afords to fossilized mobile phone sculpted air we breathe, and we are also part of humans. It suggests that we have far less in malachite rock by Belgian artist the biosphere, made up of the Earth’s living freedom, collectively, to guide the Earth Maarten Vanden Eynde, in the Democratic organisms. These spheres have been in system, than we may think we have. Republic of the Congo (2015). existence, in one form or another, for most, or all, of our planet’s 4.6-billion-year The technosphere encompasses all of © Maarten Vanden Eynde (Courtesy of the artist and Meessen De Clercq) existence. Most recently, a new sphere has the technological objects manufactured emerged – the technosphere. by humans, but that is only part of it. It is a system, and not just a growing The technosphere, in the sense that we collection of technological hardware. Tampering with nature understand it, is a concept that has been This distinction is crucial, and may developed by the American geologist The technosphere, similarly, comprises be illustrated by comparison with and engineer Peter Haf, Professor not just our machines, but us humans too, the more established concept of the Emeritus at Duke University, in the United and the professional and social systems biosphere. Originally coined by the States. Like the Anthropocene, it is by which we interact with technology nineteenth-century Austrian geologist growing rapidly in recognition – having, – factories, schools, universities, trade Eduard Suess, the term biosphere was for instance, been the focus of a recent unions, banks, political parties, the internet. developed as a concept by Russian major initiative of Haus der Kulturen It also includes the domestic animals that scientist Vladimir Vernadsky in the der Welt (House of World Culture), we grow in enormous numbers to feed twentieth century. He propounded that the international centre for contemporary us, the crops that are cultivated to sustain it was not just the mass of living things arts in Berlin, Germany. both them and us, and the agricultural soils on Earth, but the combination of that that are extensively modifed from their mass with the air, water and soil that natural state to carry out this task. sustain organic life and the Sun’s energy that largely powers it. More than the sum of its parts, the biosphere interlinks and overlaps with other spheres of the Earth, while having its own dynamics and emergent properties.
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The technosphere also includes roads, railways, airports, mines and quarries, oil and gas felds, cities, engineered rivers and reservoirs. It has generated extraordinary amounts of waste – from landfll sites to the pollution of air, soil and water. A proto-technosphere of some kind has been present throughout human history, but for much of this time, it took the form of isolated, scattered patches that were of little planetary signifcance. It has now become a globally interconnected system – a new and important development on our planet. How big is the technosphere? One crude measure is to make an assessment of the mass of its physical parts, from cities and the dug-over and bulldozed ground that makes up their foundations, to agricultural land, to roads and railways, etc. An order-of-magnitude estimate here came to some thirty trillion tons of material that we use, or have used and discarded, on this planet. The physical parts of the technosphere are also very various. Simple tools like stone axes were made by our ancestors
millions of years ago. But, there has been © Jean-Pierre Brazs 2015 (jpbrazs.com) an enormous proliferation of diferent Plastiglomerates, facsimiles of kinds of machines and manufactured hypothetical future geological matter, Nobody knows how many diferent kinds objects since the Industrial Revolution, made for the Manufacture of Rocks of technofossils there are, but they already and especially since the Great Acceleration of the Future project, started in 2013 almost certainly exceed the number of population growth, industrialization by French artist Jean-Pierre Brazs. of fossil species known, while modern and globalization of the mid-twentieth technodiversity, considered this way, century. Technology, too, is evolving also exceeds modern biological diversity. ever faster. Our pre-industrial ancestors The number of technofossil species is saw little technological change from Forming future fossils continually increasing too, as technological generation to generation. Now, in the One analogy here may help show the evolution now far outpaces space of little more than one human striking nature of this planetary newcomer. biological evolution. generation, mobile phones – to take but Technological objects, including one example – have been introduced to mobile phones, may be considered mass public use and have gone through technofossils geologically, because they several generations. are biologically-made constructs that are robust and resistant to decay; they will form future fossils, to characterize the strata of the Anthropocene.
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Humans have used power sources such as The technosphere today is not evolving watermills for millennia, but the enormous because it is being guided by some burst of energy now needed to power controlling human force, but because of the technosphere is on a completely the invention and emergence of useful diferent scale. One estimate suggests technological novelties. There is now that humans have collectively expended a kind of co-evolution of human and more energy since the mid-twentieth technological systems. century than in all of the preceding eleven millennia of the Holocene. Altering planetary Inundated with waste conditions Currently, the technosphere might The technosphere, though, difers from be regarded as parasitic on the the biosphere in one crucial respect. biosphere, altering conditions of The biosphere is extremely good at planetary habitability. Obvious recycling the material it is made of, and this consequences include greatly increased facility has enabled it to persist on Earth (and accelerating) rates of extinction for billions of years. The technosphere, of species of plants and animals, and by contrast, is poor at recycling. Some of changes to climate and ocean chemistry the waste is all too obvious, like the plastics that are largely deleterious to existing accumulating in the world’s oceans and on biological communities. These changes its shorelines. Other kinds, being colourless can in turn damage both the functioning and odourless, are invisible to us, like the of the biosphere and human populations. carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil Ideally, therefore, humans should try to fuels. The mass of industrially-emitted help the technosphere develop into a form carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is now that is more sustainable in the long term. enormous – nearly one trillion tons, which Nevertheless, humans collectively have is the equivalent of about 150,000 Egyptian no choice but to keep the technosphere Pyramids. This rapid growth in waste operative – because it is now indispensable products, if unchecked, is a threat to the to our collective existence. continued existence of the technosphere – and the humans that depend on it. Working out the degrees of freedom, within this context, for efective The technosphere is an ofshoot of the socio-economic and political action, biosphere and, like it, is a complex system is one of the challenges that the evolving with its own dynamics. The capacity of technosphere presents us with. A frst our species to form sophisticated social step here is to more fully understand structures and to develop and work the workings of this extraordinary new with tools were important factors in its phase in the evolution of our planet. emergence. However, Haf emphasizes Here, there is still much to do. that humans are not so much creators While almost all of the biosphere’s and directors of the technosphere, as components within it, and therefore energy comes from the Sun, some of the Jan Zalasiewicz, a British geologist of constrained to act to keep it in existence technosphere is powered by solar energy Polish origin, is professor of Palaeobiology – not least because the technosphere too – and other renewable resources such at the University of Leicester, keeps most of the current human as wind-power, but most is powered by United Kingdom. He has worked as a population alive, through the supplies of the burning of hydrocarbons including oil, field geologist and palaeontologist for food, shelter and other resources that it coal and gas. These non-renewable energy the British Geological Survey, and is Chair provides. Its development has allowed the sources in efect represent fossilized of the Anthropocene Working Group human population to grow from the few sunshine that has been amassed deep of the International Commission tens of millions that could be kept alive by in the Earth over hundreds of millions of on Stratigraphy, since 2009. years, and that is now being expended the hunter-gatherer mode of life in which in just a few centuries. our species evolved, to the 7.3 billion that inhabit the planet today. Just one technological innovation – artifcial fertilizers made using the Haber-Bosch process – keeps about half the human population alive.
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The little frog that lost its lustre
Karla Jiménez Comrie
Many scientists view the massive disappearance of several varieties of Central American frogs as a sign of the Sixth Extinction. This is one of the indications that we are entering the Anthropocene, that some believe will mean the wiping out of a quarter of the world’s mammals, forty per cent of amphibians, corals, and many other species. In Panama, scientists and national leaders are in a race against time to prevent a legendary species, the golden Discovered on the outskirts of the small frog, from disappearing town of El Valle de Antón and the Altos Female Panamanian Golden Frog, forever. Investigations have de Campana National Park, and endemic to Atelopus zeteki. shown that humans are indeed the central area of the Isthmus of Panama, CC BY 2.0 photo by Brian Gratwicke the golden frog – Atelopus zeteki – has long responsible, having introduced frequented and decorated the streams and into South America an invasive rivers of the Panamanian jungle. It was not known why they were dying, fungus that is highly toxic Panama has made the golden frog but Grifth’s alarm coincided with other to amphibians. an ecological and cultural symbol, research questioning the status of the even dedicating a national day – 14 August amphibian. The frogs were seen for the last – to it. The frog is so popular that it time in the wild in 2007 – in a short video According to a pre-Columbian legend adorns arts and crafts objects, jewellery, scene shot by the BBC for one of its Life from the heartlands of Central Panama, festival posters, and even lottery tickets. in Cold Blood documentaries on reptiles the golden frog brings good luck. Anyone It also lends its name to hotels, craft beers and amphibians. who sees one or manages to capture one and boutiques. This hasn’t stopped The cause of this massacre turned out will have a happy future. Its bright yellow it from disappearing from the forests to be Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis livery, speckled with cofee-coloured of the isthmus, though. patches, was a source of delight for (also known as Bd), a chytrid fungus that indigenous tribes, who thought that when According to Panamanian herpetologist is threatening the global population the amphibian died, its tiny body turned Roberto Ibáñez, a researcher at the of amphibians by transmitting to solid gold. Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute chytridiomycosis, a disease which, Ibáñez (STRI) in Panama, the frst signs of decline explains, “infects the frog’s skin, disturbing were noticed between 1993 and 1996. the way it functions”. Edgardo Grifth, a Panamanian biologist, remembers seeing dying frogs at the end of 2005, during an expedition in El Valle de Antón.
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One of the functions of the frog’s epidermis is to maintain the balance of water and mineral salts between the animal’s body and its environment. In frogs infected with Bd, the transport of electrolytes is disrupted, reducing concentrations of sodium and potassium in the blood, and leading to cardiac arrest. An invasive fungus Where does Bd come from? Probably Africa. This is at least is the most widely accepted hypothesis among Panamanian
biologists. The Bd chytrid occurs naturally © Courtesy of Diario La Prensa, Panama in the epidermis of the South African During the Golden Frog Festival, amphibian, Xenopus laevis – the frogs were held every year at Smithsonian’s Punta used extensively in human pregnancy Culebra Nature Center in Panama City, tests starting in the 1930s. Unaware that children learn more about the amphibian Xenopus laevis was the vector for this that has become the ecological disease, the amphibian test was exported and cultural symbol of their country. to other parts of the world, causing the A Noah’s Ark for disease to spread. amphibians In Panama, it is thought that the fungus Though no efective treatment against At the other end of the country, in Gamboa was transmitted through contact with the disease is available today, scientists – at the edge of a tropical rainforest these amphibians, says Ibáñez. He points hope to reintroduce the golden frog in the former Panama Canal area – out that the chytrid has already spread to its natural habitat one day. In 2011, Ibáñez directs the Amphibian Conservation throughout the country and is now the government launched an Action Plan and Rescue Project. Created ex situ in 2009, infecting other amphibian species. for the conservation of the amphibians the project aims to ensure the reproduction As a result, the International Union of Panama. Involving three components of endangered species, especially those for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has – research, conservation, and education afected by the chytrid fungus. It’s a classifed Bd as one of 100 of the world’s – it is a frst step towards resolving kind of Noah’s Ark, which uses captive worst invasive alien species, because of its the problem. The El Valle Amphibian specimens in an endeavour to reconstitute “disastrous impact on biological diversity”. Conservation Centre (EVACC Foundation), populations of the most threatened Grifth describes it as a “very efective led by Grifth, is also working for the species – until an efective treatment is organism, which reduces biodiversity, preservation of the golden frog – although, found for the Bd fungus. Based twenty-two changes demographics and the dynamics at this stage, it is still being kept in kilometres outside Panama City, the centre of reproduction, and wipes out 100 per captivity. The Centre’s zoo is home to holds 1,200 examples of frogs belonging cent of the individuals of certain species”. around 4,500 frogs, 1,000 of which are to nine species – with the exception of It is present everywhere – in Panama as of the golden variety. the golden frog. But Ibáñez says he hopes to well as in other Latin American countries. receive some specimens of Atelopus zeteki from EVACC by the end of 2018. Will the golden frog regain its former lustre? The scientists are convinced it will. Until then, we must hope that the little Scientists hope that creature will, itself, have the happy future it symbolizes for the people of Panama. it is possible to reintroduce Karla Jiménez Comrie (Panama) is a freelance journalist specializing in culture the golden frog and the environment. She has worked in the United Nations system and has into the wild one day been a reporter for the daily, La Prensa.
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Climate change raises conflict concerns
Caitlin E. Werrell and Francesco Femia
The efects of global warming on the world’s physical landscape often lead to geopolitical changes that threaten to destabilize already vulnerable regions, like the Horn of Africa. The stresses on natural resources undermine the capacity of nations to govern themselves, and increase the chances of conficts. When compared to other drivers of international security risks, climate change can be modelled with a relatively high degree of certainty. But between predicting and preparing, there is still a long way to go. Tim McKulka
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The current rate of climate change – higher seas, decreased ice in the © UNphoto Arctic, melting glaciers, extreme rainfall variability, and more frequent and intense storms – are scenarios that settled Climate change, by altering the world’s A fragile epicentre human societies have never experienced physical landscape, is also changing before. These dynamics will impact its geopolitical landscape. If governments Over time, climate change stresses the foundational resources that people, are unable to mitigate this, the risks on natural resources – combined nations – and the world order built on of confict and instability will increase, with demographic, economic and those nations – depend on for survival, and become more difcult to manage. political pressures on those resources security and prosperity: particularly food This is the case in many regions – can degrade a nation’s capacity to and water. These impacts are already around the globe. However, the Horn govern itself. This includes its ability contributing to increased state fragility of Africa is particularly vulnerable, to meet its citizens’ demands for basic and security problems in key regions given a combination of structural fragilities resources – like food, water, energy and around the world – confict in the Middle and the signifcant exposure to climate employment – also known as its output East and Africa, tensions over fsheries change risks. This raises the likelihood legitimacy. The threat to output legitimacy in the South China Sea, and a new political of confict and instability on the peninsula. can contribute to state fragility, internal and economic battleground in a melting confict, and even state collapse. Arctic Ocean. Seen through this lens, climate change may present a serious challenge to state stability and legitimacy in the Horn of Africa – a region already grappling with numerous challenges before climate change became a factor.
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According to the Fragile States Index of Rising sea levels threaten to inundate The Fund for Peace, the Horn of Africa critical infrastructure in these cities, includes some of the most vulnerable states contaminate freshwater supplies through in the world – Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, saltwater intrusion, reduce arable land, Kenya, Sudan and South Sudan. The region and potentially displace large numbers also exhibits some of the clearest indications of people. of a connection between climate change t%BOHFSPVTTFBXBZT and confict – namely, conficts between The Gulf of Aden is a critical waterway agricultural and pastoral communities along the Horn of Africa. As climate precipitated by climate-exacerbated change further narrows economic droughts and water variability. opportunities in the region, an even For example, prolonged greater increase of piracy along the coast climate-exacerbated extreme drought, such is likely. Indeed, research has shown that as in Somalia in 2011, can add additional there is a signifcant overlap between stresses to already tense and resource-scarce countries showing a high incidence of scenarios. These stresses could increase piracy attacks (of the coasts of Somalia tensions and confict between communities, and Eritrea), and the most signifcant and precipitate the need for people to move climate vulnerability in Africa. This paints – impacting the prices of livestock and other a worrying picture of the kinds of goods. This could also lead to an increase overlapping risks that can perpetuate in malnutrition and disease outbreaks, and state failure in the Horn. adversely impact food security (For more t'JTIBOEGPPETFDVSJUZ information, see: American Journal of Ocean acidifcation and warming are Agricultural Economics, Volume 96, Issue 4, contributing to the migration and 1 July 2014, pp. 1157–1182). depletion of fsh stocks around the world, Local tensions over access to food including along the coast of the Horn and water resources can spill over into of Africa – though the lack of extensive neighbouring countries, as people seek monitoring in this region means there is a to fnd additional resources and safety gap in the knowledge of the extent of the – placing more strain on the resources impacts. Changing ocean chemistry and of those countries, which could amplify temperatures can increase the likelihood of tensions. In these instances, climate change international tensions between countries does not directly cause confict over and subnational actors of the Horn that diminishing access to water, for example, share a coastline – including a heightened but it multiplies underlying natural-resource potential for confict over fshing, as their stresses, increasing chances of a confict. respective fshing feets roam into These are scenarios that, in the absence of neighbouring waters, or compete over better governance and natural resource dwindling stocks in international waters. management, are going to become t.JHSBUJPO increasingly pronounced in the future. Droughts, coupled with other factors, are already increasing pressure on Changing geopolitical people in Africa and elsewhere to move. landscape Those without the means to move also risk becoming “trapped”, or unable to An elderly woman, displaced Several studies, combined with models and move to more secure locations. In the from her home during the Sudan foresight exercises, show with increasing future, decreases in precipitation in the confict in 2008, waits for her ration accuracy, the way in which changes in Horn, and increases in extreme weather of emergency food aid. climatic conditions can, if left unmitigated, events, will likely increase the rate and scale up to higher-order security situations, scale of migration. According to Robert including a higher likelihood of confict. A McLeman of Canada’s Wilfrid Laurier These challenges have recently been lot of the research to this point, however, University: “States that are already confrmed by the United Nations Security has focused on the links between climate politically fragile are the most likely Council in a January 2018 Statement change, increased rainfall variability, future epicenters for climate-related by its President: “The Security Council and confict. Other scenarios in which violence and forced migration events” recognises the adverse efects of climate climate impacts and security intersect and (Epicenters of Climate and Security, change and ecological changes among combine to form the foundation of a new June 2017). Indeed, of the twenty other factors on the stability of West Africa geopolitical landscape include: highest-ranked countries that are deemed and the Sahel region, including through fragile states, twelve are situated in areas t4FBMFWFMSJTFBOEDPBTUBMDJUJFT drought, desertifcation, land degradation of the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa, Urbanization is occurring rapidly in and food insecurity, and emphasizes where climate change is expected to the Horn of Africa, including along the the need for adequate risk assessments create heightened levels of water scarcity. coast. Coastal cities with burgeoning and risk management strategies by That includes fve countries of the Horn: populations, like Mogadishu (Somalia), governments and the United Nations Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan Djibouti City and Mombasa (Kenya) are relating to these factors.” and Sudan. vulnerable to sea-level rise.
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t8BUFSXFBQPOJ[BUJPO The combination of “unprecedented risk” Caitlin E. Werrell and Francesco Femia Changes in water availability, including and “unprecedented foresight” underlines are the Co-Founders and Presidents increased scarcity of, and access to, water the case for a “Responsibility to Prepare” of the Center for Climate and Security. exacerbated by a changing climate, (Briefng to the UN Security Council, The Washington DC-based, non-partisan also open up opportunities for states December 2017) – a responsibility policy centre, which has a team and non-state actors to use water as a of sub-national, national, and an Advisory Board of distinguished weapon. In a recent study by Marcus and intergovernmental institutions to security and military experts, is the only King of George Washington University, build climate resilience into the Horn institution exclusively focused on United States, discusses how Somalia has of Africa’s regional order. A failure to meet the security risks of climate change. been especially prone to this nexus of this responsibility could signifcantly climate, confict and water weaponization strain regional stability in the Horn, (Epicenters of Climate and Security, and around the world. June 2017). In 2011, Somalia was hit by regional droughts that have been linked to climate change. During this time, as King notes, jihadist fundamentalist group “Al-Shabaab changed its traditional guerilla tactics and started to cut of liberated cities from their water sources so that they could demonstrate at least Changing minds, some kind of power and presence. not the climate Climate change, lack of food and continued confict involving water UNESCO has more than thirty weaponization took an enormous social programmes to help us understand toll. Limited access of humanitarian and deal with the challenges posed agencies exacerbated by al-Shabaab’s by climate change, and to raise actions led to more than a quarter million awareness of the ethical implications deaths and hundreds of thousands raised by this major issue of our times. of displaced persons.” By defning the global ethical principles surrounding climate A small silver lining © UNESCO change, the Organization provides guidelines for decision-making and policy choices to help counteract the morally While droughts and extreme weather unacceptable damage and injustice it brings. The mainstays of the Declaration of events are not new to this region, the rate Ethical Principles, adopted in November 2017, include the prevention of harm, of change and the decrease in recovery a precautionary approach, equity and justice, sustainable development, solidarity, time between extreme weather events scientifc knowledge and integrity in decision-making. will place additional pressures on governments already stretched thin. UNESCO also helps Member States to adapt to climate change, to mitigate These dynamics can make state instability its impact, to educate societies on sustainable development (ESD) and to assess and confict more likely and enduring. the risks of natural disasters. Through its International Hydrological Programme However, there is a small silver lining (IHP), UNESCO facilitates scientifc cooperation to assess and monitor changes – climate change, especially when afecting water resources. Its Man and the Biosphere Programme (MAB) aims to compared to other drivers of international improve the livelihoods of people while preserving ecosystems. The biosphere security risks, can be modelled with reserves managed by MAB, along with the World Heritage sites and the global a relatively high degree of certainty. geoparks network, all act as observatories for climate change. While signifcant uncertainties in The Organization pays particular attention the health of the oceans, which predicting local-scale climatic changes regulate the climate and capture nearly a third of carbon emissions. As a result remain, existing projections from climate of the increase in greenhouse gas emissions, coastal pollution, overfshing models paint a fairly clear picture of what and population pressures, the coasts and marine ecosystems are undergoing major the future holds. This provides a basis changes. These particularly afect Small Island Developing States (SIDS), for which for governments and societies to plan UNESCO has formulated an action plan. accordingly. However, this heightened UNESCO’s strategy is part of a comprehensive approach defned by the United predictive capacity does not, by itself, Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Since the 2015 lead to preparedness. Paris Climate Change Conference (COP 21), UNESCO has presented its various initiatives at each of the annual conferences. Its exhibition stands have become meeting places to promote debates and discussions with the public and civil society. The need to change mentalities is no longer in dispute. What is needed is an in-depth understanding of the issues underlying this global challenge. This involves raising awareness and educating people about sustainable development. “Changing minds, not the climate” is UNESCO’s central message on the issue.
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The view from Dominica: Anthropocene or Capitalocene?
Andreas Malm
Climate change is not the creation of the mere existence of billions of humans who inhabit the planet, but is wrought by the few who control the means of production and make the central decisions about energy use, argues Andreas Malm. In what is more Capitalocene than Anthropocene, a head-on confrontation with fossil capital is imperative if we are to prevent extreme climate events like the hurricanes that have devastated Dominica.
Dominica used to be an emerald hill-range, rising straight out of the Caribbean Sea. When I visited the island nation in August 2017, it remained covered by impossibly © Jason DeCaires Taylor (www.underwatersculpture.com) green woods, every peak and ravine bursting with vegetation. The most The Rising Tide, an installation mountainous island in the region, with of sculptures by British artist, the greatest intact forest cover, it was a Jason DeCaires Taylor, on the River Incalculable sense marvel of natural splendour, but poor. Thames, London, 2015. of loss Most of the 70,000 inhabitants – the vast majority, African descendants – subsisted Leaves and branches were scattered on small-scale farming. The banana, Roads were being rebuilt and new over the sea, naked trunks left standing plantain and yam were supplemented with settlements constructed to house in what looked like clear-felled areas some fshing and a little bit of tourism. the survivors. – if Erika had scratched the island, Maria fayed it. This time the entire Six weeks after I left, on 18 September The island had already sufered an early infrastructure – houses, roads, bridges, 2017, Hurricane Maria suddenly blow. In 2015, Tropical Storm Erika poured hospitals, schools – was pulverized accelerated to a Category 5 system out torrents of water over the hills, until and the agricultural sector obliterated. – one of the most explosive some of them gave way and collapsed. The fnancial cost was estimated at twice intensifcations of a hurricane on record At the time of my visit, the country the country’s Gross Domestic Product – and slammed straight into Dominica. was still licking its wounds from that (GDP), but, as the IRIN news agency Over one night, the green island turned disaster, clearly visible in the south-east, reported, “the deeper sense of loss is of brown. The extraordinarily ferocious where the slopes were cut up by the the spectrum”. landslides that had carried away top-soil winds simply blew away the forest cover. and trees and houses.
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In the frst month after Maria, a ffth An explicit statement of this logic can be of the population picked up what few found in one of the most celebrated books possessions could be salvaged, and left. on the topic in recent years – Indian author Those who stayed spoke of themselves as Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement: soldiers on a battlefeld: martial discourse Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2017), swept the country. Five days after the where we learn that global warming hurricane, Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, “is the unintended consequence of the himself now homeless, addressed the very existence of human beings as a United Nations General Assembly: “I come species.” More than that, it is “the product to you straight from the frontline of the of the totality of human actions over time. war (…). As Dominicans bear the brunt Every human being who has ever lived has of climate change, we are shouldering played a part in making us the dominant the consequences of the actions of species on this planet, and in this sense others, actions that endanger our very every human being, past and present, existence, and all for the enrichment of has contributed to the present cycle of a few elsewhere.” climate change.” On this view, the average cofee-grower on Dominica contributed to The descendants of the slaves that inhabit Maria merely by dint of belonging to the Dominica had done nothing to heat up this Homo sapiens species. So did her ancestor planet, and neither had the tiny surviving slaves who were brought to the island. So indigenous population. Subsistence did the Kalinago people, living there in farmers who resorted to taxi-driving peace before Europeans made landfall on or street-vending to supplement their the island in 1492. incomes, they had negligible carbon footprints and zero power over global energy supplies. Yet, in the assault from Flawed narrative the hyper-hurricane, the main victims were precisely these farmers: they were killed, It is exceedingly difcult to see what their lives laid to waste, the very land they scientifc grounds there could be for such stood on destroyed. a view, but a multitude of intellectuals expounding on the Anthropocene Follow the Leaders, an installation have made similar statements. To pick by Spanish artist Isaac Cordal at Are we all responsible? just one other case, historian Dipesh the Exposition Fragil (Brussels, 2015). Chakrabarty (see page 11) , perhaps the In the discourse about climate change, The small sculptures represent most infuential interpreter of the concept as it has developed in Western academia, businessmen half-drowning in a mixture in the humanities and social sciences, has media and policy-making circles over of water and oil. argued that when it comes to producing the past decade or so, another storyline climate change, “the poor participate has taken hold. It says that the problem in that shared history of human evolution has been created by all of us. Global just as much as the rich do.” (Chakrabarty The Anthropocene narrative is fawed warming is the fault of the human species D, 2014, Climate and Capital: On Conjoined because it distorts and obfuscates that as a whole. We live in the Anthropocene, Histories, Critical Inquiry 41, no. 1, reality – not by saying that human actions the epoch when our particular species The University of Chicago Press Journals.) have caused climate change, which is an has overtaken the natural forces in incontrovertible fact, but by sliding from determining the trajectory of this planet, On this view, Maria was more a suicide that observation into the depiction of the most obviously in the realm of climate than a blitzkrieg. It was a case of the human species as a unifed protagonist. – and so humans in general are responsible chickens coming home to roost among It is anything but. for the ensuing catastrophes. some of their original breeders, with no particularly fagrant injustice involved. For the past few thousands of years, as long From the denuded hillsides of Dominica, as class societies have existed, Homo sapiens the reality, of course, looks very diferent. has been a deeply fractured entity, and never more so than in this rapidly warming world – where the world’s eight richest men own as much wealth ($426 billion) as the poorest half of the world’s population combined ($409 billion), according to Oxfam, the charity (January 2017).
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Wealth is known to correlate closely with To take but one example, in December The people of Dominica and their many carbon dioxide emissions. It is the sign of 2017, The Guardian newspaper fellows of misfortune around the world profts from business-as-usual and the best reported that the production of plastics – set to multiply every coming year proof against its consequences. Soaked in the United States is set to increase unless a head-on confrontation with in fossil fuels, it is the engine of the storm. by forty per cent in the next decade fossil capital begins right about now – since ExxonMobil, Shell and other fossil – have never lived in what is termed the Plastic epidemic fuel corporations have used the ongoing Anthropocene and their actions cannot shale gas boom to invest massively be blamed for causing harm to the planet. We are being told that climate change is in new plastic plants. They will lock They sufer the blows from an age more created by an anonymous mass of millions the American – and by extension, the appropriately labelled the Capitalocene. and billions of humans, when, as American global – economy, even deeper into its It is a form of structural, systematic geographer Matt Huber has recently addiction to plastic products. These will war, but we can expect the sudden argued, it is in reality, a very narrow eventually make their way to beaches shock-and-awe events to become more segment of the species that controls around the world, and to fossil fuels, the frequent in the years ahead. A more open the means of production and makes the heat from which will fnd new islands to question is when, or if, the fght-back will central decisions about energy use. That devastate. From the standpoint of capital, ever begin. Blaming the human species segment operates with one goal in sight that is exactly the right thing to do: won’t make it happen. – expanding its riches further. The process invest in the production and consumption is known as capital accumulation, of fossil fuels to generate proft. and it grinds on relentlessly, with no regard It is this process that has fuelled global Andreas Malm (Sweden) teaches human for the fate of Dominicans or the ever more warming from the very start. ecology at Lund University, Sweden. desperate alarms from climate science. He is the author of several books, including, most recently, The Progress of This Storm: Nature and Society in a Warming World (2018).
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Stop the catastrophist discourse!
Francis Chateauraynaud, As a hypothesis, the Anthropocene This reclassifcation is questionable, though, interviewed by Régis Meyran is of interest to both geologists and given the large ecological footprint of the archaeologists, who deal with radioactive or former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics chemical residues in the soil. The question (USSR) in the twentieth century. The debates sparked of by remains whether it is really necessary to talk In fact, it is not so much the term about a new geological epoch that would the Anthropocene have real Anthropocene that poses a problem as follow the Holocene. The relevance of the scientifc stakes, since they the predictability of the model, on the term Anthropocene will certainly become one hand, and the temptation to embrace could play a role in forging clearer over time, and it is normal that it catastrophism or determinism, on the other. a global model of the evolution should be debated. Some authors, such as of planetary equilibria. the American academic Jason W. Moore But the interpretations could and Swedish author Andreas Malm, prefer to speak of the Capitalocene. get distorted by those who use the term to prophesy the end of the world – an approach which is counter-productive, argues Francis Chateauraynaud.
You have been studying scientifc controversies for a long time. What do you think of the debates around the Anthropocene? This is an important debate – scientists are looking for a global model for the planet, which, for the time being, has not been consolidated. It’s a question of establishing a formal system that sets the laws governing the functioning of Planet Earth, by thinking on a global scale and integrating many variables that were previously disconnected. With the computing power available to us today, it is possible to construct a model of the biosphere and to run simulations to study the variations that occur when parameters − such as ocean temperatures and acidity – change. © Hervé Fischer (www.hervefischer.com)
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Could you tell us more about this tendency While a measure of reversibility is implied towards catastrophism? in the adverb “soon”, a marker like “too late”, and the repetition of stock phrases One problem comes from the way in such as “we have failed” or “we did not which many experts speak on behalf succeed in”, put us on the slippery slope of all humanity, by using the pronoun of catastrophism. “we”. The historian Dipesh Chakrabarty There are always individuals, groups, has questioned the function this “we” The global thinker (the intellectual who cities or regions that are inventing might serve. To attribute phenomena to thinks of the world in its global dimension) alternatives and new possibilities. humanity as a whole is to forget or mask fnds a form of legitimacy here for his The book that I co-authored with the fact that many people, who are living in fights of fancy and can unfold a great Josquin Debaz, Aux bords de l’irréversible poverty or are from minorities, play almost narrative, encompassing all the complexity [On the Edge of the Irreversible, 2017] no part in the advent of the Anthropocene. of the world in a few stock phrases. Even traces the emergence of a multiplicity of the French sociologist Bruno Latour has “counter-Anthropocenes” – other possible The other problem is the idea that “we” entered the feld, with his book Face à worlds that are forged in the interstices. have already embarked on this fatal Gaïa (2015). The temptation to prophesy While they often appear as forms of trajectory. To give you an example, fuels writings on “collapsology”, like the “resistance”, they generate other modes of in November 2017, the French daily, book by French researchers Pablo Servigne acting and of the perception of the world. Le Monde, published an open letter and Raphaël Stevens, Comment tout peut “to humanity” signed by 15,000 scientists, Take, for example, the plan to s’efondrer [How Everything Might Collapse, titled “It will soon be too late”. build a new international airport at 2015]. While these authors base their Notre-Dame-des-Landes in France. arguments on data that few would dispute, First initiated in the 1960s, the project was the way in which they are assembled into relaunched in the early 2000s. Found to be an end-of-the-world narrative is problematic. inconsistent with the COP21 (Paris, 2015) Speculation, Passion and Anxiety, The main criticism against the catastrophist declarations on combating climate change, acrylic on canvas, 2001, by the French argument is that it doesn’t work. it was fnally abandoned in January 2018 and Canadian artist-philosopher The “heuristics of fear” theory, put forward under pressure from activists. Central Hervé Fischer. years ago by the German philosopher to the civic resistance organized by the Hans Jonas (1903-1993) – who believed citizens of Notre-Dame-des-Landes was that only fearing the worst was enough to their collective ability to reverse the order raise consciousness – is no longer relevant of priorities. in the contemporary context. It’s all very The movements around farmers’ seed well for great minds to sign ominous systems and permaculture are inspired open letters, but this doesn’t bring us any by the functioning of traditional closer to solutions. The task of scientists ecosystems and knowledge, while aiming is not to announce the inevitability for self-sufciency. As with cities in of a catastrophe, but to tackle problems transition, multiple collective experiences at diferent levels of action. work together to redefne and manage Catastrophist arguments may be futile, common goods, fuelling new ideas but they are successful... for shaping policy. Not only are they successful, The future remains open. Every humanist they also provoke hostile reactions. has a duty to prove the prophets Ecology ends up getting confused of catastrophism wrong. There are with catastrophism. Groups like the countless places on this planet Association française pour l’information where people are already struggling scientifque (French Association for to overcome the devastating efects Scientifc Information (AFIS)) have even of the techno-industrial hubris. back-pedalled, proclaiming that we have never been happier on this planet. In these polemics, the arguments of Francis Chateauraynaud (France) is groups like AFIS are all the more successful a sociologist and Research Director at because they do not call on the public the École des Hautes Études en Sciences to do anything. Sociales (EHESS, School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences) in Paris. Concretely, though, can we avoid a His most recent book, co-authored catastrophe? with Josquin Debaz, is Aux bords First of all, there are many kinds of de l’irréversible. Sociologie pragmatique catastrophes. To announce a fnal global des transformations (2017). catastrophe is to ignore the real facts. It is important to avoid endorsing a closed-of vision of the future, even if it is supported by institutions, and to unlock possible futures.
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A lexicon for the Anthropocene
In order to understand Capitalocene: This term was put the ongoing debates about forward by American environmental historian and historical geographer Jason the Anthropocene, it is not W. Moore, who preferred to use the term enough to know just the word Capitalocene rather than Anthropocene. – coined in 1980 by American According to him, it is capitalism that biologist Eugene F. Stoermer has created the global ecological crisis leading us to a change of geological era. and popularized in the early A variant of the Capitalocene, the notion 2000s by the Dutch atmospheric of Occidentalocene, afrmed notably by scientist Paul Crutzen. the French historian Christophe Bonneuil, holds that responsibility for climate change Here is an overview of some lies with industrialized Western nations key technical terms. and not the poorest countries. Co-evolution of genes and culture: Biocapacity: This concept was According to American sociobiologist frst put forward in the early 1990s Edward O. Wilson, genes have made by the Swiss sustainability advocate, possible the emergence of the human Mathis Wackernagel, and Canadian mind and human culture (language, ecologist William Rees. Their research kinship, religion, etc.) and, conversely, on the biological capacity of the planet cultural traits could favour genetic Geological epoch: required by a given human activity, evolution in return. This happens through The geological timescale is led them to defne two indicators: the stabilization of certain genes that give characterized by diferent kinds biocapacity and the ecological footprint a selective advantage to members of the of time units – eons, eras, periods, (see below). Since 2003, these two group in which the cultural behaviour epochs, and ages. To be recognized indicators have been calculated and is observed. Several anthropologists as such, each subdivision must have developed by the Global Footprint and biologists have criticized this idea palaeo-environmental (climatic features), Network, which defnes biocapacity as of “co-evolution” between genes and palaeontological (fossil types) and “the ecosystems’ capacity to produce culture, arguing that the transmission of sedimentological (resulting from biological materials used by people and cultural traits is a volatile phenomenon erosion by living beings, soils, rocks, to absorb waste material generated that does not obey the laws of Darwinian alluvion, etc.) conditions, that are similar by humans, under current management evolution. They also argue that, over and homogenous. The International schemes and extraction technologies”. the past 50,000 years, humankind Commission of Stratigraphy and has experienced signifcant cultural the International Union of Geological transformations, whereas the human Sciences (IUGS) set the global standards gene pool has remained unaltered for geological timescales. We are currently (with only a few exceptions). living in the Holocene epoch, which is Ecological footprint: According to associated with human sedentism the Global Footprint Network, this term and agriculture. If all the above conditions is “a measure of how much area of are met, the Anthropocene could soon biologically productive land and water be defned as a new geological epoch. an individual, population or activity requires to produce all the resources it consumes and to absorb the waste it generates, using prevailing technology and resource management practices”.
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Sixth Extinction: The Great Extinction is the term given to a brief event in geological time (several million years) during which at least 75 per cent of species of plants and animals disappear from the surface of the earth and the oceans. Of the fve Great Extinctions that have been recorded, the best known is the Cretaceous-Tertiary, 66 million years ago, which included the disappearance of the dinosaurs. The American biologist Paul Ehrlich has suggested that we have now entered the sixth Great Extinction (although, for the time being, its destruction in terms of number of species is considerably less than in the fve others) – 40 per cent of the planet’s mammals will have seen their habitat range reduced by 80 per cent between 1900 and 2015. Spheres: For the Russian mineralogist and geologist Vladimir Vernadsky, who devised the concept of biosphere in 1926, Planet Earth is made up of the intermeshing of fve distinct spheres – the lithosphere, the rigid, rock outer layer; the biosphere, comprising all living beings; the atmosphere, the envelope of gases known as air; the technosphere Great resulting from human activity; and the Divergence: noosphere, the part of the biosphere The expression occupied by thinking humanity, including “Great Divergence”, all thoughts and ideas. Other authors coined by American have since added to this list the notions historian Kenneth Pomeranz, of hydrosphere (all the water present designates the industrial on the planet) and cryosphere (ice). boom that has separated Europe from China since the nineteenth Technodiversity: The word biodiversity Vertigo, lithograph by French artist century. According to Pomeranz, it was refers to the diversity of ecosystems, species Antonin Malchiodi, 2018. the unequal geographical distribution and genes, and the interaction between © Antonin Malchiodi (antoninmalchiodi.fr) of coal resources and the conquest these three levels, in a given environment. of the New World that gave the decisive By analogy, technodiversity refers to impetus to the European economy. the diversity of technological objects and Great Acceleration: Scientists are the materials used to make them. Planet (as a unit of measurement): in agreement that, since the 1950s, The ecological footprint has a “planet Technofossils: Fossils are the mineralized ecosystems have been modifed more equivalent”, or the number of planets remains of individuals that lived in the past. rapidly and profoundly than ever it would take to support humanity’s By analogy, technofossils are the remains before – under the combined efects needs at any given time. In order of technological objects. of the unprecedented increase in mass to determine a country’s ecological consumption (in countries belonging Technosphere: The technosphere refers footprint, we measure the number to the Organisation for Economic to the physical part of the environment of planets that would have been needed Co-operation and Development (OECD)), that is modifed by human activity. by the world’s population if it consumed dramatic population growth, economic It is a globally interconnected system, as much as the population of that growth and urbanization. The American comprising humans, domesticated country. According to the World Wildlife chemist Will Stefen dubbed this animals, farmland, machines, towns, Fund (WWF), “every year, humanity phenomenon the “Great Acceleration”. factories, roads and networks, airports, etc. consumes the equivalent of 1.7 planets to meet its needs”.
The UNESCO Courier t April-June 2018 | 29 Zoom
Qello, aged 13, collects frewood from the forest, as dawn breaks over the village of Dodota Denbel. The second of four children in a family of farmers, she is responsible for most of the domestic chores, especially since her older sister, 19, got married and had a baby.
© Ignacio Marín
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Zoom An ordinary day in the life of Qello
Once she returns home with the frewood, Qello makes some cofee. Text: Katerina Markelova Photos: Ignacio Marín If Qello, the heroine of this photo feature In Ethiopia, in spite of a relatively high (shot in November 2017) goes to school rate of enrolment of girls in primary today, it is because she is lucky. Just 30.4% school – 82% in 2015 – only one girl in of Ethiopian girls of secondary school age two (47% in 2007) between the ages are able to go to school (UNESCO Institute of 15 and 24 years can read, write and for Statistics (UIS), 2015). understand a short and simple text about their daily lives. This is the logical Qello, who is 13 years old, has already consequence of an acute shortage taken the frst step towards realizing of teachers – there was one teacher for her fundamental right to education ffty-fve pupils at the primary level in 2011. – she has not abandoned primary school, like 61% of her young compatriots (UIS, Will Qello’s little brother face as many 2014). But will she be able to enter upper obstacles during his schooling? He will secondary school? Only 17% of girls have a slightly better chance of going to (gross enrolment rate*) passed this level primary school (the enrolment rate for in 2015. boys was 88.5% in 2015), and secondary school (31.4% in 2015).
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He will also probably spend one more year Some 17 million of them are girls *Gross enrolment rate: the number at school – the school life expectancy** – 9 million girls between 6 and 11 of students enrolled in a given level for boys was 8.9 years in 2012, compared will never go to school, as against of education, regardless of age, to 7.9 years for girls. 6 million boys (UIS). expressed as a percentage of the ofcial school-age population corresponding Even though boys and girls have almost Gender equality is Target 1 of Sustainable to the same level of education. equal access to compulsory schooling Development Goal 4, which aims to (from 7 to 14 years), the situation ensure equal and quality education for **School life expectancy: in Ethiopia is not very encouraging. all, and to promote lifelong learning the number of years a child is likely About 2.2 million children and 4.6 million opportunities by 2030. UNESCO, to spend in the school and university adolescents (2015) have had no schooling as the United Nations specialized education system. in this sub-Saharan African country with agency for education, was entrusted a population of 102 million. to lead the Education 2030 Framework for Action, adopted in November 2015. Today, 59 million children, or 9% of The main responsibility for implementing the primary school-aged population this agenda lies with governments, worldwide, do not go to school. Just over with UNESCO and its partners providing half of these children live in sub-Saharan support through advice on coordinated Africa, a region with the highest rates policy formulation, technical assistance, of exclusion from education. capacity-building and monitoring of progress at the global, regional and national levels.
Qello spends a few minutes on herself, taking a morning wash.
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Before she can get to school, Qello has already made breakfast and cleaned the house. She is sometimes late, or has to skip a class because household chores are a priority.
Five girls share one desk in Qello’s class at the village public school.
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“Two‐thirds of Qello’s girlfriends will be forcibly married at an early age. The vast majority of them will drop out from school soon after their wedding day,” explains Ana Sendagorta, Director of the Pablo Horstmann Foundation.
Back from school, Qello prepares a meal for the family. Traditionally, domestic duties are seen as essential “training” for girls, preparing them for their future lives as wives and mothers.
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Qello waits for her father to fnish his meal before she cleans the dishes.
Once the dishes are done, Qello fetches water from the community well. Only one well serves the entire village, so she often waits for hours in a queue for her turn.
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The journey back home takes even longer, since the donkey cart is loaded with water. The long distances expose many girls to physical or sexual violence, but they have no choice. Their families depend on the water.
Back home, it is time to do the laundry.
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By the time all the chores are done, it is the end of the day. Qello fnally fnds some time do her homework, by the light of a small lamp.
Night shrouds Qello’s house in darkness, though stars light the sky. Tomorrow is another day.
The UNESCO Courier t April-June 2018 | 37 Ideas Ideas
Frontispiece of a seventeenth-century manuscript. The reader holds a safna, a manuscript in a format reserved for poetry. In the original, on the opposite page, a young woman faces him, listening, and handing him her golden cup. © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée du Louvre) / Hervé Lewandowski
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We, the servants and tenants of Earth
Souleymane Bachir Diagne
To meet the challenge that the global ecological crisis presents today, there is an urgent need to draw on humanity’s philosophical and spiritual repertoire – because it teaches us valuable lessons on the importance of taking care of life in all its forms. Souleymane Bachir Diagne draws on this source here, by blending the philosophical novel of a twelfth-century Andalusian scholar, African words of wisdom and thoughts from Western philosophers. We are not nature’s masters and owners, the Senegalese philosopher warns us. With the Ideas Section, this issue My intention is to think about a major Homo perfectus of the UNESCO Courier marks crisis – the ecological crisis, which we the celebrations of the World agree, defnes the era we are living The Arabic philosophical fable, after Day for Cultural Diversity in − by showing how the history of its translation into Latin in 1671, for Dialogue and Development, philosophy can shed light on it and give under the title Philosophus autodidactus, 21 May, and the International Day us guidance on the actions we must take and later into English, was a source of for Biological Diversity, 22 May. to deal with it. More precisely, I would inspiration for many writers, including like to show how there is continuity the English writer, Daniel Defoe, between the way philosophy helps us the author of Robinson Crusoe. Indeed, to consider a policy of humanity and the Andalusian philosopher’s novel is the way it illuminates a policy of the the story of the survival of Hayy, a child “humanization of the Earth”, in the abandoned on an island that has never words of the French philosopher and known a human presence, and who is theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin rescued, protected and fed by a doe. (1881-1955). I use this expression as When the animal dies, he learns to use his signifying the duty and the responsibility hands, his practical and then theoretical that the human has to act accordingly, intelligence, in an ontogeny (the origin from the moment he understands that and development of the individual nature is entrusted to him and to humanity organism, from conception to death) in the future. It forbids me to consider that recapitulates phylogeny (evolution myself as “nature’s master and owner”, of the species over the ages): the child to cite the well-known phrase by the develops into homo perfectus, the insān seventeenth-century French philosopher, kāmil of Islamic mysticism. René Descartes.On this point, regarding In other words, he becomes an a philosophy that is simultaneously accomplished human who rediscovers spiritual and ecological, I would like to not only the essence of civilization evoke the ideas of the Andalusian scholar (and especially fre), but also the sense of Abu Bakr Ibn Tufayl (1105-1185). They are transcendence that leads him to the idea, masterfully expressed in his magnum opus, and then to the experience of the divine. the philosophical novel Hayy ibn Yaqzān. We fnd an echo of the Philosophus He presents the idea that humans realize autodidactus in the philosophical debate their humanity fully only when they reach about the tabula rasa, the clean slate ecological consciousness − which allows that represents our ability to know them to simultaneously understand before experience begins to record the evolution of their own becoming our knowledge on it. and the responsibility which is incumbent on them to protect life on earth.
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Thus we have underlined the continuity between the idea illustrated by the novel The caliph of God about Hayy and An Essay Concerning on Earth Human Understanding by the seventeenth- The frst shock that sets in motion the Hayy devotes himself to the practice century English philosopher John Locke. practical and theoretical intelligence of of dissecting dead animals, and then We should note, in passing, that the the child is the question that confronts attempts to surprise the vital principle in teaching of the history of philosophy as him, plunging him into sufering and living animals by performing vivisections it is presented in most textbooks leaves incomprehension, at the moment his on them − not seeing, in his ignorance and little room for a work as important as mother, the doe, dies − what is this his innocence, the cruelty of his actions. Ibn Tufayl’s, or for the intellectual tradition thing, life, which has left the body of the He abandons this research, again because to which it belongs − this calls for another mother and made her forever deaf to of failure. Later, when he attains full way of teaching the history of philosophy, her child’s calls? To answer this question, awareness of self, God, Creation and his which does not make it a purely own place within it and responsibility for European matter. it, Hayy will understand his responsibility Photograph of the Careto man, by French to be the guardian of life, in all its forms. photographer Charles Fréger, taken He will take from nature only what is during the Carnival in Lazarim, Portugal. necessary for his sustenance, ensuring that It is part of the Wilder Mann series the capacity for renewal of life is perfectly (2010-2011), which took Fréger across preserved, and that nature reconstitutes eighteen European countries in search what it gives him. of images of the “savage man”. Ibn Tufayl’s insistence on Hayy’s ecological consciousness is a philosophical illustration of Koranic anthropology that defnes the human as “the caliph of God on Earth”. The word caliph, which means substitute, and the best translation for which is no doubt lieutenant – or more precisely lieu-tenant, place-holder, in French etymology – teaches humans what they have to be and defnes their responsibility to watch over their environment, namely the Earth. Moreover, this word caliph, in spite of what we hear today, has in the Koran only this meaning, denoting the destination of the human. An important message from Ibn Tufayl’s book is, therefore, that the human is guardian of the Earth for itself and for the generations to come, because the human is originally the depository of what makes him the placeholder of God on Earth. Today, we need more than ever to heed this responsibility, without it being necessarily linked to a religious meaning. © Charles Fréger (www.charlesfreger.com)
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In my opinion, I am not one of those people who go overboard in their eforts to bring down anthropocentrism – and for whom the diferent kingdoms should be self-represented in a sort of “natural contract” replacing the social contract. It is not necessary to dissolve humanity to forbid it to behave, as another seventeenth-century philosopher, Baruch Spinoza, wrote, “like an empire in an empire” − to make humans understand that they are not free nor separate from natural necessities. On the contrary, we must afrm our humanity, but afrm it as ubuntu. Ubuntu is a philosophical concept with universal scope and it seems to me that it encompasses the meaning and the role of the humanities − in particular, the philosophical humanities. By showing how these can enlighten us, I want to emphasize their contribution, even their “utility”. But it is not a matter of exaggerating what philosophy can do, nor of giving in to the imperative of the proftability of knowledge, considered solely from the point of view of its technical implementation – by insisting on the use to be made of it. Instead, when it comes to the thought and action required by the major crises of our time, I want to show that we can, we must, rely just as much on a philosophical novel written in the twelfth century in Muslim Spain as on Western philosophical thought, or African words of wisdom. To meet the challenges of changing times, we need to revitalize ourselves by delving into what humans have thought all around the world and at diferent times. In other words, I want to recall that philosophy, and the humanities in general, are what give meaning to an education Homme nature, aquarelle on paper aimed towards the total, complete human by Angolan-French artist Franck Lundangi. −the homo perfectus – who is able to use the knowledge of history to invent a future © Franck Lundangi / courtesy of Galerie Making humanity Anne de Villepoix we must build all together. together I’ll sum up my point in one word: ubuntu. To be the receptacle of what makes me Souleymane Bachir Diagne (Senegal) This Bantu word gained worldwide a placeholder of God on Earth makes is a philosopher, specialized in the history fame when it was used by South me understand that “making humanity of logic and mathematics. He is a Professor Africans Desmond Tutu and Nelson together” is the opposite of depredation. at Columbia University (New York), Mandela. It literally means “to make It gives me the duty to look after life in and the author of several books on humanity together” − to create, thanks general − to think that although animals, the history of logic and philosophy, to other people, the human that I have for instance, do not themselves formulate Islam and African societies and cultures. to become, and at the same time, create rights that must be recognized as declared, He received the Edouard Glissant award “one humanity” with others. these are not any less real to me, because in 2011 for his life’s work. my humanity obligates me to them.
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Creolizing the idea of humanity
Mireille Delmas-Marty
How can we protect and promote the diversity of cultural expressions, while resisting relativism and imperialism, and reconciling the universalism of human rights with the pluralism of cultures? Mireille Delmas-Marty, a member of the Institut de France and a jurist specialized in the study of the internationalization of law, shares her perspective on the issue. She advocates “reciprocal creolization”, a dynamic and evolving process of coordinating, harmonizing and sometimes unifying, diferences. © Minia Biabiany (www.miniabiabiany.com) Protecting and promoting the diversity of cultural expressions is one of the priorities that UNESCO’s Member States An image capture of Blue Spelling, have set for themselves at the dawn a change of perspective is a change Recalling this context seems to me entirely of the third millennium. By signing of temporality, by Guadeloupean necessary, because since 2001, we have the 2005 Convention, they defned artist Minia Biabiany. been engaged in a kind of permanent cultural diversity as a common heritage global civil war, which sustains genuine of humanity that must not only be religious frenzy and terrorizes entire protected – as an established, permanent It was the frst major intergovernmental populations. This has resulted, in particular, treasure – but also promoted, because it is meeting held just after the 11 September to the mass exodus of populations a living treasure, and therefore renewable attacks in the United States, that we are experiencing today, and in and evolving. and UNESCO wanted to proclaim loud the identity tensions of the countries of Cultural diversity had already been and clear its rejection of the theory immigration − that are closing themselves elevated to the rank of common heritage of the clash of civilizations and its refusal of on their diferences, in the name of humanity in the Universal Declaration of to sanctify diferences. of a supposedly threatened national 2001, unanimously adopted by UNESCO’s identity. All these current events compel General Conference in November of us to develop increasingly efective tools that year. The text afrms that cultural for cultural pluralism. diversity is, for humankind, “as necessary as biodiversity is for nature”.
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The risk of contradiction is twofold, because by posing the principle of “equal dignity of all cultures” (Article 2 of the 2005 Convention), cultural pluralism, if limited to juxtaposing diferences alongside each other, could lead to a certain relativism of values and, consequently, to a kind of negation of universalism. Conversely, the universalism of human rights could lead to the negation of pluralism, if it were to force the fusion of all cultures and the disappearance of all But where should these paths, which open diferences. In such a case, this universalism to the widening of our knowledge of would be the new garb of an imperialism diferent cultures, lead? My answer that does not speak its name. is: to the rapprochement of cultures. The drafters of the 2005 Convention saw It is one step further, not just to merge this difculty clearly. They laid down the cultures, but to make them more fundamental rule in Article 2: “No one may compatible with each other. I would call invoke the provisions of this Convention that ordering pluralism. in order to infringe human rights and fundamental freedoms as enshrined Pluralizing the universal in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or guaranteed by international law, Sensory perceptions – hearing, sight, or to limit the scope thereof.” smell, taste and touch – constitute the frst tool for a true knowledge of diferent In other words, diferences are only cultures. We know to what extent concerts permitted if they are compatible with or festivals, for example, contribute human rights. The difculty is that to expanding our knowledge through the guarantee is not the same for all rights. sensory perceptions. For “non-derogable rights”, such as equal human dignity (prohibition of torture and The second tool comprises cognitive other inhuman or degrading treatment), representations – the acquisition of the protection is absolute and applies even knowledge through reason, and not in the event of war or terrorism, marking necessarily through the senses. in principle, a common limit to the diversity These include educational, philosophical, of cultures. Other rights (privacy, religious economic, sociological, ethical and freedom) are subject to restrictions, legal discourse. For example, the role of when the purpose is legitimate and libraries, cultural institutions or the People’s the restrictions proportionate. Universities of ATD Fourth World. It is fair to say that the drafters of the 2005 These are based on the convergence of Convention set a goal, but that they did knowledge, a notion on which I would not provide the “user guide” to prevent like to dwell on briefy. Since 1972, pluralism from rhyming with relativism the Fourth World People’s Universities and universalism with imperialism. have been investing in the sharing of knowledge between the learned As a jurist, my contribution to the and those who know – that is, between refection on the tools of cultural pluralism the knowledge of scholars and the would be to propose, if not a set of knowledge of experience. The cooperation instructions, at least a few ways to try Are pluralism between cultural institutions is also to reconcile pluralism and universalism, based on the idea of mixing together and universalism and some means to try to bring cultures several cognitive paths. In the feld of closer together. incompatible? art, we have a large number of examples We know that many conficts are the result of this kind of cross-over. For example, It must be recognized, however, of ignorance of the Other, but we often French composer Pierre Boulez who, that the text of the 2005 Convention forget to look for their origin in the in the late 1980s, shed light on the process contains an underlying contradiction, ignorance of our own culture, which is a of musical composition, by evoking the which is not easy to resolve, between key factor. Opening up ways to broaden lessons of the Swiss artist Paul Klee of pluralism − which the 2001 Declaration our knowledge of diferent cultures, the Bauhaus School of Design in Weimar, describes as giving “policy expression including our own, is essential, I think, Germany (from 1921 to 1931). to the reality of cultural diversity” because it makes it possible for everyone − and universalism, which is enshrined to avoid conceiving the universal as in the 1948 Universal Declaration of an extension of their own culture. Human Rights and, more broadly, In other words, it is necessary to pluralize in human rights law. the universal.
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The combination of the sensory and the rational – and we know that these two capacities are linked – is undoubtedly the one that opens the widest perspectives for our knowledge of diferent cultures. Today, this combination is facilitated by new technologies, as admirably illustrated by the Museum of World Culture in Gothenburg, Sweden, inaugurated in 2004, or the Mucem (Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée) in Marseille, France, established in 2013. Whichever path we take – sensory, cognitive or combined – we have several ways to order pluralism, without suppressing it. Going beyond fxed metaphors To avoid both the relativism and imperialism of values, an interactive and adaptable dynamic is necessary. The rapprochement of cultures must be understood as a process, a movement that encourages us to go beyond the fxed metaphors – human rights seen as the foundations, pedestals, pillars or roots of various cultures – and give preference to the metaphor that presents human rights as the common language of humanity. It suggests three processes, the dynamic efect of which is growing: from intercultural exchange (dialogue) to the search for equivalences (translation), and even to reciprocal transformation (creolization). Dialogue, or intercultural exchange, improves the understanding and knowledge of the Other and thus facilitates rapprochement, but does not guarantee it. As an example, I summarize here the judges’ dialogue on the death penalty, triggered in 1989 by a bold interpretation of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The court had ruled that the extradition to the United States, of a man facing a death sentence violated the prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. By its potential applications to various third countries, this case law would have an infuence throughout the world. It seems to have favoured a turnaround in 2001 by the Supreme Court of Canada, which is largely based on the decision of the ECHR. It was also used by the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa in 1995, to support the judgement on the death penalty as contrary to the prohibition of © Gilles Elie-Dit-Cosaque (www.lamaisongarage.fr) cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
Lambeaux is an intimate diary reconstructed from disparate elements. It is a “Creole memory, Creole in the geographical and spiritual sense,” according to its author,
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But dialogue remains subject to the goodwill of the actors and, in this sense, its contribution to the rapprochement of cultures is limited to coordinating diferences. The second way, which goes further in the recognition of common values, is translation. A true “miracle”, according to French philosopher Paul Ricœur (1913-2005), it “creates a resemblance where there seemed to be only plurality”. I would add that translation is “miraculous” in that it respects diferences, while seeking equivalences that can make these diferences compatible. Translation is a means of harmonizing diferences, an approach that contributes to rapprochement on the principle of musical harmony, as defned by Plato in The Symposium: “From contrary elements, such as sharps and fats, the art of music, by making them agree with each other, produces harmony.” That said, we often encounter untranslatable concepts, and the misunderstandings they cause. For example, in Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we read that “all men are endowed by nature with reason and conscience”. Initially, only “reason” was mentioned. But one of the drafters of the Declaration, Zhang Pengchun of China, remarked that if the declaration was to be universal, the notion of reason alone was not enough. He proposed adding the Chinese term liangxin, which translated to conscience. In reality, the equivalence between liangxin and conscience is weak, because the Chinese term, derived from the characters lian and gxin, evokes moral conscience in the Confucian sense, that is, a conscience that favours otherness. To solve this type of difculty, we would need to go even further, by implementing the third means mentioned above: hybridization or, to avoid possible misunderstandings, creolization. I use the word creolization in the way it was used by the French poet Edouard Glissant (1928-2011), when he suggested opening up our particular poetics, one with the other. In other words, creolization makes it possible to unify diferences by integrating them into a common defnition. In his book, La Cohée du Lamentin (2004), Edouard Glissant wrote: “Creolization is not a simple mechanism of inter-breeding. It is a mixture that produces something unexpected.” To produce the unexpected is to fnd − beyond dialogue and the Martinique artist and flmmaker Gilles Elie-Dit-Cosaque. It is also a fantasized diary, translation, but thanks to them − a new, where the individual and the collective intertwine in fragmented pages. truly common meaning. It is a way of overcoming diferences.
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A shift from the poetic to the legal realm As such, it almost exemplifes the notion will allow me to examine the example of crime against humanity, because of a concept with a universal vocation, in fact it is humanity as a whole that is the legal signifcance of which is evolving: afected by the destruction of a specifc crime against humanity. religious culture and cultural objects that are attached to it.” [ICTY, Prosecutor v. Dario Kordic and Mario Cerkez, IT-95-14/2, Towards a mutual Judgement, February 26, 2001]. transformation The question also comes up regarding It would also be necessary to associate The notion of crime against humanity has Iraq. “The destruction of objects tracing the cultures that impose duties on a collective dimension – “a widespread or the history of a people is an eloquent humans towards nature, like those that systematic attack on a civilian population” way of uprooting them, depriving them protect Pachamama (Mother Earth), – and implies the depersonalization of of their origins and destroying them for example, inscribed in the constitutions the victim. First used in the charter of the in their soul,” says French-Iranian jurist of Ecuador and Bolivia. This is perhaps International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg Pejman Pourzand (Radio Notre Dame, how we should understand the proposal in 1945, this concept is implicitly part of the 6 March 2015]. Other commentators have that is currently being circulated, Western perception of humanity, which is referred to this kind of destruction as to extend the notion of crime against based on the idea that each human being a “crime against the history of humanity”. humanity and genocide to ecocide is an individual, and equally, a member – that is, the irreversible and serious To ensure genuine creolization through of the human community. damage being caused to the equilibrium a reciprocal transformation, it would of the ecosystem. But the concept has gradually been be necessary to integrate cultures extended to the destruction of that value the links between individuals In order to endow the notion of crimes cultural property. In 2001, the judges of the same national community against humanity with a truly universal of the International Criminal Tribunal − as suggested by the Zulu word vocation, other traditions should enrich for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) ubuntu (which, roughly translated, the Western vision of humanity itself. ruled that when the destruction and means common humanity) from South The rapprochement of cultures, degradation of buildings dedicated to Africa, the Japanese term uchi-soto the theme of the ongoing International religion or education is perpetrated (the distinction between group members Decade (2013-2022), involves many with discriminatory intent, it amounts to and others), or the previously-mentioned paths that make it possible to resist “an attack on the very religious identity Confucian term, liangxin (conscience). both relativism and imperialism, of a people. and to reconcile the universalism of human rights with the pluralism of cultures. These are the paths that lead to reciprocal humanization. Errance, 2012, by Haitian artist Sergine André Mireille Delmas-Marty (France) is a member of the Institut de France and an honorary professor at the Collège de France. She is a founder of the Association de recherches pénales européennes (ARPE), honorary president of the Pharos Observatory of Cultural and Religious Pluralism, member of the Haut Conseil de la Science et de la Technologie, and an administrator of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Delmas-Marty has published numerous books on criminal law, human rights law and the globalization of law, including: Les forces imaginantes du droit, in four volumes (2004-2011); Résister, responsabiliser, anticiper (2013); Aux quatre vents du monde. Petit guide de navigation sur l’océan de la mondialisation (2016), and De la grande Accélération à la grande Métamorphose (2017). © Sergine André / private collection of Maurice Depestre
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A missive for youth
Abdourahman A. Waberi
“An old African teacher used to say: There is my truth and your truth, but the truth is in the middle. To get close to it, everyone must move slightly out of their truth to take a step towards the other.” This is one of the lessons that Amadou Hampâté Bâ wanted to transmit to young people on his continent and elsewhere, in a letter written in the 1980s. Today, this letter takes on a prophetic quality. © Magule Wango He who knows not where he came from, will not know where to go, From one end of the Sahara to the other, Growing up in slums, these youth did by the Mozambican painter a large segment of African youth have not have the opportunity to appreciate Magule Wango. experienced only precarious lives. the legacy of elders who were generous Destitute and disoriented, these young with advice and other lessons of life. people throw themselves body and soul Among them, is an emblematic fgure for into a hazardous adventure. For them, the entire African continent – the Malian, to face the desert, the smugglers, Amadou Hampâté Bâ (1901-1991), the man the barbed wire, the waves of the to whom is attributed the now-famous Mediterranean, seems more bearable dictum: “In Africa, when an old man dies, than the feeling of falling by the wayside, a library burns down.” rotting on the vine. What else can they do? What he really said was: “I consider Move, fee, opt for migration and perish the death of each of these traditionalists in the sea if they must. When questioned, as the burning of an unexploited the shipwreck survivors emphasize cultural fund.” It was 1 December 1960, the lack of means of subsistence. and Hampâté Bâ was then the head Crossing the Sahara to be sold as a slave of Mali’s delegation at the UNESCO in Libya or joining the Boko Haram General Conference. is neither an option nor a life plan.
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Just as the beauty of a carpet is the variety of its colours, the diversity of people, cultures and civilizations makes up the beauty and wealth of the world.
How boring and monotonous would Whether they like it or not, all humankind is be a uniform world where all humans, sailing on the same raft: when a hurricane rises, everyone will be threatened at fashioned according to the same model, the same time. Is it not better to try to understand and to help each other before thought and lived in the same way! it is too late?” Having nothing more to discover in others, The wise man of Bandiagara then encourages these young people how would one enrich oneself? – growing up and developing in a bipolar world where interest groups clash and tear each other apart – to “gradually Mali had just joined the Organization as The generations of the twenty-frst century produce a new mindset, more oriented an independent country. In his speech, will experience a fantastic encounter of towards complementarity and solidarity, he pleaded for the “gigantic oral races and ideas. Depending on how they both individual and international.” monument to be saved from destruction assimilate this phenomenon, they will Because we cannot stress often enough by the deaths of traditionalists who are ensure its survival or cause their destruction that “in our times, so fraught with threats its only repositories [and who] are, alas, by deadly conficts. In this modern world, of all kinds, people must emphasize not in the decline of their days.” none can take refuge any longer in their what separates them, but what they ivory towers. All states, whether strong or have in common, with respect for the I used to say to myself that as a teenager, weak, rich or poor, are now interdependent, identity of each. Meeting and listening I would have liked to have had Hampâté if only economically or in the face of the to the other is always more enriching, Bâ as my grandfather. Honesty forces dangers of global war. even for the blossoming of one’s own me to recognize that I probably would not identity, than conficts or sterile discussions have had the ears to listen to his advice. to impose one’s own point of view.” The old boubous, the hoary heads Macho Nne / Caribbean Peacock, 2014, and their traditional values did not attract from the C-Stunners series by Kenyan me. I condemned in advance, this world artist Cyrus Kabiru. that seemed to me passive and obsolete. I rejected its rules on principle. I was terribly wrong. If today’s world, in Africa and elsewhere, desperately needs tutelary fgures like the author of The Strange Destiny of Wangrin, it is because the rupture between the generations seems to be complete. The family circle has shrunk considerably. Worse, it is no longer the solid foundation © Courtesy of the artist and SMAC Gallery of awakening and transmission that it was yesterday. “My dear young people…” Six years before his death in 1991, Hampâté Bâ wrote a letter dedicated to youth that reads like a testament. “The man who speaks to you is one of the frst-born of the twentieth century,” he says. He then issues an alert: “Young people, last-born of the twentieth century, you live in a time which is at once terrifying, for the threats it imposes on humanity, and enthralling, for the possibilities it opens up in the feld of knowledge and communication between people.
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Whether individuals, nations, races or cultures, we are all different from each other; but we all have something similar too, and that is what we must look for,
Eloquent and precise, the writer uses in order to be able to recognize ourselves striking images to make his point: in the other and to converse with him. “Human life is like a big tree and every generation is like a gardener. The good Then our differences, instead of separating gardener is not the one who uproots, but the one who, when the time comes, us, will become complementary knows how to prune the dead branches and, if necessary, proceed judiciously with and a source of mutual enrichment benefcial grafts. To cut the trunk would be to commit suicide, to renounce one’s own personality and to assume artifcially that of others, without ever completely A defender of traditional African society, The land was not the property of humans, succeeding. Again, let’s remember the old and recognizing that it had “its faws, but a sacred trust entrusted to them by saying: The log has spent a lot of time its excesses and its weaknesses”, he draws the Creator and of which they were only in the water, it may foat, but it will never our attention to the fact that it was “above all the managers.” become a crocodile!” a civilization of responsibility and solidarity In the era of the Anthropocene – the result at every level,” including the environment. of the divorce between humankind and “Young people, be this good gardener,” “Humankind was also considered nature – this lesson of our ancestors invites Hampâté Bâ exhorts. “Then, well-rooted responsible for the balance of the us to seriously question the way of life in yourselves, you will be able to open surrounding natural world. It was forbidden that we have adopted, which is destructive to the outside, without fear and without to cut a tree without reason, to kill an animal of both traditions and the environment. harm, both to give and to receive.” without a valid motive. Open-mindedness, diversity, dialogue and mutual understanding –these are Mali Ya Mfalme, Macho Nne | Nubia the four pillars that bear the message Kale (Ancient Nubia), 2016. Artwork by of this precious letter from Hampâté the self-taught pluri-disciplinary plastician Bâ. The time has come to put it in the Cyrus Kabiru (Kenya). hands of everyone, young and old, in Africa and elsewhere. Storyteller, writer, poet, ethnologist, spiritual leader, numerologist, diplomat, Hampâté Bâ defned himself as “a graduate of the great university of the Word, taught in the shadow of baobabs”. Having taken some unusual paths to reach the higher spheres of knowledge, he made it his mission to pass on the baton to us
© Courtesy of the artist and SMAC Gallery – regardless of our beliefs, our skin colour or our age.
Abdourahman A. Waberi, a novelist, essayist and poet, was born in what is today the Republic of Djibouti. He now lives between France and the United States, where he is a professor at George Washington University in Washington, DC. Author of several novels, including Aux États-Unis d’Afrique (In the United States of Africa) (2005) and La Chanson Divine (The Divine Song, 2015), he also writes a bi-monthly column for the French newspaper Le Monde. Translated into over a dozen languages, his work seeks answers from the world with anger, tenderness and compassion.
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Bangladeshi stylist Bibi Russell has devoted her life to Fashion for Development.
© Séverine Desmarest
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Bibi Russell: Finding magic in fingers
Interview by Krista Pikkat (UNESCO) and Jasmina Šopova
UNESCO’s Artist for Peace and Here, she teaches and motivates the girls, well-known designer Bibi Russell has some of whom are victims of child achieved a tour de force: thanks to her, trafcking, to develop income-generating the humble gamuchas – traditional skills. “I can’t believe that in the twenty-frst cotton towels that people in South century, when everyone is talking about Asia generally use to wipe their hands women’s empowerment and equal rights, and faces – rival the most prestigious we are still selling our girls!” she says, pieces on fashion podiums all over the pointing out that destitute girls in the state world. But her real success is away from are sold for less than $100. “If I have the these podiums, in hundreds of weaving strength to fnish this difcult work, I hope workshops in her country, Bangladesh, it will open doors for these girls to start but also in Uzbekistan, Colombia, India. a new life flled with dignity and love.”
In December 2017, she took part in India’s Russell’s eforts are paying of. On 7 March Rajasthan Heritage Week, showcasing 2018, thirty-three girls from the shelter, her khadi collection. The show was including six Rohingya refugee kids, her tribute to Mahatma Gandhi and to walked the ramp at a fashion show the traditional Rajasthani weavers who organized by the government in Kolkata created the homespun cloth. and conceived by Russell. They were wearing clothes designed by their friends Russell also participated in at the Home, who have been trained the Commonwealth Fashion Exchange by Bangladesh’s best-known designer. in February 2018, with an exhibition showcasing sustainable fashion Since the late 1990s, Russell has been from the Commonwealth countries. working to develop traditional textiles
It was launched at Buckingham Palace and handicrafts, giving a chance © Bibi Productions with the support of the Queen and to thousands of people to rise out of A young girl trained by Bibi Russell the Duchess of Cambridge. poverty thanks to their “magic fngers”, in Uzbekistan, embroidering as she puts it. traditional designs. The designer with a diference is now working on what she calls “a difcult and emotionally very engaging project”. Fashion design was your true passion and With the direct support of Mamata vocation, though you frst became famous When I was 15 or 16, my father gave Banerjee, Chief Minister of West Bengal, as a top model. How did a young girl from me a book about the fashion house of she has been working at the Liluah Bangladesh decide to go to a fashion school Chanel. I discovered French haute couture, Home, the state’s largest shelter for girls, in London? and realized that there is a grammar in since September 2017. fashion that I wanted to study. I had received At home, my mother used to sew clothes for diferent awards for art between the ages us. My sisters never complained, but I was of 6 and 12, but I did not want to study never quite happy with the clothes. art. I wanted to do something diferent. So when I was 10 years old, my father I wanted to go to London. Over six months, bought me a sewing machine. You can the London College of Fashion refused barely hold a pair of scissors properly when With this interview, The UNESCO Courier my application, but they fnally accepted you’re 10, but I started experimenting. marks the celebration of the World me, with many conditions attached. Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development, 21 May.
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After twenty years in the West, where you I think parents must teach their children built a successful career as a top model, more about their culture and traditions you returned to Bangladesh in 1994. so that these traditions do not die. What made you do that? When you returned to Bangladesh, Since I was young, I had a dream. I could you started a small tailor’s workshop, not understand why Bangladeshi which grew into Bibi Productions in 1995. people were thought of as poor. For me, Most traditional weavers live in villages. the country was rich with colours and Why did you decide to base your company music! When I went to Europe, my dream in Dhaka, the capital? went with me. One day I knew that I was I only have one ofce located in Dhaka. mentally and physically ready to go I need an ofce from which we can back home. connect to the rest of the world. How many people does I believed that the people of Bangladesh But I spend 99.9 per cent of my time in Bibi Productions employ? villages. We work with craftsmen from needed me as much as I needed We have some thirty people from diferent parts of Bangladesh. They are them. You need two hands to clap. diferent corners of Bangladesh working not from privileged families, and each Today, after more than twenty years of in the ofce. There are people who frst one of them – starting from the person experience, I know I was right. They know thought they would not have the skills who makes tea in my ofce – feels that I respect them and help them restore their and knowledge to work in the ofce. Bibi Productions is theirs. human dignity. That is the most important But I am able to recognize people with thing. On the other hand, they give me I have done this for the people of a positive attitude. so much love and afection! This gives me Bangladesh, and Bibi Productions belongs In addition, we work with thousands the strength to go forward. Nothing in the to the country. world can take me away from this work. of craftspeople. I cannot say their exact How would you defne the philosophy number, but they are around 100,000. I have never turned my back on behind Bibi Productions? You think that’s huge? It is not even one my country. My parents always lived in per cent of the weavers in the country! We cannot say that Bibi Productions is Bangladesh, so I returned home regularly I wish that I could feel that I have reached not-for-proft, but we make very little even when I lived abroad. I was born in the frst step of the ladder before I die proft. Our focus is on saving and reviving Bangladesh and spent my childhood there. – there is so much more to be done. I think childhood has a major impact on the crafts and supporting the craftspeople, your life. and on raising their awareness about the In countries like India, Bangladesh, importance of education and health. Central Asia, agriculture is the most I have a wonderful family. My parents important sector of the economy. I see the diference since I started taught me to appreciate our culture as People working in agriculture and Bibi Productions in 1994. All the well as the culture of other countries. handicrafts live side by side. I work people working either in the ofce Bangladesh used to be a part of India, with people who do things by hand: or in the villages have no more than which was governed by the British and Fashion for Development is what I am. the Mughals. Thanks to the education two or three children. They know how my parents gave me, I learned all about to better manage the money they How did the idea of Fashion Greater India and about the culture of make, and their standard of living has for Development start? improved. Having come out of poverty, other countries as well. It started when I held my frst show at they understand the importance UNESCO, in 1996. Designers are very of their children going to school. rarely given recognition by United Education and health is the backbone of Nations agencies, but the Organization any economy in any country. Bibi Russell with craftspeople recognized the link between fashion and in Rajasthan, India. development, education and health. UNESCO’s “Weavers of Bangladesh” show was covered by twenty-nine television channels around the world. It was supported by Federico Mayor, the then Director-General of UNESCO, and Queen Sofía of Spain. If the media made me Bibi the model, these two people, who believed in me from the start, gave me priceless support in my career as a designer. I also received a lot of international support. Since then, I have been invited to top universities in the world, which now work on fashion for development, and to the World Economic Forum (WEF), because they realize the importance of the creative economy and the social economy. © Bibi Productions
52 | The UNESCO Courier t April-June 2018 Our guest © Bibi Productions
Bibi Russell pays tribute to the craftswomen of Barmer, Rajasthan, What defnes your work as a fashion But the real “revolution” was brought whose work was presented at a fashion designer? about with our design for young people. We do jeans in diferent colours, saris in show to celebrate Rajasthan Day Everything we do at Bibi Productions a diferent way, modern blouses, etc. in the Indian state, March 2017. is natural and handmade. I have never used synthetic fabrics or artifcial colours. How do you balance your family life I don’t expect people to wear natural and with your professional activities? In 1999, UNESCO designated you as a handmade all the time, but even if you I know married life, I have two children. Designer for Development. Then, in 2001, have four or fve outfts, wear them every When my kids were around 9 or 10, you were made an Artist for Peace. What do now and then! UNESCO’s recognitions mean to you? I had to make them realize that I have My models are inspired by traditional a dream, and that if I do not pursue it, What I am today is thanks to UNESCO. design. Of course I change colours, I would be frustrated. Today, my parents But also, thanks to my work, people realize I simplify the design, but I never change have both passed away, my children live that Bangladesh does not only have the traditional way of weaving cotton abroad, but the craftspeople I work with problems, it is also a wonderful country. or silk. never allow me to feel alone. These are ordinary people, who need their wages on When I was designated Designer for Among my biggest sellers are the frst day of the month to pay the rent. Development, I returned home and my accessories and scarves. My bangles They are not my family, but they mean showed the certifcate to the weavers. I told are made out of water hyacinth, a plant more than anything to me. them that the honour was for them, not that grows widely in Bangladesh. I now just for me. You can change people’s minds have women in six villages making these Since I returned to Bangladesh, I started when you respect their human dignity. bangles. And my gamuchas are promoted to support street children. I gave them Any recognition gives you strength. I am by the Spanish actor, Antonio Banderas, some money on the condition they went a fellow of the University of the Arts, so I do not need to spend money on to school. I became their guarantor for London. This recognition is given to publicity. I would never do that anyway NGO (non-governmental organization) me for the contribution I have made to – Bibi Productions is a self-funded project, schools, where street children are not promoting handloom. I have received and hundreds of people depend on me usually accepted. It was frst one child, the highest award from the Bangla for their livelihoods. then another – now they are more than a hundred! They are my source of joy Academy, Bangladesh’s national language How has your work evolved? authority, established in 1955 on the when I am in Dhaka. model of the French Academy. And the When I started working in Cambodia, biggest designers in the world have also I began recycling and today, I have become recognized the work I do for development. an expert at recycling! In Bangladesh, The international recognition helps me I make things out of what people a lot in my work of promoting Fashion throw away. for Development. I was also inspired by the “rickshaw art” in Bangladesh to make spectacle frames that I personally wear very often.
The UNESCO Courier t April-June 2018 | 53 Current affairs Current affairs Current © Andrzej Krauze (andrzejkrauze.com)
54 | The UNESCO Courier t April-June 2018 Current affairs
Athens: Books everywhere
Anna Routsi
Athens, the Greek capital, kicks of a year-long celebration of reading, culture and knowledge as UNESCO’s World Book Capital 2018, starting 23 April. “Books everywhere” is the motto
this year, which means books © Jean-Claude Beaujouan and a feast of related activities Le refuge (The Refuge), an installation at are open to everyone, to be the Ivresse Livresque exhibition, Amboise, Besides spreading a love for books encountered and savoured in France, 2015. and learning, it hopes to foster open dialogue − not only for the creators, every corner of this historic city. stakeholders and the intellectual elite, These include cultural institutions, but most importantly, for all its citizens. museums, civil-society groups, startups, Book lovers in Athens and those visiting non-governmental organizations (NGOs), Books and reading are melded with art it, are in for a treat. Proud of having been embassies and international organizations. and creativity, focusing on learning, named World Book Capital for 2018, Not surprisingly, about 150 libraries across but also exhibiting that books can bring the ancient capital kicks of its global Greece will implement several special joy and pleasure to readers. cultural event to celebrate books in myriad programmes within the summer reading At a time when the country is going ways, in April 2018. campaign, led by the National Library through fnancial hardships and the book of Greece. In preparation for the event, the City of industry is facing a crisis, fnancing Athens has worked hard to translate the Municipal programmes and organizations the event has had its challenges. Even so, vision of the Mayor of Athens, Georgios will also participate in the year’s activities the City of Athens has allocated a budget Kaminis, into reality. The aim of the mayor – including the City’s Athens Culture of €500,000 for communications to − and his team of seven people working on Net and Open Schools, both funded by support the event, and contribute to the event − has been to involve citizens of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation; the book activities of OPANDA. Donations various social, ethnic and age groups and Technopolis, the industrial museum and from institutions, sponsors, and embassies to difuse the book and reading culture cultural complex; OPANDA, the Youth, that will directly support the programme throughout all of Athens’ neighbourhoods Culture and Sports Organization, amounted to another €500,000 (at the end via smaller, localized activities. This is the civil-society platform SynAthina of February 2018) and was expected to expected to increase the self-esteem of the and refugee programmes. increase. What surprised and motivated us people and contribute to social integration was the interest and willingness of most and coherence. Additionally, the city’s participants to commit and undertake creative forces would be merged with a One million visitors actions, using their own means to be a part common cultural goal: to leave a solid expected of this very special event for the city. legacy, in terms of physical evidence and The programme features a vivid patchwork in the mindset of its citizens, encouraging Anna Routsi (Greece) is an advisor to of over 250 events and activities, them to love and read books, long after the Mayor of Athens for the programme all revolving around the world of books, the year has gone by. and communication of Athens World learning and knowledge. With a million Book Capital 2018. To make this possible, the City has joined visitors expected, the city aspires hands with over 150 institutions where to provide a literary backdrop to cater learning takes place, and with writers to all tastes and ages. and the publishing industry.
The UNESCO Courier t April-June 2018 | 55 Current affairs
Filling the cultural vacuum
Lucy Mushita Southern Africa’s youth are as talented as young people anywhere else. But with disappearing local traditions, and the lack of avenues to channel their creativity, they live in a cultural vacuum. Consuming content that is bombarded on the internet is not enough – these young people need to be given access to the right tools and opportunities, and to be guided and encouraged to craft their own stories. The African continent is overfowing with talent: musicians, writers, poets, philosophers, dancers and other artists. These artists and their creative work are the conduits through which cultures pass from one generation to the next. But many of them have lived in exile: Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka, Congolese novelist and chemist Emmanuel Dongala, French-Congolese author Alain Mabanckou and Zimbabwean musician Thomas La professeure Ada E. Yonath Mapfumo. The list goes on. Some exiled lors d’une expérience Africans are teaching at prestigious de cristallisation. universities abroad where their real value is appreciated – while students in their home countries are deprived of their wisdom. At the same time, traditional oral literature is disappearing from our cultural scene. Courtesy of the artist and Goodman Gallery
/ When I was young – I grew up in a small village during apartheid in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) – my identity and cultural needs were nourished
through this literature that elders conveyed © Kudzanai Chiurai through stories recounted in the evenings. We Live in Silence VIII, Involving acting and singing and dancing by the Zimbabwean artist and plastician, The outcome is that our youth is in the community, these “lessons” Kudzanai Chiurai, 2017. disconnected from both our traditions complemented the formal education and the work of contemporary African we received. authors and thinkers. It was in school that I read the classics by Today, young Africans know very little Yet, our youth is as talented anywhere numerous icons of English, French and about our traditional heritage, and would else in the world. I have witnessed American literature. These books did not rather spend their time discovering young girls and boys produce the most refect our reality, and were devoid of Hollywood flms, or playing games on the beautiful music with the most rudimentary thoughts that might have given us any ideas internet. Instead of passing down our own instruments, or making some of the of equality with Whites. But regardless of culture to our children and grandchildren, best short flms using their smartphones the censorship, reading opened up a whole and having them create their own art – all without any formal training. new world for me – introducing me to based on that culture, they are paying for other cultures and to philosophical thinking foreign entertainment. and reasoning, which led to questioning the status quo.
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Lack of funds? How can Southern Africa shape public By contrast, Neria, the homegrown 1993 policy to fll this cultural vacuum with arthouse flm scripted by Zimbabwean relevant content? How can African youth author and flmmaker Tsitsi Dangarembga learn to refect before regurgitating and directed by fellow-Zimbabwean whatever comes their way? How can Godwin Mawuru – which explores gender the region reject that which is toxic and issues – was more accessible and remains incorporate that which is untainted, the highest-grossing flm in Zimbabwe’s into their own creative work? history. The common argument about a lack While it was nearly impossible for someone of funds may be valid in many cases. of my generation to write their own stories But it is interesting to note that nearly while growing up, today’s African youth every Southern African country spends have both the possibility and the tools at millions on football stadiums and on the their disposal to do so. Women writers and infated salaries of footballers. It is true philosophers – like Ken Bugul (Senegal), that sport must be promoted and that Kidi Bebey (France-Cameroon), Nadia Yala football stadiums are generally proftable. Kisukidi (born in Belgium, of a Congolese One solution could be to create a strategy father and a French-Italian mother), in which sports and culture were merged. Virginia Phiri (Zimbabwe), Chimamanda Revenue from stadiums, for example, Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria) – are all writing could be channelled to fund libraries, their stories, and Africa needs to listen to cinemas, theatres, music centres. and engage with them. Most world-views of Africa continue to be tainted by colonial Another frequent political argument is points of view – African voices, if provided that any investment should create jobs. the right platforms, could change that. Take the example of Hollywood, which employs thousands, if not millions, directly or indirectly – economically Lucy Mushita (Zimbabwe) is a novelist benefting the United States, besides and essayist. Born in Southern Rhodesia, allowing it to use its soft power. she grew up in a small village during Now that technology is available to us, apartheid. Her novel Chinongwa we too are in a position to craft our own (published in South Africa in 2008, stories – through literature, cinema, and in France in 2012) explores this period and art. of her life, before she left her country in 1986, for France, the United States Homegrown success and Australia – eventually making Paris her home. Being creative doesn’t have to be prohibitively expensive. In 2016, the Italian With this article, the Courier marks publisher 66thand2nd, published La felicità the celebration of UNESCO’s Africa Week degli uomini semplici (The happiness in the month of May. of simple men), a book of short stories on soccer in Africa, by African writers. In Italian and at €18 a copy, not many Africans can aford it.
Young people would greatly beneft from e-resources in forms of downloadable books. The same applies to visual artists, whose work needs galleries to exhibit their genius. It is also essential to develop policies governing intellectual property to protect their work. Revenue from stadiums could be channelled to fund libraries, cinemas, theatres, music centres
The UNESCO Courier t April-June 2018 | 57 Current affairs Young Africans: reinventing politics
Hamidou Anne Young people are getting politically Decolonizing politics involved in new ways – creating startups, using digital forms of activism and forming These new African icons are disconcerting Many young people in Africa citizens’ groups. Yet none of these initiatives – as much because of what they say and are taking a stand against can replace politics, which is the only way the way they say it, as by the way they to change the course of a country’s history, dress, which breaks with the traditional the current politics in their to halt the perpetuation of inequalities, suit-and-tie of politicians. The decolonial countries. As civil-society and to restore a sense of dignity to millions dimension of their projects represent a campaigners who are active of people. Much needs to be done urgently real challenge to the political classes and on social media networks, in Africa, but, above all, there is a need even the general public, largely because of to foster the emergence of a new kind of their horizontal (rather than hierarchical) they are challenging the dialogue among youth – using with other reach, combining real political action with established authorities – using methods and other players if necessary, a social stance. rap and grafti, and bringing and with the ultimate aim of seizing power democratically. traditional cultural codes up to date. Supporters of direct One alternative is gradually taking shape and deserves careful attention. democracy, they are preparing New political youth movements are the way for a society that is less appearing, springing up from urban hierarchical and ‘decolonized’, cultures and suburban neighbourhoods. at last. Examples include Y’en a Marre (“We’ve had Hans Lucas
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enough”), a group of rappers in Senegal, Le Balai Citoyen (the People’s broom), The African political classes have failed in in Burkina Faso and Filimbi and LUCHA their mission to build nations characterized (Lutte pour le Changement, or Struggle by justice and progress, in spite of a for Change) in the Democratic Republic © Sophie Garcia number of signifcant and very welcome of the Congo (DRC). advances. Adding the non-existence of credible alternatives among the opposition These civil society movements are a breath parties, we are forced to admit that politics of fresh air compared to the drab and in general have reached a low point. essentially interchangeable political classes. This impasse is leading large numbers of The message of these new elites breaks young people en masse to adopt a stance with classical political-speak – it is raw, of defance – which could be summed up direct and delivered in a language that by the phrase: “they’re all the same”. can be understood by those to whom it is addressed, which explains its success. So, when Y’en a Marre campaigned to get people to register to vote in 2011, the turnout at the elections was unprecedented. It was the same for the symbolic street-cleaning operation in Ouagadougou, after the popular uprising of October 2014 against a proposed amendment to the Constitution, which would have allowed Burkina Faso’s former president, Blaise Compaoré, who had been in power since 1987, to stand again in the presidential elections.
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Art at the service of politics These youth movements are deeply The combination of methods arising By using music, dance, grafti and Young Africans: political, even if they unconsciously or from contemporary citizens’ groups references borrowed from street poetry, tactically hide behind a ‘social’ label. and traditional African negotiation these movements are succeeding in They also show no desire to participate strategies, ofers a model for how a bringing together young people who reinventing politics directly in elections. political organizational structure in Africa understand the language and codes of might work. their neighbourhoods. On the streets and These movements are all attempts to via the internet, they are calling for an decolonize politics. They aim to return These groups have proven their alternative dialogue and for projects that politics to the people – into the hands efectiveness. In Senegal, during the give wings to their dreams. These new of citizens who have hitherto been mobilization of 23 June 2011, and in spite players in African politics are employing excluded from the democratic process of police repression and surveillance a range of cultural references to support and consulted only to add their stamp of by intelligence agencies, Y’en a Marre their actions. Rap music, for instance, approval by voting. Interestingly, the way triggered a massive movement. has been a powerful vector for getting these groups are organized is a form of This helped to torpedo amendments to the message of opposition across. direct democracy. Through a network of the Constitution by parliament that would Other statements include using national local branches, Le Balai Citoyen enables have allowed the re-election of Abdoulaye languages (Wolof by Y’en a Marre and people across the nation to take part in Wade – and probably ensuring that his son Moré by Le Balai Citoyen) or wearing decision-making. With a slightly more took over when he stood down. an Amílcar Cabral hat (named after limited horizontal dimension – because of the emblematic leader of the struggle the notoriety and massive popularity of its against the Portuguese colonization leaders – Y’en a Marre also allows everyone of Guinea-Bissau). to join in the process of consultation. This kind of transversal connection does As beacons of hope, the responsibility of not exist in conventional politics. Crowds cheering the caravan of these movements is great. They represent Balai Citoyen, during the demonstration political forces that are uninhibited, free, against the constitutional revision and unencumbered by colonial burdens. project in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, It is thanks to them that the continent October 2014. no longer conjures up only images of pity, generated by poverty, famine, AIDS and war. We are on the threshold of a radically emancipating project. Much like the anti-austerity Indignados movement in Spain, which gave rise to the far-left Podemos political party in 2014, these groups will sooner or later be called upon to stand in general elections. We could then witness a decolonial turning point vis-à-vis Western countries – with the possibility of societies founded on our own social and cultural realities.
Hamidou Anne (Senegal), a graduate of France’s École Nationale d’Administration (ENA) and Sorbonne University, has held several positions in Senegalese government organizations and contributed articles to the international media. He is currently working on a doctorate in political science at the Gaston Berger University, Saint-Louis (Senegal). With this article, the Courier marks the celebration of UNESCO’s Africa Week in the month of May.
The UNESCO Courier t April-June 2018 | 59 Current affairs
Listen to the voice of the lake
Chen Xiaorong
The Bear Lake People in the central Northwest Territories of Canada have taken their destiny into their own hands. After decades of eforts, they won the right to self-governance in 2016. That same year, they also managed to inscribe their territory, Tsá Tué, in UNESCO’s World Network of Biosphere Reserves. They are on the right track to keep alive the water’s heart, on which their own survival depends.
With this article, the UNESCO Courier marks the International Day for Biological Diversity, 22 May. © Tsá Tué Biosphere Reserve
“I go out by boat six hours a day, quite They live in Déline, a small settlement on aways – from one side of the lake to the western shore of the lake. Sahtuto’ine the other, depending on the weather. means the ‘Bear Lake People’ and Déline, I see nothing but an endless fat land... ‘where the water fows’. Tutcho is chief that’s where my ancestors were. I keep of the new Déline Got’ine government warning my sons: “Just look at the land and (DGG), Canada’s frst indigenous, it will tell you the story it has to tell you. public self-government, formed You don’t want hear it? Yet you can say it by in September 2016. heart.” Who is this man who asks his sons to listen to the voice of their land and chooses to cross a frozen area of over 30,000 square Unique relationships kilometres? His name is Raymond Tutcho. The lake has a Tudze, the Sahtuto’ine He lives close to the Great Bear Lake, believe. This ‘water’s heart’ beats at the the last large pristine Arctic lake. bottom of the lake, pumping its life-giving Respecting nature and their elders is waters through the world’s rivers and deeply rooted in the minds of his people oceans. The pristine wilderness of the Great – not more than 600 souls, almost all of Bear Lake forms the foundation of their whom are Sahtuto’ine Dene. Dene people cosmology, history and traditional law, and are an aboriginal group of First Nations of Déline’s renewable resource economy. who inhabit the central Northwest Territories of Canada.
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A constant message from their elders is In 2013, Déline elders and key community that they must be responsible custodians agencies held talks on setting up of the things gifted to them by the earth. a biosphere reserve. The Tsá Tué As long as these gifts are looked after biosphere reserve steering committee and kept in good condition, they, in turn, was formed the following year. will continue to bestow their bounty The partnership between government on the people. and non-government organizations has broadened the consensus about the critical “We have unique relationships with role indigenous people play in managing the lake and its surroundings that go their own lands. back thousands and thousands of years,” explains Charlie Neyelle, Elders’ In March 2016, Tsa Tué was added to Representative of the government’s Main UNESCO’s World Network of Biosphere Council. “Some have prophesied that Great Reserves. The event was unanimously Bear Lake will be the last place where the hailed and celebrated by the community. water will be alive because the water’s “The lake can’t speak for itself, we are heart is still beating,” he says, adding: going to be the voice for the lake,” “But if we kill it and if it dies, everything enthused Gina Bayha, a coordinator for will die. To prevent that from happening, the biosphere reserve. we need to educate people about the The Tsá Tué Biosphere Reserve Stewardship importance of water.” Council, comprised of Déline residents, “We don’t value money,” explains elder is in charge of biosphere implementation. Leon Modeste. What the community is It includes representatives of the Déline worried about is that modernization will Renewable Resources Council, other key bring more development projects to Déline agencies, Parks Canada, elders and the reserve, upsetting the natural balance. youth. Decisions of the council are based on consensus. Managing Spanning an area of 93,300 square their own lands kilometres, Tsá Tué is the largest biosphere reserve in North America. It includes the Though the elders of Déline have long Great Bear Lake on the Arctic, the largest exhorted everyone to live in harmony with lake lying entirely within Canada, and part their surroundings, climate change and of its watershed within the Déline District increasing development pressures mean of the Sahtu Settlement Region. that drawing on traditions and taking Huge expanses of pristine boreal forest other measures to preserve their way of life and taiga, rivers and mountains cover has become imperative. much of the watershed, which is divided The community relies on harvesting fsh into three ecological zones: the Taiga and wildlife to provide for much of its plains in the west; the Taiga shield to the needs. Its renewable resource economy south-east, which includes the drainage includes limited – but increasing – tourism area of the Camsell River; and the Southern The people of Great Bear Lake essentially and infrastructure development. Arctic ecological zone on the north-eastern live of the renewable resources ofered edge of the lake. Within these eco-zones, by the lake. The establishment of the indigenous the lands are further classifed into public DGG has helped the economy nine ecological regions and a total of tremendously. Hard-won after decades twenty-two eco-districts. Each of these Dene’s spirituality includes appreciating of political activism, self-rule has meant smaller areas have a distinct combination all the elements of the world. that the Déline community now has one of landforms, permafrost (perennially Animals, birds, fsh, thunder, lightning, government, with one set of rules – making frozen ground), soils, climate and biological water, rocks, all possess a living force it easier to preserve their culture, language, communities which makes them unique. and must be respected. All of nature is spiritual practices and land-based way alive, and everything has its own spirit. of life. The waters of Tsá Tué are largely Thus, by obeying laws and being efective unpolluted, its fsheries are in good shape, For instance, when it was noticed that stewards of the land, the essence of being and there is an abundance of wildlife. the number of caribou dwindled from Sahtuto’ine is retained by the community. The animals found here in large numbers 500,000 ffteen years ago to 60,000 due to include the barren ground caribou, climate change, the DGG introduced limits grizzly bear, moose and muskox, and a on hunting the animals. “We all honour variety of migratory birds, attesting to these rules,” explains Leonard Kenny, the high degree of ecological integrity Community Economic Development in the reserve. Ofcer of the DGG. However, other animals, like moose, continue to be hunted “to a certain extent,” he adds.
The UNESCO Courier t April-June 2018 | 61 Current affairs
Don’t let modernity Biosphere Reserves kill the heart UNESCO’s World Network of Reconciling tradition with modern living On 6 December 2016, Canadian Prime Biosphere Reserves is the centrepiece while ensuring that indigenous people Minister Justin Trudeau announced of UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere can safeguard their economic and social his commitment “to enact an Indigenous Programme (MAB), launched well-being is often difcult – with Canada’s Languages Act, co-developed with in 1971. It aims to promote solutions First Nations people, this is no diferent. Indigenous Peoples, with the goal of by reconciling the conservation Modern life is intrinsically linked to ensuring the preservation, protection, of biodiversity with its sustainable modern technologies, the use of which and revitalization of First Nations, Métis, use. Comprising terrestrial, marine depends on the knowledge of modern and Inuit languages” in the country. and coastal ecosystems, biosphere languages. Younger people learn English, reserves are special places for The DGG is working on strengthening and gradually lose their connections testing interdisciplinary approaches the education system and plans to to their tribal language. to understanding and managing pass their own laws to make sure that changes and interactions between According to UNESCO's Atlas of the the Déline are taught and encouraged social and ecological systems, World’s Languages in Danger, there are to use their aboriginal language including confict prevention and eighty-eight endangered languages in at their workplaces. the management of biodiversity. Canada. Among them, Sahtúot’įnę Yatį,́ These eforts refect both the spirit They are nominated by national spoken by the Bear Lake People and of open-mindedness in Canada and governments and remain under spread over four communities in Canada a return to traditional sovereignty the sovereign jurisdiction of the states (1,100 speakers in 2006) is considered within modernized governance where they are located. ‘defnitely endangered’, which means that structures. It ofers important lessons children no longer learn the language as for other biosphere initiatives to forge a mother tongue in their homes. It is only new relations of respect, harmony two steps away from becoming ‘extinct’. and solidarity between humanity How then is the knowledge and wisdom and the planet. that elders possess transmitted to younger generations? As its languages disappear, The Tsá Tué experience, it is hoped, indigenous knowledge is disappearing too. will encourage more indigenous communities to manage their own biosphere reserves. Nightfall at Great Bear Lake. The natives believe that Tudze, or “Water Heart” lives and breathes in the depths of this lake, the last to remain intact in the Arctic. Parks Canada
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© Fritz Mueller
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C R O E U R I The UNESCO Courier is 70! Attending the school of free thought © UNESCO The UNESCO Courier, October 1961. Roberto Markarian
In the 1960s, a teenager dreamed I came from very modest beginnings I knew that I would fnd a variety of of escaping the cramped − my grandparents were illiterate and my opinions in its pages, and a vision that confnes of his home in a poor parents barely knew how to read and write. was not apolitical − that is not the point My knowledge came from my studies in – but objective; an analysis of the subjects neighbourhood in Montevideo, the public-school system of my country, that was both balanced and thorough where he lived with his parents, Uruguay, and from my reading. Between at the same time. the ages of 12 and 17, I regularly read the who were barely literate. I still have a particularly vivid memory UNESCO Courier and that is how I absorbed of the issues dedicated to the Nubia He wanted to go far, and went culture. I can still see the images on the campaign. I was a high-school student on to pursue a brilliant career in magazine’s covers, and so many questions back then, and knew nothing about the that shook the world − of science, culture, pure and applied mathematics Abu Simbel temple. In the Courier issue and education during the past century in Brazil. He was eventually of February 1960, Save the Treasures of − come back to mind. Many of these issues Nubia, I learnt that the construction of the elected rector of the University still make headlines and remain relevant Aswan Dam across the Nile in Egypt would of the Republic in Uruguay, − the challenges posed by illiteracy, food 3,000-year-old monuments. This was access to water, preserving the world’s in 2014. But before that, Roberto at the end of the 1950s, and UNESCO historical heritage, etc. Markarian attended another kind mobilized the whole world to save them. of school – that of free thought Since it was launched in 1948, the journal rapidly gained enormous prestige because – which he discovered within of its open-mindedness – which made the pages of the 6/&4$0$PVSJFS. it a reference source for hot topics and controversial issues.
The UNESCO Courier t April-June 2018 | 63 70 The UNESCO Courier is 70!
The Organization garnered tremendous international support to undertake the monumental efort of entirely Year after year, the Courier reported dismantling the majestic Abu Simbel on every step of this unprecedented temple and rebuilding it at another international undertaking − The Nubian location, several metres higher − so that Campaign is Launched (May 1960), twice a year, the rays of the sun would “An Account of Excavation in Nubia during penetrate the temple’s inner sanctuary, 1961-1962” (November 1962), Victory in just as they did in its original location. Nubia (December 1964), “Dismantling Abu Simbel” (November 1965), “Rameses fnds a New Home” (February 1967), The Greatest A formative journal Archaeological Rescue Operation of all Time (February-March 1980) − thus echoing one Impressed by the four colossi of Rameses And here is seen the purposeful ingenuity of the greatest victories of international II, I read, in an issue entitled Abu Simbel, of the architects and engineers. Like skilful solidarity, as the title of an article in the Now or Never (Courier, October 1961), stage-lighters, they contrived that the August-September 1971 issue suggests. this detailed explanation by Peter rising sun would penetrate 200 feet into Ritchie-Calder, the famous British scientifc the heart of the mountain, to illumine At the time, the Courier’s collaborators writer: “A narrow passage leads to the inner the faces of only three of the immortals. included Albert Einstein, Claude sanctuary where are seated the statues The fourth, the god of the Underworld, Lévi-Strauss, Jorge Amado, Bertrand of the three gods to whom the temple is Ptah, on the extreme left remained Russell, Robert Capa – I discovered who dedicated, and Rameses himself. eternally in darkness. This essential feature they were, what they did and what of Abu Simbel was one of the things taken they thought, by reading the journal. into account in deciding how the temple They enabled me, as the watchword of should be fnally preserved from the rising the UNESCO Courier professed back then, Back cover of the Courier waters of the High Dam.” to look through “an open window onto of February 1967. the world”. When, in the mid-1960s, I started university life to study engineering and mathematics, I dedicated much of my time to union activities and the university’s management, and stopped regularly reading the Courier. But fortunately, in spite of the vagaries of my country’s history, I managed to save nearly all the issues I had − bound together with a system of metal wires that would seem slightly outdated today. As for the Courier, it continued its existence until 2001, when its monthly publication stopped. A lack of fnancing and support forced it to close down in 2011. We thought that was the end of it. A call to humankind But fve years later, the magazine reappeared. The frst issue of the revived Courier was published in April 2017, with the motto: “Several Voices, One World”. Now a quarterly, it continues to enrich the collection. You can access the entire collection, from 1948 to the present, in the digital archives. Most of the archives are available in English, Spanish and French, but issues from the last few years can be found in many more languages on the journal’s website. It is worth the detour. I recommend it. Reading the Courier, you will discover a serious vision of the major current issues facing humanity. Its massive ambition – it is one of the greatest past and current merits of UNESCO – is to promote links between various forms of thought, diferent ways of looking at problems, and a call to humankind. © UNESCO
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UNESCO mobilized the whole world to save the monuments of Nubia
Human dignity: the compass guiding your journey through the world’s cultural landscapes Today there are no more unexplored continents, unknown seas or mysterious islands. But while we can overcome the physical barriers to exploration, the barriers of mutual ignorance between diferent peoples and cultures have in many cases still not been dismantled. A modern Ulysses can voyage to the ends of the earth. But a diferent kind of Odyssey now beckons – an exploration of the world’s The UNESCO Courier, December 1964. many cultural landscapes, the ways To reiterate what I have already stated, of life of its diferent peoples and the journal’s major contribution is the their outlook on the world in which promotion of a culture which encompasses they live. It is such an Odyssey that both a diversity of opinions and respect. the UNESCO Courier now proposes Roberto Markarian (Uruguay) is the rector This is the culture − and I say this with to you, its readers. Each month of the University of the Republic and the utmost sincerity, recalling my family contributors of diferent nationalities Professor Emeritus at the Rafael Laguardia background − I acquired by reading the will provide from diferent cultural Institute of Mathematics and Statistics Courier with passion and enthusiasm. and professional standpoints an (IMERL) in the university’s Faculty I was a young boy who was eager to learn, authoritative treatment of a theme of of Engineering. He has extensive experience and through its pages, I found a source universal interest. The compass guiding of trade unionism, first as a student to do so. This is why I write these lines. this journey through the world’s and then as a teacher. He was imprisoned cultural landscapes will be respect for The importance of UNESCO and its Courier for political reasons, from 1976 to 1982, the dignity of man everywhere. in today’s world, and tomorrow’s, is even during the military dictatorship in Uruguay. more signifcant, as the fundamental On the occasion of UNESCO’s 70th June 1989. First editorial principles of the Organization’s Constitution Anniversary Celebration in 2015, by Bahgat Elnadi and Adel Rifaat, are being put to the test by those who Markarian spoke on the topic Director and Editor-in-Chief of promote “the mutual incomprehension “70 years of UNESCO and its impact the Courier (1988-1998). between peoples” and contradict on Latin America” in Montevideo, these principles “by exploiting ignorance during which he highlighted the role and prejudice”. Let us not forget this. of the UNESCO Courier. The year 2018 marks the 50th anniversary of the completion of the Abu Simbel heritage safeguarding campaign.
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See, old river, the men who will carry these giants far away from your waters On 8 March 1960, UNESCO inaugurated its international campaign to safeguard the monuments of Nubia. André Malraux, who was French Minister of State for Cultural Afairs at the time, presided the over the ceremony at UNESCO Headquarters. His speech was published in the Courier of May 1960. Here are some excerpts.
At their highest expression, In such a way, during three thousand The emotion we share with the creators of Egyptian conventions were designed years, Egyptian art translated the temporal these granite statues is not even one of love, to mediate between ephemeral men into the eternal. nor a common feeling for death nor even, and the controlling stars. It is an art perhaps, a similar way of looking at their Let there be no misapprehension about that consecrates night. work; yet before their work, the accents this today: it is not as a witness to the past of anonymous sculptors forgotten during That is what we all must feel before the that it moves us, nor as what used to two thousand years seem to us as much Sphinx at Gizeh, as I remember doing last be called beauty. “Beauty” has become untouched by the succession of empires as time I saw it at twilight. I thought then, one of our age’s most potent mysteries, the accents of mother love. [...] how the second, furthermost pyramid the inexplicable quality which brings enfolds the view, and how it makes this the Egyptian masterpieces into communion One could not too highly praise your colossal deathmask seem like the guardian with the statues of our own cathedrals, or [Mr. Director-General of UNESCO] having of some trap set to lure the heaving desert the Aztec temples, or the Indian and Chinese conceived a plan so magnifcent and and the darkness. This is the hour when grottoes; with the paintings of Cézanne so precise in its boldness one might say, the oldest fashioned forms recapture and Van Gogh, with the greatest dead and a kind of Tennessee Valley Authority the soft murmur with which the desert the greatest living artists; with, in short, the of archaeology. [...] echoes the timeless devotions of the whole treasury of the frst world civilization. Your appeal is historic, not because it East; the hour when they restore to Ufe This is an immense regeneration, of which proposes to save the temples of Nubia, these places where the gods were heard; our own Renaissance will soon seem a but because through it the frst world when they banish the immensity of chaos difdent prefguring. For the frst time, civilization publicly proclaims the world’s and order the stars which seemingly men have discovered a universal language art as its indivisible heritage. In days emerge from night simply to gravitate of art. We feel its infuence acutely, even when the West believed its cultural round them. if we only partly understand its nature. heritage had its source in Athens, it could This tremendous storehouse of art, of which nonetheless look on with equanimity while we are now becoming conscious, draws the Acropolis crumbled away. Photo from the pages of the Courier, its force no doubt from its being the most February-March 1980: “Victory in Nubia: The slow food of the Nile has refected the signal victory of human efort over death. [...] the greatest archaeological rescue melancholy caravans of the Bible, the armies operation of all time”. of Cambyses and Alexander, the knights of Byzantium and Islam, the soldiers of Napoleon. No doubt when the sand-storm blows across it, its ancient memory no longer distinguishes the brilliant notes of Rameses’s triumph from the pathetic dust that settles again in the wake of defeated armies. And when the sand is scattered again, the Nile is once more alone with its sculpted mountains, its colossal efgies whose motionless refection has for so long been part of its echo of eternity. But see, old river, whose foods allowed astrologers to fx the most ancient date in history, men are coming now, from all parts of the world, who will carry these giants far away from your life-giving, destructive waters. Let the night fall, and you will refect again the stars under which Isis accomplished her funeral rites, the star of Rameses. But the humblest worker come to rescue the statues of Isis and Rameses will tell you something you have always known but never heard from men before: that there is only one action over which indiferent stars and unchanging, murmurous rivers have no sway: it is the action of a man who snatches something from death. André Malraux © DR
66 | The UNESCO Courier t April-June 2018 UNESCO Publishing
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3FDPOTUSVDUJPO 8PSME)FSJUBHFGPS4VTUBJOBCMF /BUVSF#BTFE4PMVUJPOT BOE3FDPWFSZ %FWFMPQNFOUJO"GSJDB GPS8BUFS Le Patrimoine mondial pour United Nations World Heritage un développement durable en Afrique World Water Development No.86 ISBN 978-92-3-000045-5, 282 pp., Report 2018 21 x 29.7 cm, paperback, PDF ISSN 1020-4202, 102 pp., ISBN 978-92-3-100264-9, 156 pp., 22 x 28 cm, paperback, € 7.50 Available on http://unesdoc.unesco.org 21 x 29.7 cm, paperback, € 45
Cultural heritage sites face an unprecedented Infrastructure development and the changes The 2018 edition of the World Water escalation of damage and destruction today. occurring in Sub-Saharan Africa are having Development Report (WWDR) aims to inform The rebuilding of these sites could play an impact on the region’s World Heritage. policymakers of the potential of nature-based an essential role in reinforcing the identity Through a series of case studies from solutions (NBS). These nature-based solutions of populations. the region and other parts of the world, are an essential tool to address water This issue examines the restoration of this publication analyses the dynamics of management challenges in all sectors some of the world’s most signifcant sites. the current change from a World Heritage – particularly agriculture, sustainable cities, It explores the lessons learned from perspective. It also makes proposals disaster risk reduction and the improvement the reconstruction of mosques in Timbuktu for leveraging African World Heritage of water quality. (Mali) and the Mostar Bridge in sustainable development. (Bosnia and Herzegovina). It also discusses the issues raised by the potential rebuilding of devastated sites in Syria and Afghanistan in the future. TheCourier is 70! throughits cultural diversity Celebrating
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