By Jan Wareus
20 April, 2015
"Oscar Reutersvärd 1997 - 'Follow the Groove"
"A perfect metaphor for our situation – progress and sustainability can't meet!"
We live in times when semantics are changing and texts are full of abbreviations. So, now I'm told that COAD is chronic obtrusive air-ways decease. The plague miners and stone-pit workers even share with people smoking too many Cohibas and Davidoff pipe tobacco. However, we all share the COED – chronic obstructive economic decline! With enormous consequences for both rich and poor, both developed and developing countries.
We are now at a point when our entire civilization has entered what John Kenneth Galbraith called "the twilight of illusion". We are at a point at which the end of a forever growing industrial economy is nothing but a short historical process, clearly and visibly declining. To make this understood, we have to search for a realistic understanding of the troubled future ahead of us and a meaningful way of responding to it. That's my reason for this writings and extremely important for what we flippantly label "so called economists". In my opinion, we are all "so called" : town planners, architects, engineers……..you may fill in the blanks! But we have professional ethics (or should have) and let's look ahead!
Our civilization is on head-on collision with our planetary limits of growth and this is often, and unfortunately, treated as an economical/technical problem that can be corrected by reading a neo-colonial answer book. But doing so, we are following the same trajectory of overshoot that terminated so many other civilizations in the past. What we are experiencing now is a permanent economic decline and precisely what many scientists pointed out about peak oil and the finite resources many decades ago – it will not necessarily be a sudden collapse, a slow decline for industrial societies but quicker for African countries, knocking on the progress door.
And, contrary to intelligent thinking, the faith in limitless progress is the basis for most national budgets, for economical writers in our papers -"so called economists" according to some local writers, here. In general, we seem to be totally unaware that we are on a slope, a decline, with economical failures – a crisis here and a crisis there (power, water, education here, regional catastrophes and wars there) with oil, gas and resources always in the background.
Consequently, it cannot be disputed that we are on a downward trajectory as a civilization – those of us who still have a job are struggling to hang on to them, those who have lost their jobs are struggling to stay fed, clothed and housed and there are many, many young ones that will never have an outsourced job with a salary. This is the situation and why the so called "industrial countries" (now often called post-industrial) - the triad of US, EU and Japan especially act as they are doing and we see consequences here in Africa. Reason – there was no "trickle down" from the top to the bottom (as neo-liberal paradigms promised) and it will never be.
But it is no longer necessary to speculate what kind of future the end of cheap, abundant energy era will bring to the industrial world and the countries that are hoping to mirror their old status. The package has already been delivered and the hope the aspiring developing countries had in their legitimate right to become industrialized is fading quickly.
Now's the time to rethink – globalization was a one-way road to bring resources to the post-industrial nations, a "kiss-of-life" for the neo-colonial powers. In this situation it is futile to hope that non-industrial nations will follow the same trajectory as the now post-industrial nations did, once upon a time (e.g. building factories, hiring workers with salaries enough to be consumers, providing services and generating ample profits). We can now see that it wasn't forever self-sustaining there and it will never, ever happen here.
So, are we forced for the nearest future to "digging holes" and exporting our (also finite) untreated resources raw -copper, coal and other stuff from the earth? Many western as well as Eastern countries seemingly think so, and are often discouraging African nations so called beneficiation and process their natural resources prior to export. And when possible beneficiation is there, it's easy to kill for the big ones – now we hear we're too lazy and spoiled by huge salaries! What's up but creating more Moment 22's?
I guess I'm quite clever, now! What is Moment 22 all about but swallowing the tail, bit by bit? Let's note the following regarding what most developing countries have been through:
• Destruction, the Terra Nullius concept – destroy cultures and get vacant land (the initial stage of colonialism – from 1750 and still ongoing);
• Dual Laws – one for colonialists another for ingenious people – a money saver!
• Introducing colonial "sciences" –proving there are Subject people to Master ones – mostly Aryans/Caucasians;
• Economical neo-colonialism – globalization, free-trade, de-regularization of laws and cutting domestic expenses.
Consequently, I cannot but understand the situation that most developing countries are in today. There was hardly any coherent alternative to the massive neo-liberal economic concept from western development institutions and charitable donors for newly independent developing countries then. The "hidden" conditions were just as important as the job was for new architects and town planners.
But there were serious consequences when the developing countries applied this kind of outdated, high cost, western, somewhat outdated technology (an inheritance from the colonial powers, I insist) – mostly concerning infrastructure and utility service that we more or less copied from the west. Obviously not considering the problems developed countries had with aging infrastructure networks and service delivery and the end cost for it when energy became expensive that disappeared when "eternal progress" was less than 8% a year.
By the late 60-ies it was obvious that the infrastructure sector was falling apart in the west – maintenance was neglected and cost of delivery escalated quickly - esp. after the first oil bubble burst in early 70-ies. There were huge external costs never assumed, and environmentalists started their whistle-blowing. For some economists things were written on the wall – for example E F Schumacher (with his famous book "Less is Beautiful") advised that developing countries must find 'an appropriate technology' approach and localized production and delivery of service'. But the 'appropriate' development authorities were handcuffed by its former colonial masters. And the western infrastructure warehouses were full of stuff to send to new "independent" countries often almost gratis. The producing of outdated, conventional stuff could go on and supporting the workers at home. This approach is still in full swing. And developing countries were ever so grateful until they had to pay the full price. I know this game – when I was young, the welfare people got water and power almost gratis, e.g. pensioners like my grandmother (even a flushing toilet). But 25-30 years later, the situation changed and people started to pay real costs – and it worked quite well for a city of about the size we had, then. Of course – problems escalate logarithmically for BIG cities but my point is – lets forget about them. We are heading for SMALL cities.
Thus, we have outdated (and not appropriate) infrastructure and service delivery systems in Africa and elsewhere among developing countries - more than century old infrastructure models from densely populated European countries even in sparsely populated areas in Africa – chaos created!
When I arrived to Gaborone in early 1979, Gaborone had its own electricity plant. The delivery plant moved about 400 km north of the City. And we are losing 1/3 of its energy on the way back here and another 1/3 lost in imperfect western wiring in the consumer's home. And now we must pay for it!
When we experience power and water on/off and blocked sewers, we mustn't put all the blame on our utilities and its staff. The technology was wrong for a start and not appropriate – leading me to realize that the physical planning was also very wrong. But on this, I remember that Gaborone was never meant to be more than for 25-30,000 people. And then more "gaborones" needed to be built and connected with communications. To me, that had been appropriate planning!
In short – we jumped onto the wrong train a few stops from the end station. There is an immense task for planners and utilities in the close future.
There's more to say about an African experience. We'll see!
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Jan Wareus is a retired architect and town planner active in Botswana since 1979. Mostly on important planning issues based on donor and and international financing (SIDA, IMF amd Worldbank etc.) and increasingly worried about the senseless mirroring of western development. Thus concerned about 'appropriate' concepts for developing countries today and in the future.
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