Modern sciences and climate change
Correspondent | Friday February 5, 2016 16:24
Due to the fluctuating climate, people knew how to survive and being resilient in a semi-arid climate and we may say that it was an indigenous knowledge, inherited from generations and almost genetical. It’s not astonishing that, even today, there are proposals to move Gaborone to greener pastures. But – there is a technical, modern scientific hindrance in the shape of investments in very expensive modern infrastructure!
The colonialism came with a strong concept of making the colonies legible by mapping, indicating land uses (and pretended ownerships) plus various petty infrastructure like churches, schools, monasteries and the possibility of taxing huts started. Able people were moved from agriculture to a labour reserve for mines, monetised by the hut tax – small farmers were put in an unsustainable situation by modern science already then. Quite clearly, we see results today!
Feasibility studies of traditional farming under the special climatic and soil conditions were never done or even considered by the western science introduced – a science developed under very different conditions.
Traditional farmers here were dressed in attire meant for very different stages. And now the remaining ones are experiencing very serious problems. We have to look into this issue as a matter of the long run sustainability for the human race.
Earlier climate changes were not human made as this one. We cannot blame humans for the volcanic pollution that changed life on earth tremendously ca. 1.5 million years ago (and made human evolution possible, by the way as well as storing fossilized energy) . This time we humans are to blame for a serious climate change and we are doing little to stop it.
The stored energy from earlier epochs is being burned uncontrolled and polluting the atmosphere as volcanoes did once and changed the living conditions importantly. But this time it is manmade, predominantly by an unharnessed industrialisation – what I here call ‘colonial science’ – and we are now witnessing the first blows to our environment. I like to pinpoint a few:
The infrastructure concept developed in the former colonial countries has been forced upon us is old, sometimes outdated, and based on low costs for energy and raw materials making it not sustainable even to maintain today – as they have realised in the West;
The centuries old know-how to sustain agriculture under not so perfect soil and climate conditions (e.g. savannah and half-deserts) is scientifically neglected by donors and finance lenders for most countries in the Third World.
I will concentrate on these two points in the following and make necessary references for in depth studies for readers, starting with Part 1 :
Power Supply in Botswana
The modern power delivery concept for Botswana is forced upon us by the western, now post-industrial countries. The technological side of it has been developed over a century marked by cheap, abundant fossil fuel. Thus the efficiency of the system was not a serious question until today when fossil fuel is peaking and economy decreasing. Even the western countries can’t pay the bills! But this is what they have developed and must face and the same for us – we have to maintain the dubious concepts we have, at least for a generation as investments continue.
Consequently, we have to look into the wastefulness of the system and if it can be corrected, at least partially – the price of power depends on this. Already in the 90’s it was clear that there was a problem to maintain the infrastructure given us, based initially on cheap fossil fuel and money in abundance. And the western industries were spitting out products, more or less obsolete to them, as “needed” for developing countries. That didn’t have economy to buy at shop/prime price but so called aid money and loans came (with conditions – see a quotation below).
The so called legitimate expectations by African countries were met by obsolete products and technology from west. Let’s call it neo-colonialism supported by local, in-house colonialism. And we must face it – there are mighty corporate interests behind the power solutions we are now implementing. For instance, we know now that modern economies run at less than 5% for the full chain from extraction to delivery (“Factor Four” by Weisacker, Lovins and Lovins 1998). So, there is a considerable scope for advance. This book also tells us that we can do everything we do on a quarter (1/4) of energy and materials now used. Remember, long-haul electricity loses about 1/3 of energy in the transmission and another 1/3 is lost in the local wiring, gadgets and plugs. Inefficiency, yes! And totally unacceptable but might be improved (and must be) as we have to pay fully for this inefficiency.
As ex-president Masire is pointing out in a paper recently - Botswana has signed the Kyoto Protocol regarding the use of solar power in the country. Furthermore, Vision 2016 is pointing out that Botswana has a tremendous potential for solar energy that must be exploited, especially for rural communities not catered for by national grid.
Despite this, BPC (together with a alien corporations) has extended the inefficient and expensive national grid to more than a hundred rural settlements! For a short while I was part of this conceptually imperfect project, assisting the involved Swedish partner to BPC with surveys. And to my perplexed mind, some far away villages had schools, clinics, administration offices and more with “defunct” solar power. I’m not an electrician, but I could see that the wiring was as for 220 Volts, i.e. tiny slim wires. As far as I know from my grandfather and my old father-in-law that had old kind of windmills for pumping water and charging batteries – wiring for low voltage (12 V) is quite different from high voltage (220 V) tiny wires (as 220 can push through minimal wires with heat losses but 12 volt cannot). I’m not sure, but I think that as usual it was a management/supervision problem. I’m glad to be corrected if need be. Maybe, the local users didn’t know how to handle the batteries (read Prof. Grynberg in Mmegi of March 28, 2014).
However, the new expensive grid was just replacing existing solar panels, probably wrongly installed. Made right, the low voltage solar panels would have done a good job as most modern electronics works fine on 12 V and lights, too. And we must realise that there are very few households with money for BPC power. I hope some disused solar panels came into use by them!
Don’t take my comments for being some death sentence to BPC and the work done so far. I’m in full understanding of the working climate they have. The lack of in-house skills to supervise multimillion projects makes it depending on very expensive consultants (often with a double agenda) and it escalates the price for power. But we now have to take a step-by-step walk away from the main road to bankruptcy to a sustainable situation – the one we have signed treaties about. While working on this narrative, an international heavy-weight economic dissident, Dr Paul Craig Roberts is presenting an essay dated Jan 31/2016 on Countercurrent.org and as he says are often printed in our papers, I’m quoting the following from his article “The West Is Reduced To Looting Itself”:
“Third Worlld countries were and are looted by being inticed into development plans for electrification or some such purpose. The gullible and trusting governments are told that they can make their countries rich by taking out foreign loans to implement a Western-presented development plan, with the result being sufficient tax revenues from economic development to service the foreign loan.
Seldom, if ever this happen. What happens is that the plan results in the country becoming indebted to the limit and beyond of its foreign currency earings…”
Then comes conditions in play – austerity so as to pay for the loans! (Please read the rest of the article in Mmegi next week)!
This is interesting reading for me who still remember my first years here in Gaborone – power came from a local BPC plant near the station (fed by coal on an industrial spur). There was seldom a power cut – well once the coal lorries derailed and there was an hours cut, only. This local power production worked well to minimal tariff costs and was also the concept for other towns and large villages here. And interestingly, now re-invented for a bunch of western places. Part 2 - The Alienation of African Farmers will follow next!
*Jan Wareus is a regular contributor to Mmegi with 30 years town planning experience in Gaborone and another 15 in Stockholm, Sweden.