ELECTIONS VI: For a Country and a Planet in Harmony with Nature

24.10.2014

This is Part VI of LALIT's electoral program for the coming general elections, translated from the Kreol into English. The full booklet version is available at the LALIT offices in GRNW, if you would like a copy.

Today the entire planet and its environment are threatened by the increasing pillage and pollution that follows inexorably from decisions made under capitalist logic of unbounded profit-seeking. Put in other terms, there is simply no social control over this ongoing and exponential devastation.

This section of LALIT’s program is divided into 3 parts. We look first at the destruction of nature at a world-wide level, then at the damage wreaked in the Republic of Mauritius, and finally we look at the 5 main bases of LALIT’s program on how ecology needs to be integrated into a transformed economy.

The Capitalist System and the Destruction of Nature on a world-wide Scale
LALIT’s program differs from mainstream ones in that, while they tend to address the problems pollution causes after the event, we in LALIT tackle them at their source: capitalism, itself. It is, in fact, capitalism that is responsible for all the major problems Mother Earth is facing today. John Bellamy Foster, a wonderful writer on ecology, outlines 9 of the major problems, as follows:

- The level of acid in the oceans is rising.
- The ozone layer in the stratosphere is being destroyed.
- The nitrogen and phosphorous cycles are under threat.
- Sources of fresh water are drying up.
- Dramatic changes in land-use (like de-forestation).
- Loss of biodiversity (land and sea)
- Too much aerosol in the air.
- Chemical poisoning.

Some on the list have already reached the point of no return, which means they are very close to a dangerous tipping point. All are part of what Karl Marx, and later Foster, have called cases of “metabolic fracture” – breaking points in the interdependence of matter and living creatures in various cycles of metabolism.

All these issues are definitely interconnected, and a program on environment must look at them as a whole, not just as single issues. The destruction of nature goes together, for example, with the oppression and disenfranchisement of the working class, for the simple reason that the people made to do the destruction are not involved in the overall decision-making. By linking everything together, it becomes possible to envisage protecting or rehabilitating the natural environment as the working class gains democratic control over the means of production, and when as we move towards the end of the alienation that humans suffer under capitalism. When there is a mode of production that is egalitarian and democratic, then everyone will have the same vested interest in looking at nature in a new way – as human beings who, ourselves, form part of nature and are natural beings.

The Republic of Mauritius
The environment in Mauritius and Rodrigues has suffered huge upheavals, one after the other, from colonial times onwards, and present-day capitalism has continued on the same destructive trajectory. Today, all aspects of our environment, land and sea and air, are affected.

Extreme Deforestation – Mauritius’ forests have been destroyed with a vengeance from the time of Dutch Colonization, right through until the recent felling of the trees in the Ferney Forest. Fortunately protests saved some of this forest, but the deforestation in general, 2014 statistics show, continues.

Air pollution – Our geographical situation as small islands allows the trade winds to blow across and move some of the pollution off the land. But there are often cases of air pollution in particular areas near big factories, and in areas where mountains make hollows not cleansed by the trade winds. Workers are often housed near these dangers. Today, energy is still produced mainly by fossil fuels. Private cars, and the construction of new roads all over the place to service them, only add to this air pollution.

Water – The Republic of Mauritius is a “water stressed country”. An unacceptable proportion of water is lost because of defective piping. New developments of tourist hotels, golf courses and IRS gated communities, have added further stress on water resources. With climate change, we can expect the water situation to deteriorate.

Soil depletion – Concrete buildings and tarred roads, what with new IRSs and shopping malls replacing agricultural land, are decreasing the amount of land used for agriculture. The topsoil everywhere is continues to get depleted, washed away, covered up, and hardly ever replaced and replenished in a cyclical fashion. Mauritius’ development strategy is not ever seen by the powers-that-be as something that has to be integrated into the environment, but puts stress on all eco-systems, instead. And it is ironical that the private sector runs big campaigns against pollution, while it is the main culprit in depleting the soil, polluting it, and causing all the problems that mono-culture provokes by its persistence in cane, as well as all the problems posed by intensive tourism. Bio-diversity is being lost at a dangerous rate.

Waste disposal – Our society no longer knows what to do with all the rubbish and other waste we produce. In the sea, there are some places where there are thousands of square kilometres of plastic and other floating waste stagnating on the surface, often threatening and even killing off marine creatures. Waste management on land is getting more and more difficult. Again while the capitalists run campaigns to decrease rubbish in the country, they remain the main producers of all this waste. LALIT was part of a campaign against ever introducing plastic bottles, at a time when culturally everyone was accustomed to returning empties, for example. But instead, plastic bottles were introduced, and have become a scourge.

The coast and the sea -- The sea ecosystem has become so badly affected that scientists believe that there has already been a “shift” in it. There is no longer fish for fishermen’s traditional takes, corals and coral reefs are dying, while mangrove swamps that protect the sea are being destroyed by new supposed “developments”. There is not nearly enough information available about possible deleterious effects of hotels and of the constant building-up of coastal areas, on both the marine environment and the many wetlands near the coast.

Chemical pollution – There is little study and hardly any information about the “spills” that factories and mills organize for waste disposal, straight into the earth, and what long-term effect this is having and will have.

Energy – Most energy in Mauritius still comes from fossil fuels which are extremely polluting. Energy production has been privatized by the Independent Power Producers going into the sector. They have shown little or no interest in producing genuinely renewable energy, even while the new CT Power plant, run on coal, may well also be going ahead, despite protests and much criticism.

The State’s signing up to international Conventions, its Maurice Ile Durable project and other policy objectives have not stopped environmental degradation, which continues apace. At the same time, there are a number of new environmental organizations that want to protect the environment, but that feel obliged to work hand-in-glove with the main polluters, and so the vicious circle goes on and on. (In the USA, it has just been made public that “The Nature Conservancy”, for example, had invested directly in oil drilling!)

LALIT’s Program
Renewable Energy
A vital need like energy cannot be left in the private sector’s hands. Their driving motive is profit, and energy is too important to modern society, as is pollution, to be left to the private sector. The sugar estates are a fine example of this when, instead of burning bagasse to produce energy as they pretend they are doing, they are, in fact, using coal for over 75% of their energy production. It is a sector that must be nationalized, and that must convert to renewable energy – from the sun, wind and waves/tides/temperature differential of the oceans. Today’s technology already allows this kind of development, so there is no reason not to aim for complete conversion to renewable.
Integrated Agriculture – agro-ecology
As in Mauritius we move towards planting more food crops on sugar estate land, this will allow the re-introduction of a certain degree of bio-diversity in agriculture, and an “agro-ecological” approach. Agricultural production – when using traditional and organic methods – re-enriches the soil, increases the numbers of different insect species that help in food production, and limits or removes altogether the need for pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Peoples’ health will no longer be endangered by these substances, and at the same time food security will be ensured. An integrated approach takes into account existing local biodiversity, and agricultural development does not endanger the already depleted forests, already threatened rivers and other indigenous and endemic resources that canemonoculture threatens.

Marine Resources
Marine resources need to be protected in favour of ordinary people, workers and fishermen, and not just in favour of the capitalist class. Protected zones in the lagoons must be looked after by the people there, and access to beaches and the sea must be kept free, in terms both of access and no charges. There needs to be investment in a genuinely sustainable fishing industry for outside the lagoons and in the Mauritian economic zone, which is huge – literally millions of square kilometers

Pollution
The existing laws and regulations on chemical pollution of the air must be enforced, and further tightened up. The capitalists’ factories must be made to be “accountable” for their pollution and waste production in general, whether it is degrading the land, the sea or the air.

International
The State must commit itself, and take initiatives, at an international level, to protect the environment.



References
LALIT’s Existing Program on Ecology is on-line:
http://www.lalitmauritius.org/resources/documents/169-Ecology_and_environment.doc
You can also read some John Bellamy Foster in Kreol
http://www.lalitmauritius.org/resources/documents/169-Ecology_and_environment.doc