The Somnambulist

Donor projects: is money a placebo, attention the drug?

admin — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 12:23:45 +0000

In development, local self reliance is often seen as the main long term objective, while the delivered “hardware”, bridges, roads, schooling, are just seen as stepping stones to the road of self reliance.

I would like to raise the following issue: when working with a local partner in a structured way, the donor attention sometimes has more impact than the money. This means the current indicators to measure development value, based on money spent, might be of little merit.

A classical logical framework approach, or even better, a participatory German ZOPP procedure, helps the local partner to analyse his own problems, and search for solutions. It means that in the startup phase of a project, the partner creates himself a project he fully identifies with and can believe in. Further down the line, external attention helps to keep the partner focused to reach the benchmarks of the project.

In my limited experience, the effect of the external attention to the problem at hand, has an important effect on the success of the programme, where the spending of donor money could sometimes rather distract than focus the minds.

Indeed, a limited project to address one issue in the health system, e.g. introducing a new approach to TB treatment, needs different inputs from the different actors in the health department. The donor money itself for this project is only a very limited contribution, compared to the need for focus of the higher management, the time the staff must spend on training, the cost of maintenance and use of health department buildings, etc. The mobilisation of these inputs does not depend on donor money, but on stakeholder motivation on all levels.

In a developing country the problem is often how to bring everything together and motivate the understaffed and underpaid stakeholders. One way to do it is to give recognition. The old fashioned way: doing site visits, meeting officials, holding joint events, bringing overseas visitors to a rural backwater.

Exactly these elements are, in the post Paris declaration world, classified as “transaction costs”. However, the field visits of the donor might for structural multi-stakeholder change processes be the most efficient input, while the money itself is mostly the grease to keep the machine running.

Of course, when the main problem is debt relief, or the need for a concrete bridge over a river, just paying attention will not solve much, but as social programs are more and more central in development, I just wonder whether anybody has more than anecdotal evidence on this effect, or whether I am just a development romantic?

By Sam Gardner

Aid evolution: a system beyond planning, markets and networks

admin — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 21:07:28 +0000

Local units obeying local incentives and rules¹

I remember the bleak look of the supermarkets in Nicaragua in 1992. Only a few products were available, nearly all from the same low quality brands. So where should we buy diapers, baby toys? I am speaking about the everyday things you need to run a household with two small kids. On the black market of course: the Mercado Oriental, where you ventured only with enough money to buy what you wanted. A market bustling with activity and offering products from all over the world. The government, which controlled a big chunk of the economy, trade, the borders, could not deliver simple products like diapers to the consumers, while the rough and bustling smugglers could.

Central in the concept of evolution is the principle that the result is not planned, but is obtained by local units obeying local rules and incentives, and each optimize their behavior to get for themselves optimal result, within the limits set by the rules. This is the secret of natural evolution, but also the way the Mercado Oriental could sell my kids a Korean bicycle.

The concept of evolution is interesting to apply to development processes, as it would turn the current paradigm on its head: a lot of proclaimed principles work against the grain of the self interest of the actors, and by striving to commonly defined goals, the actors flock towards one-size fits all fads instead of trying to optimize the results of their own efforts. An evolutionary approach would make donors flock to high result areas, but also reward higher benefits when specializing in a less crowded area.

Beyond planning, markets and networks

Owen Barder wrote a thoughtful paper explaining exactly why it is important to move away from the current planning paradigm. In essence, the planning paradigm tries to ignore the political economy, the different interests at play in the aid environment. While a consensus is created at a higher level, the incentives to get low-level results are scant. Owen argues that instead of imposing a new plan, we should change the evolutionary pressures in order to get results where it matters, unleashing the powers of evolution by harnessing the potential of a market and network approach.

Perverse effects of joint agendas: the lemming effect.

“Admitting that coordination problems are insoluble could point in a more fruitful direction, such as specializing more and then you won’t have to coordinate“

As only a few aid agencies have the wherewithal for good research, the research of the World Bank and DFID is dominating the discourse on development. It is not surprising that the best course of action for a whale like the World bank is probably not the best course of action for a mountain goat like Luxembourg or Switzerland. Under the current paradigm, the Paris Declaration, this is largely ignored. All should invest more in basket funds and budget aid². If a small donor would strive to get some expert knowledge in only a niche, like in land management in mountain areas, their credibility and added value would probable be way beyond their monetary contribution, while the value of money in a basket fund is never much beyond the nominal value. What is the best course of action for the World bank might not be the best for the recipients, nor the individual contributing donor. As the consensus tries to cover all aspects af development, it pushes the donor countries to spread their support thinly, towards all good causes. This is something where the World bank might strive for, but for a small donor it leads to a ridiculous number of small contributions.

At the same time, the current consensus leads donors to select the same donor darling countries, or the same sexy themes of gender and development. In the current paradigm, where the budget and not prior evaluation is the tool for deciding on an intervention, the donor has no incentives to search for his own niche.

The planning response to the lemming effect, where all donors fund the same interventions, is to create a trust fund, to support “underfunded” causes. A common complaint is indeed that some actors and causes are just not enough taken on board. The disadvantage of this kind of approach is its tendency to spread the money amongst all stakeholders (“more democratic than strategic”). It is just not done to judge the quality of the participating executing agencies. The possibility that nobody funds a project because of quality issues with the evidence base or the partner organisation is never really taken on board.

The social economy of incentives, rules and indicators

The current paradigm : an amount is a result; everybody using the same instruments and partners

A number is simple and authorises everybody to judge whether it is much or not. However, in development the amount invested is seldom related to the results. The drive for higher project amounts is not based on economies of scale, but rather on the capacity of donors to manage transactions. The difference in efficiency between interventions rank from micro-interventions with huge payback (e.g. the Sant’Egidio community succeeding peace negotiations in Mozambique) to huge interventions with catastrophic results (the US intervention in Vietnam?) with combination in between.

The current incentives are very much skewed to a lemming – like approach to development. A mono-culture of approaches and priorities. If an approach is “hot”, everybody wants to be in the picture and rushes to join the stampede. The incentives are important to do so. Indeed, as the electoral cycle of 4 years coincides with the rotation cycle of development staff, success is not in results, but in announcements, commitments and project start ups, in line with the issues the international seminar circuit agrees upon. You shine today, not in 4 years’ time. Everybody moved on by then. The rules on “good” donor behavior will stimulate the donors to walk jointly the same paths. The current rules that donors abide with are more about how do we do what, than what should we get to. Indeed, if the MDGs would be taken seriously as a basis, the interventions would fight child mortality directly, not basket funds based on long term comprehensive plans.

The current approach, is geared to joint photo-opportunities at coordinating events and funding complex “innovative financial products” such as pooled thrust funds, Cerfs and Errfs, with overall unclear oversight structures.This approach seems to contain risks for an elected official, as all politics are eventually local.

Like buying a government bond as an investment, following the crowd isn’t exactly a bad investment: the results will be dependable, but average. However, development needs bold initiatives, where high returns and failure are the two sides of the same coin, with evaluation as a way to flip it

From identity to added value

In development, like in business, an added investment should never be decided on the average return of the investment, but on the marginal return. What will be the real added value of a small donor topping up a World Bank effort and contribute 0.3 % to a trust fund for basket funding? Wat is the benefit for a skilled plumber to start an Internet company, because the internet is where the money is? Would taking out a loan to invest in the internet startup be really the best the plumber can do?

What if a donor stopped caring about the effectiveness of the system as a whole, but looked at the results of his own money instead? Deciding on real evidence based results for the beneficiaries.

The main question should not be “what do the others do? ” but “where can I make a difference”. The Easterly post “Do what you are actually good at, or what you should be good at?“makes an eloquent case on New Zealand. But other examples abound: an analysis of the Netherlands development cooperation “less pretention, more ambition” advocates concentrating on what the Netherlands are actually good at, like water management, instead of just supporting the World Bank ideology of the day.

A focus on measuring and expected impact and evaluating results on a case by case basis should be central, in order to determine exactly how high the added value of the marginal investment is. The evidence base of effectiveness should replace the current set of proxy indicators for donor effectiveness, as they are contained in the Paris declaration or the Accra agenda for action.

For a donor politician, this seems an easy sell towards his voters: Our contribution to develpment will be linked to our national identity, like the Dutch building dykes, the New Zealanders training pacific students and helping sheep farming. We are our own man. And where we cannot help, yes, we just abstain or support whoever can do best.

notes

¹The greatest Show on earth, Richard Dawkins, 2009, p 218

²DLet alone the Paris declaration is mostly based on in house World Bank research that has been found inconclusive in subsequent World Bank research reviews.

Civil society, or perhaps mercenaries. What are NGOs?

admin — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:35:27 +0000

A Grimm fairy tale

While reading the Haiti Earthquake Flash Appeal 2010, I was surprised, after all these years of talk about local ownership, to find only a few local civil society organisations mentioned in the whole document. What is wrong here? Have the poor become less empowered over the years?

In the seventies and eighties, the rural areas of Central America were stirring. There were farmers’ unions creating savings and credit unions and mutual health insurance was starting up. The organisations of the poor professionalized, and linked up on national level. With economical self reliance came more political cloud. This was hailed as the coming of a social democratic movement, comparable to how the poor were uplifted in Europe long time ago.

In the nineties however, these membership based service organisations were in decline. The treasurer ran off with the money, or some insolvent members took the whole system down. Meanwhile, (is correlation causation?) the Credit-NGOs took off on a large scale. NGOs, led by a professional board, and hiring experts for the field work, created credit systems all over the place with donor money, not limited by the savings they could gather. As the risk in taking credit is rather limited (it is another guy his money anyway) and the risk in depositing savings in a community managed structure is high, the creditworhty poor moved to the better option, leaving the cooperatives with heaps of bad credit and angry savers.

The same happened with farmers unions. Being part of a union for legal support spreads the risk amongst the members, but using a legal support NGO is without any risk for the individual poor. The outcome is simple: bye bye empowerment. The rural client-patron relationship between landlord and sharecropper moves towards a triangle, where the landlord and the legal NGO become the patron of the sharecropper. Is he better off now? yes, without any doubt. Did the poor become more self reliant and powerful to negotiate his rights with the landlord and the other powers surrounding him? Doubtful.

While self organizing poor can be a threat for the powers that be, NGOs seldom are, although the NGOs might speak out forcefully.

A black and white picture, and the reality has a lot of shades of gray. However, if there is even some truth in it, NGOs can be counterproductive if self reliance is the goal of aid, as they make the self-organisation of the powerless more difficult. This leads to less accountable governance, a prerequisite for a more equitable society.

Legitimacy comes in different stripes

For the sake of this article, I would narrow down the definition of NGO to the typical organisation that receives donor aid: an organisation governed by a board that is self contained and not directly responding to the beneficiaries of the services the NGO offers.

Most civil society organisation are accountable to the (paying) membership. The chamber of commerce, the church, the union, even Greenpeace lives and dies with its active membership. It are also the members who receive the benefits provided by the organisation, such as an entry to heaven, business related information and lobbying or defense of the employee. NGOs are contractually accountable only to the donor providing the funding. I would like to define civil society, for this article, as such a membership based organisation. Although the press and the academia definitively are civil society, they are not captured by this definition.

In essence, if the organisation would die without donor funding (funding by a foreign power), it is not civil society, but it is still classified as an NGO.

A third important group active in development is the private sector as such, and we might wondeer whether the typical NGO is not rather part of the private sector.

From the governance structure you know who will call the tune: “if you ask them to paint your bathroom, they will” claimed somebody about a competing NGO in South Africa. NGOs will be more popular with donors as they can focus on delivering on their project documents: no internal democracy, no unruly membership, no delays discussing project arrangements with the membership, just flawless execution, at a transparent price.

NGOs have no democratic legitimacy as they represent only themselves, however, their legitimacy can be very strong on other aspects. They can have strong financial systems and deliver the required results. Some NGOs, like e.g. Transparency International¹ and many other local and international NGOs have a very strong moral legitimacy.

Community Based Organisations can be Civil Society or NGOs, depending on the governance structure. However, when local groups are serviced by national organisations, it is only when this larger organisation can qualify as civil society (with the local CBOs as members) there will be a counter-power holding the national government accountable. If the servicing organisation is just a NGO, there is no democratic legitimacy, and no counter-power. Supporting efficient NGOs can cause the civil society to wither and will consequently strengthen the powers that be.

The problem is that taking a shortcut, bypassing international NGOs and supporting immediately the local NGOs, will not solve the legitimacy question.

The goal of development aid: self reliance

If the goal of development aid is to support the self reliance and self development of the poor, it is important to use NGOs for their skills, expertise and moral legitimacy for strengthening the civil society, and not just for the services they deliver. Even if this civil society is less than perfect in delivering themselves. Supporting NGOs in roles that compete with the role civil society normally plays should be shunned. NGOs are important, but only to a degree. Strengthening the NGO-sector is not a valid development goal, while strengthening a democratic civil society is.

Of course, the central problem is, that accountability to the beneficiaries is mostly an aftertought, and beneficiaries might not like the donor priorities.

notes

¹Amnesty International and the Red Cross movement are rather civil society organisations, as they are very much membership based.

From heart of darkness; develop or civilize? to city of light

admin — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 21:18:23 +0000

The objectives of development aid are not well defined. This is one of the reasons why it is so easy to claim that aid does not work. More narrowly defined sub objectives, like diminishing child mortality, or getting more children in schools (whatever they do there) are more specific, and success is more common and even measurable. Most often development is seen as poverty reduction, in the broad sense. however, poverty reduction does not give the full picture: development is wider. Values like respect and empowerment have only limited poverty reduction value, and they should be accepted as part of “development” in their own right. On their own, they are also better measurable than mixed up with all the other aspects.

In Conrad’s’ “heart of darkness”, Marlow, the captain, before leaving for Africa, visits “the city of light” where he gets his contract as a captain on the Congo boat. The main discourse in that city amongst the chattering classes is not about getting rich but about ’weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways’. As recent as the invasion of Irak, the civilizing mission was highlighted, more than the economical or even military aspects of the enterprise.

Marlow goes on:

I ventured to hint that the Company was run for profit.

‘You forget, dear Charlie, that the labourer is worthy of his hire,’ she said, brightly. It’s queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there has never been anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset. Some confounded fact we men have been living contentedly with ever since the day of creation would start up and knock the whole thing over.

The insensitive choice of words is not the issue here, I just want to highlight that even King Leopold’s exploitation of Congo was marketed and even bought as a noble task, aimed in the first place to transfer values. Aren’t we development workers like Marlow’s auntie? We are still mixing up the noble development tasks and the mundane, and then claim everything is one and the same thing. Going holistic.

Apart from the material aspects of development, there is a whole body of values that are considered as part and parcel of development. Gender equality, human rights, accountable government, the convention of the rights of the child, refer to values that are ingrained in development thinking. Most of these internationally recognized values are important on their own. When they are “taken on board” as a prerequisite for economic growth and whatnot, they end up diluted and compromised. Political correctness has linked these values to the overall development goal, mostly defined in shorthand as poverty reduction, or, economic growth. The noble values get mainstreamed instead of spearheaded.

Meanwhile, there seems to be little evidence that these individual rights and the values behind them really lead to faster economical growth, and we don’t need a link between these separate goals. The results are bad economics, and very much compromised values.

I would like to argue for a more vertical approach, where you know that if you work on Child Protection or accountable government, you will not be accountable for economic growth, or when you work on small business development, you are not evaluated for gender equality. When you want to improve the life of women, it is often better to improve it than start an overall watch on everything everywhere, called mainstreaming. Indeed the different values and goals are linked in some way, and a good problem analysis will show all the interdependencies, and help to choose those that must be tackled to get our results. Where values clash, it is worth to have a fight over it, and make choices instead of just smothering everything in a meaningless consensus.

It is possible that if budgets are allocated for the separate values instead of for development as a general enterprise, countries would choose to fund only support for economic growth, or only child rights. I am not sure whether this would really be a problem, as some kind of market would be created, where a donor will have to find for a “fit” for its priorities with the recipient countries, with less demand for the more exotic choices, or for the same choice everybody else makes.

By Sam Gardner

Can Haiti count on us? Seriously?

admin — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 20:37:57 +0000

To cut a long story short: yes, you should donate to Haiti. How and to whom is a secondary question.

Haiti has touched a raw nerve with the professional aid cynics. A case in point is William Easterly, the champion for more accountability in aid, who is now going out of his way to praise the current wave of solidarity for Haiti.

When a catastrophe strikes the poorest and most vulnerable people in the hemisphere, you just have to help. Whether you help or not tells you who are. Somebody who knows to act on compassion or not? In the face of disaster, other questions are secondary. My main concern is whether Haiti will be able to count on us beyond the first 3-4 weeks or even 5-10 years to get out of the hole they are in.

I’m just a soul who’s intentions are good/ Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood

I don’t know a lot about Haiti itself, and will refrain from an opinion on specific local organizations. In my profession, I help international Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) with certain projects and have overseen international agencies. I have visited and worked with local aid groups in Africa and Latin America. Most of them have a very strong internal moral culture. They take their mission seriously. Money is accounted for internally, although they might externally obscure accounts so that they can use it in ways that they perceive to better serve their mission and organisation. They are also human. Some people do become corrupt, build empires, play games of power, and slack off. Most don’t. Common as they are, any case of corruption in an NGO is a double disgrace, because it’s like stealing from the poor.

If you fund one of the UN-agencies or major NGOs for its core competency, your money will be rather well spent. These organisations are without any doubt more frugal, better focused and more motivated for their work than a lot of private sector and government services. Professionally, I am convinced that for development, only the highest standard of results for money is acceptable. This means that improvements are always necessary. But we were talking about Haiti.

The first weeks: effective delivery of food, health and other basic services

In the first couple of days, you need search and rescue, first aid and emergency surgery. You need it quickly and professionally. You need everyone who is in the area to rush to the scene and start working. Of course this is not perfectly coordinated. You don’t have time to wait for the results of meetings on all levels. Rush in and don’t waste time. Starting from the moment when there is an appointed coordinator, the teams must just go where this coordinator tells them to go. If this wild rush for to help didn’t happen, lives would be lost. Indeed, most people die in the first day. And after three days, savings become rare. International teams are welcome, but nearly all the people who get saved are saved from the rubble by their neighbors during the first few days. Apparently the all-hands-on-deck cooperation and mutual help is the norm in emergencies, rather than asocial behavior. A joint-relief effort can be a good start to nation-building.

Next priorities are water, food and shelter, while medical attention continues to be important.¹ For this kind of “bulk delivery” of aid, small is wasteful, and only clogs up the coordination mechanisms. The big professionals for this kind of aid are known: the Red Cross movement, the multilateral agencies like UNICEF and the World Food Program, and on the NGO side there are humanitarian giants like MSF and Oxfam.

Already after a few days people start rebuilding their life. Rubble removal is a first sign. The ministry of Health, supported by the international agencies, gets more control over the process.

In the case of Haiti, I am amazed that all these different countries,UN agencies, and International NGOs have managed to produce a document within a few days with all their planned activities for the first months: the Haiti Flash Appeal. Now the donors have a good overview on who does what. As most of these actors are accepted by the humanitarian community as decent organisations that can deliver what they promise, nothing stops the individual to pick his beneficiary from that list.

Are these not the moments that make you proud to be human?

Who’s country is it anyway?

The average Haitian has been a victim of his country rather than an actor in it. In other articles this sad history is highlighted. It is a story of dashed hopes and hope-turned disaster, of popular heroes staying on too long as a president and turning into dictators, of families with no other option to survive and exploit the land beyond restoration. The once-lush country is now barren. With lots of poor in it.

What was worrying me in the first week was the lack of even token respect most people talking about Haiti have for the local institutions, the civil society, the elected government and the churches. It is true that the earthquake has destroyed the very heart of the country, but still, every long-term solution will have to be one where the Haitians can take responsibility for their own future. We heard stories of heroic international rescue workers, saving lives. But the thousands of heroic stories of Haitians were left untold.

While the rushed declarations in the first week had more than a whiff of paternalism, the Ministerial Preparatory Conference in Montreal (25th of January, only 2 weeks after the catastrophe) is a document of unexpected lucidity. The government of Haiti gets the leadership role it needs to take. A long-term commitment is pledged by the main donors, based on the needs.

An election is an event, democracy is an institution: of duty bearers and rights holders

However, I still fear for the future. High-level declarations are usually just that, and my view of empowerment is not that it is something that is given by the powerful, but wrestled by powerless.

In his excellent blog, Duncan Greene from Oxfam writes the following:

There is no apolitical option: A disaster of this magnitude is also a political shock. New actors will emerge, old ones will decline, politics will shift. The spontaneous self-help groups that sprang up after the 1985 Mexican earthquake boosted independent social movements and ultimately led to the decline of Mexico’s one-party state. In Nicaragua, the Sandinista revolution traced its rise back to the mishandling of 1972 earthquake aid by the Somoza dictatorship.

Disaster response is not a substitute for politics. Donors won’t solve Haiti’s problems (which of course predate the earthquake), Haitians will. But the way reconstruction is designed could help or hinder efforts to tackle poor governance, mass unemployment, inequality and crime.

The government currently appears largely absent, but power, like nature, abhors a vacuum. New forces will emerge, which may strengthen or radically alter the social contract between citizen and state.

Re-building the country will be a massive effort. A lot of the physical infrastructure can theoretically be built by international enterprises and delivered key-in-the-door. However, the Haitians will still be in the same dire situation, without a dream of a decent life, even with a new hospital without working health services. With Duncan Greene I would plead to keep an eye on the institutions that lead to a better society and with every intervention to take the impact on these institutions into account.

An option nobody mentioned yet, is to tap into the successful institution-building experience of the European Union for prospect member states. Indeed, up to now the success of the EU in building stable economies and democracies from countries for all kind of stripes is remarkable. From Poland to Portugal, From Greece to Macedonia, success was not guaranteed. It is telling that the EU reserves the institution-building treatment for the “near abroad” while for countries far away, elections event management with international election monitoring tourism will do.

Interventions in the third world tend to be just that: interventions. The world intervenes and organizes an event, with massive press coverage and superstars. They call it elections. Preferably presidential elections with winners and losers. While democracy has been a story of creating stronger institutions to restrain abusive individuals, elections and even constitutions are organised to create “strong leadership”. And this is exactly what happens. Strong leaders are seeking a third term, and weak institutions cannot stop them.

Duty bearers and rights holders is UN jargon for very important principles. Poor people have human rights such as education, basic health services and protection against abuse. They will only get these rights if the civil society, the organised “we the people” are empowered to ask for it. The poor are the rights holders. And who are the duty bearers? It is the local government. Indeed, the local government should guarantee the basic rights, and be accountable for it. The same happens with the civil society: the local union or chamber of commerce is the duty bearer for the type of services they give their members. They organize the people to help them demand their rights from the powerful state or private sector boss. The government is the duty bearer, but can outsource the services if need be, e.g. to the church for education, or to NGOs.

Indeed, our aid-giving governments are duty bearers towards their own electorate, not towards the Haitians. This means that in the long run, our governments will push what their own electorate wants, and the feedback from the Haitian whether this is appropriate, will not be taken into account (otherwise our leaders would act against their mandate). International NGOs that don’t respect this dynamic will be more part of the problem than part of the solution. Local paternalistic NGOs, who only deliver services, wouldn’t be helpful in the building of an accountable Haiti. They aren’t duty bearers, and health care becomes a donation from the NGO instead of a right that can be asked from the elected government. This way universal health care is difficult to attain, as a lot of people who could fight for it, already get it. Those falling through the cracks just stay there.

With great power comes great responsibility, what are you going to do?

How fast will we forget? We should mark the date of January the 12th 2011, and every year after to ask for accounts from everybody who promised to help. How much has been spent? on what, who were the intermediaries? was empowerment of the rights holders mainstreamed in all activities? Where did every penny go? Do we get access to the reports and accounts? Is there a systematic evaluation and are there lessons learned? An institution that complies should get more money. Incompetent ones should be exposed. All too often funding decisions come from the heart while the content of reports go to the brain. We must hold our governments and NGOs accountable for the money spent and the promised results.

As an individual, you should feel good about the needs you want to address and the organisation you are going to support. The needs are plenty and most of them are vital. When the normal protection of family and society crumbles, you need shelter, health care, protection against all kinds of abuse, education, work, income…. If you browse the Flash Appeal, you’ll be amazed by the rainbow of needs and the organizations that reflect them. In March there will be an updated version, that doesn’t only focus on saving lives but also emphasizes reconstruction with the government in the drivers’ seat and with the international community as peers, and with more attention paid to local contributers. It is more a structured and coordinated inventory than a top-down plan.

So choose your cause, your quest, and research your partner.

A good place to start this research is here. Different websites (or this and this) track the behavior of organizations. Other websites focus on transparency. I don’t know the internal workings of these self-appointed watchdogs, but I use them as a web-source, just an element in my research. What bothers me in the lists the US sites have is that they give very little attention to empowerment of the local civil society or elected officials. Do they support well-respected local communities or are they just paternalistic do-gooders? It is a complaint equally heard about official Aid from the US: when all the US-partners and consultants are paid, what is left? How can you be sensitive to the real needs if you have no local partners? I know the Haitian Red Cross supported by the red cross movement has always been there. I know Oxfam has been working for years in Haiti, just like Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF, Catholic relief Services, and some others.

There is a lot of support now, and if you give to an organisation you trust, they might gather more means that they can use efficiently for Haiti. Are victims of other catastrophes less worthy? If you trust the organisation, let them reassign the money to the needs they see as the most urgent. This is what Doctors Without Borders did already a few days after the earthquake: they announced they had enough for Haiti already. Most humanitarian agencies have a “reserve fund” they can use in case of need. These funds can be mobilized within 24 hours after the impact. The juggernaut of all these funds is the Central Emergency Relief Fund of the UN, and money from it can be assigned flexibly. Most UN-agencies and even most NGOs can recieve money from this fund. To donors and the public, most of them offer their own fund you can contribute to without earmarking your contribution to a specific crisis. But don’t let anybody distract you from demanding the results you paid for.

Moreover, if you have any skills, you might consider to contact a decent organization and offer your services. For Haiti or elsewhere. Probably money is more efficient, but as I said before, it tells more about who you are if you give more than just money. For the moment the place is swarmed, and if you don’t have any specialised skills they urgently need, stay away. The rebuilding may take 10 years, so what about 2018? By then you are a certified engineer they will need. As I said before: can they count on us? seriously?

By Sam Gardner

notes

¹Epidemics rarely happen immediately after an earthquake. Contrary to conventional wisdom, dead bodies don’t cause epidemics, although they do stink. However, mass burials can traumatize the grieving family. Bad hygienic circumstances afterwards, e.g. by the lack of water and sanitation can cause epidemics though.

Ethical eating in a diverse world: where angels fear to thread (final part of a series)

admin — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 14:12:24 +0000

I am sitting on a terrace in the shade of a vine in the South of France invited by some friends. Not the kind of like-minded buddies we mistake for friends, but the kind of neighbors you know you can count on whatever happens. The day was good, and the evening is promising. Drinking a good wine and degustating some superb foie gras. Foie gras is a divine treat. It is the liver of a fattened goose or duck. The production stems from a tradition dating almost more than 20 centuries old, and foie gras is produced by local small farms, who raise their birds with love themselves and choose the fodder with care.

It is an evening to remember: what can be more rewarding than being with friends you can trust and together enjoying superb food and wine? I have second thoughts. The “gavage” or force feeding that produces the “fat liver”, foie gras, is normally recognized as inhumane treatment.

Should I make a stand, refuse to eat, educate my friends about the ethics of foie gras consumption? Shut up and just abstain myself? Or just enjoy the food and company? How would my friends percieve my breach of the laws of hospitality? How would the greek gods judge it? The jewish god would understand, but Jesus might have second thoughts.

I don’t know what to do. Although the different values touched upon are all unequivocally important, applying them all together in a real life situation is never straightforward. It does not work to use a points system for every ethical choice: 3 points for obeying the laws of hospitality, – 5 for eating an animal inhumanely fed, but +1 for having it raised in a sustainable system and another +1 for being top quality food. I might even come out winning.

The current popular culture promotes a puritanical view of life: One issue is singled out, and declared good or evil, and people can “sin” against food prescriptions. Another Spanish Inquisition is born. The use of sugar, corn syrup, aspartame, cooked food, uncooked food, meat, fish, milk, grains, have all been declared a sin against our own health and the environment at one time. Long gone are the times when only gluttony was considered as immoral, when “not what goes into the mouth is sinful, but what comes out of it”. The vegan, the vegetarian, cave man dietist, explain the complex world of wining and dining with simple answers. And chances are, those answers don’t take taste into account.

It is clear what I should have done with the foie gras: the ethical eater is essentially an asshole, who never just can let go. Perhaps we should mostly try to be just mindful about what we eat. Prepare our meals with care, chosing the ingredients with knowledge of the different choices they imply, and transform them to a nice dinner for our loved ones. And sometimes, we should just enjoy.

Farming systems: from exploitation to stewardship and back; ethical eating in a diverse world (part 6 of a series)

admin — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 14:10:07 +0000

Farming system analysis is at the core to what food really is. It describes the ecology of men in nature, or the place of nature in the human environment. This is why this chapter is central in our series. As with every story, a tentative to a coherent picture is presented, while reality is much more muddled.

Domestication: a special case of symbiosis

The hunter gatherers could cook, and with this they set themselves apart from the other animals. But the impact of cooking on the environment was not an environmental revolution: humans managed to spread around the globe, invading most ecosystems, but their numbers stayed limited to the carrying capacity of the ecosystem around them. Cooking is special, but so is the capacity of beavers to create plains and marshland with their dams. So is the capacity of coral reefs to create islands. As an efficient hunter, men could cause the population of vulnerable animals collapse, such as perhaps with the mammoth. However, those animals had it coming, as they were apparently defenseless against the first capable predator. It was not the first time that a new predator changed the balance in an ecosystem.

The hunter gatherer exploits his environment: he takes from it, without too much thought about long term sustainability. Indeed, nature itself limits the crop, by limiting the number of humans to the carrying capacity of the area. Too many humans leads to too little resources, and humans die until the equilibrium is restored. This is why they prefer to roam to new hunting grounds. Once there are humans everywhere, the territorial fight for hunting grounds is of life or death importance.

In nature, a wonderful cooperation can develop between different species that are totally unrelated. Ants cut leaves to grow fungi for food, or protect aphids against predators, and are paid for it by the aphids with energy rich, sugary drinks. Birds feed from the meat between the teeth of a crocodile, and clean the teeth in the process, other birds pick parasites from cows or hippos. Plants come to the same type of relations: birches live in symbiosis with a fungus which receives sugar and provides the plant with water and nutrients in exchange. A symbiosis is a relationship of mutual support, in contrast with exploitation.

Symbiosis between two different creatures can be compared to a marriage: some are abusive, but as both parties share the same fate, making the best of it is in both sides’ interest.

This type of relationships increase the complexity of the ecosystems, bringing mutual benefits in the equation. However, primates, except for living with beneficial bacteria, are not known for developing this kind of relationship. In Symbiosis, the totality is cared for, moving away from pure exploitation to a more caring and system based approach.

According to the fossil record, for most of his history, the human hunter gatherer was not very good at bonding. But then, another pack animal was drawn to cooperate with men, and hunt together. Men and Wolves/dogs hunt together since 15000 BC. Both men and dogs adapted to the cooperation. Men by developing warm and fuzzy feelings towards puppies, dogs by changing in a lot of ways, the main trait of domestication being to become nicer to humans, or “tame”.

The mutual benefits of a symbiosis between herbivores and men are enormous. Men protect the animals from predators, and guarantee a food supply by herding or feeding in a stable, provide regular water and shelter. The animal gives his healthy flesh to the humans, after a life span normally longer than average in nature. Both humans and domestic animals have been fertile and multiplied thanks to this arrangement.

Not all animals are fit to live in symbiosis with men: initially, they had to fit with the semi-nomadic lifestyle, and be prepared to eat a diversity of food. Moroever, they should be nice and recognize the leadership of the human. Animals roving around in herds, like sheep or goat are a perfect fit for living with the early hunter gatherers. Nasty creatures, like the African Buffalo, never were domesticated.

Another kind of symbiosis requires a permanent settlement. Symbiosis of plants requires the grower to stick around for the complete crop cycle; pigs and chicken are not that easy to move around. This wave of domestication Happened as from 9000 BC. Cats apparently only moved in with granaries and mice.

Michael Pollan has an interesting take on domestication in “the Botany of Desire”: corn might have manipulated mankind to plow fields, to sow and fertilize, all this to multiply the genetic material of corn.

While environment was destiny in the hunter gatherer days, now the farmers begin to master the environment. While over-hunting makes game more scarce, and means mostly hunger for the hunter, overgrazing with cattle can cause desertification. In order to have a decent harvest of wheat,you must clear the field from every competing plant, calling them weeds. Going beyond the carrying capacity leads to generalized environmental degradation, and loss of short and long term carrying capacity. The strategies to cope with these aspects, lead to farming systems as a response to the different short and long term challenges. Farming systems are an important element in the ethics of food, and should be treated seperately. A managed, stable farming system is a stable ecological situation, unlike the exploitation of the earlier systems.

Genetically, over time both sides of the symbiosis will adapt to get the most from the collaboration. Humans that can digest milk as an adult will thrive, while others die earlier. Meek, fast growing and productive animals will be allowed to multiply, while others get slaughtered young.

The ethics of domestication.

Domestication is a natural phenomenon, pushed to extremes by humans. As domestication is in essence an inter-species collaboration and a more complex system, it looks like a positive evolution in itself. However, “with great power comes great responsibility”: the effects on the environment can be devastating. Plant domestication of annual grain crops seems in this regard the more threatening, as it is requires a complete slash of the competing vegetation, eliminating biodiversity and leaving the soil exposed for erosion. The effects of animal domestication are less total on the spot, but over the years, it leads to a wider impact on whole regions. Indeed, sometimes bush is burned regularly to leave room for the more hospitable grasses, or overgrazing can lead to desertification. Moreover animal husbandry can cross the ethical line and degrade to animal abuse.

In this framework, it seems unethical to assign as a general rule lesser intrinsic value to domestic animals, and a higher value to the wild beings.

Only vegetation of 4-5 meters high gives a blaze that is suitable for annual crop farming: semi-nomadic agriculture or sustainable exploitation.

Undisturbed, in most areas, vegetation develops from fallow to grass to a bush and later to a forest. Under a thick bush, soil is well drained, aerated by soil fauna and roots. Moreover, the organic matter of good quality gives the soil ideal properties for agriculture and ample reserves in plant nutrients. Typical for good quality humus (the organic material in the soil) is the C/N ratio of around ten, which is the ratio typical for soil microorganisms. The part above the soil however, is high in carbon with wood or straw having a ratio of up to 100. The species in a bush are perennial, competing well in bush over the years, but not thriving in the environment of annual crops: bush species are not weeds for agriculture. The soil however is often rather acid for annual crops. The best way to restore soil fertility (make the field good for agriculture, including the soil structure, drainage capacity, nutrient content and weed competition) is to let the bush grow long enough, so you have 4-5 metres of vegetation.Sufficient for a good blaze.

Cutting down the forest and planting in the residue would mean bacteria would decompose in a hurry all the cut down material, immobilizing the Nitrogen to create a ration of ten, down from 100. Starving the crops from this vital nutrient. Termites and other insects would multiply and decimate the crops. The soil acidity would stunt growth of every annual crop. A good burn however, maintains the soil fertility, while eliminating the above mentioned problems. The ashes would bring down soil acidity, while adding Potassium and Phosphorous to the soil. After 2-5 years of culture, the amount of weeds will increase, the nutrient status goes down, the structure degrades. It is time for the farmer to clear a new plot. Adding chemical fertilizer would improve the nutrient status of the soil for some time, but the weed infestation, structure and organic content of the soil still goes down, making yields harder to get. Throwing in herbicides could stave off the need to move on for another year or so, at a cost in long term soil protection.

A slash and burn rotation, manages to maintain average soil fertility for centuries. However, with population rise, or sedentarisation, the holy fallow gets shorter. Yields go down and erosion strikes. Where did the Maya’s go? The answer is simple: “every civilizations disappears with the 15 cm of fertile topsoil”. A more sustainable system than slash and burn is needed for building a lasting civilization.

Humus farming: sustainable intensive systems, stewardship with knowledge

In different parts of the world the conundrum of soil fertility decline was solved. This lead to stable societies practicing agriculture for centuries on the same plot, without any long term decline in soil fertility. There was not one solution, but a mesh of small measures, based on a thorough understanding of the interactions between all elements of the farming ecology. Some elements are common to those systems: firstly, as much attention to long term fertility as to short term yield, with special attention to humus economy and the valorisation of residues and secondly, the need for extensive local, even plot specific knowledge.

You don’t actually own the land, you take care of it for the next generation.

The farming system has a long term view, measuring progress in fertility in generations, not in years, in an environment where life expectancy can be as low as 25 years. This is perhaps why they must be traditionalist and have good reason to honor the ancestors.

The organic matter in the soil degrades only slowly, and you can farm in temperate climates for 20 years without experiencing a crop decline by not taking care of it. This is a common practice for farmers knowing they will sell the land, not leaving it to their children. This also means that in regions without reliable property rights, long term sustainable agriculture is an illusion. Weed infestation too builds up over the years.

In different farming systems the humus problem has been solved by integrating animal husbandry with agriculture. Indeed, farm animals valorise mostly residues, creating on a fast track stable humus with a good C/N ratio in the process. Grass, crop residue and leaves feed ruminants, growing in places unfit for annual crops, such as the roadside or wetlands, or in between perennials like in orchards. Pigs savor sub-par human leftovers and acorns or truffles. Chicken feast on the worms and maggots living in the dung of the farm animals around the house. Farm manure, in an integrated farm in the 18Th century, was probably the most valuable animal product, with meat, milk, wool, as an added bonus.

The farms were optimized for soil fertility maintenance, maximizing the total long term production within the limited available resources. Every element in the farm was used in different ways. The willow was used for broomsticks, basket weaving, shade for cattle, drainage of wetland, fuel, nesting for mice-hunting owls, and emergency fodder for ruminants. The benefits of the willow are weighed against the diminished grass production in the shade. The system was not optimized to maximize just one crop on one field during one year.

Controlling weeds and pests happens by manipulating the environment, making it hostile for a weed species to take over. By rotating crops, the weed that do well in a certain year, gets clobbered in a next year. For instance a weed blooming in 20 days after germination will do well in an open crop, like leeks, needing a lot of weeding, but will be eliminated in a crop that covers the land well during the bigger part of the year, like clover. If necessary, the land can be covered with grass for a few years to eliminate all annual weeds and crop pests.

Minimizing the ecological footprint

In an integrated farming system with husbandry, agriculture and forestry, the ecological footprint of the total is lower than the sum of the components. Indeed, the ecological footprint of beef is said to be way above the one for grains. However, in a farming system where the cow is browsing on lots unsuitable for annual crops or eating crop residues the footprint tends to zero. Humus-farming without animals seems like an enormous waste in comparison. To keep your humus content high, you have to forage for organic matter or gather crop residue for making compost. Keep the temperature of the compost high and tumbling the product regularly to kill of germs and weed seeds. While with less work, you could have meat, eggs and milk as an added by-product, just by letting animals do the composting.

In this system the loss from leaching and export is very limited. The export from the farm is only the grain itself, no crop residue. In peri-urban areas, the nutrient in the grain returned to the land as night soil or kitchen spoils for direct fertilizing or as swine swill.

From humus farming to capitalism

At the onset of the chemical revolution in agriculture, in the old agricultural areas, the farming systems were mostly sustainable. The soil properties were near optimal. Adding chemical fertilizer to this mix was explosive: suddenly the plants were placed in an optimal environment with added to it optimal macro element nutrition. Micro elements were available in the soil already.

With benefits now depending mostly on the use of inputs in a short time span, the elements composing the old humus based farming system broke down. Indeed: soil structure can be improved by heavy plowing; nutrient status by adding chemical fertilizer; weed control can be obtained by using herbicides; it is cheaper to import soybeans to feed the cows than to make hay for the winter.

The local nutrient and humus cycle is not relevant for the bottom line of the farmer any more: by increasing the total yield, including crop residue, the humus content of the field can be maintained. Spreading 10 bags of 50 kg on an hectare of fertilizer is cheaper in labor and total cost than gathering and spreading 30 tonnes of compost or farm manure. Because of the cheap energy (to make fertilizer, transport everything, to work the field) the economical picture of agriculture has changed completely. Optimizing the farm for capital and labor, the integrated system has little chance. Through the law of comparative advantages, the different elements of production get split between farms, regions or continents.

While the integrated farming system was heavily based on ecological knowledge of the farm and the different living creatures on it, this knowledge is less of an asset in modern farming. Indeed, the solutions for every problem are similar in most cases: more fertilizer, more herbicides, more insecticide. The detailed knowledge of the benefits of crop rotation for weed control is less important. However, most farmland has stayed productive under modern agriculture, proving it is not rushing us to disaster.

The biodiversity of an integrated farming system is important, domesticated and otherwise. There is probably more biodiversity in this kind of small scale farming system, with small plots, hedges, woodlots, crop rotations than in the original climax vegetation, which is often dominated by only a few species. . Although the macro fauna (bears, wolves) might be limited, there is a lot of diversity in bird life, insects, rodents, all kind of weeds and other plants. The modern agriculture by contrast, is very poor in biodiversity. A well maintained corn crop is not a lot more diverse in biological life than a tar road.

Cognitive dissonance, alienation and the longing for the idyllic Arcadia

The humus focused integrated farming system is the image all people have when we buy milk or meat, and the dissonance with the current reality with muddy, bare feedlots, is striking. We long for an Arcadia that did not produce enough to pay for a decent life for the farmer.

The ethical question we ask ourselves when filling our shopping basket is how much deviation from the “natural”, becomes rape of the earth, the plants, the animals.

Capitalism disassembles the integrated local system and creates a global instead of local system. Soybeans for growing pigs in Denmark are imported from Argentina, Fertilizer for the soybeans in the US comes from Morocco. The sense of ownership, the holistic approach is replaced by a sense of loss.

Did we go wrong? successful modern farming and ethics.

There is no doubt that the main ethical imperative is to feed all humans, with a price affordable by the poor. The quality must be acceptable and balanced with the price.

There is equally no doubt that this is only feasible using modern farming methods, the sustainable, low-input systems of yore will just not do. In order to limit the damage to nature, it is also imperative to limit the area under cultivation, meaning maintaining high yields. Indeed, when the agricultural industrialization started, Malthusian thinking was the norm: farming systems were sustainable, but is was accepted that, with projected population growth, famine would execute population control. This did not happen. Whatever is proposed, as an ethical system to produce human food, planning for famine is not acceptable.

With benefit and pricing as the main driver, and cheap inputs to raise yields, 4 issues are not taken (sufficiently) into account:

The rape of the earth through unsustainable exploitation is not checked. For instance burning down the rainforest for only a few years of annual crops
The externalities from industrial agriculture. To name just a few: the decline of biodiversity, the destruction of the environment from over-fertilization, pesticides,
Instrumentalization of animals, beyond what is acceptable in a compassionate society. Chicken in batteries, cows in feedlots, “gavage”, force feeding of goose.
Production for remunerative markets, not based on needs. As there is a good market for meat, and poor don’t have the means to buy staple food, the food is used to produce meat (I hesitate to say raise livestock).

The environmental footprint: products or systems?

As a picture tells more than a thousand words, I refer gladly to The International Institute for Environment and Development that prepared a picture comparing how an integrated farming system produces an egg, to industrial egg production.

A comparable picture can be created for (soy) milk production and even pig raising. Of course, if you feed the chicken fish meal, soybeans, maize, the footprint of eating eggs will be higher than the footprint of eating the grains immediately (and leave the fish in the sea, using fish meal might be immoral in itself, as it exterminates all fish indiscriminatingly emptying our seas). However, when the chicken aerate your you compost and produce eggs in the process, with only additional feeding, the footprint might be close to zero. The footprint of industrial farming rotation of maize-soybean, with its vast fields without any biodiversity left, relying on long-lasting herbicides, over-fertilization and use of heavy machinery is humongous.

The “footprint”, the calculation of the environmental impact should never be see the product as a commodity: it should take the production, marketing and transformation system into account to produce this specific chicken in my oven. Moreover, it should not only be calculated on simple measures, such as carbon balance or water use, but also on the impact on biodiversity, or environmental damage through pollution. Also the impact on producing communities is important. An approach of Fair miles is more indicated than just counting food miles.

As a basis for ethical choices, lists of products out of their farming systems context are worse than useless. They lead the consumer to make an irrelevant choice, and feel self righteous about it. Moreover, they stand in the way of promoting the needed changes. A product based approach would direct the farming system not to overall efficiency, but on product based efficiency on the global level. The demand for soybean would go up, monoculture or not, while the demand for integrated chicken production would go down. The final outcome would be thus more industrial agriculture.

A better approach would be to give a label to an individual product or to a farm of farming community. To the same degree a sheep grown in his natural habitat at the other side of the world (e.g. New Zealand) can have a smaller footprint than a local sheep fed with valuable grains.

Moreover, in most farming systems optimized for sustainability, animal husbandry has its place, especially milk and egg husbandry, meat as a by product. But it is impossible to satisfy the gluttony of a slab of meat with every meal without wasting valuable resources and being animal unfriendly.

The ethical consequences of a farming system approach

The question whether humans should eat killed plants or animals is not directly relevant to the issues discussed in this chapter, and shall be dealt with later.

Looking at the farming systems, ethical food choices will strive to diminish the negative impact of industrial agriculture. Some possible guidelines:

Higher production per unit of area is an ethical imperative. Local if possible, global if necessary
The raping of the earth should stop. Growing respect for plants and the earth must be promoted. There is clearly an ethical aspect to how tracts of land are used in a way that leads to biological death or pollution in the wider environment. Cutting down the rain-forest for unsustainable annual crops, dumping pig manure on maize fields, radical extermination of all competing soil life or plants from a farming system, leading to extreme impoverishment of the biodiversity, the use of fish meal from industrial fisheries as animal fodder are but a few examples.
Respect for animals, domestic or otherwise , is imperative. Where you draw the line on ethical treatment of animals cannot be cast in stone. Acceptable treatment of humans might be a benchmark. A sliding scale can be followed, where with time, increased education and higher income, better treatment for animals is expected.
From the environmental viewpoint, there is nothing wrong with eating animal products from an integrated farm. However, the current levels of meat consumption are unsustainable.

And what about Genetically modified crops?

Is there any ethical problem or just a manageable, subject to regulation, safety hazard problem with GM? I notice the ethical question is not asked when using vaccinations with GM bacteria. I would like to get better answers on this issue.

Ethical eating in a diverse world; cultural idendity and food: from nuclear family to feasting on diversity (Part 5 of a series)

admin — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 07:07:49 +0000

The cultural identity is based on the biology, but tastes better.

Answering the question “what do we eat” is central to our omnivorous identity, unknown by herbivores nor carnivores, as they just eat the same every day.

The major cuisines of the world compose meals from the main food groups: meat or milk products when available, beans or cabbage when lacking meat, a starch rich staple food, and some fruits and vegetables. As our body has a genetic memory of very lean times, we crave for food high in energy such as oil (fat, cream), sugar and starch. Traditional meals will limit these cravings, by e.g. limiting the deserts to the end. However, as meat has always been in short supply for most of the population, until a few decades ago, richer people traditionally ate more meat, even more than a few times a week. Meat is worldwide still seen as an indicator of status.

Traditional meals are not “composed” on the basis of a prescription for health, although the element of balance can be found in most kitchens. Once there is enough “staple” and the question “where is the beef?” has been answered, the main element in a refined kitchen is taste. People eating food only for nutrition are frowned upon in most cultures. In times of extremist zeal however, the enjoyment of food, sex and alcohol can be forbidden or heavily regulated.It is remarkable that you can raise a child on traditional food, although the meal is not prepared following scientific prescriptions, while a modern diet taken from a magazine, or the adverts, or even a modern “ism” like veganism, almost certainly will leave you deficient for a few major elements, and overfeed in others. Even following the “food pyramid” based on food science will leave you confused. Modernized traditional meals, with more attention to vegetables instead of the traditional “all the meat we can get” approach seem to be the best available choice. The fun part is that we are not limited to our own tradition. To the contrary: diversifying into other cultures seems to improve the overall value of the diet. Even combining traditions in one meal seems to improve our level of satisfaction. And is contentment not the real fruit of a good meal, and the overall goal of civilization?

The marriage of culinary tradition with global diversity has an ethical aspect on itself: openness to the world, compared to closeness. Looking over the border and enjoy it, while not giving up your own. Your mothers’ kitchen defines your identity, but this identity can only be positive if it is a window to the world: your own kitchen gives you the reference framework to go confidently into the world of taste and other traditions, like speaking your own language well is a boon for learning more languages.

Sam Gardner

Ethical eating in a diverse world; the taboo: to define identity by exclusion (part 4 of a series)

admin — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 17:59:54 +0000

There might be as many taboos as people

A taboo food is a food from which people abstain for cultural or religious reasons. As the common meal is an important way to share common humanity, the food taboo is an important way to separate “us” from “them”. While the laws of hospitality join everybody around the table, the food taboos strengthen the inner circle by excluding the other. Strict adherence to food taboos makes reciprocal hospitality impossible.

Cannibalism might be the oldest taboo. It seems that cannibalism was practiced by different groups at one stage, although direct testimonies are rare. It was mostly something told about “those people over there”. Now cannibalism is taboo in most cultures. This might be originally a health prescription and not a real taboo: diseases transmit easily by eating flesh of deceased specimen of your own species, with Creutzfeld-Jacob as a grueling example. Slaughtering healthy humans for their flesh doesn’t make you a lot of friends neither in an environment where life is nasty, brutish and short.

Taken together as a group, the religious taboos are mainly proclaimed for their power to exclude “the other”, the unfaithful. Indeed, the essence of a religious taboo is the confirmation of prejudices and often apparent illogical rule. Humans should not question the divine law. Afterwards, people weak in their faith,seek a post facto rationalization, although second guessing a Divine order is always risky. The sometimes quoted health reasons for religious taboos suffer from confirmation bias: most foods have positive and negative effects on health. Looking for an explanation for the taboo only the negative is highlighted. Indeed pigs can be carriers of illness, but in most era’s of human history the health benefits of having a decent meal with (fried) bacon were higher than the risks carried by contagious pigs.

For the nomadic early Arabs and Jews it was easy to forgo pork: hogs, due to their physiology, need water and don’t support traveling. It was the domestic animal of the sedentary farmer and the city dweller: them, not us. Moreover, there is good reason to accept that the taboo was “cast in stone” in a period of increasing water shortages in the region. Some go as far as stating that Islam has been spread mostly into regions where pigs don’t thrive anyway. Meanwhile in regions where Islam and pigs thrive, a more tolerant form of Islam with small scale pig farming is often practiced. The animal of the arabic peninsula, the goat, is meanwhile instrumental in deforestation, desertification, and making the ecology more hostile to pigs and agriculture, more prone to nomadism.

Another well known religious taboo is the vegetarianism practiced by Jain, linked to an ethical choice for non-violence. The taboo on beef-eating in Hinduism could also be explained by environmental factors: Cattle is too precious providing milk and power, to have it slaughtered for meat. In traditional agriculture, the surplus of calves for slaughter is limited. In Hindu and Jain vegetarians do eat other animal products, such as milk. Non-religious Vegetarianism and its modern pendant, veganism are discussed later.

Some cultures extend the cannibalism taboo to “friendly” species. In the Anglo-Saxons don’t eat companion animals like horses and dogs while they savor drought oxen without impunity. This has nothing to do with flavor or nutritional aspects, it is an ethical judgment. Frogs are too prince-like to eat for the English, while the French eat them without regret.

A special form of cultural taboo are the fake health recommendations: suddenly a food gets labeled with a health risk, with little or no scientific basis. Before you know, it is conventional knowledge. A kind of nutritionist political correctness. Examples abound: carbs, fat, etc. I mention these taboos here, as they are part of a sub-culture and not really health concerns.

Some people stop eating a certain animal or plant because of the risk for extinction or the damage to the environment caused by the culture. Notorious examples are the eating of turtle eggs, eating whale meat, or the consumption of soybean or maize grown under over-fertilized monoculture. These are not really taboos, as the reason for not eating is ethical and not cultural nor religious,.

The ethics of taboos

For ethical purposes, four main groups of taboos can be identified:

Private taboos, which are kept in the home. E.g. some subcultures have a taboo against soft drinks, but when they organize birthday parties or eat out the taboo is not community enforced. This kind of taboo is ethically neutral, as it clearly considers the importance of community acceptance higher than the enforcement of the taboo. A lot of people abide in this way to religious taboos too.
House rules are linked to the family: the taboo is not enforced when going out in the community, while it is expected from the others to abide with the house rules when visiting the home. This kind of taboo is coherent with the laws of hospitality. It accepts diversity, and forces everybody to face the diversity (when in Rome, do as Romans do).
Missionary taboos impose themselves on the environment. The aim of the taboo is to separate oneself from the community or to proselytise the community change its ways. The missionary taboo demands respect, but it is not respectful itself. Most strictly enforced religious taboos fall in this category. The taboo is seen as an absolute value, higher than the other values in the community. Worse: the community is defined as those accepting and following the taboo.
Personal taboos: while the individual always abides with the taboo, no behavior change from the community is asked. An example can be the consumption of alcohol.

At what point do bad manners turn into unethical behavior?

Private taboos and house rules pose in general little ethical problems, as long as the taboo does not lead to child malnutrition, health costs for the community, or degrades to a form of psychological child abuse.

Some religious leaders have taken a strong stance against missionary food taboos: “It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man (Mathew 15:11).” Indeed, the general effect of a missionary food taboo is its divisive impact. It separates us from them, and attaches a moral superiority to the followers of the taboo. The taboo goes nuclear on the shared meal, bringing division at our table. Moreover the taboo diminishes freedom of choice and food diversity for an individual. By limiting the access to diversity it is limiting the development of a person to its full humanity. Due to these negative properties, the balancing positive properties of a particular taboo must be very convincing in order to be acceptable.

In a modern ethos most religious taboos are difficult to defend as a missionary taboo for their limited advantages to mankind, and the divisiveness they bring. As they have scant rational basis, their enforcement on the community as a missionary taboo is at least a show of bad taste.

Refusing to eat some food because of the negative impact on the environment is on a stronger ethical foundation. It is however, not really a taboo, as the reason for not eating it nor cultural nor religious. However, the scientific basis for these choices is often shaky. Some of these taboos are just a sign of black and white thinking or environmental myths, without attention for the nuances of reality. In this case, they are food taboos as they are a sign of adherence to a sub-culture an not a science-based ethical choice.

This aspect will be addressed in the part on farming systems. When is an environmental effect so important it should be law, when should it be “the right thing to do” and when is it just individual lifestyle choice? When is this taboo just not important enough to go nuclear on our shared meal? What is the effect on the environment of eating meat just only once at the shared table, compared to the use of a car? In the chapter on veganism some of these elements will be further explored.

The taboos against eating animals emotionally close to us seems to have little objective ground, but the attitude of respect it shows for companions is important.

By Sam Gardner

Ethical eating in a diverse world: at the table (part 3 of a series)

admin — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:32:13 +0000

Dining together to create a common identity and as an educational tool

Dining together, is an important community-building institution. Extended family and community are less defined by bloodlines than by sharing a meal on a regular basis or on special occasions such as Christmas, marriage or funerals. Indeed, the genetic offspring was never sure for men, but the moral offspring, those with whom the daily meal is shared,is obvious.

In some traditional hunter-gatherer societies a woman offering a man some cooked food and the man accepting it boils down to a marriage. Sex is less central to the family bond than food exchanges.

Table manners set apart insiders and outsiders. The use of utensils, sticks, cutlery or hands, the time of the meal, eating with open or closed mouth, these habits separate the people like us (class, culture, family) from the others.

Research has confirmed the importance of the shared meal. The family dinner seems to be central both as an educational tool, assuring that children do well at school and grow up to be valuable adults, as to instill a reflex in the family members to care about nutritional habits.

Looking at the importance of shared meals in historical, cultural and educational context, it can be concluded that the ritual of the shared meal has an intrinsic ethical value on its own, strenghtened when the food or the occasion are special. However, for the global citizen, it is not always clear what rituals and table manners he should use. The laws of hospitality answer this question.

The laws of hospitality, defining identity by inclusion

The laws of hospitality, common in traditional cultures, build on the sanctity of the common meal. These laws contain rules for the visitor and for the host: ” In an accurate reflection of ancient Greek culture, rules of hospitality are among the most revered social and religious laws in the Odyssey. Men are measured by the way they play host or guest, and those that antagonize the hero often do so by failing their part of this important contract. Guests are expected to bring gifts to their host, respect the house and servants, and act with grace and appreciation. Often, the guest is a source of news and bearings from the outside world and expected, in some ways, to sing for his supper. The host is then to provide food, shelter, and even money and transportation if the guest is in need. Breaking these obligations in the Odyssey is disrespectful to the gods and indicates a somewhat subhuman status”

The laws of hospitality are a way to codify the coming together of 2 identities: the identity of the guest, who comes into the house of the host, and will be invited to share the ritual of the common meal that defines the identity of the hosting family, according to their table manners. The guest will receive food and shelter, but must respect and become part of the identity of the host. The identity meaning, amongst others, what they eat and how they eat: what you eat is who you are.

The laws of hospitality, inviting people and be their guest, are still a very important ethical pillar of our day to day human interactions. While less central than in the days of yore, the laws Ulysses abode with are still valuable in the current western culture. Tinkering with the laws of hospitality changes the inherent quid pro quo in the arrangement, to a degree to make it less adapt to our modern society. Indeed, if the idea of full immersion of the guest in the identity of the host gets lost, and the guest does not participate in the sharing of the food and the rituals of the host, the walls between the cultures are not broken down: each partner keeps up his own shield and observes the other from behind it as an outsider. The new arrangement will lead to less cross fertilization and hybridisation than the tested arrangement. As the guest does not share the common meal, there is less “communion”, and less obligation for the host to defend the guest as if he was a part of the family or clan.

by Sam Gardner

The Somnambulist

Donor projects: is money a placebo, attention the drug?

Aid evolution: a system beyond planning, markets and networks

Local units obeying local incentives and rules1

Beyond planning, markets and networks

Perverse effects of joint agendas: the lemming effect.

The social economy of incentives, rules and indicators

The current paradigm : an amount is a result; everybody using the same instruments and partners

From identity to added value

Civil society, or perhaps mercenaries. What are NGOs?

A Grimm fairy tale

Legitimacy comes in different stripes

The goal of development aid: self reliance

From heart of darkness; develop or civilize? to city of light

Can Haiti count on us? Seriously?

I’m just a soul who’s intentions are good/ Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood

The first weeks: effective delivery of food, health and other basic services

Who’s country is it anyway?

An election is an event, democracy is an institution: of duty bearers and rights holders

With great power comes great responsibility, what are you going to do?

Ethical eating in a diverse world: where angels fear to thread (final part of a series)

Farming systems: from exploitation to stewardship and back; ethical eating in a diverse world (part 6 of a series)

Domestication: a special case of symbiosis

The ethics of domestication.

Only vegetation of 4-5 meters high gives a blaze that is suitable for annual crop farming: semi-nomadic agriculture or sustainable exploitation.

Humus farming: sustainable intensive systems, stewardship with knowledge

You don’t actually own the land, you take care of it for the next generation.

Minimizing the ecological footprint

From humus farming to capitalism

Cognitive dissonance, alienation and the longing for the idyllic Arcadia

Did we go wrong? successful modern farming and ethics.

The environmental footprint: products or systems?

The ethical consequences of a farming system approach

And what about Genetically modified crops?

Ethical eating in a diverse world; cultural idendity and food: from nuclear family to feasting on diversity (Part 5 of a series)

The cultural identity is based on the biology, but tastes better.

Ethical eating in a diverse world; the taboo: to define identity by exclusion (part 4 of a series)

There might be as many taboos as people

The ethics of taboos

At what point do bad manners turn into unethical behavior?

Ethical eating in a diverse world: at the table (part 3 of a series)

Dining together to create a common identity and as an educational tool

The laws of hospitality, defining identity by inclusion

Local units obeying local incentives and rules¹