Paradise For Sale — A Parable Of Nature. - Review - book review

Ecologist, The, July, 2000 by Gard Binney

Carl N. McDaniel

John M. Gowdy

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, US$17.95

This gripping account of the self-destruction of Nauru -- once the richest island in the South Pacific -- is a cautionary tale for our times. After thousands of years of peaceful existence in ecological harmony, doom was spelled for this flyspeck of an island and its Polynesian inhabitants when rich deposits of guano -- accumulated over aeons -- were discovered there a hundred years ago.

Both under colonial rule -- by the Germans until World War I and the British until World War II -- and as a UN protectorate until its independence in 1968, Nauru was systematically stripped of its only natural resource of value to the outside world: its phosphates which are in demand for large-scale agriculture in industrialised societies.

By the time Nauru finally achieved self-rule as the world's smallest secular nation, the once self-reliant and self-sustaining inhabitants had become so dependent on the global economy that they no longer had the option of reverting to their old, time-tested lifestyle. As almost everything needed for their sustenance, including food and drinking water, must be shipped in from distant lands, the Nauruans now find themselves trapped in the insidious web of a monetary system. But as the trust fund established for their financial security is being exhausted with the once rich phosphate deposits, the islanders will soon find themselves with no means of support.

In common with many other isolated societies, deemed 'primitive' by Westerners, Nauru lost much of its innocence and cultural uniqueness under the ignorant and arrogant tutelage of Christian missionaries, who taught them to be ashamed of their bodies, while condemning their efforts at maintaining a viable population by various means. Western beliefs compelled the newcomers to zealously 'improve' a society that had existed for thousands of years before being discovered by the white man. But he did not just bring salvation to this tropical paradise -- he also brought a plethora of diseases hitherto unknown to these primitive heathens.

In a chapter titled Living the Myths the authors draw some parallels with other isolated cultures threatened with extinction by the imposition of a money economy, replacing the traditional barter system. Several pages are devoted to the former Himalayan kingdom of Ladakh, now part of Kashmir. Citing Helena Norberg-Hodge's seminal work, Ancient Futures, they lament the fact that the young Ladakhi are often ashamed of the traditional ways, and that the old beliefs and values are no longer central to everybody's existence. And because the people of Ladakh -- who used to practice polyandry in order to maintain a sustainable 'ecological footprint' of about one person per square mile -- have been dis-connected from their habitat and uprooted from their culture, the population has now grown beyond sustainable levels.

Paradise for Sale is much more than a dirge for quaint vanishing cultures, however; it is a metaphor for what ails modern society as a whole. The fate of Nauru is not just an isolated tragedy; it is, in the words of the authors, 'a story of power, exploitation, greed, and the selling of the future for short-term gain, which... render intelligible the numerous fallacies in our cultural beliefs and the trajectories they [project].' Since technology has greatly accelerated the current ecosystem and habitat destruction, it is unlikely that we will be able to restore our planet's biodiversity by technological means -- 'with the market as our master, technology is the handmaiden of this destruction'.

Like the Nauru natives, who sold the very land from under their feet for a brief moment of material wealth, or the Rapa Nui of Easter Island, who built bigger and bigger statues to appease the gods, today's corporate and political leaders call for ever greater economic growth as a way of guaranteeing human well-being. Yet 'within the last several hundred years all of the major components of this worldview' have been shown to be untenable.

Despite the gloomy picture painted by the authors of our present technology-based civilisation and its devastating impact on our planet, the authors end their narrative on a note of optimism. In response to the question whether the fate of Nauru and countless similar examples prove that our globalised economy is, in fact, dysfunctional and self-defeating, they assert that we 'certainly have [both] the knowledge and the resources to achieve enduring habitation'.

But the authors are no romantics la Rousseau who view the world through rose-coloured glasses; both have solid scientific credentials. Perhaps it is the fact that they are not beholden to any corporate or other short-sighted interests which enables them to take an objective and dispassionate view of their world -- a world which is rapidly depleting its finite resources under pressure of an exploding population and reckless consumerism.

To paraphrase Louis XIV: 'After us, the flood.' (Apres moi le deluge.)