I’m enjoying reading Collapse by Jared Diamond, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised to learn a lot more than I expected, and gain some interesting new perspectives on a number of situations.
The book paints a picture of the collapse or success of a number of historical societies, such as Easter Island, the Anasazi, Maya, the Norse in Greenland (where they became extinct) and in Iceland (where they succeeded). More interestingly, it then moves on to current societies, looking at Rwanda, the Dominican Republic and Haiti, China and Australia.
The Australian and Rwandan chapters have most interested me. The same day I happened to be reading the chapter on the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, I came across an article on Rwanda entitled HOTEL RWANDA: Hollywood and the Holocaust in Central Africa. The article wasn’t convincing – it seemed overly concerned at refuting simplistic western depictions of the situation. Much time was spent critting the film Hotel Rwanda for it’s supposedly saintly depiction of Tutsis, and diabolical depiction of Hutus. Now I haven’t seen the film, and wouldn’t be surprised if it does oversimplify, but it seems a bit of a straw man argument. The main thrust of the argument was that the situation did not warrant being called genocide – rather it should be defined as civil war.
More interesting, and news to me, was Diamond’s argument. The chapter was entitled Malthus in Africa, which gives a hint as to the argument. Rwanda’s population density was three times greater than the African country with the third highest density (Burundi being similar), higher than some western European countries, but with much less efficient agriculture. All available arable land was being farmed. Population was increasing rapidly, leading to the average plot size shrinking, and increasing social problems, such as disputes between brothers over land. The gap between rich and poor was widening, with the rich able to buy land from the desperate poor at low prices, further exacerbating the gap. I wasn’t aware just how much all these indicators had deteriorated in the years leading up to 1994.
Diamond by no means makes a simplistic ecological determinism argument, claiming that overpopulation was the sole and necessary cause of the genocide. Rather, it was one of the factors fanning the flames. He spends time on the situation in Kanama, an almost entirely Hutu region, where the massacres still claimed about 5% of the total population (the figure was around 11% in the country overall).
The Australian situation was even more of a surprise to me. Diamond paints a pretty gloomy picture of environmental degradation in Australia, fuelled by short-sighted government (until the 1980’s they actually incentivised clearing of native vegetation, and both major parties can still hardly be called progressive), inappropriate cultural values (a British-like demand for sheep and cows as meat, both unsuited and relatively destructive animals, rather than something more abundant and suited to the climate, such as kangaroo). There’s also the poverty of the soils, incompetent management of their fisheries and fresh water supplies, the rapid disappearance of their forests (see the UN-sourced data on Mongabay to see just how bad), geographical location, the negative effect of climate change on their main productive farming area, all of which add up to a first world country more at risk than most.
What still keeps me positive is our human ability to adapt. Australia, facing these challenges, has some of the most active, albeit marginalised, green activists. The US public are starting to wake up politically in the face of the political onlaught their. The greater the challenge, the greater the urgency in facing it. There will be failures, pain and suffering, but nothing is ever as gloomy as it seems.