Bangladesh tea strike boils as lowest-paid workers stand ground

Seeking $3 a day amid inflation, protesters draw sympathy from beyond industry

Striking Bangladeshi tea workers stage a demonstration at 

a plantation in the northeastern Moulvibazar District. 

(Photo by Mintu Deshwara)

SYFUL ISLAM, Contributing writer

August 20, 2022 

DHAKA -- A strike by the tea workers of Bangladesh is becoming a rallying point for the country, as accelerating inflation adds to frustration over meager wages.

Workers from over 160 tea plantations across the nation are demanding a raise to the equivalent of $3 per day, from the present standard of $1.20, which makes them the country's lowest-paid workforce.

"The tea garden owners have agreed to raise wages to only $1.40 per day, which we did not accept. We will wage a greater movement to realize our demand," said Nripen Pal, acting general secretary at the Bangladesh Tea Workers Union.

"We won't make any compromise unless we get proper wages," he said after a meeting with owners and government labor department officials on Wednesday night.

On Thursday, the union called for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's intervention.

The strike, which reached its seventh day on Friday, comes amid surging living costs in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which has fueled price rises worldwide. In June, the nation's inflation rate soared to 7.56%, the highest in eight years, according to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics. Earlier this month, sudden fuel price hikes heaped even more pressure on consumers.

But tea workers have it harder than most -- a fact that has moved people from all strata of society to support their cause.

Abdus Shahid, a member of parliament in the tea production area of the Maulvibazar district, demanded that the minimum wage for the workers be $5. In universities in Dhaka and Sylhet, students have also rallied, calling the tea workers victims of "modern-day slavery."

On Friday, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) -- the main opposition party -- issued a statement urging the plantation owners to accept the workers' demand. "Steps need to be taken to enhance tea workers' wages to help them come out from starvation, poverty and sufferings," said Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, the BNP's general secretary.

There are 100,000 permanent tea workers and 50,000 more temporary laborers in 167 tea plantations in Bangladesh. They support some 500,000 dependents. But even their $1.20 a day is not guaranteed: If they collect less than 23 kilograms of leaves, they get paid less.

The Bangladesh Tea Association (BTA), a body of landowners, said in a statement that the workers earn the equivalent of $4 a day, including benefits such as free housing, 3.5 kg of wheat rations per week and access to medical care.

"We will settle the wage issue and [have] requested the workers to resume work," said M. Shah Alam, chairman of the BTA.

The workers argue the medical facilities mentioned by the BTA are poor and inadequate, while the housing amounts to shanties that they are expected to pay for.

Tea workers union leaders speak at a meeting on Aug 17. 

WOMEN TEA WORKERS NOT REPRESENTED BY THEMSELVES, 

NON TEA WORKERS, MALES ARE THE SO CALLED UNION LEADERS

(Photo by Shafiqul Islam)

Either way, their situation compares unfavorably to their peers in other sectors, including day laborers and rickshaw pullers who can earn around $8 to $10 a day. Tea workers in neighboring countries are relatively better-paid as well: In the Indian state of Assam, just opposite the Bangladeshi tea plantations in Sylhet, the authorities on Aug. 10 agreed to raise wages by about 34 cents to the equivalent of about $2.90, amid strikes and legal cases in upper courts. Last year, in India's Tamil Nadu, wages rose to equal about $5.35 a day, while Nepali and Sri Lankan tea pickers earn around $3 a day, according to local reports.

The tea pickers are not Bangladesh's only frustrated workers. Laborers in the vast garment industry took to the streets in June, clashing with police in some cases.

On June 6, Shajahan Khan, a government representative and former shipping minister, pledged to form a wage board as soon as possible to establish a new pay structure for the garment workers. He also said the government would arrange ration cards for workers so that they can buy some basic commodities at subsidized prices.

Neither the wage board nor the ration cards have materialized.

Now there are signs of an emerging united front among workers' groups.

Labor leaders are calling for immediate wage hikes in all trades. "There are no other options but to raise wages without delay to help workers survive," said Nazma Akter, a former child worker and executive director of the Awaj Foundation, a labor rights organization.

Noting the lack of follow-through on the wage board and rations, she said, "The wage hike issue is being discussed among the labor organizations separately, and we may sit together soon to devise a strategy to press home the demand."

Still, garment factory owners insist they cannot afford to increase pay due to a steep increase in production costs. "The government can provide workers commodities at a subsidized rate," argued Shahidullah Azim, vice president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association.

On Chile rivers, Native spirituality and development clash

LONG READ


MELIPEUCO, Chile (AP) — Mist suddenly arose from the Truful Truful River as it flowed below the snow-covered Llaima volcano, and Victor Curin smiled at the sun-dappled water spray.

A leader in one of the Indigenous communities by the river’s shores in the Chilean Andes, Curin took it as a sign that the waterfall’s ngen — its owner and protector spirit — approved of his visit and prayer that mid-July morning.

“Nature always tells you something, always answers,” said Curin, who works as a park ranger in Conguillio National Park, at the river’s headwaters. “Human beings feel superior to the space where they go, but for us Mapuche, I belong to the earth, the earth doesn’t belong to me.”

In the worldview of the Mapuche, Chile’s largest Indigenous group and more than 10% of its population, a pristine river is home to a spiritual force to revere, not a natural resource to exploit.

That has led many Mapuche across Chile’s water-rich south to fight hydroelectric plants and other projects they see as desecrating nature and depriving Indigenous communities of essential energies that keep them from getting sick.

“Being part of nature, we cannot destroy part of ourselves,” said Lientur Ayenao, a machi or healer and spiritual guide who draws water from the Truful Truful for his ceremonies. “You have to keep the balance, and this is broken when one intervenes in natural spaces for a selfish purpose.”

___

Some 200 miles to the south, another machi, Millaray Huichalaf, has led a sometimes-violent battle against hydroelectric plants on the Pilmaiquen River, which flows through rolling pastures from a lake in the Andes’ foothills.

After her resistance and cultural consultations with Indigenous communities, an energy company froze plans for a plant by a riverside sacred site and said it would return ownership of the land to the Mapuche.

But construction is continuing on another plant, so the fight isn't over — just as it isn't on the Truful Truful, where a proposed plant is under review.

“I am the river too, we’re as sacred as the river,” Huichalaf said as a thunderstorm pounded her wooden cabin. “At the same time as we’re fighting for the river, we’re in the process of territorial recovery and spiritual reconstruction.”

It’s on the question of rights over Indigenous land, a volatile issue in Chile’s politics, that spirituality gets entangled with ideology. Several Mapuche leaders say spirits appearing in dreams encourage the fight against capitalism in their ancestral territory.

Next month, Chileans will vote on a new and controversial constitution spotlighting Indigenous rights and land restitution. But they’re also dealing with growing violent attacks against agricultural, logging and energy industries, particularly in the Araucania region, including by some groups claiming Mapuche ancestral lands that were never fully conquered by the Spanish empire and only fell to the Chilean state at the end of the 19th century.

For most Mapuche, such violence further destabilizes the desired balance between people, the natural space they belong to and the spirits that inhabit it. A first step against it is to ensure non-Natives understand how nature matters to the Mapuche, Indigenous leader and mediator Andrés Antivil Álvarez said.

“The world is not loot. Everything that’s outside is also inside ourselves,” he said, sitting by the fire in his ruka, a traditional building outside his house near Araucania’s capital, a two-hour drive from the Truful Truful. “You have to understand that the spirit of this fire, present here, is as sacred as the Christ in a church.”

And trampling a crucifix — as some protesters did in 2019 mass uprisings — is as painful and evil as damming a river, he said. He cited as an example construction in the early 2000s of the Ralco dam, which flooded sacred compounds and generated an uproar that prevented similar massive projects and energized cultural resistance to smaller ones.

___

Mapuche community members' reverence is evident when they walk alongside rivers like the Truful Truful, whose name means “from waterfall to waterfall” in the Mapudungun language.

On a chilly afternoon, Ayenao approached the river’s largest waterfall, the proposed site of a new hydroelectric plant, with a bag of seeds in his pocket. That would be a reciprocity offering for the river’s ngen should Ayenao decide to draw water to treat his patients’ physical and spiritual ailments.

“Ngen existed before us and it’s they who allow us to live in a place. And there are some predominant ngen to whom we need to pray” like the Truful Truful’s, he said.

Failure to ask the ngen’s permission to approach the water, or to explain the need to do so, means transgressing on the space, alienating the spirits protecting it and making you, your family and even your animals sick.

But if the ngen permits it, then Ayenao can use the falling water’s distinctive “energy power” for healing purposes, either in riverside ceremonies or by taking large soda bottles full of it back to his house.

Relocated to Temuco when he was 6, Ayenao eventually moved to Santiago, Chile's capital, to study and there got so sick he couldn’t walk or talk. His family realized the only remedy was to accept that the spirit of his great-grandmother, also a healer, was asking to come back in him.

He apprenticed for three years and returned to practice traditional medicine on a tiny plot of land in the broad valley downstream from the village of Melipueco, named for the union of the Truful Truful and three other waterways.

Now the spirit of a nearby river where a fish farm is planned has been asking in dreams for Ayenao’s help.

“The ngen asks me and demands of me that I need to protect it, and thus contribute to health,” said Ayenao, 28. “We as human beings ... are the messengers of the ngen mapu to stop” the extraction and sale of natural resources.

___

More spiritual guides like Ayenao are needed to remedy the loss of environmental, medicinal and linguistic knowledge caused by enforced assimilation policies in the past, when many Indigenous people grew up alienated from their roots in marginalized big-city settlements, said Artemio Huenupi, a Mapuche elder.

“Our wisdom is entirely based on the territory of nature. We live in this space to take care of it. It’s other cultures that say that they own the land,” he added, speaking in the small museum of Mapuche culture he curates in Melipeuco.

At a July nighttime village concert to raise funds for Ayenao’s thatched-roof gathering space, community members recounted how they have banded together to oppose a hydroelectric plant on the Truful Truful.

After nearly a decade of multiple environmental and cultural evaluations, as well as legal appeals, the plant has been temporarily blocked in court, said Claudio Melillan, a Melipeuco city councilor who recently returned to his ancestral lands for what he called “a stage of reconstruction” of his Mapuche identity.

The community hopes a final ruling will definitively scuttle the project, which threatens to harm the waterfall that’s considered a crucial source of spiritual energy, said Sergio Millaman, the attorney who won the latest appeal.

But some human impact is already evident, from an increase in tourism to the diminished flow compared with the powerful river many remember from their childhood.

Despite this winter’s abundant rain and snowfall, Chile is facing a worrisome climate change-driven drought, which has compounded tensions over water use, said Juan Pablo Herane, a hydrology expert with the Global Change Center at Santiago’s Catholic University.

In April, after more than a decade’s legal wrangling, the country’s water code was updated to better protect various rights including the use of water at its source for conservation or ancestral customs, said Juan José Crocco, an attorney specializing in water regulation and management.

It’s unclear, however, if a new constitution might alter that and how the code will be implemented in the case of hydroelectric plants that technically don’t extract water but reroute it to create energy, said Benjamín Bulnes, a water rights attorney who worked on the new code and has fished on the Pilmaiquen River.

___

The first hydroelectric plant on the Pilmaiquen, built in the mid-20th century, sits across the road from a Mapuche-administered botanical garden spotlighting native trees.

A bitter battle under Huichalaf’s leadership started a decade ago to stop three other plants several miles downstream. Like Ayenao, she got seriously ill as a child in the nearby city of Osorno until her family realized it was an ancestor’s spirit wanting to come back in her as a healer.

During years of training to assume that role, she started having dreams about Kintuantü, a ngen living by a broad bend of the Pilmaiquen.

“I am a medium of energy. Through dreams and visions in trance, Kintuantü told me that I had to speak for him because he was dying,” Huichalaf said.

A plant would have raised the river right to the cliffside caves where the ngen lives. Atop the cliff is a Mapuche ceremonial compound, including a cemetery, from where souls are believed to travel via underground water flows through the caves, into the Pilmaiquen and on to eventual reincarnation.

Huichalaf led an occupation there. A private home burned down, and protesters clashed with police. More protests and lawsuits followed, dividing the Indigenous communities around the river.

Huichalaf was jailed for several months. But she said she doesn’t fear prison because she managed to save the site, where she gathers medicinal herbs and performs sacred ceremonies: “The ngen is still there.”

Statkraft, the Norwegian state-owned energy company that bought the Pilmaiquen projects, is working with the Chilean government to return ownership of the ceremonial compound. Construction was stopped after the company realized the proposed plant’s cultural impact was “unacceptable,” said Statkraft’s Chile manager, María Teresa González.

González said the company learned the importance of understanding the Indigenous worldview and engaging different communities from the start, and it’s doing just that with another plant being constructed on the Pilmaiquen.

But she condemned ongoing violence such as the recent burning of a truck carrying a half-dozen workers. Nobody has been charged in the late June attack.

For Huichalaf, the fight continues: “Our big goal is that the companies on the river will leave."

___

Back on the black volcanic field crossed by the Truful Truful, as a snowstorm approached a nearby peak with thousand-year-old araucaria trees, Curin defined his people’s goal in more essential terms.

“What does the Mapuche world fight for? What does the Mapuche world protect? Not a world of money,” he said. “Mapuche culture is very spiritual, very much of the heart. It’s not random that we’re still here.”

Then he knelt to sip from the river’s water and got back to his park ranger post.

 

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Giovanna Dell'orto, The Associated Press

'The paycheck has died': Argentine workers hold funeral for wages
AUGUST 19, 2022

Demonstrators carry a coffin during a symbolic funeral for their wages, as they march towards the Casa Rosada Presidential Palace, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Aug 19, 2022.
Reuters

BUENOS AIRES – Some women wore black funeral attire and sported flower crowns. Other people in the procession in Buenos Aires carried a gigantic coffin. But this funeral procession in the Argentine capital was not honouring a person.

Instead it was to mourn the "death" of the wages of Argentine workers in a country where inflation is expected to hit 90 per cent by the end of this year, eating up workers' purchasing power despite years of government attempts to curb price increases.More from AsiaOneRead the condensed version of this story, and other top stories with NewsLite.

"The situation for the workers is devastating. Before the middle of the month we don't have any more salary, it's not enough," Melisa Gargarello, a representative of the Front of Organisations in Struggle (FOL), the protest's organiser, told Reuters.


One protester carried a "clinical history" for Argentine wages, a chart showing how inflation has eaten up the value of paychecks.

Demonstrators hold a graph showing the changes in minimum wage in the past months, during a symbolic funeral for their wages, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Aug 19, 2022.
PHOTO: Reuters

While much of the world is battling high single-digit inflation this year, Argentina's struggles are in a different category.

"The paycheck has died" read a banner in the symbolic procession, which toured the main streets of Argentina's capital and ended in front of the Presidential Palace.

The flower crowns worn by women carried the message "RIP the minimum wage."

The country's official monthly minimum wage stands at 45,540 Argentine pesos (S$465.57) while a basic food basket for a family of two adults and two children costs more than twice that amount at 111,298 pesos, according to the national statistics institute Indec.

Years of political efforts to curb inflation have done little to abate price increases, and in July the country registered its highest inflation rate in 20 years.

The latest effort involves the appointment of a new economy minister, Sergio Massa, who has been granted expanded powers to try to tame inflation. Argentines have dubbed him a "superminister."

"Today we are holding a symbolic funeral for wages, which we have to say expresses the situation that all workers in Argentina are experiencing," said FOL's Maximiliano Maita.

Source: Reuters

Transgender kids can play girls sports in Utah after ruling

Fri, August 19, 2022



SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Transgender girls in Utah will be given the opportunity to participate in girls' sports as the school year begins, after a judge on Friday reversed a ban pending legal challenges from parents.

Instead of an outright ban, transgender girls will now be sent before a commission that will determine on a case-by-case basis if their participation compromises fairness. Utah's Republican lawmakers created the commission in a law passed earlier this year as a fallback plan to be implemented in case of an injunction against the law.

Under the law, the panel will be allowed to ask for and assess the child's height and weight in making decisions about whether a transgender girl would have an unfair advantage. The commission, which is set to be convened in the coming weeks, will include politically appointed experts from athletics and medicine. When proposed, the commission was criticized by advocates for transgender student-athletes — who worried they would feel targeted having their bodies measured — and proponents of an outright ban, who argued it didn't go far enough.

The commission is set to go into effect while the court weighs the legal challenge to the outright ban. Members have not yet been appointed but will be in the coming weeks, legislative leaders said.

The state's association overseeing more than 80,000 students playing high school sports has said only one transgender girl competed in their leagues last year and, with school sports already underway, it's unclear how many will go before the commission and when its decisions will take effect.

Utah's ruling marked the latest court development in a nationwide debate over how to navigate a flashpoint issue.

At least 12 Republican-led states — including Utah — have passed laws banning transgender women or girls in sports based on the premise it gives them an unfair competitive advantage. Transgender rights advocates counter the rules aren’t just about sports, but another way to demean and attack transgender youth. Similar cases are underway in states such as Idaho, West Virginia and Indiana.

Utah's ban took effect in July after its Republican-supermajority Legislature overrode a veto by Gov. Spencer Cox, also a Republican.

Utah state Judge Keith Kelly said in the ruling putting the ban on hold that attorneys representing the families of three transgender student-athletes had shown they've suffered significant distress by “singling them out for unfavorable treatment as transgender girls.”

The transgender girls and the parents filed the lawsuit last May, contending the ban violates the Utah Constitution’s guarantees of equal rights and due process.

The ruling was thrilling news to the girls and their families, said Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, who also represented same-sex couples in a landmark court case against Utah last decade.

“The pressure, the strain this was putting them under was so enormous,” Minter said. “It is just a huge relief to have that weight lifted.”

Utah state Sen. Stuart Adams, a Republican, said in a statement Friday that the commission that will now make decisions in a way “to protect equitable and safe competition while preserving the integrity of women’s sports.”

The commission will include a medical data statistician, a physician with experience about “gender identity healthcare”, a sports physiologist, mental health professional, collegiate athletic trainer, representative of an athletic association and a rotating member who is a coach or official in the sport relevant to each case.

Minter said he hopes the commission will act merely as a safety net, with the presumption being that transgender girls can play unless there is an obvious issue of competitive fairness.

“How it is done is very important,” Minter said.

The ruling follows a revelation this week by the Utah High School Activities Association that it secretly investigated a female athlete — without telling her or her parents — after receiving complaints from the parents of two girls she had defeated in competition questioning whether the girl was transgender.

The investigation — which was roundly criticized by Gov. Cox — determined she indeed was female after poring through her school records dating back to kindergarten, its spokesman David Spatafore told lawmakers this week. The sequence of events laid out how similar

Critics of the ban were upset but said they weren't surprised by the investigation. They said it highlighted how the impact of politicizing girls' sports affected more than transgender student-athletes and subjected all girls to scrutiny in ways they anticipated.

“It creates such a negative atmosphere based on stereotypes about girls and how they should look,” Minter said. “It is really is harmful to all the kids in the state.”

The sequence of events also laid out how officials may pursue complaints now that youth sports and the associations governing them are the subject of state laws. Spatafore said the complaint was among several the association had looked into in its efforts to comply with the Utah law, which went into effect in July.

Brady Mccombs And Sam Metz, The Associated Press

 

The story of a conquest. The fruiting body of a parasitic fungus erupts from the body of its victim. Attribution: Roberto García-Roa

ANIMALS NEWS, WEIRD

Best nature photos for 2022 include mind-controlling ‘zombie’ fungus infecting a fly

by Chris Melore

‘Roberto García-Roa’s striking image is like something out of science fiction.’

LONDON — The discovery of a mind-controlling “zombie” fungus may not be something to celebrate — but a picture of it killing its insect victim is receiving cheers from the scientific community! The stunning photo has won the second BMC Ecology and Evolution Image Competition, edging out a number of eye-catching scenes from nature this year.

The University of Valencia’s Roberto García-Roa captured the incredible image of a parasitic fungus erupting from the body of a fly. Researchers say this particular fungus infecting the fly (genera Ophiocordyceps) actually takes over the victim’s body and mind. It forces them to move to locations which are better for fungus growth before leaving the insect’s body to find and infect more victims.

“The image depicts a conquest that has been shaped by thousands of years of evolution. The spores of the so-called ‘zombie’ fungus have infiltrated the exoskeleton and mind of the fly and compelled it to migrate to a location that is more favorable for the fungus’s growth. The fruiting bodies have then erupted from the fly’s body and will be jettisoned in order to infect more victims,” says García-Roa in a media release.

“Roberto García-Roa’s striking image is like something out of science fiction. It illustrates both life and death simultaneously as the death of the fly gives life to the fungus,” adds senior editorial board member Christy Anna Hipsley, who recommended the entry.

“Here, they await death, at which point the fungus feeds on its host to produce fruiting bodies full of spores that will be jettisoned to infect more victims—a conquest shaped by thousands of years of evolution.”

Relationships in nature

In addition to the overall winner, judges selected winners and runners-up in four other categories: Relationships in Nature, Biodiversity Under Threat, Life Close Up, and Research in Action. Journal authors say the winning photographs highlight the relationships between species, the minutiae of life on Earth, and the challenges facing it.

In the “Relationships in Nature” category, this year’s winner featured “a plant-frugivore relationship,” submitted by Alwin Hardenbol. The photograph depicts a Bohemian Waxwing eating fermented rowan berries, demonstrating the strong relationship between plants and fruit-eating animals.

Gone with the berry. Flying under the influence—a waxwing feasts on fermented rowan berries. Attribution: Alwin Hardenbol (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CCBY))

The runner-up in the category depicts predator–prey relationship at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.

“This image illustrates how natural and sexual selection can be at odds. A male Túngara frog (Physalalamus pustulosus) makes a tasty meal for a hungry fringe-lipped bat (Trachops cirrhosis) that detected and localized the frog by listening to the mating call,” says behavioral biologist Alexander T. Baugh.

Trachops & Tungara. A bat locates its dinner via tuning into a frog’s broadcast to attract a mate. Attribution: Alexander T. Baugh (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CCBY))

Biodiversity under threat

In the “Biodiversity Under Threat” category, Samantha Kreling from the University of Washington captured a winning image of African elephants taking shelter from the Sun under a large baobab tree in South Africa during a drought.

“Baobab trees can live for more than 2,000 years and store water in their barrel-like trunks when water is scarce. The tree in this image has had its bark stripped by elephants seeking water. Although these trees are usually fast-healing, this damage is more than baobab trees can cope with as temperatures rise due to climate change. This photograph highlights the need for action to prevent the permanent loss of these iconic trees,” Kreling says.

The Baobab tree. The relationship between a group of African elephants and a Baobab tree strains as droughts strike. Attribution: Samantha Kreling (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CCBY))

Lindsey Swierk, an Assistant Research Professor at Binghamton University, submitted the runner-up photograph. That image captured the threat wood frogs face from climate change in the spring.

“I think it is important to realize that effects of major drivers of biodiversity change can also happen in counter-intuitive ways. In the present case, due to climate warming, there is an increased risk of the frog offspring dying because of cold/freezing (due to severe changes in phenology),” notes senior editorial board member Josef Settele.

Wood frog under a freeze. A false spring—climate change threatens wood frog offspring. Attribution: Lindsey Swierk (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CCBY))

Life close up

The “Life Close Up” winning image featured gliding treefrog embryos developing within their eggs in Costa Rica.

“The eggs in this image are among those laid by thousands of gliding treefrogs during an explosive breeding event triggered by a torrential rainstorm. If undisturbed, these eggs will hatch after six days of development, however the embryos can hatch early in order to escape threats such as predators and flooding,” says Brandon André Güell from Boston University, who took the picture.

In ovo. Gliding treefrog siblings at an early stage of their development. Attribution: Brandon André Güell (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CCBY))

Meanwhile, the runner-up image in this category captured an anole lizard using a clever trick to breathe under water.

“Water Anoles (Anolis aquaticus) are small Neotropical lizards that escape to the water when threatened by predators. They can spend almost 20 min underwater, inhaling and exhaling a bubble of air that clings to their snout. Oxygen from this bubble is depleted over the underwater dive, which likely helps water anoles remain underwater for so long,” explains Lindsey Swierk, who took this image as well.

Bubble breathing in Water Anoles. An anole lizard dives using a clever trick to breathe underwater. Attribution: Lindsey Swierk (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CCBY))

Research in action

Lastly, the “Research in Action” winner, taken by Jeferson Ribeiro Amaral from Cornell University, featured two researchers from the State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The pair were working during the COVID-19 pandemic, investigating whether isolated trees help to lessen the impact of human activity on frog populations.

“The researchers in this image are representative of so many others who carried on working throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. This image demonstrates their strength and dedication to understanding our world as they carry out their work despite thunderstorms and a global pandemic,” Ribeiro Amaral says.

Fieldwork with masks, rain, and tadpoles. Researchers investigate the effect of isolated trees and land use on tadpole-mediated nutrient recycling during the COVD-19 pandemic. Attribution: Jeferson Ribeiro Amaral (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CCBY))

The runner-up in this category featured Brandon A. Güell standing alongside thousands of gliding treefrogs and their recently laid eggs.

Focus amidst the chaos. PhD student, Brandon A. Güell, amidst thousands of reproducing gliding treefrogs (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CCBY))

All of the winners appear in the journal BMC Ecology and Evolution.

About the Author

Chris Melore

Chris Melore has been a writer, researcher, editor, and producer in the New York-area since 2006. He won a local Emmy award for his work in sports television in 2011.

View Chris's article archive

Towards an ecological economics

David Caicedo Sarralde

 

| 30th July 2021 | 

Creative Commons 4.0

https://theecologist.org/

Wikimedia

Long Read: 

Economics has been dominated by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a measure of success. But ecological economics measures welfare and sustainability instead.

Neoclassical economic approaches have considered progress as a concept that is equivalent to economic growth, which is measured by the increase of the gross domestic product (GDP).

I want to engage in a discussion of the main critiques that have been presented to show the limitations of GDP as a sole measure for progress and wellbeing.

This article has been published through the Ecologist Writers' Fund. We ask readers for donations to pay some authors £200 for their work. Please make a donation now. You can learn more about the fund, and make an application, on our website.

Firstly, progress will be defined from the perspective of Pareto Optimality and the subsequent indicators that have been constructed to account for different factors and externalities, such as environmental degradation and social inequality.

Improvement

Afterwards, a brief description and proposition of the ecological economics perspective will be introduced as an alternative that considers the intertwining of the economic system and other biophysical systems in the measurement of wellbeing and economic development.

Thirdly, the "Buen Vivir" approach will contribute as de-colonial perspective, to decouple social wellbeing and sustainability form economic growth and progress. Finally, conclusions will be drawn.  

The idea of progress has been historically associated with the concept of advance, which can range from the material and physical to the spiritual matters (Nisbet, 1980).

Moreover, the idea of advance entails a vision of history as an ongoing path of improvement, which has been modified over the course of time by poets, philosophers, and economists, presenting a collection of worldviews and conceptions.

As certain values grow in importance in our society, such as social and environmental justice, equity, and community self-determination, GDP can be questioned as a sole indicator for progress.

For philosopher G.W.F Hegel, history advanced in terms of the development of the spirit seen from a dialectical point of view (G.W.F Hegel, 1977; Nisbet, 1980, p. 25).

Wellbeing

In the case of Adam Smith, progress was a byproduct of the “invisible hand’s” actions that assured both stability of the economic system and progress (Smith, 1776).

Later, marginalist economists proposed the Pareto Optimality, as a mechanism of improvement, or progress, in order to attain the most efficient market allocation of resources (Buchanan, 1962).

Such allocation can, however, be problematic if there is a risk of a high unequal distribution of resources or income, which can affect the possibility to improve society’s level of wellbeing.

If progress is “defined as an improvement in the well-being of human beings” (Sulkowski, 2016, p. 2), it becomes thus useful to add a conception like wellbeing, as a means to evaluate the notion of GDP in terms of its power to measure progress. That is, by also acknowledging the different conceptions on wellbeing that exist.

The branch of welfare economics provided one of the definitions on wellbeing when it acknowledged the importance of measuring material welfare through the work of economists like Marshall, Hicks, Pigou, Edgeworth, and Pareto, who included the concepts of wellbeing, utility, and social welfare in the economics analysis (Myrdal, 2017, pp. 208–210).

Voters

Likewise, there are other measurements of wellbeing that come from pluralist or de-colonial approaches which enrich the debate on development and progress.

The principle of Pareto Optimality and efficiency was taken by marginalist economists as a ground principle for measuring social welfare or wellbeing.

For welfare economists, As Pigou affirms, “…the one obvious instrument of measurement available in social life is money. Hence, the range of our inquiry becomes restricted to that part of social welfare that can be brought directly or indirectly into relation with the measuring-rod of money. This part of welfare may be called economic welfare.” (Pigou, 1920, p. 11).

On the one hand, this principle can be found in national policies and institutions, such as the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research which measures wellbeing through the economic performance of society (Syrquin, 2016, p. 582).

On the other hand, welfare improvements can enter in contradiction with political interests, as some governments have boosted GDP in order to increase their likelihood for the current ruling party to be voted again in the next election, assuming voters to be short-sighted and responsive to GDP measures (Alt & Lassen, 2006).

Welfare

Additionally, GDP measurements do not necessarily measure wellbeing. For instance, if one measures the increase of GDP between the decades of 1950 and 1960, it can be seen how GDP increased but subjective well-being remained constant (Stiglitz et al., 2010, pp.21-22).

Under welfare economics’ concept of wellbeing, progress is made in the context of a Pareto improvement in situations of inefficiency, that is, in a scenario of inefficient allocation of resources (Hausman et al., 2016).

Yet, a highly unequal distribution of income in a society can occur as a consequence of a Pareto improvement. As a result, measurements of societal welfare were proposed, such as the Social Welfare Function, based on an ordinal utilitarian conception (Myrdal, 2017).

The function however does not consider the values, wants and desires of the individuals, that depend on the social and historical context (quote here).

In other words, it does not consider that there can be different interpretations of welfare, such that a low welfare scenario in a certain society, can be regarded as a high welfare scenario in a different one, when taking concepts like sustainability and social justice into account.

Wealth flows

When attempting to include environmental factors, indicators like the Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) and the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) were designed to deduct the effect of environmental pollution and natural depletion.

The divergence between the GDP and ISEW or GPI means that GDP by itself is limited as an indicator for well-being and progress nowadays. Another indicator, the HDI (Human Development Index), was additionally formulated by including education and life expectancy along with GDP, to measure changes in well-being (quote here).

Nordhaus and Tobin’s Sustainable Measure of Economic Welfare (SMEW) were created to deduct private consumption and monetary estimations of non-positive welfare factors to correct elements that were not considered by GDP.

The main critique is that these indicators do not set a clear limit on growth, which means that it can go beyond the ecological system’s capacity.

In turn, indicators like Osberg and Sharpe’s Index of Economic Wellbeing were developed, to include measures of consumption, wealth flows, protection against social risks, and costs of CO2 emissions per capita (Stiglitz et al., 2010).

Progress

Although GDP has not been dropped out in these indicators, it has acquired a much less important position than it previously had. 

In conclusion, GDP has been developed as an element to measure wellbeing and progress in a society, supported on assumptions on the mechanisms by which wellbeing can be achieved.

One of the main assumptions come from neoclassical economics’ Pareto Optimality, which strives for an overall efficiency, that may as well lead to a scenario of high inequality or high environmental degradation.

This in turn, may introduce a trade-off between efficiency and other values like equity, sustainability, or justice.

If efficiency is chosen to be more important other values, then GDP can be a good indicator for progress, but if other values are more important, then GDP’s usefulness to measure progress becomes problematic.

Ecological economics principles and critique of economic growth perspective

Ecological economics argues that neoclassical economics lacks a correct conceptualization of nature and other systems, which in turn develops an endless growth perspective that causes a situation of welfare reduction (Faber, 2008, p.2).

Most importantly, ecological economics modifies the efficiency principle when it introduces the economic system within a complex network of macro systems, which are underpinned by other principles, like ecological ones (Spash, 2012).

This view contrasts with the traditional neoclassical view, which is based on marginalist perspectives of utility, profit maximization and production optimization, performed in a closed economics system that is reduced to homes and firms (Mankiw, 2011), without including nature as an additional agent.

For ecological economics, the natural processes of waste management, resource cycles, energy cycles (ALIER & JUSMET, 2000, pp. 22–74) and biosphere boundaries (Røpke, 2020) have to be included as a grounding principle for the understanding of the economic system (Røpke, 2004).

For that reason, it is argued that GDP measures possess an incorrect inclusion of negative externalities, which are external distortions of the market’s equilibrium and efficiency.

Usefulness

Furthermore, this proposes a different view on economic growth, as the economic system is to be studied as a part of global ecological system that not only restricts the possibilities of endless growth, but also affects the notion of well-being that was previously associated with growth (Røpke, 2020, p.8).

As Herman Daly (1991) pointed out, the full costs of growth are not included in the marginalist or neoclassical conception, which makes it an incomplete measure.

By applying a marginalist logic, Daly argues: “Growth in GNP should cease when decreasing marginal benefits become equal to increasing marginal costs” (Daly, 1991, p. 99).

A new guiding principle for growth is proposed, which is based on a steady-state economy conception where the GDP-based assumption of “more is better” is replaced by “enough is best”, by proposing a limit to the growth path (ibid., p.6).

As a response to this, an indicator called the green GDP tried to give value to environmental inputs and outputs into the economic system. Although, in the case of outputs, the measurement becomes more speculative, bringing again the question of its usefulness. In the words of Stiglitz et al. (2010):

Justice

Valuing environmental inputs into the economic system is the (relatively) easier step. Since these inputs are incorporated into products that are sold in the marketplace, it is possible (in principle) to use direct means to assign a value for them based on market principles.

In contrast, as pollution emissions are outputs; there is no direct way to assign a value to them. All the indirect methods of valuation will depend to some extent on 'what if' scenarios.

Thus, translating valuations of degradation into adjustments to macro-economic aggregates takes us beyond the realm of ex-post accounting into a much more hypothetical situation.

The very speculative nature of this sort of accounting explains the great discomfort and strong resistance among many accountants to this practice. (Stiglitz et al., 2010, p. 22)

The framework of ecological economics additionally contributed to the wellbeing conceptualization, as Faber (2008) summarizes, with the inclusion of the concepts of nature, justice, and time based on thermodynamical rules.

Pollution

As a result, mainstream economic theories can be limited in measuring wellbeing by not including a definition of justice in their measurements.

Although welfare economists have strived for a value-neutral theory, Streeten (1955) shows that their alleged neutrality hides the ethical and political stance that unavoidably underpins neoclassical and welfare economics assumptions. 

Myrdal (1955) complimented this argument by explaining that separating between scientific economics and political valuations, hides the intrinsic value judgement that welfare economists exercise whenever they give their opinion on “what ought to be”, which is in other words, what the Pareto Principle aims to show.

Given that neoclassical economics regards nature as a subsystem and as a means to achieve a steady economic growth (Faber, 2008, p.2), it presents limits to the inclusion of externalities coming from other systems.

In a scenario of internalization of externalities such as an introduction of Emission Trading Schemes (ETS), a reduction of environmental pollution can be fostered, which would initially point to an improvement of social welfare.

Markets

Nevertheless, evidence states that the outcomes of such policies have not been enough to revert climate change policies (Posner, Eric; Weisbach, 2010, p. 59), because economic growth has been set to be more important than attaining the lowest level of pollution.

For that reason, ecological economics advocates for the inclusion of a deeper principle of sustainability transitions in the measurement of wellbeing and economic progress.

This means, including biophysical foundations, the origins of capitalist relationships, property relations for distribution, dependence of markets on governments and governance challenges in the economics design.

Transition

The purpose of this is to holistically encompass environment and justice challenges with a more central role of distributional institutions and governance (Røpke, 2020).

In conclusion, ecological economics presents a complimentary view to welfare economics arguments, displaying a new set of variables and principles that welfare economics and sole GDP measurements have left aside.

Particularly, as environmental issues are seen as intertwined with social and economic problems, more holistic indicators are needed, in order to include hidden costs and important values, that are directly related to what well-being and progress are defined by individuals.

A focus on other targets different to economic growth becomes also relevant to make this transition to other indicators possible.

Buen Vivir as an indigenous and postcolonial critique to GDP

The concept of Buen Vivir, which means 'good life' in Spanish, is also known by other names as “Sumak Kawsay” or “Sumaq Qumaña” and represents a collective of world visions and philosophies of life based on ancestral wisdom, indigenous practices and globalization critics that have one notion in common.

The attainment of a good life based on the pillars of the human being, the community, and Mother Nature.

The principle of cohabitation is drawn as a fundamental concept (Gudynas, 2011), which means that economic development or progress can only be achieved if communities and human beings live in harmony with Mother Earth.

This perspective rejects economic growth as a measurement of progress and promotes a set of principles that eliminate GDP as a guiding concept, similar to A-growth perspectives (Van den Bergh, 2011).

Moreover, the philosophy draws a direct statement against the market economy, which is seen as a cause of the fragmentation between the relationships between human beings and nature (Radcliffe, 2012), with physical and ecological implications.

Ethnical pluralism

To support the argument, the A-growth critique of GDP de-growth perspectives may become useful, as it shows that even if GDP is controlled, it fosters environmental degradation in the short run by having a combination of less output with more inputs and use of energy and resources (van den Bergh, 2011, p.2).

Thereby, a structural change is proposed in which the needs and decisions on the levels of output are based on a new production system, that is delinked from market-based relationships that are based solely on the material requirements of a good life.

A first response to the principles of Buen Vivir comes from the evaluation of its implementation in the countries of Ecuador and Bolivia, where many academics like Gudynas (2011) and Acosta (Acosta, 2013; Acosta et al., 2012) objected that the objective of harmony was not respected in the context of National policies.

Moreover, cohabitation with Mother Earth was not evidenced when large scale mining and the amazon forest degradation was fostered, while several capitalist practices and structures of power remained unchanged, like Agrarian elites and concentration of means of production in few hands.

Finally, in the State practices, the de-colonial principles of ethnical pluralism and linguistic diversity underwent several contradictions by coexisting with the rooted market-based practices (Ranta, 2018).

Policy

In Ecuador, Buen Vivir was included as a guiding principle for the Development Plan of president Rafael Correa between 2013 and 2017, having previously influenced the constitution of the country in 2008. 

An excerpt says the following: ‘‘We...Hereby decide to build a new form of public coexistence, in diversity and in harmony with nature, to achieve the good way of living, the sumak kawsay’’ (Republic of Ecuador, 2008, p. 8).

In practice, GDP was not abandoned as a public policy measurement, although well-being was no longer seen a uniquely tied to GDP but also tied to cultural pluralism and linguistic diversity.

In the words of Radcliffe (2012) new principles were added such as “… amplifying collective rights, strengthening intercultural education, and recognizing Spanish, Kichwa and Shuar as official languages” (Radcliffe, 2012, p.244).

The practical example of Ecuador and Bolivia underpins the reason why Waldmüller (2014), Radcliffe (2012) and Ranta (2018) identified several structural contradictions, which support the claim that if GDP measures are not questioned as a guiding policy, they may clash with other principles that are important to other worldviews.

Community

In practice, market based inequalities and postcolonial hierarchies were not fully addressed, evidencing a continuation in the cultural, political, social and epistemological oppression of the indigenous ways of life and ancestral practices (Radcliffe,  2012, p.246).

If wellbeing is to be conceived from a relational and ontological perspective associated to the emancipation of indigenous understanding of life (Waldmüller, 2014, p. 8), a new worldview needs to be adopted.

Nevertheless, Buen Vivir constitutes an important theoretical critique of GDP by presenting the values of pluralism, ontological-relational concept of the human being and the three-pillar harmony for a measurement of social welfare and individual wellbeing.

Regarding what a good life can be, some economists have formulated indicators alongside GDP, to include the need for more leisure (Van den Bergh, 2011, p.884), fewer working hours (Kallis, 2010. P876) and a safe environment in its measurement.

However, such indicators obliterate one of the pillars from Buen Vivir philosophy, which is the community.

Guiding principle

That is, the definition of what a good life is, cannot be arbitrarily determined by the amount of leisure time, working hours or safe environment, but by the level of connection between all the human beings living in a place-based community and their spiritual connection to nature.  

As a final argument, Buen Vivir can provide several alternatives to GDP, that include practical measures of the harmonical relationship between human beings, the community and nature.

Some comprehensive indicators, in terms of environmental and community matters, have attempted to propose a subjective measure that accounts for the ratio of the people involved in environmental practices in the whole community and their level involvement (Pallaroso et al., 2016).

Moreover, some authors have proposed a combined measurement of green zone access, estimation of waste and pollution produced per person, average land property, level of food sovereignty and environmental viability (Herrero, 2011; Sempere et al., 2010).

This could represent a possibility of reconciliating the Buen Vivir worldview and the government’s public policy framework. Most importantly, including the population in the formulation of the indicators must a guiding principle if a Buen Vivir conception is to be followed.

Indigenous

In conclusion, Buen Vivir as an alternative, de-colonial, and pluralist perspective, shows the limitations of GDP as a measurement for progress, by considering the pluralist elements of a good life.

Firstly, the principles of harmony between human beings, the community and nature indicate that an increase of GDP does not necessarily foster a development of the three pillars.

Moreover, even if output production is left aside, consumption can still be harmful to progress if it is not respectful of the three pillars harmony.

Although indicators can attempt to include pluralist principles, the relational and ontological nature of indigenous knowledge is not really quantifiable, which means that a different worldview to the western one, is required to understand it.

Equity

I have discussed the limits of measurement from GDP as the best indicator for progress and wellbeing. For a delimited discussion, a conceptualization of the definition of progress was presented, such that it was linked to the indicators of well-being and economic welfare, engaging in the underpinnings of such concepts from neoclassical economics, welfare economics, ecological economics and Buen Vivir.

The first part presented the core assumptions that underlie GDP growth as a measurement for progress and efficiency, which is the Pareto Optimality principle.

If wellbeing improvement is tantamount to progress, Pareto efficiency principles become the core assumptions supporting the neoclassical belief in GDP. In that case, it was shown that as the Pareto efficiency does not account for situations of inequality or environmental degradation, (Stiglitz et al., 2010; van den Bergh, 2011).

Such limitations have led to the creation of new indicators like the ISEW, HDI, GPI and others, which have included new variables and externalities for the measurement of welfare an ultimately for progress.

However, as values like justice, equity and sustainability have become more relevant to wellbeing, indicators that include GDP as a central measurement have started to become limited.  

Harmony

A second argument consisted of presenting the ecological economics conception of the intertwining of the economic and ecological systems to assess the notion of endless growth that underpins the belief in GDP’s relevance.

Ecological economics pointed out the lack of a holistic view in the GDP, which means that it has a limited measurement of negative externalities and environmental impacts that can be detrimental to measure welfare and progress (Alt & Lassen, 2006; Daly, 1991; Røpke, 2020).

Although environmental economics has tried to include this, the belief on endless growth and lack of understanding of the economic system limits, questions the validity of GDP as a main indicator for welfare.

Buen Vivir provided a third argument from a decolonial and indigenous perspective to understand that economic growth can be directly associated to detriments in human, social and nature’s wellbeing.

This happens, as a decrease of wellbeing occurs in if there is a break in the ancestral harmonization of Human Beings, the Community and mother nature (Acosta, 2013; Gudynas, 2011).

For this conception, GDP is not only harmful for progress but also needs to be eliminated as a societal target, as it is associated with fragmentating market relationships that cause a brokage of the harmony between human beings and nature.

Pluralist

In conclusion, given that progress has been linked to the improvement of wellbeing in society, GDP as a measurement can be proven to be either a contributing or damaging factor.

This would depend on the core assumptions on the concept, be it the Pareto Optimality, the intertwining of the economics and ecological systems or the harmony of human beings and nature.

Nevertheless, as certain values grow in importance in our society, such as social and environmental justice, equity, and community self-determination, GDP can be questioned as a sole indicator for progress.

Moreover, if the measurement of wellbeing is defined by a community’s own priorities, then, as it happens in indigenous communities, GDP will lose its value to determine what progress is, while pluralist worldview will lead the way to an open and ongoing debate on the concept.

This Author

David Caicedo Sarralde is a masters student of politics, economics and philosophy at Hamburg University and has published in peer-reviewed journals on the topics of political economy, indigenous studies, and development.

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