Paper Straws & Vegan diet won’t Save the Maldives!
Human history has many examples of suggested progress before its time. The English Levelers, for example, were seventeenth century proponents of social justice, religious tolerance and universal democratic sovereignty long before such concepts could ever become fully implemented, or even foreseen. That is of course not to diminish the importance of what the Levelers stood for, but rather a question of timing. Proto-capitalist feudalism, underscored by semi-absolute monarchy, was still the order of the day at that time in England.
Likewise, famed Roman general and statesman Marcus Aurelius had been a keen advocate for freedom of speech – in a time when slavery and public execution were considered to be perfectly acceptable to the people of the Roman empire. Nearly a century later, during the time of Mohamed Amin Didi, an advocate for the education and empowerment of women in the Maldives at a time when this country had a rampant class system where common women were placed at the bottom of social ladder.
Fast forward to where we are now and humanity is not only still confronted with massive issues of social and political injustice here at home and abroad, but we can also factor in significant, even potentially life-challenging environmental issues too, specifically for a country as vulnerable to climate change as the Maldives. Consequently, concerns which are currently at the fore-front of environmentally-aware public perception, often driven by social media, such as plastic straws or rising veganism are by definition, all well and good - to an extent.
See: https://www.facebook.com/No-Plastic-Straw-Campaign-1481553511971448
https://www.facebook.com/ROMINTU/
https://www.facebook.com/VeganEnvironmentalists
However, there are of course a range of way more demanding, pressing socio-environmental issues that not only need to be addressed at the same time, but beforehand, if real progress is to be made. There is also the sneaking suspicion that in just a few years’ time, while the ice caps are still going to be in potentially catastrophic melt-down, the issue of plastic straws will have been long forgotten only to have sadly been replaced with some other environmental fad. Remember how just a few years ago it was plastic bags that were the “in fashion” environmental concern to be focused upon? I remember some shops actually switched to paper bags and some advocated in bringing our own reusable bags. Well, bags have seemingly now become straws, but the Earth’s atmosphere continues to heat up year on year regardless.
So then, what price do we then pay for limiting the amount of plastic straws that those in the West, or at least Western-orientated economies, carelessly dispose of, when over half of the population of the planet live in, or at least in some close proximity to regular human rights violations and / or non-democratic systems of government? The reality is, if we are being denied the right to a fair vote, or persecuted on the basis of orientations, beliefs or any other arbitrary criteria, what then the relative importance of 25% less plastic straws in the oceans or new vegan burgers being on the menu at our local fast food joint?
The bottom-line here is that for real socio-economic progress to be achieved on a genuinely global basis, a solid foundation needs to be built. Without that foundation, the trendy, in vogue impulses, while they may have merit to some degree, are without firm footing. To borrow a phrase – rather like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic just after hitting the iceberg.
If you feel passionate about plastic straws all of a sudden, believing yourself to be environmentally aware, but shrug your shoulders and say “meh” to the fact that we continue to reclaim several reefs and mangroves to build housing and airports or the way we cut down trees to build roads, or look the other way when the vegetation of an island get razed to the ground to build a five star resort, then our priorities are seriously mixed up.
Alternatively, if you know that nearly 50% of the world live in severe poverty and that nearly a billion people a day go hungry, vegan cheese options pale into insignificance. Again, let’s be clear here. Things like campaigns to limit the use of plastic straws or to bring about more vegan options are wholly worthwhile. But just like the Levelers, and Amin Didi, and the ideas that they espoused, there are bigger issues that need to be addressed collectively, because freedom, equality, justice and environment no longer exist isolated from one another.
