It's been a busy old few weeks, full of all kinds of different sorts of activities, I'm going to aim for a few little blogs to catch you up with it, though there never seems to be quite enough time for it all. My interests seem to be revolving around politics (the final round of the french presedentials are looming) and sustainable development at the moment. I'm getting more and more passionate about sustainable living - it seems clear to me that it's the only way ahead for us, globally and more obviously here on our tiny little island, where it's partly by necessity! A couple of weeks ago I was invited to give a short presentation about sustainable development at our local MFR (Maison Familial Rurual). The MFR is an educational establishment which allows students to gain practical experience, particularly in agriculture, whilst taking some regular classes at the high-school level. Here in Rurutu they are just a handful of students who didn't or couldn't go to school in Tahiti. It was an interesting experience to meet Rurutu youth, and in particular to test their knowledge about global trends. People here, generally, have lived extremely sheltered lives and know little about the world outside. Simply talking numbers of people in the world is a pretty big eye-opener for many of them. The idea that there are cities like Delhi or Tokyo with populations well over a 100 times that of the entire population of French Polynesia, is hard for them to imagine. I also came up with some figures that were pretty hard for me to imagine, but sadly, I suspect they are all too true.
Based on data in the CIA world factbook, every individual in French Polynesia consumes almost 11 barrels of crude oil per year, almost the same figure as an average metropolitan frenchman, but by comparison we consume less than a third of the quantity of electricity
per capita. While it's not too surprising that we consume so much less electricity, what is depressing is our oil guzzling habits (albeit half that of the average American). It clearly underlines our utter dependence on fossil fuels, for transport and electricity - why don't we use more solar or wind-power? This is a mystery to me, you'd have thought it'd be a no-brainer. What's even more upsetting is that there is huge biodiesel potential in coconut-oil.
If you can have a soybean bus, where are our coconut powered cars? Sadly you need political will for these things to happen, and it seems clear that it's not there at the moment.........here's hoping the french elections next week will bring us a change of ideas and a change of air (OK I'm not too otimistic)! But I do have faith in our local community, our green bins are just the start, over the months and years that come we're going to be working towards a more sustainable Rurutu, watch this space.......
Based on data in the CIA world factbook, every individual in French Polynesia consumes almost 11 barrels of crude oil per year, almost the same figure as an average metropolitan frenchman, but by comparison we consume less than a third of the quantity of electricity per capita. While it's not too surprising that we consume so much less electricity, what is depressing is our oil guzzling habits (albeit half that of the average American). It clearly underlines our utter dependence on fossil fuels, for transport and electricity - why don't we use more solar or wind-power? This is a mystery to me, you'd have thought it'd be a no-brainer. What's even more upsetting is that there is huge biodiesel potential in coconut-oil.
2 comments:
Hi! My name is Laura. I'm an anthropologist working with youth on Rurutu, and I just stumbled upon your blog! It's great to hear about your work with youth and sustainability!
Also, I was thinking about what you were saying about the dependence on fossil fuels in French Polynesia, and it reminded me of something I read about Tuvalu (I think) where they wanted to convert their energy to solar power, but it turned out to be so expensive that it wasn't really feasible to change. Although I totally agree that something needs to be done, the economy is so precarious that it might be a big risk to undertake such a complete infrastructural overhaul...
Anyway, that's my two cents. I'll be on Rurutu this summer, so maybe we will bump into each other! :)
Hi Laura, great to hear from you, I would really like to meet you while you're here in Rurutu.
I do understand that we can't expect to go over to 100% renewable straight away, but solar panels are becoming more and more affordable and widely used in "sunny" Europe, we should at least be working towards it as a goal. My parents are even considering investing in some, and they live in Wales! However, our local power company refuses to buy back energy (unlike in Europe), so photovoltaic programs are harder to justify, unless you live on islands without electricity. Unlike Tuvalu, we are an overseas territory of France, our currency is linked in with the euro, we have relatively high per capita income and a lot of subsidy from mainland France, it could be possible to do more. We did have three (just three) wind turbines up on the central ridge of Rurutu, but they were never maintained by the power company, and the two remaining turbines are rusting away on the hillside. I suspect they were never properly installed (but it all rather smacks of lip-service to sustainability, without any real will to change)..... I hate to suggest it, but I think France prefers to keep us entirely dependent on outside imports, as it prevents the country from realistically working towards independence, something that the ministers for overseas territories have made abundantly clear is not an option. At the moment there is a strong pro-independence movement, though we couldn't realistically become economically autonomous without a huge shift in living standards. Anyway feel free to contact me at our guesthouse email, if you have any more questions about Rurutu. Would love to hear more about your work......
Post a Comment