Peaceful Societies

The Semai village of Ulu Geroh in Malaysia has been much noted by the press, as recently as last week, for its community approach to promoting ecotourism in the nearby forests. Nearly a decade ago, the villagers realized that saltlicks in their region were quite important to the rare Rajah Brooke birdwing butterflies. They also understood that the huge blossoms of the Rafflesia flowers were unique. They started taking visitors to see these sights. In recent years, the villagers have added other attractions that tourists might want to see. They have gained training as guides, secured the cooperation of outside NGOs, and gotten grants from sponsoring organizations to further expand and protect their operations.

It appears from news reports late last week as if the enterprise may be in danger. The major saltlick used by the butterflies has been destroyed. One report indicated that workers who were digging up a large pipeline that had been used to take water to a mining operation in the nearby town of Gopeng had destroyed the largest saltlick. All that remained of the saltlick, according to the report, was muddy ground. The village organization, SEMAI, and its friends in higher places in Malaysia, immediately raised a storm of protest.

The chair of the tourist management organization in the village, Ahha Bah Udal, said that the workers “bulldozed” the saltlick located next to the route of the pipeline, which was being torn up for the scrap metal. “The ground is flattened and there is mud everywhere,” Ahha said. He indicated that the workers left the pipes next to the road, which is near the saltlick, and that they keep the butterflies away. The online press reports include photos of the pipes and the devastation.

Ahha said that his organization was considering taking legal action against the contractor. It had permission to remove the pipeline, but it should have consulted with the village, especially since the saltlick had been gazetted as a protected area. “The butterflies have flown away. They can’t be seen on the ground anymore,” he said. “Now, everything is destroyed and it is impossible to create another site. You cannot recreate nature,” he added.

Phon Chooi Khim, an entomologist for the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia, said on Thursday that only an immediate halt to the salvage work could save the large patch of butterfly habitat. “I was made to understand that the pipeline removal works would go on for three to six months but I’m afraid that by then, the Rajah Brooke Birdwing, an endangered species, would never return again,” she said. “Should they find another spot nearby, they may puddle there but if not, they may fly elsewhere.” She added the obvious: that the destruction of the saltlick, and its affect on the butterflies, will have a very significant impact on the livelihood of the Semai people in the village.

Phon spent several days in the village immediately following the first reports about the devastation. She pointed out that the birdwing males needed to puddle at the saltlick in order to mate with the female butterflies. The males transfer minerals from the water to the females during the process of mating. She observed butterflies trying to land at the remnants of the saltlick but they were unable to. Exhaust fumes and noise from the machinery appeared to the scientist to be keeping the butterflies away from their normal puddling spot. She also noted that the trauma seems to inhibit the butterflies from approaching the tourists in the area.

By Friday, the state of Perak, which had authorized the removal of the pipeline, was taking a defensive stance. Shabrina Shariff, director of the Perak Wildlife and National Parks Department, told the press that the contractor had promised that it would not get near the saltlick where the butterflies had congregated, and that they would remove the pipes. “My officers were at the site to speak to the contractor on Thursday,” she said.

The official contradicted reports about the destruction of the saltlick from the village, the scientist, and the press. She denied that the saltlick was destroyed—some of it could be salvaged. The contractor promised that the mud would be cleared and the stones washed. She added that her agency intended to monitor the site to ensure that the contractor did the job correctly.

Mr. Ahha responded that the terms of the permit issued to the contractor had specifically forbid the company from using heavy machinery in the area for removing the pipes. He said that the contractor had held a meeting with the villagers a few days prior to moving in their machinery, and the village had not given permission to begin the work. A follow-up meeting was supposed to have been held. He alleged that the company went ahead with the removal anyway.

The Union Ministry of Environment and Forests in New Delhi issued a statement last week that may halt a proposed dam on the Chalakudy River in Kerala. According to a news report in The Hindu, a major Indian newspaper, the MOEF directed the Kerala State Electricity Board, which has been pushing for the project, to show cause why the environmental clearance the agency had issued in July, 2007, should not now be revoked.

The proposed dam has prompted a lot of opposition from environmental activists in Kerala and elsewhere in India due to the fact that it would destroy the habitat for numerous species of wildlife. It would also have a serious impact on a Kadar community. The MOEF notice said, according to The Hindu, “It has come to the Ministry’s notice that the primitive Kadar … colony is located in areas surrounding the proposed dam site… and that valuable biodiversity would be endangered.”

The protests by environmental groups, scientists, and people sympathetic to the plight of the Kadar have made the news numerous times over the past two years. The state government has 15 days to respond to the order.

The state government reacted quickly. On Thursday, the Kerala Electricity Minister, A. K. Balan, met with Jairam Ramesh, the Union Minister for Environment and Forests in New Delhi. The two men evidently did not resolve the matter—at least to the satisfaction of the Kerala government. Balan said after the meeting, according to another news report, that the central government should be honest about why the permission, already issued, has now been denied. “There is a deep rooted conspiracy behind attempts to thwart this project and at the appropriate time, I would reveal it,” Mr. Balan said.

On Friday, the former Chief Minister of the state, Oommen Chandy, described the hydroelectric power project as crucial for Kerala. He acknowledged that there were environmental problems with it, but that they would be easy to overcome. “This project can go ahead without causing any fears of environmental degradation,” he said. So far, there are no reports that anyone has traveled up the Chalakudy river to the dam site and asked the perspectives of the Kadar themselves on this recent development.

The opening ceremonies of the Vancouver Winter Olympics will be held on February 12, and the Olympic torch is on its way across Canada. A report on a Canadian TV website last week highlighted the interest—and lack of interest—among Hutterites along the torch route.

Hutterite colonies apparently are taking different approaches to the sports event. Few if any of the colonies permit televisions, so most Hutterites will not be able to directly watch the games. Some of the more conservative groups feel that the much-hyped travel of the torch violates their cultural and religious beliefs, while others feel that a measure of interest is permissible.

Last week, the torch passed through the Manitoba town of Neepawa, 180 km west of Winnipeg. The eight nearby Hutterite colonies debated whether to allow their members to gather in town and cheer on the torch, as so many other citizens of Canada have been doing. Four decided they would, and four refused to be bothered.

Ben Gross, a member of the Westroc Colony, expressed a negative attitude. “We don’t participate in that sort of thing,” he said. “Our beliefs don’t allow it.” He admitted that other colonies are more liberal than his.

One of the more liberal groups, the Springhill Hutterite Colony, not only attended but it allowed the colony choir to sing a couple of their traditional songs at the event. Warren Wollmann from Springhill explained that he initially turned down a request from the Olympics organizing committee that the colony should become involved. He couldn’t see any connection between the sacred songs of his people and a secular, commercial event such as the passing of the Olympic torch. But the committee was able to change his mind, and convince him that the Olympics and the Hutterites had similar ideals: beliefs in peace and hard work.

“In some ways the Olympics shows the best of the human spirit, which makes it a great teachable moment in so many ways,” he said. “It’s also an opportunity for people to learn about us. There are many misconceptions about Hutterite people.”

A teacher in the colony, Mr. Wollmann has used the Olympics in various ways to help teach social studies, math, and physical education in the school. He admitted that the colony is following the path of the torch online, which helps him incorporate the Olympics into the school lessons. “The world is changing. We can’t be left behind. Some people think our children have blinders on, that they’re shut out from the outside world. Here, at least, that’s really not the case.”

A photo accompanying the story shows a group of eight Hutterite women, dressed in heavy black coats against the bitter weather, standing on the street of Neepawa waving banners and cheering wildly for the torch—and for Canada.

Of course, not all Canadians support the Olympics, though many do. Protesters have lined parade routes in major cities, and while they have generally been peaceful, a few scuffles have occurred. Many opponents have accused government agencies of trampling on the rights of the First Nations, on some of whose territories a portion of the Olympic events will take place. Opponents also decry the costs, the disruptions, and the problems the events will cause the Vancouver region.

A newspaper story last Saturday featured the village of Ulu Geroh, in Malaysia, where local Semai guides take tourists to see the Rajah Brooke Birdwing butterflies and the rare Rafflesia flowers. The story in The Star updates information provided by an AFP dispatch on the subject in November.

The community-based organization that hosts tourists is obviously expanding and growing more sophisticated. Called the Friends of Ecotourism and Nature Conservation, which has the acronym SEMAI, the group not only takes tourists to the places where they know the visitors will see the butterflies and the rare flowers, it now also takes people to a local waterfall, to a cave, on white water rafting trips, and trekking into the Cameron Highlands.

Furthermore, according to the newspaper story, the guides make an effort to introduce curious tourists to the Semai way of life. Ahha Bah Udal, the chairman of the project, told the newspaper there are 19 villagers who provide the guiding service, three of whom, including Ahha, have certificates called green badges from the Tourism Malaysia Licensing Board.

Ahha told The Star that the village gets between 1,500 and 2,000 visitors per year. Most come from Singapore, but they also come from other countries. The state of Perak gave the community organization a Tourism Appreciation Award in 2009 to recognize the group’s passion and dedication for promoting ecotourism and safeguarding their natural heritage. “Why let others do the job when we are the ones most familiar with the jungle and its surroundings?” asked Ahha rhetorically.

The initiative to guide tourists to local natural attractions started in 2000 when the villagers realized the potential for income from ecotourism, but it really took off when the Malaysian Nature Society helped them launch the SEMAI organization. The group now receives funding from various NGOs, government agencies, and corporate bodies. Shell Malaysia has given the group a grant so they can build three or four Orang Asli houses along the Ulu Geroh River for tourists, which will supplement the present dormitory in the village that is available for visitors.

The article also mentions that the group has established a website, at www.esemai.org, where a lot of additional information can be found on Ulu Geroh, the Semai people, and the nearest town of Gopeng. The website describes the E-Semai project, which has developed the website. It provides information about attractions in the area, accommodations, how to get there, and other useful information on the people and their ecotourism project.

In its photo gallery section, the website provides a couple brief videos about the project and the village. One shows some interesting footage of the Rajah Brooke Birdwing butterflies hovering at a salt lick, plus other animals such as leaches that are found in the forest. The other video is focused more on the culture of the Semai themselves and their village.

The news story gives a phone number so potential visitors can call Ahha.

The Times of India carried a story on Saturday about a novel plan developed by a Ladakhi man to counteract the effects of global warming. The Copenhagen climate conference may have been a bust, and glaciers in the high mountain ranges of Asia are certainly still receding, but Chewang Norphel is counteracting the problem in his own way.

Norphel, a 74-year old former civil engineer, realizes that global warming is slowly melting the glaciers, which provide the water that supports human life in the high desert valleys of Ladakh. They are receding farther up into the mountains. As they recede, they begin to melt and release water into the rivers later each year. The effect is that the melt water, so necessary for crop irrigation in the spring, does not arrive until it is too late to do the crops much good.

The “Glacier Man,” as he is called, told the paper, “Farmers often complained of [a] water shortage that was eating into their livelihood. This bothered me and I would spend hours searching for a solution. That’s when the idea of high altitude water harvesting occurred to me.” He began constructing artificial glaciers, and today Ladakh has 10 of them.

Inspiration came to him over 20 years ago when he noticed that the water he had left dripping from his faucets at night during the winter to prevent his pipes from freezing had accumulated in his nearby garden and frozen by morning. It occurred to him that that could be a way to store water high above the valleys, so people could draw on it the following spring when it melted.

Instead of building large-volume reservoirs, however, he has been building shallow impoundments so they will easily freeze in early autumn and store water in a frozen state. He uses networks of pipes to divert water into his shallow ponds on the shady sides of hills, and he keeps the volume of water low on purpose so it will quickly freeze solid. While the higher elevation, massive, natural glaciers now begin melting in late June, his shallow, artificial glaciers, which are not as high, start melting in April, when the farmers most need the water. Each one of his artificial glaciers stores about one million cubic feet of water, enough to irrigate about 200 hectares of farm land below.

He has had his setbacks. Flash floods in 2006 damaged five of his artificial glaciers. Norphel bounced back, however. He obtained help from India’s central government, the army, and local residents to rebuild them—and add more. At this point, 113 villages in Ladakh and 100 in Kargil get water from his artificial glaciers to help their farmers through the growing season.

He is concerned that he might not have too many years to keep working, so he is filming his projects in order to pass along his inspiration to the younger generation. He grabs a chunk of ice and tells the reporter, “I want to make sure that when I am gone, Ladakh continues to remain green and its people prosperous.”

A Christian Science Monitor article about Norphel back in October said that he is constantly experimenting—tweaking his designs to see what will work best. He varies the depths of his impoundments from five to seven feet. He tries various shady locations—all to find out the most effective approach. A project under construction for the village of Stakmo is employing 20 people, with shovels, to build the 900 feet of rock walls that will be needed to create the impoundments and trap the water runoff. Like the others, it will then freeze in early autumn and melt in spring, so the villagers can have water.

Leh, and the rest of Ladakh, have been enduring a serious cold snap recently. Temperatures last week reached 20 degrees below zero Celsius (4 below Fahrenheit), but Ladakhis realize that, despite the temporary cold, the glaciers are slowly melting. Solutions such as the one being developed by Chewang Norphel represent only a short-term solution to the local, Ladakhi problem. His approaches, however, are more effective than those of the diplomats who failed to achieve much in Denmark.

Claims that the Rural Thai people are “peaceful” are based, in part, on a remarkable study conducted by Phillips (1965) between 1956 and 1958 in a village in Central Thailand. The nonviolence that Phillips recorded in Bang Chan was a result of the Buddhist values of the people and the fabric of their rural society. But 50 years have passed. How much have social conditions in Central Thailand changed over the years? Have economic and social changes in the region affected the peacefulness and stability of Thai rural society?

A journal article published last year by Rigg et al. addresses some of these questions. Though not focused on the peacefulness of the villages per se, it does analyze some of the social changes brought about by the modernization of rural Thailand, particularly in the capitol region. Bang Chan, the village studied by Phillips, is 35 km northeast of Bangkok, while Ayutthaya province, examined by Rigg et al., is 75 km north of the city.

The authors focus on the establishment of the Rojana Industrial Park, a development that extends over 672 hectares in Ayutthaya. It examines the effects of the development on the local economy and society. As of 2005, the industrial park employed over 43,000 workers, mostly immigrants from other parts of Thailand, many of whom are housed in dormitories in the village of Baan Khokmayom. The impact from these new people has been enormous.

Descriptions of the villages in Ayutthaya province before the industrial development, provided by elderly people, sound very much like Bang Chan at the time Phillips studied it. Everyone in the village identified as a rice farmer and social life focused on the village. The villagers were preoccupied with the cultivation of enough rice to meet the economic needs of their families for the year. No one could contemplate selling any of their land, which had been handed down in their families for many generations.

The villagers, for the most part, grew enough food for their own needs. In addition to rice, they caught fish in the nearby canals, raised fruits and vegetables, and, in the dry season, some of the men temporarily took wage laboring jobs in Bangkok. Life centered on the homestead, the focus of relationships with family and friends. Most of the family income was based on agricultural pursuits.

Rigg et al. indicate that the villagers still think of wet rice farming as the center of rural identity, as “emblematic of what it is to be Thai (p.365).” In fact, however, very few people today work as farmers. Most work in the Rojana Industrial Park, which opened in 1988, in one of the other industrial parks in the province, or in service jobs that support those workers.

While some families in the province still own land, it is economically unimportant except as an investment. The farm economy has worsened, environmental problems have increased, and almost everyone prefers to make a living through wage employment. The open land that remains is now being rented out and managed by professional farmers, and farming has become a memory for most of the people. The social status of farming has dropped—few want to do it now.

But the social structures in the province are affected by more than simply the change from farming to wage labor. People are increasingly able to commute to jobs—they are more mobile than they were 50 years ago. Many younger people leave home for lengthy periods of time to take jobs elsewhere, returning only sporadically. An even greater source of disturbance, particularly for Baan Khokmayom, has been the construction of the dormitories.

The first dormitory, called a hor pak, opened in 1990, and today there are 30 of them. They tend to be filled with migrants from northeast Thailand, a poor area of the country. They typically arrive alone, without their families, who stay in the home villages. They remain outsiders, rarely part of the Central Thai villages except on the occasion when one marries a local person.

The authors describe some of the effects of these changes in the province. Conflicts have developed that were not part of the social landscape earlier. Interests of factory workers are not the same as those of the individuals who still farm. Interests of the managers of the dormitories are not the same as those of the people who still try to cherish their village institutions. Local people now have to fence, gate, and lock their homes and properties to prevent theft by outsiders who come to the region only for the money that they earn at their jobs.

The presence of outsiders living in the dormitories has eroded the sense of community. People no longer know one another—they work hard and have little time or incentive to socialize with neighbors. The factory is the place for socializing, the dormitory a place for sleeping. Unmarried people in the dormitories establish live-in relationships, outside the moral structures of the home villages or the local community. Disparities in wealth exacerbate the divisions between people.

The rural people appreciate the advantages that “progress” has brought to their communities, but they also recognize and sense their losses. The accumulation of wealth has brought more social malaise, more individuality, and more crime. The land has been degraded, and there is little hope that the region could return to an agricultural base any time soon. The techniques of farming have mostly been forgotten. The villages have lost the identity that they once had.

Whether the villages of central Thailand preserve any elements of the peacefulness that Phillips (1965) described is not clear. Perhaps a future study will analyze this issue in more depth. In the meanwhile, this is a significant contribution to our understanding of the economic and social forces at work among the Rural Thai.

Rigg, Jonathan, et al. (2008). “Reconfiguring Rural Spaces and Remaking Rural Lives in Central Thailand.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 39(3): 355-381.

Five years ago, the Peaceful Societies website opened with a range of reference information about 25 human social groups that try to maintain a nonviolent existence. Encyclopedia articles, lists of recommended books, an archive of research articles about some of the societies, and weekly updating news and reviews have been features of the website for this past half-decade.

While generalizations about groups of societies must be made with great care, it is probably safe to say that many of these peaceful groups forswear focusing on individuals. Self-promotion could foster egotistical behavior, which could inspire envy, rivalries, jealousy, and conflict. These could ultimately lead to violence. The Amish are famous for avoiding the taint of self-promotion, but other groups, such as the Ju/’hoansi, also take care to not elevate individuals above the group.

In that spirit, it is only appropriate to commemorate the fifth anniversary of this website, not by singling out its accomplishments, user statistics, or the like, but rather by celebrating the leadership of the Website Patron, Dr. Elise Boulding. Now nearing ninety years old, Dr. Boulding has written many very important books relating to peace studies and has helped form several international peace associations. As the Wikipedia article on Boulding quite correctly states, “She is considered to be one of the most influential peace researchers and activists of the 20th century.”

In 1993, Dr. Dale Hess of Australia, an influential peace scholar in his own right, urged this webmaster to contact Dr. Boulding and apprise her of the existence of the scholarly literature on peaceful societies. Dr. Boulding responded to letters graciously, read recommended works on these interesting groups of people, and incorporated into her own writings their approaches to social life and ways of forming harmonious societies.

This webmaster finally had the pleasure of meeting her in person at a conference in Worcester, Massachusetts, a few days after September 11, 2001. We talked, naturally enough, about peaceful societies and the fact that they demonstrate the very real possibility of forming a more harmonious world. Three years later, Dr. Hess, a reviewer and guiding spirit for the new website, suggested that Dr. Boulding would make an ideal Website Patron. His suggestion was very astute. Dr. Boulding kindly agreed and her son, Russell Boulding, handled the further arrangements and details. The website News and Reviews section announced her acceptance of this role in August 2005. A review of Mary Lee Morrison’s new biography of Boulding accompanied that announcement.

Since New Year’s Eve is a good time for reflecting on the past, it is appropriate to express appreciation for the help and influence that Dr. Hess and Dr. Boulding have had on this website. The other three website reviewers, Dr. Robert Knox Dentan, Dr. Leslie Sponsel, and Dr. Douglas Fry, have also provided a lot of assistance and continue to make helpful suggestions.

But the senior member of the team, our Website Patron, is foremost in our thoughts. A lengthy review of Dr. Boulding’s life and works would be beyond the scope of this news post. For readers who want to go beyond the biography provided on Wikipedia, a personal discussion of her current life is also available on the Web. Dr. Boulding now has Alzheimer’s disease and is living at a nursing home in eastern Massachusetts, where family members and old friends visit and help her celebrate her long life for peace. The website has many beautiful photos of her and family members. It provides inspiring words about her Quaker faith, discussions of some of her contributions to peace, guidelines for visitors who want to see her, and, of course, many warm vignettes of a lady who has exemplified, throughout her life, a firm commitment to her own peaceful life.

This website is honored to have her continuing patronage.

Few were surprised last week by the failure of the Copenhagen climate conference, though plenty of diplomats and world leaders claimed they had made important strides.

Hopes expressed early in the conference, that President Obama might somehow lead the developed nations in halting global warming, that he even might be sensitive to the plight of countries that are being destroyed, proved to be wishful thinking. Like everyone else, he represented a country with its own set of priorities. His pledges, cloaked in grandiose language, were minimal, even compared with those of the other industrialized nations. He clearly confined his proposals to limit climate-changing gas emissions so they would not exceed a bill already passed by the U.S. House of Representatives. His priority was getting something started.

Many issues dominated the news last week. Could the United States push China into allowing verification measures for their proposed greenhouse gas emission cuts? Could the U.S. and the other developed nations provide enough funding to assist the victim nations of global warming? Could the conference agree on a treaty that would establish binding targets for attempting to reduce climate changes?

The developed nations ignored the desperate pleas by the small island countries, that the conference should mandate a 1.5 degree Celsius cap on rising temperatures, rather than the 2.0 degree limit that the developed nations angled toward. While the press focused on many such issues, the plight of the small island nations that are disappearing into the sea did not fade entirely.

Time magazine published a story last week on Ifaluk, as an example of the problems that nations such as the Federated States of Micronesia are facing. The Time reporter interviewed people on Ifaluk, and nearby islands, to get their perspective on what is happening. The article confirmed earlier reports: these small atolls are already confronting serious problems.

The reporter discussed the situation with Manno Pekaicheng, one of the chiefs on Ifaluk. The chief placed the blame for the rising seas directly on the developed countries. “The big countries are contaminating the whole universe,” he said, “and it’s getting us before it gets them.” Mr. Pakaicheng was not able to go to Copenhagen, but he proposed a solution to the reporter. The rich countries should either send them a ship that they could live on, or give them enough money so they could purchase land somewhere else. Since neither appears to be happening, he said he is putting their fate in the hands of God—and he hopes that the countries that are causing the problem will assist them.

Henry Tasumwaali, a spear fisherman on the nearby atoll of Falalis, pointed out the principal taro patch on his island. He showed the reporter the wilting taro leaves, similar to the ones on Ifaluk, which are brown and yellow due to rotten roots that were damaged from extremely high waves last year. Mr. Tasumwaali told the reporter, “There is nowhere we can go. When the wave comes again, maybe we will wash away from our island, swimming like a sea turtle in the big ocean.”

Some scientists contend that conditions are worse in the western Pacific than elsewhere on earth. One report just issued on November 24th argued that the sea could rise as much as 3.5 to 6.5 feet by the end of this century. Between 1993 and 2008, the western Pacific rose more rapidly than other ocean locations, about 4 inches, well above the global average of 1.7 inches.

Dr. Rolph Payet, a prominent climate scientist who comes from the Seychelles, an island nation near Africa, said that the human inability to change is the key to continued existence for places such as Ifaluk. “Adaptation and survival that has developed over thousands of years now has to change overnight,” he said. His perspective could be turned around, however. Could the developed nations ever change their own unbridled faith in the limitless use of natural resources and the transcendent importance of growth?

The Schwartzentruber Amish in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, have been in the news last week for the same legal issues that have disturbed their community for over a year.

Two families in the sect apparently removed padlocks from their homes and moved back in on November 19th. They openly violated Judge Norman Krumenacker’s order, issued in May, that the two homes must be locked to keep them out. The judge had supported the county sewage authority’s contention that the two families had built new homes without constructing proper outhouses. Since they refused to modify the outhouses—their religious beliefs require them to avoid modern conveniences—the judge had ordered the sheriff to padlock the houses.

When the two families received notices last week that the judge was going to hold a contempt of court hearing against them, they quickly moved out again. The Amish families will be represented by an attorney from Altoona, Thomas Dickey, who has been retained by a national organization that has gotten involved in the case, the National Committee for Amish Religious Freedom. Attorney Dickey has requested the judge to continue the hearing until he has a chance to meet with church elders and see if he can work out a settlement to the sewage issues. The judge and the attorney for the sewage district, William Barbin, agreed to the delay.

Judge Krumenacker has tried to find compromises without success, and other attorneys who have worked with the Schwartzentruber Amish have also been unsuccessful. But Mr. Dickey says that he welcomes the chance to see if he can find a workable compromise between the state regulations and the Amish beliefs. For his part, Mr. Barbin said “it’s certainly better to try to resolve the issues than [to be] as harsh as possible.”

A potentially more serious issue is developing over the one-room Schwartzentruber Amish schoolhouse that had to be padlocked in March, on the orders of the same judge. The owner of the land on which the schoolhouse was constructed, Andy Schwartzentruber, also refused to build outhouses that would be in compliance with state and country regulations. Mr. Schwartzentruber ultimately served a 90 day sentence in the county jail for contempt of court. The judge ordered the schoolhouse to be padlocked until the school outhouses met regulations.

According to a news story last week, it is doubtful if the 22 children who had been attending the school have gotten any formal education since March. Officials are frustrated because they are not sure whether the families are home schooling the children. It is also not clear what the officials intend to do about it, if anything.

Attorney Dickey also does not know, at this point, if the children are getting any education, but he suspects they are not. Tom Estep, the District Superintendent for the Northern Cambria School District, where the Amish children live, said, “if they are not being educated in an Amish school, they are in violation of the law.” The Schwartzentruber Amish families moved to northern Cambria county over 10 years ago from Ohio. According to the solicitor for the school district, Gary Jubas, they never notified the Pennsylvania Department of Education, as required by state law, to report lesson plans and the numbers of students attending the new school. The state department of education leaves matters like that entirely in the hands of local school districts.

Superintendent Estep made his frustration quite apparent. “They’ve been illegal since they’ve been here, which is longer than I’ve been here,” he said. Mr. Jubas is hoping to get a list of the Amish students who should be attending school from Attorney Dickey. Estep said one possibility might be to canvas door to door throughout the school district to census all residents, but that would be quite expensive. “We’d like them to be educated, certainly, but we’re not going to spend a lot of the district’s money because they’re not going to comply anyway,” he said.

The school district would dearly love to find a way to obtain a list of the school students, so they could notify their parents of the requirement that their children must attend school. They could then file legal charges against parents who refused to comply. “If I found one, I’d go after them,” Mr. Estep said. The Amish families are doubtless aware of the threat and will act accordingly.

The officials, for their part, are undoubtedly aware of the sorry history of American school authorities that have attempted to force Amish families to send their children to public schools. John A. Hostetler (1984), writing about the legal hassles the Amish have experienced at the hands of civil authorities, described episodes of Amish nonresistance in the face of overweening pressures from school administrators.

For instance, in Iowa in the mid 1960s, the press learned about plans for a raid by law enforcement officials on a rural Amish school. The authorities intended to grab the children and force them onto a bus which would take them to a consolidated school. When the officials arrived at the school, the frightened children ran for cover in nearby cornfields. The authorities could only arrest their hysterical parents for not complying with state education laws. Local citizens were outraged—and sympathized with the seemingly helpless Amish.

The controversy finally led to a Supreme Court decision, Wisconsin vs. Yoder in 1972, which gave the Amish the right to educate their children in their own schools, and only as far as the 8th grade. There is a lot of literature, such as Kraybill (1989) and Kidder and Hostetler (1990), which describes the ways the Amish, at times aided by outside organizations, have built up working arrangements so that the civil authorities and Amish leaders can find workable compromises to regulations that both sides can live with. The Cambria County school authorities doubtless do not want to have videos posted to You Tube of screaming Amish children fleeing from sheriff’s deputies into the woods.

President Obama may well decide the fate of entire societies, such as the one on Ifaluk Island, when he attends the last day of the international climate change conference in Copenhagen tomorrow. The small island nations that will be submerged forever when global warming raises sea levels have been making a forceful case since the conference opened on the 7th. They argue that the industrialized countries must make drastic cuts in carbon dioxide emissions if they are to survive. The question is whether Obama, or the other world leaders who are slated to attend, will listen.

Obama has already stated that the United States will make a commitment to reduce American greenhouse gasses approximately 17 percent by 2020 over its 2005 level. That amount is clearly too much for his Republican opponents in the US Congress, who decry the establishment of any mandatory emission levels. Representative Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee argues that emission targets would harm American economic competitiveness and foster much higher prices for energy.

Opposition by conservative Americans represents only a fraction of the wealth of opinions being expressed in Copenhagen. India and China, counting on a future that includes their continuing use of highly polluting industries to help them become richer, oppose severe emission targets that they believe will hamper their industrial growth. The highly developed countries favor only mild targets for emission cuts.

The really vocal countries have been the ones that are most threatened by rising sea waters, joined by the very poorest African nations that face increasing drought and desertification from climate changes. Delegations advocating the toughest standards against greenhouse gasses are the 43 nations that have formed an Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS)—countries with a substantial amount of territory that will soon be submerged and uninhabitable.

The delegates from Tuvalu have been among the prime spokespersons for the group. Mataio Mataio, head of the Department of Environment in Tuvalu, commented on Tuesday last week that “climate change is real to us. It’s happening now. It’s a threat to our existence.” He argued that his country is already feeling the effects of rising sea levels, with worsening coastal erosion and increased flooding.

He suggested one solution: richer countries that have caused global warming should provide much more financial aid to the poorer countries that are going to be badly affected. However, a panel of European experts reacted skeptically. The “constant [portrayal] of Tuvalu as a doomed, disappearing nation might compromise its potential for future development,” their report stated.

Ian Fry, another representative from Tuvalu, garnered widespread news attention when he made an emotional appeal during the first week of the conference for the AOSIS draft. “I woke up this morning crying, and that’s not easy for a grown man to admit,” he said, as he choked up in front of the plenary session. “The fate of my country rests in your hands.” Todd Stern, a special climate representative from the US, was dismissive, referring to the AOSIS proposal as “constructive” but “unbalanced.”

The Federated States of Micronesia—Ifaluk is an outer island of the state of Yap in the FSM—made its own appeals. Like Tuvalu and many of the other states in AOSIS, many of the atolls in Micronesia are slowly disappearing beneath the waves. A scholarly report earlier this year described in detail the consequences of rising seas—what is happening right now—on the low-lying islands of FSM. Masao Nakayama, Permanent Representative from FSM to the United Nations, amplified the consequences to his country in a news interview. He was born and raised on a low-lying atoll in the country, so he spoke from personal experience.

“The threat is to our existence, survival, not only as a people [but] as a culture….We now have just flat beaches—the wash comes in and hits the roots of coconut trees,” he said. “It’s very scary, it’s very frightening.” The prediction by scientists that the Micronesians should expect sea-level rises of from three to six feet or more in the next 90 years mean the end of many islands, the highest points of which are not too far above that higher prediction.

“Even a small rise of 1 meter … would … have a devastating effect,” Nakayama said. “If it gets to a meter or higher, [many of] the islands would [become] uninhabitable.” He discussed various aspects of climate change, but rising seas are his worst nightmare. “You cannot put sea walls on all the islands—about 600 of them [in the FSM].”

Nakayama may not have choked up the way the Tuvalu representative did, but he was just as eloquent. “It’s going to be very sad for us to lose all that ancestry and homes—where we’ve grown and maintain our culture,” he said. He was asked where they would go. “We don’t want to go anywhere,” he replied. “We want to stay on our islands, and this is what we want the international community to understand.”

The AOSIS countries are advocating, strenuously, that the conference should adopt a target of no more than a 1.5 degree Celsius raise in global temperatures, not the 2.0 target that many other countries feel is more realistic. Ambassador Nakayama believes that other countries have written them off—and he may be right.

A prominent Australian economist, Ross Garnaut, was quoted last week saying that it was inevitable that the small island nations would have to relocate their peoples to countries like New Zealand or Australia when sea levels rise. It was good that the conference had highlighted their problems, he said, but other countries, such as Bangladesh, had far more people who would be flooded out of their homes by rising waters.

Places like Micronesia— Ifaluk Island—might become uninhabitable, but so what, he seemed to be saying. Strategy sessions, protests, walkouts, drafts and counter drafts have dominated the news coming from Copenhagen. The Micronesians and the other islanders will get a sense of their fate when President Obama addresses the conference.

Peaceful Societies

Peaceful Societies

Major Threat to Semai Ecotourism

Athirappilly Hydroelectric Proposal May Be Halted

Hutterites Cheer the Olympics

Semai Tourism Develops Sophisticated Outreach

Building Glaciers in Ladakh

Social Changes in Rural Thailand [journal article review]

Five Years of Peaceful Societies

Pacific Island Atolls at Copenhagen, Part 2

Cambria County Amish Defy the Laws

Pacific Island Atolls at Copenhagen, Part 1

Subscribe to our weekly digest

Subject Listing

Previous News and Reviews