Timely reflections on global catastrophe

Nothing evokes more visceral fear than natural disaster. The unexpected death of a family member reminds us that we cling to life by tenuous, often incomprehensible threads. Tsunamis raise the ante. They wipe away entire communities in an instant. Not only are individual lives lost but also everyone who did or could remember those lives.

The question be-comes inevitable: Is life fair? In language reminiscent of Job, many wonder why the flood had not taken them instead. Life in this sense is hardly fair.

There is no satisfactory answer as to why some die and others are spared. Nonetheless, social policy plays a major role in determining the loss of life such devastation occasions. When the anxiety of unexpected death leads to the hardening of social and economic boundaries, tragedy is compounded.

Natural catastrophe exposes both the disproportionate vulnerability of the poor and our hubris about technology. Writing from a fishing village in India, J. Sri Raman comments: “India, by law, has a coastal regulation zone where building activities are supposed to be strictly regulated… The rules and regulations have been observed more in breach than in observance. The rapacious rich, callous corporations, and a state flush with the ‘free market’ spirit have indulged in impermissible real-estate activities in the allegedly protected zone. A concrete chain of residential colonies, star hotels and entertainment spots has robbed the land of all coastal protection… It is mainly the poor who have paid – with their lives – for this crime against the coastline.”

Markets have played a vital role in improving the lot of the poor. But markets take many forms. Under so-called “free trade” regimes, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization have discouraged environmental regulations and have ripped away long- standing safety nets. The rush to riches by commercial agribusiness often denudes the land, and the flight to overcrowded cities leaves the poor in ramshackle housing.

Living on the coast, I can imagine the damage that a vast tidal wave might do. Nonetheless, in the event of disaster residents of coastal Maine can also anticipate assistance facilitated by well-developed transportation and communication networks. Federal and state subsidies built our transportation systems to remote communities. Public utility regulation required even sparsely populated and not immediately profitable areas be served. It is just those subsidies and regulations, however, that the World Bank and the IMF now forbid or discourage.

The response by many in the United States is commendable. Here in Maine, maritime interests, churches and the local Red Cross mounted major campaigns. Once again, however, the role that economic inequality on a global scale plays should not be neglected. President Bush maintains that the United States is generous, but U.S. foreign aid amounts to less than two-tenths of 1 percent of GDP, a figure about one-fifth of the level of contribution made by the Scandinavian nations. Private assistance has a long way to go to make up that gap. In addition, debt payments from developing nations, the subject of my next column, dwarf all foreign aid budgets.

Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee argued that how wealthy nations treat poorer ones is in part a reflection of how they treat their own poor. Thus it is not surprising that European social democracies are more generous with their foreign aid budgets, though the rise of nationalism and racism even in the Netherlands and Sweden may pose a challenge to these budgets.

More than any other advanced capitalist democracy, the United States is inclined to believe that poverty is a reflection of moral character. For a brief moment, however, poor citizens of the developing world were lauded for their generosity toward the wealthy tourists stranded in their midst. Many in the United States would do well to remind themselves, as Jeremy Seabrook recently did in the London-based Observer, that Sri Lankan fishermen are little different in aspirations from the many families turned away at our borders in Texas and Arizona.

The tsunami disaster has offered a strange comfort. Contributions by the wealthy to tsunami relief perhaps assuaged survivors’ guilt. For some they also probably eased enduring concerns about gaping inequalities. Tragedy and the very act of giving thus could paradoxically – and tragically – lead many to harden their own worldviews.

Far better if a nature that is both splendid and destructive in its very unpredictability inspire a different outcome. Perhaps the moments of cooperation and political negotiation that briefly crossed ethnic, class and national boundaries could themselves be seen as a new miracle worthy of future emulation. Both as a government and a people we might move beyond episodic generosity to question the deeper forms of inequality and exclusion that stain our world and exacerbate the harms nature inflicts upon us.

John Buell is a political economist who lives in Southwest Harbor. Readers wishing to contact him may e-mail messages to jbuell@acadia.net