Day 3: Thursday, June 18

Our first lecturer today was Mishkat Al-Moumin (shown lecturing in the picture to the right), the former Minister of the Environment in the Interim Iraqi Government. She spoke to us and did some thought experiments about environmental scarcity and violence. We discussed governmental representation of the people, and how governments can influence or control resource distribution. She maintained that government must be representative of the people to be effective. I wonder how to maintain the perspective and representative nature of government that comes from the general population of people. Can this be built into a system, or does it have to come from the individual in power? Mishkat also talked about the importance of working directly with people, and not neccesarily with governments that are not going to help the poor people of their country. But if we try to relieve scarcity by simply getting resources to the people--rather than the rulers--won't the rulers simply take those resources from the people? I suppose you have to start somewhere, and working with the people "at the bottom of the pyramid," as Mishkat said, is more effective than continually funneling millions of dollars into the people "at the top of pyramid"--the government--and seeing no change at the bottom.

Pat Erickson, a professor at UVM, then talked to us about the Grassroots Soccer program that she started in Batey Libertad in the Dominican Republic, and we got to play some of the games they use as educational tools. Bateys were started essentially as labor camps for Haitians who would come to the DR to work on sugar cane plantations, but as time passed more families came to immigrate to the DR and live in the Bateys with the men who originally came just for a few months at a time. Now the Bateys are permanent, in the sense that the people who live in them live there for life, although the DR government periodically conducts "raids" and sends these people "back" to Haiti--a country most of them have never even seen. Pat's program focuses on HIV/AIDS education through soccer (futbol?!), and community projects in one Batey, called Batey Libertad.

Later, Carol Franco introduced us to the topic of Environmental Economics with an exercise called "Where do you stand?" We had to move around the room and debate our opinions on the truth of statements such as "Economic growth and environmental protection are fundamentally conflicted," "There should be a limit on the amount of money an individual can earn," and "Free markets will solve our environmental problems." We had interesting discussions, but most of us are like-minded in that we value conservation and the environment. I still don't know how to respond to people who are set in the status quo, or who are complacent about their role in doing some kind of good, and this is something I think I'll continue to struggle with.