Villagers hold the secret to greener world

By ADELE 0'SHEA A couple of months ago I attended a screening of Al Gore's film by an expatriate society and afterwards the organiser of the event took the floor and spoke about how individuals can help save the world. The speaker advocated "a return to a more simple life" as a way to halt global warming. The new lifestyle would include buying a vehicle which gives out less CO2 emissions, choosing the most direct route for air travel and placing all recyclables into the appropriate recycling bins. Perhaps on a global scale, if all the industrialised nations adopted such practices, then global warming would remain constant for the next few years. But adopting such measures as an answer to environmental problems in Bahrain would have little effect, or would more likely be doomed to failure. It is not the prospect of adopting a simple lifestyle that draws expatriates to work in the Gulf; it's the big salaries and all the perks that go with it. Bahrain's current development projects of multi-storey apartments, artificial islands and luxury residential complexes are by no means geared towards those who wish to adopt a more simple lifestyle. The project director of one of the up-and-coming water front luxury tower blocks said that the three most critical components that a tenant looks for are functionality, convenience and comfort. We can imagine that no natural environment will be spared in order to give the clients exactly what they expect from their costly new homes. In contrast, a visit to the last traditional villages in Bahrain would reveal a population which truly practises a harmonious eco-friendly lifestyle, not because the threat of global warming has been preached to them, but because for generations these people have lived simple, fulfilling lives. Perhaps, the first thing that will strike you in these villages is how courteous the people are and how they have time to welcome you; they are not people who live by the philosophy that time is money. Another remarkable fact about the traditional villages in Bahrain is how they make use of the natural resources in their environment in a sustainable manner. Just before the summer, palm trees are trimmed and the palms fronds are left out to dry and from this natural resource a multitude of products are made; baskets and mats are made out of the leaves, while the sturdy inner ribs are used as poles for the 'hadra' fishing nets. Whole palm tree leaves are used for making fences and for roofing. The dates are harvested at summer and none of these go to waste, some are sold fresh, some are boiled and packaged to form a sticky slab of preserved dates and some are preserved in the sun-dried method. The hadra fishing traps harvest a sustainable amount of fish from the sea and donkey carts, which give off no CO2 emissions, are used to collect the fish from the shoreline. The donkeys are fed on locally grown products from the surrounding fields and the local cats are fed the fish which are too small to sell. From a Western point of view, we tend to drive past these villages only noticing the old buildings and pitying the 'poor people' that live in them, but there's more to life than what money can buy. In Richard Leakey's book, The Making of Mankind, he refers to the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, who argued that different societies have different goals and values; with Western society in the pursuit of wealth, property and prestige and traditional societies pursuing something totally different. Sahlins even went so far as to say that the traditional hunting-and-gathering way of life, still practiced by Kung of the Kalahari desert is 'the original affluent society, in which all the people's wants are easily satisfied'. Leakey added that the hunting-and-gathering economy was not an incessant search for food, as many anthropologists have supposed, but a system that allows a good deal more leisure than is possible in either agricultural or industrial society. If we want to do our bit to halt global warming as inhabitants of Bahrain, the choice of car or air travel route won't make a lot of difference and until Bahrain has a large scale recycling facility, the segregation of household waste will not make a huge deal of difference either. But what would be directly beneficial would be to support the preservation of the natural environment in Bahrain and we can do this by buying locally grown fruit and vegetables, locally crafted products and locally harvested fish. Farming and fishing communities are now being forced to justify their existence by their contribution to Bahrain's gross domestic product and with an overall contribution of under one per cent, their position appears to be extremely weak compared to the financial sector, which currently contributes 27.6pc. It is this type of mentality that has sent the planet spiraling into global warming, with the big polluting industrial nations holding sway over countries practising traditional, non-polluting lifestyles. There is an old saying, known as the North American Cree Indian Prophecy, which says: "Only after the last tree has been cut down. Only after the last river has been poisoned. Only after the last fish has been caught. Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." The answer to rising CO2 emissions in Bahrain is to plant roadside trees to soak up exhaust fumes; a sad existence for the trees, literally denigrated to serve as carbon drains along the highways and there is no way that these lines of trees can replace the majestic palm tree groves along the northern coast line of Bahrain. Enter deep into an old palm tree grove in the heat of a summer's day and you will instantly feel the drop in temperature. The protection and preservation of Bahrain's palm groves would contribute more to the halt of global warming than other schemes and projects cooked up by scientists in the latest regional conference or seminar. Ms O'Shea is an Environment Friends Society member