April 2009

The Mediterranean—a basin of cultures, the demographics of which, it seems, invite both appeal and criticism…

Gone seem to be the days when water was the key in a process of communication; where those living along the coasts would be absorbing, assimilating and partaking in diversity and exchange. Routes were sea, not land. Trade was linked to ports, transport to ships, and movement to waves.

Between 1798 and 1826 Thomas Malthus, in his series of essays on population, had stated that the human population grows in geometric proportion while the food production grows only in arithmetic proportion. Hence, he predicted that there will be a situation, in the 19th century, when the food supply will not be able to support the growth in population and it will inevitably lead to a population check by means of natural/man-made catastrophes.

A few weeks back, I was in Europe where I heard the speaker mention that the current crisis is an L-shaped crisis. Normally in a business “cycle,” there is a boom period (like we had till a few years back) which is almost inevitably followed by a slowdown (or a correction), but then the economy picks up again after a short time and in all probability, attains a higher level of production than the last boom. This is the way a capitalist society works. However, this time it is feared that the economy will not pick up again after the recession, meaning it will not be a normal U-shaped growth pattern but a severe L-shaped one –we can expect no growth or an insignificant growth rate in the coming decade or more. This is a scary picture!

CNN is the only channel I get in English, so I watch a lot of it. Needless to say, I’m kind of sick of hearing about the global economic/financial crisis, especially since the reports of the end of the world as we know it have little relation to my day-to-day life.

Here in Benin, high unemployment and poor business prospects are not news. Home foreclosures and vanishing retirement funds would be news because it would mean that people had actually owned homes and had retirement funds. This is not to say that the crisis has not or will not have an impact here, but if it is, it’s not nearly as visible or talked about.

There has been a lot of speculation over what the crisis would mean for Africa. Some say that it will be felt less here because of Africa’s relative isolation from global markets and its already low levels of foreign investment and trade.  Others argue that many African countries’ already precarious economic states and their dependence on foreign investment, loans, and aid put them in a vulnerable position. 

The other day I dropped by our school’s Gender Studies and Development Center and had a brief chat with a good friend of mine, who also happens to chair the center. We had exactly the same observation on the progress of empowering women at the grassroots level here in the Philippines, and in Dumaguete City in particular—it’s moving at a snail’s pace.