It is Sustainability Week, and despite my being an environmental studies major, I am confused. What I have learned about sustainability in America focuses on wealthy or middle class communities. These goals include reducing water consumption, promoting public transportation, and creating environmentally friendly building codes.
My experience in a third world nation over spring break challenged all these ideas in the context of sustainability. I went to the Dominican Republic to promote sustainability in a Haitian refugee village. Instead, I realized that my concept of sustainability is elitist and worthless in communities whose problem is not wasting resources, but not having any resources.
The goal of my group's trip was to promote sustainable grassroots international development. I figured that since I know all about sustainability, I would be especially helpful. Nevertheless, I knew nothing of what sustainability means in a developing country.
American Jewish World Services (AJWS) sent me and 10 other Tufts students to a batey in the rural part of the Dominican Republic. A batey is a sugarcane plantation where Haitian refugees live and work. When there is work. When there is enough food to live. When there is enough clean water to drink. When one is not pregnant and does not have AIDS. The people in the bateys have nothing. They come to these rural communities because they are shunned by the Dominican government and stripped of the rights they constitutionally deserve. Yet, they are happy to be there because their homeland, Haiti, is hell.
When reading about sustainability in America, I learn about reducing our ecological footprint. This footprint refers to the amount of land it actually takes to support the extravagant lifestyles of the Western world. The Haitian refugees have no perceptible footprint. In America, I learn about recycling programs to reduce waste. The refugees burn their trash because there is no waste disposal program. In America, I learn about air pollution laws. In the bateys, the burning plastic bags and tin cans send plumes of foul black smoke into the air, causing cancer and asthma in children and adults. In America, I learn about sanitation and hygiene to promote healthy citizens. In the batey, animal feces line the streets and rusted barbed wire strings the roads and fields. Batey inhabitants have no running water, sporadic electricity, polluted drinking water, potholed roads and embarrassing education systems.
Promoting sustainability in America is necessary. We are wasteful. We are selfish. We are oblivious to the struggles and problems of the developing world. Even if we were working relentlessly to make America a sustainable country, which we are not, it would not be enough.
As arguably the most important nation on Earth, we have a responsibility to those whose lives are torture. They are not in these positions because they do not work hard or because they are inherently inferior. They are trapped by their insurmountable circumstances: the poverty cycle, their skin color, the terrible virus that wracks their country. We as Americans need to fix our priorities quickly. There is only so much that well-intentioned individuals can do, but we have seen the extraordinary feats that America can accomplish when it works united towards a goal. I realize that our current administration has no intention of heeding my plea. Nevertheless, I hope that the moral agenda that has gripped our country is of the same moral fabric as the Christian, Jewish and Muslim desire to help one's neighbors. The Torah speaks of Tikkun Olam, or healing the world. Let's start now.
Zachary Cuttler is a sophomore majoring in environmental studies and American studies.
