Becker says that human beings are “out of nature and hopelessly in it”, an effective way to express the difficult relationship between human society and nature, an interaction from which environment comes out, in shapes and functions which become visible in territory.
At present, territory reflects the conflict existing between human being and environment, expressing the effects of what Crutzen calls Antropocene, a new era where anthropic activities impact natural systems significantly, producing modifications at different scale, both locally and globally. What is now clear is that the state of environment can significantly affect human wellbeing, strongly conditioning economy as well as society.
A dichotomy exists between the extraterritoriality of globalization and the territorial effects which the exploitation of natural resources produces at a local level. Furthermore, while local daily actions of individuals cause planetary consequences, the individual has been losing the faith in the possibility to change the world around him or her. We do not dare “to image a different world”, we are “much too cautious to try and change” the present one, as Bauman says.
But, while the rich world lies immobile in front of the great challenges which face it, in developing countries we are assisting to attempts of demonstrating that is it possible to think of different social and economic models. There are examples which, far from being experimental and idealistic, have been demonstrating that sustainability is not just a word, but it can be made real in daily life of many communities all over the world.
Is this a revenge of developing countries?
Sure it is the manifestation of a new rurality, which claims the right of countryside and its people against the jackalling of city. It is a demonstration that rural is not synonymous of uneducated and coarse, rather can it be just the opposite if efforts are carried out to provide rural communities with facilities which allow them to improve their life environment, guaranteeing not only the right to a healthy alimentation, but also the access to communication, better education, mobility, electricity, decision-making and other facilities which concretely expand “the real freedoms that people enjoy”.
The experience of the GEF Small Grants Programme (SGP) in the Dominican Republic is just an example of a different way of thinking of development and collaboration among people. And the community of Fondo Grande is a concrete manifestation of this new rurality which is emerging through its struggle to not disappear under the squashing forces of a distorted system which puts money before anything else. It is a huge struggle, since everything which moves away from “normality” is judged as dangerous and is suppressed, especially in a world where consumerism and foreign influences have become the true “people’s opium”… The Plato’s myth of the cave perpetuates itself in different forms and motives.
In a sunny day like many others in the Dominican Republic territory, we left from Santo Domingo early in the morning, direct to Fondo Grande, a rural community in the Dajabón province, one of the areas of the so called Environmental Border, a western band of the Dominican territory at the border with the Republic of Haiti characterized by unsustainable land use, high poverty and, consequently, low Human Development Index.
Fondo Grande is one of the many communities which suffer the difficult conditions of rural areas in a developing country. Its history dates back to the ‘30s of the past century, when the previous Haitian community who lived in the area was obliged to leave in order to avoid the notorious massacre ordered by the dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo.
The Dominicans who arrived there from the near provinces translated the original Haitian name of “Grand Fond” into “Fondo Grande”, a community where about 200 people live at present.
Why Fondo Grande? It is one of the numerous examples of local communities which have been growing in the last 15 years showing that a different model of development is possible. In a time when an extraterritoriality of social relationship and feelings of brotherhood does not follow the extraterritoriality of globalization, Fondo Grande, as many other communities in the Dominican Republic, is making a difference, basing its actions on principles of community participation and empowerment.
Riding towards Fondo Grande, the main road step by step becomes a stone and earth path which allows only one vehicle to pass at a time. During rainy season or after heavy precipitation and thunderstorms, communication turns difficult and the access to the community is permitted only through four wheel vehicles. The existing road is an achievement of local population: the people themselves, after being neglecting by the authorities, built the road to Fondo Grande with their bare hands. Fondo Grande belonged to the long list of villages not reached by the national electric service, which in fact is characterized by huge problems in the Dominican Republic, where, from the 1980s, situations of discontinuity in the provision of electricity have become more and more frequent. Interruptions in the service are now so frequent and prolonged that the energetic enterprises themselves admit the use of alternative systems of energy supporting public service, which, among other things, presents significant losses and high costs of production. Obviously, rural zones suffer the most for the situation, because in these areas the major interruptions of the service are registered, with only two or three hours of light guaranteed not every day. Furthermore, most of the areas do not have access to electricity, and consequently experiment huge limitations to their development.
Fondo Grande has left this situation to its past: now its inhabitants count on 24 hour electricity the whole year, provided by a 17 kW micro-hydroelectric power system, installed with the funds and help of the Small Grants Programme, an initiative of the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), implemented by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). This GEF initiative promotes the economic progress in a sustainable development perspective in developing countries. It bases its action on the principles of empowerment, local participation and self-determination of people, according to the idea of human development. In its 15 year presence in the Dominican Republic, the SGP has been funding more than 20 projects of electrification based on micro-hydroelectric generation, accompanying rural communities in the whole process of planning, execution, monitoring and management of their systems.
The arrival of electricity meant a significant change in communities, fomenting initiatives and enterprises which contribute to increase human development of local population, through a process which improves self-esteem of people.
Despite or probably thanks to the great difficulties which accompanied the implementation of the micro-hydroelectric project, Fondo Grande reached its goal to have light from electricity, but above all it is now a more mature community, capable of choosing its own development. In fact, initially Fondo Grande was completely dependent on external organizations which acted in a murky way. After situations which obliged the community to assume the direction of the project, people make group around their natural leaders and implemented a successful initiative. The work of self-organized groups was supported by an adequate plan of education, which allowed the community to acquire the necessary know-how to manage its system. Now it can count on two of its members who technically monitor and maintain the system and are paid by the Rural and Suburban Electrification Unit (UERS-CDEEE), which is responsible for the Dominican electric system at a national level. This shows how the new scheme has become entering into the state institutions, resulting in a revolutionary approach, where each intervention passes through local people.
Furthermore, a Committee of Administration and a system of payment were established with the aim of guaranteeing the well management of the micro-hydroelectric system and its sustainability. Electricity fees go to a community fund which would serve both for the system maintenance and for possible other initiatives which members of the community could undertake.
Community organization came out reinforced from the process and now Fondo Grande counts on its own Strategic Plan, which traces the ideas of development of Fondo Grande people for the next 15 years. A part from the importance in terms of planning, in a country where people often find it very difficult to plan their actions, the huge implication of the Strategic Plan resides in the holistic principles which are behind it: it expresses the idea of a territory as a whole, where human communities are just a part (even though, for human self-consciousness, an important one) in the ecosystem of the region where they are inserted.
This environmental consciousness foments a harmonization of human actions with the environment and, as a consequence of the improved environmental quality, has a positive effects on the economy and society of the people living in the area. As a demonstration of this, new initiatives have been started and are being implemented at present in Fondo Grande, resulting both in a protection of the environment and in an increase of families’ incomes. Soon after the micro-hydroelectric system being installed and functioning, new projects have been started. In collaboration with the Dominican Ministry of Environment, Fondo Grande participates in the national Plan “Quisqueya Verde”, which works with local communities at the reforestation of the country: an interesting element of it is that reforestation is carried out by local “brigadas”, organized groups of local people, which are leaded by a woman of the community, what foment an improvement of the consideration and self-esteem of women, who assume a recognized role in local development.
Since the Plan started, 125 hectares of land have been reforested on mountain slopes around Fondo Grande and 20 people of the community have been being paid for this work. Through this process people have changed their way of production, passing from subsistence agriculture, characterized by low productivity, to permanent cultivations, like cacao, which guarantee better incomes and at the same time protect soil. Reforestation is being implemented in collaboration with the Haitian community at the border, thanks to the “Anacaona” Agreement signed between the Dominican and Hatian Ministries of Environment: Magase, a Haitian community twelve kilometers far from Fondo Grande, has become its twin community. Working together has caused a relationship of brotherhood be born among people who, according the stereotype, are incompatible because of the differences linked to their origin, histories and cultures. Now, “Haitian” is not just a category: for a person from Fondo Grande, “Haitian” calls to mind Magase and with it faces of people with whom hours have been spent working together for the protection of a common territory. Step by step, these actions are generating a different behavior of the Haitians towards the environment where they live: traditionally adopting agricultural techniques which are at the base of land degradation, the Haitians are now working at the protection of territory, developing a consciousness about the importance of preserving its quality and contributing at redeeming a peasant world which has been completely abandoned.
As a consequence of this growth, Fondo Grande has developed a deep feeling of being part of its territory, what allows the community to defend it against those who would like to assume the control of the space and its resources. The locals have recently had to start a non-violent struggle in order to protect their lands against gold mine exploitation, carried out by companies who do not take in any account the respect and dignity of people: they arrived at Fondo Grande and started exploring lands without either asking their owners for a permission or just informing them about what was going on… since they did not have people in front of them, just “indios” to be bought by means of little hand mirrors and colored glasses. Unfortunately for the strangers, at the convened meeting the company found a community conscious of its right and informed about the legal requirements which an entity that would explore or exploit a territory for mining purposes have to fulfill. The direction of the meeting was assumed by the community which can count on a group of young people who studied abroad but decided to come back in order to live a different rurality and demonstrate that peasants can make a difference in a world that is being destroyed by individualism and consumerism elsewhere.
Fondo Grande, like many other communities in the country, is a living example of true democracy, where schemes based on imposition of power by hierarchies are substituted by others where the local supports and justifies institutions at an upper level, according the principle of subsidiarity.
The success of communities like Fondo Grande claims a responsibility to be assumed by rich countries on one hand and intellectuals on the other. The first ones have to rethink the model of cooperation they are imposing: far from being a space of collaboration, dialogue and mutual support, at present most of the cooperation is just a business like others, without taking into account local interests and valued principles that are important for local people.
On the other hand, intellectuals are responsible of embracing the Gramscian idea of “organic intellectuals”, as those who embrace the principle of knowledge as a mean for development and not a weapon used to impose power over vulnerable and disadvantaged people. New rurality and the world in general are in need of intellectuals who work supporting local developing, collaborating with people of any place and social position, recognizing that in each process there is a mutual learning: peasants, far from being uneducated, are repositories of old culture and traditions and, above all, of a deep knowledge of the territory where they live, which they perceive in a very different way if compared with distracted people coming from a urban world.
When people find accompaniment, more than a cold economic support, encounter a space where they can express their personality and idea of development. It must be said that this scheme is not convenient for the general system, since the present dominant model excludes from the poor from the group of the decision makers, alleging that they do not have the elements to manage a political context, or they do not know the established protocol, or that it is a managerial matter which must be faced at a different level. In such a context, free people are an obstacle, since they do not accept hierarchic powers as a dogma and make schemes based on threat, fear and corruption vulnerable… In the general “matrix”, they simply decide to take the “red pill”, accepting a role “against the tide”.
Fondo Grande demonstrates that the road towards sustainability has to be countryside-centered. Even though one does not take into account the ethical aspect, rurality has to be protected and respected due to the dependence which urban systems have from it. In fact, city is a parasite for environment, depending on countryside for everything is consumed in it. Furthermore, creating conditions which allow peasants to remain in the countryside is an interest for urban people, since the labor market would not be able to absorb peasants migrating from countryside and, without a valuable alternative, the arrival of peasants at the city would increase social pressure in the urban environment.
Many rural communities in developing countries, often completely forgotten by the world which “matters”, are claiming the right to redeem human condition and are now promoting a non-violent revolution. They silently say and testify: “We were born free, to reach great goals”.
At present, territory reflects the conflict existing between human being and environment, expressing the effects of what Crutzen calls Antropocene, a new era where anthropic activities impact natural systems significantly, producing modifications at different scale, both locally and globally. What is now clear is that the state of environment can significantly affect human wellbeing, strongly conditioning economy as well as society.
A dichotomy exists between the extraterritoriality of globalization and the territorial effects which the exploitation of natural resources produces at a local level. Furthermore, while local daily actions of individuals cause planetary consequences, the individual has been losing the faith in the possibility to change the world around him or her. We do not dare “to image a different world”, we are “much too cautious to try and change” the present one, as Bauman says.
But, while the rich world lies immobile in front of the great challenges which face it, in developing countries we are assisting to attempts of demonstrating that is it possible to think of different social and economic models. There are examples which, far from being experimental and idealistic, have been demonstrating that sustainability is not just a word, but it can be made real in daily life of many communities all over the world.
Is this a revenge of developing countries?
Sure it is the manifestation of a new rurality, which claims the right of countryside and its people against the jackalling of city. It is a demonstration that rural is not synonymous of uneducated and coarse, rather can it be just the opposite if efforts are carried out to provide rural communities with facilities which allow them to improve their life environment, guaranteeing not only the right to a healthy alimentation, but also the access to communication, better education, mobility, electricity, decision-making and other facilities which concretely expand “the real freedoms that people enjoy”.
The experience of the GEF Small Grants Programme (SGP) in the Dominican Republic is just an example of a different way of thinking of development and collaboration among people. And the community of Fondo Grande is a concrete manifestation of this new rurality which is emerging through its struggle to not disappear under the squashing forces of a distorted system which puts money before anything else. It is a huge struggle, since everything which moves away from “normality” is judged as dangerous and is suppressed, especially in a world where consumerism and foreign influences have become the true “people’s opium”… The Plato’s myth of the cave perpetuates itself in different forms and motives.
In a sunny day like many others in the Dominican Republic territory, we left from Santo Domingo early in the morning, direct to Fondo Grande, a rural community in the Dajabón province, one of the areas of the so called Environmental Border, a western band of the Dominican territory at the border with the Republic of Haiti characterized by unsustainable land use, high poverty and, consequently, low Human Development Index.
Fondo Grande is one of the many communities which suffer the difficult conditions of rural areas in a developing country. Its history dates back to the ‘30s of the past century, when the previous Haitian community who lived in the area was obliged to leave in order to avoid the notorious massacre ordered by the dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo.
The Dominicans who arrived there from the near provinces translated the original Haitian name of “Grand Fond” into “Fondo Grande”, a community where about 200 people live at present.
Why Fondo Grande? It is one of the numerous examples of local communities which have been growing in the last 15 years showing that a different model of development is possible. In a time when an extraterritoriality of social relationship and feelings of brotherhood does not follow the extraterritoriality of globalization, Fondo Grande, as many other communities in the Dominican Republic, is making a difference, basing its actions on principles of community participation and empowerment.
Riding towards Fondo Grande, the main road step by step becomes a stone and earth path which allows only one vehicle to pass at a time. During rainy season or after heavy precipitation and thunderstorms, communication turns difficult and the access to the community is permitted only through four wheel vehicles. The existing road is an achievement of local population: the people themselves, after being neglecting by the authorities, built the road to Fondo Grande with their bare hands. Fondo Grande belonged to the long list of villages not reached by the national electric service, which in fact is characterized by huge problems in the Dominican Republic, where, from the 1980s, situations of discontinuity in the provision of electricity have become more and more frequent. Interruptions in the service are now so frequent and prolonged that the energetic enterprises themselves admit the use of alternative systems of energy supporting public service, which, among other things, presents significant losses and high costs of production. Obviously, rural zones suffer the most for the situation, because in these areas the major interruptions of the service are registered, with only two or three hours of light guaranteed not every day. Furthermore, most of the areas do not have access to electricity, and consequently experiment huge limitations to their development.
Fondo Grande has left this situation to its past: now its inhabitants count on 24 hour electricity the whole year, provided by a 17 kW micro-hydroelectric power system, installed with the funds and help of the Small Grants Programme, an initiative of the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), implemented by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). This GEF initiative promotes the economic progress in a sustainable development perspective in developing countries. It bases its action on the principles of empowerment, local participation and self-determination of people, according to the idea of human development. In its 15 year presence in the Dominican Republic, the SGP has been funding more than 20 projects of electrification based on micro-hydroelectric generation, accompanying rural communities in the whole process of planning, execution, monitoring and management of their systems.
The arrival of electricity meant a significant change in communities, fomenting initiatives and enterprises which contribute to increase human development of local population, through a process which improves self-esteem of people.
Despite or probably thanks to the great difficulties which accompanied the implementation of the micro-hydroelectric project, Fondo Grande reached its goal to have light from electricity, but above all it is now a more mature community, capable of choosing its own development. In fact, initially Fondo Grande was completely dependent on external organizations which acted in a murky way. After situations which obliged the community to assume the direction of the project, people make group around their natural leaders and implemented a successful initiative. The work of self-organized groups was supported by an adequate plan of education, which allowed the community to acquire the necessary know-how to manage its system. Now it can count on two of its members who technically monitor and maintain the system and are paid by the Rural and Suburban Electrification Unit (UERS-CDEEE), which is responsible for the Dominican electric system at a national level. This shows how the new scheme has become entering into the state institutions, resulting in a revolutionary approach, where each intervention passes through local people.
Furthermore, a Committee of Administration and a system of payment were established with the aim of guaranteeing the well management of the micro-hydroelectric system and its sustainability. Electricity fees go to a community fund which would serve both for the system maintenance and for possible other initiatives which members of the community could undertake.
Community organization came out reinforced from the process and now Fondo Grande counts on its own Strategic Plan, which traces the ideas of development of Fondo Grande people for the next 15 years. A part from the importance in terms of planning, in a country where people often find it very difficult to plan their actions, the huge implication of the Strategic Plan resides in the holistic principles which are behind it: it expresses the idea of a territory as a whole, where human communities are just a part (even though, for human self-consciousness, an important one) in the ecosystem of the region where they are inserted.
This environmental consciousness foments a harmonization of human actions with the environment and, as a consequence of the improved environmental quality, has a positive effects on the economy and society of the people living in the area. As a demonstration of this, new initiatives have been started and are being implemented at present in Fondo Grande, resulting both in a protection of the environment and in an increase of families’ incomes. Soon after the micro-hydroelectric system being installed and functioning, new projects have been started. In collaboration with the Dominican Ministry of Environment, Fondo Grande participates in the national Plan “Quisqueya Verde”, which works with local communities at the reforestation of the country: an interesting element of it is that reforestation is carried out by local “brigadas”, organized groups of local people, which are leaded by a woman of the community, what foment an improvement of the consideration and self-esteem of women, who assume a recognized role in local development.
Since the Plan started, 125 hectares of land have been reforested on mountain slopes around Fondo Grande and 20 people of the community have been being paid for this work. Through this process people have changed their way of production, passing from subsistence agriculture, characterized by low productivity, to permanent cultivations, like cacao, which guarantee better incomes and at the same time protect soil. Reforestation is being implemented in collaboration with the Haitian community at the border, thanks to the “Anacaona” Agreement signed between the Dominican and Hatian Ministries of Environment: Magase, a Haitian community twelve kilometers far from Fondo Grande, has become its twin community. Working together has caused a relationship of brotherhood be born among people who, according the stereotype, are incompatible because of the differences linked to their origin, histories and cultures. Now, “Haitian” is not just a category: for a person from Fondo Grande, “Haitian” calls to mind Magase and with it faces of people with whom hours have been spent working together for the protection of a common territory. Step by step, these actions are generating a different behavior of the Haitians towards the environment where they live: traditionally adopting agricultural techniques which are at the base of land degradation, the Haitians are now working at the protection of territory, developing a consciousness about the importance of preserving its quality and contributing at redeeming a peasant world which has been completely abandoned.
As a consequence of this growth, Fondo Grande has developed a deep feeling of being part of its territory, what allows the community to defend it against those who would like to assume the control of the space and its resources. The locals have recently had to start a non-violent struggle in order to protect their lands against gold mine exploitation, carried out by companies who do not take in any account the respect and dignity of people: they arrived at Fondo Grande and started exploring lands without either asking their owners for a permission or just informing them about what was going on… since they did not have people in front of them, just “indios” to be bought by means of little hand mirrors and colored glasses. Unfortunately for the strangers, at the convened meeting the company found a community conscious of its right and informed about the legal requirements which an entity that would explore or exploit a territory for mining purposes have to fulfill. The direction of the meeting was assumed by the community which can count on a group of young people who studied abroad but decided to come back in order to live a different rurality and demonstrate that peasants can make a difference in a world that is being destroyed by individualism and consumerism elsewhere.
Fondo Grande, like many other communities in the country, is a living example of true democracy, where schemes based on imposition of power by hierarchies are substituted by others where the local supports and justifies institutions at an upper level, according the principle of subsidiarity.
The success of communities like Fondo Grande claims a responsibility to be assumed by rich countries on one hand and intellectuals on the other. The first ones have to rethink the model of cooperation they are imposing: far from being a space of collaboration, dialogue and mutual support, at present most of the cooperation is just a business like others, without taking into account local interests and valued principles that are important for local people.
On the other hand, intellectuals are responsible of embracing the Gramscian idea of “organic intellectuals”, as those who embrace the principle of knowledge as a mean for development and not a weapon used to impose power over vulnerable and disadvantaged people. New rurality and the world in general are in need of intellectuals who work supporting local developing, collaborating with people of any place and social position, recognizing that in each process there is a mutual learning: peasants, far from being uneducated, are repositories of old culture and traditions and, above all, of a deep knowledge of the territory where they live, which they perceive in a very different way if compared with distracted people coming from a urban world.
When people find accompaniment, more than a cold economic support, encounter a space where they can express their personality and idea of development. It must be said that this scheme is not convenient for the general system, since the present dominant model excludes from the poor from the group of the decision makers, alleging that they do not have the elements to manage a political context, or they do not know the established protocol, or that it is a managerial matter which must be faced at a different level. In such a context, free people are an obstacle, since they do not accept hierarchic powers as a dogma and make schemes based on threat, fear and corruption vulnerable… In the general “matrix”, they simply decide to take the “red pill”, accepting a role “against the tide”.
Fondo Grande demonstrates that the road towards sustainability has to be countryside-centered. Even though one does not take into account the ethical aspect, rurality has to be protected and respected due to the dependence which urban systems have from it. In fact, city is a parasite for environment, depending on countryside for everything is consumed in it. Furthermore, creating conditions which allow peasants to remain in the countryside is an interest for urban people, since the labor market would not be able to absorb peasants migrating from countryside and, without a valuable alternative, the arrival of peasants at the city would increase social pressure in the urban environment.
Many rural communities in developing countries, often completely forgotten by the world which “matters”, are claiming the right to redeem human condition and are now promoting a non-violent revolution. They silently say and testify: “We were born free, to reach great goals”.
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