Monday, February 4, 2008

Collapse (Jared Diamond)

Review by Christian Tena

Bottom up Management Approach as opposed to Top Down

p 277-278 "Small societies occupying a small island or homeland can adopt a bottom-up approach to environmental management. Because the homeland is small, all of its inhabitants are familiar with the entire island, know that there are affected by developments throughout the island, and share a sense of identity and common interests with other inhabitants. Hence everybody realizes that they will benefit ... Thats bottom-up management, in which people work together to solve their own problems."

p313 par 2 "I came to discuss the difficulties that regularly confront societies trying to reach agreements about environmental disputes... disputes could be, and frequently were, solved in the course of conflict (this didnt mean that it favors murder as a means of settling disputes). Instead ... its a mere observation that environmental problems often do create conflicts among people ... which can either be resolved thru coutroom process (like in the US or Phils) or nastier forms like that in Rwanda"

p320 2nd par "Friends of mine who visited Rwanda in 1984 sensed an ecological disaster in the making. The whole country looked like a garden and banana plantation. Steep hills are being farmed right up."

p469 p2 "Water transpiration from trees returns water to the atmosphere, so that deforestation tends to cause diminished rainfall and increase desertification."

This reminds me of living here in Mozambique where bush areas are transformed into machambas (gardens) where they plan corn and alot of stuff. On top of the cutting of trees they also (still do) slash and burn practice... very widespread. Which is sad because damages Mozambique's environment.

p450 par 2 "Chevron employees in several countries told me independently that every month they are every other Chevron employee around the world receive from the CEO an email about the state of affairs in the company... the authors (Peters and Walters) found that if managers want their employees to behave in a certain way , the most effective motivation is for the employees to see the managers themselves behaving in that way."

Christian Tena