1 Environment and Development: from Ecological Anthropology to Sustainable Development, Political Ecology, and Climate Change
Social scientists in general—and human geographers and social anthropologists in particular—have long theorised the relationship between the environment and development. Ecological anthropology in the 1960s posited that natural environments shaped culture by providing both opportunities and constraints; a culture was assumed to adapt to its natural environment in pursuit of social stability and ecological equilibrium.1 From this perspective, environmental sustainability and socio-economic development seemed to be at odds with each other.2 Within a few decades, in an era characterised by transnational migration, global interconnectedness, and an awareness of the long arc of anthropogenic environmental change, the ecological anthropology of the 1960s appeared overly culturally bound, ecologically deterministic, and preoccupied with stability rather than change.3
Many parts of the world are caught in a vicious downwards spiral: Poor people are forced to overuse environmental resources to survive from day to day, and their impoverishment of their environment further impoverishes them, making their survival ever more difficult and uncertain.4
Scholars have suggested that the authors of the Brundtland Report were seeking simultaneously to address the concerns of environmentalists about environmental degradation in the developing world and the preoccupation of governments in developing countries with seeking socio-economic development.5 Subsequently, Integrated Conservation and Development Projects (icdps) targeted the activities of impoverished people on the grounds that it was these activities that posed the greatest threat to the environment.
Social scientists were quick to criticise the underlying assumption in the Brundtland Report that environmental degradation could be blamed primarily on poor environmental management by impoverished people.6 First, this assumption ignores the socio-economic structures that cause impoverishment.7 Second, much anthropogenic environmental change is caused by the activities associated with industrialisation and the consumption patterns of affluent people.8 Since the 1980s, political ecology—which combines human ecology with political economy—has sought to address both the underlying causes of impoverishment and the contribution of industrialisation and wealth to environmental degradation.9
Across the social sciences, political ecology has become associated with arguments about the gulf between those who contribute most to climate change and those who are most vulnerable to its effects. The vast majority of climate scientists now attribute global climate change to rising emissions of the greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane), particularly since 1750, correlating with the industrial revolution and a subsequent dependency on fossil fuels that has increased in intensity and global extent in the second half of the 20th century.10 Marginalised people in developing countries tend to cause lower greenhouse gas emissions, and yet it is them who suffer disproportionately from climate change due to their concentration in ecologically fragile parts of the world and their dependency on the environment for their livelihoods.11 Climate change thus magnifies existing inequalities, compounding existing impoverishment, vulnerability, and marginalisation.12
In a recent article on the uneven attention devoted to the concept of climate change around the world, Orlove et al. argue that since the 1980s both sustainable development and climate change have been prominent explanatory and policy frameworks, but in different geographic contexts.13 First, they argue that sustainable development is more commonly applied in relation to environmental changes attributed to intensive local land use—such as desertification, which reduces land productivity, and mountainside deforestation, which results in soil erosion and landslides—and so the proposed solution is to promote sustainable resource management and alternative livelihoods.14 Second, they argue that climate change is more commonly applied in relation to environmental changes—like melting Arctic glaciers and associated rises in sea level threatening low-lying islands—that are attributed to global causes such as greenhouse gas emissions. These, they argue, are thus to be addressed on a global scale,15 although they do recognise that both frameworks are applicable to all these regions.16 To start with, deserts and mountains also experience environmental changes associated with global climate change, such as changes in temperature and precipitation patterns and the increased frequency of extreme weather events.17 The Arctic and low-lying islands, meanwhile, also experience environmental changes associated with unsustainable resource use, such as depleted fish stocks as a result of overfishing, loss of biodiversity associated with invasive species, and declining water quality as a result of solid waste disposal.18
This chapter interrogates the interplay between environmental change and society in Africa through the lens of the Republic of Mauritius, a relatively small and highly developed island state in the Indian Ocean, where environmental changes are discursively associated both with vulnerability to global climate change and with unsustainable management of local natural resources. My case study treats the contradiction between the Mauritian government’s sustainable development programme, Maurice Ile Durable (mid, or Sustainable Mauritius), and its actual energy policies designed to meet rising energy demands through further dependency on imported coal and the conversion of waste to energy rather than to promote sustainability and self-sufficiency through reduced energy demand and the development of local renewable sources of energy.
2 Vulnerability to Environmental Changes in Mauritius
The 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development recognised that “small island developing states are a special case both for environment and development […] [and] are considered extremely vulnerable to global warming and sea level rise”.19 The Small Island Developing States (sids) are scattered around the Caribbean, the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, and the South China Sea. sids are diverse in terms of size, resource endowment, isolation, productive capacity, vulnerability to environmental and natural disasters, and economic diversification and development trajectories.20 Nevertheless, the usefulness of sids as a category rests on several general characteristics. sids tend to have relatively small populations that are, however, growing relatively quickly. They are also often densely populated, meaning that their limited agricultural land and marine resources are put under considerable strain. sids are often highly dependent on exchange with distant markets—in particular for the importation of food supplies and fossil fuels—making them vulnerable to high transportation costs and price fluctuations. sids typically contribute little to global climate change; yet, low-lying islands are disproportionately vulnerable to the effects of climate change, such as rising sea levels, variations in temperature, fluctuations in rainfall, and the increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events such as tropical storms. At the same time, however, as tropical islands they also have considerable natural resources offering opportunities to develop renewable energy supplies from sources such as solar, hydro-, wave, and wind power.
Four of the sids—Mauritius, Seychelles, Comoros and Maldives—are in the Indian Ocean. Six of the sids—Mauritius, Seychelles, and Comoros, plus Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau as well as São Tomé and Príncipe in the Atlantic Ocean—are also members of the African Union. Malay, Arab, and Swahili traders explored the southwest Indian Ocean over a thousand years ago, but many of the smaller islands in the region—including Mauritius, Seychelles, and Réunion—were unpopulated prior to European colonial expansion from the end of the 15th century onwards.21 Following Vasco da Gama’s trip around the Cape of Good Hope Portuguese navigators in 1498 used Mauritius as a stopping point en route between the Cape and India, but did not establish a permanent settlement on the island.22 From 1598, the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, voc) used Mauritius as a stopping point en route to and from East Asia, but abandoned the island in 1710 due to the challenges of maintaining the small settlement.23 The French, who had occupied nearby Réunion since 1642, then claimed Mauritius in 1715 and Seychelles in 1742, populating the islands with enslaved labourers, mostly from coastal East Africa and Madagascar.24 Britain acquired Mauritius and its dependencies—including Seychelles, Rodrigues, Agalega, St. Brandon, Tromelin, and the Chagos Archipelago, but not Réunion—under the Treaty of Paris in 1814; Seychelles became a separate crown colony in 1903.25 Following the abolition of the British slave trade in 1807 and the emancipation of enslaved labourers in Mauritius in 1835, the British supplemented the population of Mauritius with indentured labourers from India, who comprised two-thirds of the population by 1871.26 Mauritius became independent in 1968, and the Republic of Mauritius now constitutes the main island of Mauritius plus the outer island of Rodrigues as well as the coral islands Agalega and St. Brandon. Mauritius also claims the Chagos Archipelago, which is currently administered as a United Kingdom Overseas Territory, and Tromelin, which is currently a French Overseas Territory co-managed with Mauritius.
The voc introduced sugarcane to Mauritius in the mid-17th century, finding the crop resilient and well suited to the rainy and windy climate.27 The French experimented with other crops—coffee, cotton, indigo, and spices—which turned out to be more susceptible than sugarcane to natural disasters such as cyclones.28 The British replaced native forests with sugarcane plantations, and Mauritius became a monocrop agricultural economy based on sugarcane.29 Mauritius was still almost entirely dependent on sugarcane at independence in 1968, but this made the economy extremely vulnerable to the weather, to fluctuations in global sugar and fuel prices, and to the gradual end of European Union subsidies and preferential trade agreements.30
Since the 1970s, Mauritian governments have sought to reduce dependence on sugarcane by diversifying both agricultural production and economic activity. Nevertheless, ninety per cent of the arable land on the main island of Mauritius is still under sugarcane cultivation, while the remaining ten per cent comprises tea, tobacco, and food crops.31 Mauritius has a high but declining dependence on food imports, which comprised two-thirds of its food supplies in 2010.32 The main pillars of the Mauritian economy are now sugarcane, manufacturing, tourism, financial services, and ict.33 Agriculture and other economic activities on the smaller outer islands differ from mainland Mauritius in that Rodrigues relies on fisheries and livestock export plus tourism, while Agalega relies on its coconut plantations.34
As a result of its relatively peaceful transition to independence, its well-functioning democracy, and the diversification of its economy, Mauritius is often referred to as one of Africa’s postcolonial success stories in terms of political, human, and economic development. It is the highest-ranking country on the Ibrahim Index of African Governance, which assesses safety and rule of law, participation and human rights, sustainable economic activity, and human development.35 In 2013, Mauritius ranked 63rd on the undp’s Human Development Index, which was higher than almost every country in mainland Africa (except Libya at 55th); the other African sids also ranked lower (Seychelles was 71st, Cape Verde was 123rd, São Tomé and Príncipe was 142nd, Comoros was 159th, and Guinea Bissau was 177th).36 Given that the Republic of Mauritius is indexed as a country of high human development, it is perhaps less a Small Island Developing State (sids) than a middle-income Small Island State (sis), although with a land area of over 2,000 square kilometres and a population of 1.3 million it is also considerably less ‘small’ than many other sids or sis.37 Moreover, the main island of Mauritius, an oceanic island with relatively high elevation, is less at risk from sea-level rises than the archipelagic states comprised entirely of low-lying islands: Kiribati, Maldives, Marshall Islands, and Tuvalu;38 Mauritius was, for instance, relatively unaffected by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.39
Nevertheless, like many Small Island (Developing) States, the islands of Mauritius are vulnerable to the effects of climate change and other environmental changes.40 Rainfall is declining at an average rate of 57 millimetres per decade, resulting in water shortages that cannot meet the increasing demand from the domestic, agricultural, industrial, and tourism sectors.41 The average temperature is rising at a rate of 0.15°C per decade (and has risen by 0.74–1.2°C since the 1961–1990 long-term mean); coral bleaching events in 1998 and 2009 resulted in loss of biodiversity, degradation of marine and land ecosystems, and a negative impact upon fisheries and tourism.42 Sea level at the capital Port Louis was rising by an average of 2.1 millimetres per year by the first decade of the 21st century (compared to around 1.5 millimetres per year over the second half of the 20th century); salination of freshwater and soil negatively impacts upon drinking water supplies and agriculture, while erosion of beaches contributes to the unmaking of Mauritius as an attractive tourist destination.43 The occurrence and severity of tropical storms have intensified, and flash floods after storms in 2013 killed eleven people.44
At the same time, socio-economic development has also posed threats to the Mauritian environment, including loss of biodiversity, resource depletion, deforestation, erosion, degradation of the ecosystem, contamination of coastal zones and freshwater supplies, air pollution, and solid and hazardous waste disposal.45 Overfishing results in diminished fish stocks, and undersea tourism damages the coral reefs.46 Sugarcane plantations can promote soil erosion and cause landslides on hill slopes, while the fertilisers and pesticides used on these plantations as well as the chemicals used in the textile industry run downhill and enter the water system, where they can harm agriculture and marine wildlife.47 Traditionally, sugarcane fields have been set on fire to burn off the dry leaves before harvesting the juicy canes, but this releases dioxins and wastes the cane trash, which could otherwise be left on the fields to prevent the regrowth of other species and thus reduce the need for herbicides; now, as a result of more efficient manual harvesting techniques and increasing mechanisation, the practice of burning fields is in decline.48
Sugarcane is an exceptionally productive species: in addition to commercial sugar products, cane trash, and cane tops (used as an animal feed or exported as a raw material for paper), the extraction of cane sugar also produces by-products including molasses and a fibrous biomass called bagasse.49 Bagasse was historically incinerated to power the sugarcane factory itself, but more efficient techniques have meant that the Mauritian sugarcane industry has increasingly produced energy beyond its own needs, which is then sold to the national grid.50 Molasses can be distilled into ethanol, which can be blended with petrol or used as a cheaper and cleaner alternative to petrol; this practice is being developed but remains relatively underexploited in Mauritius.51 The sugar industry is now increasingly referred to as the cane industry in recognition of the potential energy value of its by-products.52
3 Maurice Ile Durable (Sustainable Mauritius)
Mauritius has no coal, natural gas, or oil deposits, so its energy needs are met through imported coal and petroleum products supplemented with local renewable resources: bagasse, hydropower, solar thermal energy, photovoltaics, fuelwood, waste-to-energy, and wind.53 The country’s economy and energy requirements both grew at an average rate of five per cent per year over the first decade of the 21st century; meanwhile, the contribution from local renewable energy sources stagnated.54 Mauritius is thus extremely vulnerable to fluctuations in global energy prices. In response to the global energy crisis and record high oil prices in 2007, then Mauritian Prime Minister, Navin Ramgoolam, launched the concept of Maurice Ile Durable (mid, or Sustainable Mauritius) in 2008. mid aimed to “make Mauritius a model of sustainable development”—particularly in a sids context—“in which the needs of the present generation are met, without jeopardising the chances of future generations to meet theirs”.55 This clearly draws on the Brundtland Report’s oft-quoted (1987) definition: “sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.56
The mid Fund was originally established under the aegis of what was then called the Ministry of Renewable Energy and Public Utilities (and became the Ministry of Energy and Public Utilities). Initially, the main thrust of mid was to make Mauritius less dependent on imported fossil fuels—with an initial target of 65 per cent autonomy by 2028—by making increasing use of renewable energy and more efficient use of energy in general.57 Many of the original projects financed by the mid Fund were entirely focused on energy efficiency: grants for the purchase of 25,000 solar water heaters, subsidies for the purchase of one million compact fluorescent lamps, the replacement of conventional lighting with fluorescent lighting in public buildings, the replacement of incandescent and halogen traffic lights with led signal lights, and the installation of solar water heaters in public hospitals; mid also contributed to the ongoing renewal of the bus fleet towards reduced emission vehicles.58 The proportion of Mauritian energy that came from local renewable sources, actually fell annually from 17.5 per cent in 2009 to 15 per cent in 2013, of which 92 per cent came from bagasse, four per cent from hydropower, and the remaining four per cent from wind, landfill gas, photovoltaics, and fuelwood. Correspondingly, the proportion of Mauritian energy derived from imported fossil fuels rose annually from 82.5 per cent in 2009 to 85 per cent in 2013.59 The optimistic 2008 target of 65 per cent energy autonomy by 2028 was revised downwards; in 2013, the target stood at 35 per cent renewable energy by 2025.60 In 2016, however, 85 per cent of Mauritian energy was still derived from imported fossil fuels.
In 2010, a national consultation process with members of the public and special interest groups contributed to the expansion of the scope of mid. According to the resultant “Green Paper”,61 responses to the consultations suggested broader understandings of sustainable development as incorporating the environment (particularly in relation to conservation, pollution, and waste management), the economy (particularly energy and transport, but also self-sufficiency and green construction), society (particularly education, employment, health, and social cohesion), and governance. mid was thus expanded to incorporate the so-called “5Es”, which were divided into six Working Groups that met in mid-2011: (1) Energy; (2) Environment—preservation of biodiversity and natural resources; (3) Environment—pollution, wastes and environment; (4) Employment; (5) Education; and (6) Equity.62 As part of this diversification, responsibility for mid was transferred from the Ministry of Energy and Public Utilities to the Prime Minister’s Office (pmo) in collaboration with the newly renamed Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development (MoESD, formerly known as the Ministry of Environment and National Development Unit). The five additional lead ministries were Energy and Public Utilities; Agro-Industry and Food Security; Labour, Industrial Relations and Employment; Education and Human Resources; and Social Integration and Economic Empowerment. All ministries were expected to prioritise the realisation of mid’s goals. Drawing on the final reports from the six Working Groups, the UK consultancy Mott MacDonald drafted the mid ‘Policy, Strategy and Action Plan’, a much-revised version of which was finally implemented in June 2013.
Although mid’s stated aim was to reduce dependency on imported fossil fuels through the development of renewable energy sources and more efficient use of energy in general, Mauritius has instead experienced rises in both demand for energy and in the proportion of energy derived from imported fossil fuels. The following subsections ask what is going on and look in more detail at two controversial energy efficiency projects, which are aimed not at reducing demand or developing renewables, but at meeting increasing demand through the importation of fossil fuels and the conversion of waste to energy in ways which apparently contradict the aims of mid.
3.1 Energy Efficiency: a Proposed New Coal-Fired Power Station
Especially in the period since industrialisation, human societies have relied increasingly on the extraction of fossil fuels—coal and later also petroleum and natural gas—for the production of cheap and abundant energy to fuel technological advancement and economic growth, but fossil fuels are highly polluting, and demand for them continues to rise even as supplies dwindle.63 Responses to the prospect of reaching peak oil extraction vary from pessimism about unemployment, the high cost of energy, and energy shortages to optimism about opportunities to increase sustainability and self-sufficiency through the development of local renewable energy sources.64
The state-owned Central Electricity Board (ceb) is responsible for sourcing and supplying electricity in Mauritius. Mauritius has long relied on dual-fuel power stations that burn bagasse for six months of the year (during the sugarcane harvesting season) and imported coal for the other six months of the year when bagasse is not available; without coal, bagasse would be inefficient, but coal is environmentally more damaging than bagasse.65 In 2011, nearly 54 per cent of the country’s electricity supply came from Independent Power Producers (ipps) operating dual-fuel bagasse/coal cogeneration facilities, nearly 43 per cent came from thermal power stations reliant on imported heavy fuel oil (which costs twice as much as coal to produce), just over twp per cent came from hydroelectric plants, and the remaining one per cent was derived from bagasse and landfill gas.66 In the context of increasing demand, perceptions of the unreliability and marginality of renewables, and the high cost of heavy fuel oil, the supposed main alternative to coal, the ceb decided to commission a new single-fuel coal-fired power station.67
In 2006, the ceb issued a contract to Mauritius CT Power (mctp, staffed by Indian and Malaysian engineering teams) to build and operate a coal-fired power station with two 50-megawatt turbo-generator units at Pointe aux Caves near Albion, a town on the west coast of Mauritius.68 In 2011, the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development rejected mctp’s application for an Environmental Impact Assessment (eia) license, but mctp appealed and was granted its eia license in 2013. mctp was initially to own and operate the power station; the ceb would have a 26 per cent shareholding and would receive all electricity generated for the first twenty years, after which the facility would be transferred to the ceb with an expected further lifespan of twenty years.69 The power station would use bituminous coal sourced from the South African town of Richards Bay, the source of coal currently used by other ipps in Mauritius.70 The initial plan was for coal to arrive at the Port Louis docks for transportation by road 15 kilometres south to Pointe aux Caves, but critics questioned the road network’s capacity to support the additional traffic load on already congested roads. Ultimately, the government decided that—with Pointe aux Caves being on the coast—mctp should instead construct a jetty so that coal could arrive by sea.
mctp proposed to create one thousand local jobs in construction and, after its completion, two hundred local jobs at the power station.71 Local fishermen based in Albion to the south and Pointe aux Sables to the north raised concerns about effluent. The Mauritius Environment Platform led opposition to the power station on the grounds that it contradicted mid’s purported commitments to reducing reliance on imported fossil fuels and to developing local renewable sources. Despite existing capacity for electricity generation from renewables such as bagasse and hydropower, critics were widely concerned that a single-fuel coal-fired power station would divert investment away from alternative sources of electricity, such as installing photovoltaic cells (which are an initially expensive investment but have long lives as well as low running and maintenance costs), retrofitting the existing dual-fuel power stations to use cleaner natural gas (from Mozambique and Tanzania) instead of coal, and the development of wind and wave power.72 In 2015, the Mauritian government decided not to proceed with the plant after all; mctp won its Supreme Court appeal in 2016, and the saga continues.
3.2 Waste Management: a Proposed New Waste-to-Energy Plant
Increased waste production poses ever-greater challenges for safe waste disposal. Solid waste is increasingly incinerated and converted into electricity through a process known as Waste-to-Energy (WtE), which also addresses the ever-rising demand for energy.73 Nevertheless, WtE has its critics, including Friends of the Earth and the Global Anti-Incinerator Alliance (gaia). WtE facilities emit dioxins and other unintentional persistent organic pollutants as well as highly hazardous ash as by-products.74 Furthermore, WtE relies on waste production, and thus appears to promote waste creation rather than waste reduction. It can also divert attention away from waste segregation for composting and recycling as well as from the development of renewable energy sources.75
During the 1980s and 1990s, solid waste in Mauritius was deposited in open-air dumping sites, which emitted pollutants into the water table, the waterways, the soil and the air, especially when rubbish was burned.76 In 1997, the government opened a landfill site at Mare Chicose in the southwest. This landfill posed a multitude of problems for the local community—leachates that polluted the nearby waterways, scavenging pests, and increased traffic, odours, and skin and respiratory problems—who eventually agreed to relocate to the town of Rose Belle.77 Mare Chicose had a capacity for processing three hundred tonnes of waste per day for 18 years. Economic development, however, has been accompanied by increased waste production, and by 2009 solid waste production was around four times this amount at 1,200 tonnes per day (or about one kilogram per capita per day). As a result, the site could not keep up.78
In 2006, the Mauritian government announced that it was considering a WtE facility that would incinerate 300,000 tonnes of mixed waste per year, which would allow it to sell the resultant twenty megawatts of energy to the ceb. The WtE facility would be constructed and managed by a local company, Gamma Civic, in collaboration with an American company, Covanta Energy. La Chaumière lies between the west coast and the conglomeration comprising the densely populated upland towns of Beau-Bassin/Rose-Hill and Quatre-Bornes/Ebène. According to Gamma–Covanta’s Environmental Impact Assessment, La Chaumière was selected, among other reasons, because the prevailing easterly winds would minimise the potential impacts on local air quality and because its proximity to the most densely populated part of the island would reduce transportation distances.79
Local residents campaigned against the WtE facility on the grounds that it could have similar local impacts as landfill sites, and filed an appeal against the government’s approval of Gamma–Covanta’s eia report before the Environment Appeal Tribunal.80 The political party Lalit questioned whether the WtE facility would be more polluting than the status quo of landfill sites plus the burning of bagasse and coal in cogeneration electricity plants.81 Furthermore, Lalit also noted that Gamma–Covanta stood to make mur 250 million from the project, and that the state would lose money if the WtE facility received less than the contracted 300,000 tonnes of waste per year, which could undermine proposals to reduce waste production and sort waste for composting and recycling.82 Similarly, local environmentalists argued that the government should instead use mid to concentrate its efforts: firstly on waste reduction; secondly on composting organic animal and food waste; thirdly on recycling paper, glass, plastics, and aluminium; and fourthly on the development of renewable energy.83
However, another company, Solid Waste Recycling Ltd., does run a composting plant on state land at La Chaumière, which deploys a process and technology developed by an Indian company called Excel Industries. Solid Waste Recycling Ltd. has a contract with the government to receive 180,000 tonnes of municipal solid waste per year for twenty years. The company then sells the treated compost as fertiliser, while Sotravic transports the residual waste (amounting to about half the total received) from the composting plant to Mare Chicose. There, Sotravic reports converting landfill gas into about three megawatts of electricity per month, which has been provided to the national grid since 2011.84 According to the Institution of Engineers, Mauritius, the amount of waste taken to landfill at Mare Chicose decreased by 16 per cent from 2011 to 2012, resulting in a reduction in landfill gas emissions and water pollution through leachate infiltration into underground water.85 Additionally, the Institution of Engineers, Mauritius reported that the rerouting of raw municipal solid waste from the capital, Port Louis, and from the densely populated hill towns to the nearby composting plant rather than to the more distant landfill site had also reduced fuel consumption and CO₂ emissions.86
4 Perceptions of mid and Sustainable Development
In light of the political and economic challenges facing the Mauritian government in its quest for energy efficiency within a context of sustainable development, this section examines how people understand, engage with, and critique mid. The material I discuss derives from two research projects: one with mid insiders and the other looking at mid from the outside. The resultant material divides into three subsections: perceptions of mid from within, perceptions of mid among engaged professionals, and perceptions of mid and sustainable development among marginalised citizens.
4.1 Perceptions of mid from Within
During the process of revising the draft mid ‘Policy, Strategy and Action Plan’ in 2012, Saeko Kajima conducted research with officials involved in the development and implementation of mid.87 She conducted interviews with members of various mid committees and working groups, including representatives from four ministries, two international development organisations, two private sector organisations, a conservation ngo, and the University of Mauritius.88 Kajima found that there was considerable confusion about the division of responsibilities for mid, and all but one of her respondents agreed that inadequate coordination between ministries was a barrier to its successful implementation.89 Representatives of the other ministries questioned the MoESD’s leadership capacity and wondered why it had been selected as the lead ministry for a programme that was supposed to involve all ministries; a proposed solution was for the pmo and the Prime Minister himself to take a more active lead in coordinating mid activities.90
Kajima asked her interviewees, “How would you explain Maurice Ile Durable to someone who was not aware of it?”91 She was struck by the wide diversity of responses and by the fact that none of the respondents mentioned all of the above-mentioned ‘5Es’, despite their centrality to the Mauritian government’s vision of mid.92 Of the ‘5Es’, ‘energy and the environment’ was most frequently mentioned, while ‘education and equity’ was mentioned only once, and ‘employment’ was not mentioned at all.93 There was general consensus among Kajima’s interviewees that mid had raised public awareness of and engagement with issues of sustainable development, and that it had publicised the action taken by the Mauritian government in pursuit of social, economic, and environmental sustainability.94 Despite this optimistic consensus, there were a few voices of dissent: one interviewee suggested a lack of public understanding about the concept of sustainable development, and another questioned the extent of the dissemination of relevant information among those who did not read newspapers or who had no access to the internet.95 For its part, the Mauritian government admitted that there was inadequate public awareness of and engagement with its commitment to sustainable development.
4.2 Perceptions of mid among Engaged Professionals
As part of a wider project on debates about environmental knowledge, I spoke to people about sustainable development during two periods of ethnographic fieldwork in Mauritius in mid-2011 (when I also observed part of one of the mid Working Group meetings) and mid-2013. The people whom I asked specifically about mid included natural scientists, environmental consultants, leading members of three ngos affiliated with the Mauritius Environment Platform, and political actors, many of whom had engaged professionally with mid as consultants or working group members. Many of the professionals whom I asked to tell me about mid immediately volunteered some variation on the theme of the then Leader of the Opposition, Paul Bérenger, that mid is an “empty shell” (“coquille vide”).
These professionals had three interrelated principal concerns. First, they were critical of the Mauritian government’s self-interest in relation to mid’s concentration on energy and the economy and its relative neglect of environmental sustainability. Second, they were concerned about the government’s vulnerability to foreign interference, complaining that mid was primarily a means for the French government and French companies to increase their influence and economic activities in Africa. The French government provided significant funding and technical support for mid through its development agency, Agence Française de Développement, which had privileged access to the Mauritian government, thus giving French companies a competitive advantage when it came to bidding for business opportunities, such as the management contract for the Port Louis bypass. Third, my respondents told me that corruption was a concern, because the Mauritian government was continuing to award large-scale energy contracts to supporters of the ruling Labour Party even when such contracts contravened the principles of mid. Arguments about the government’s narrow focus on energy efficiency rather than environmental sustainability, its vulnerability to foreign interference, and political corruption were most often brought together and illustrated using the two controversial examples of the proposed coal-fired power station at Pointe aux Caves near Albion and the proposed waste-to-energy plant at La Chaumière, both of which are near to where I and most of my research participants lived in west Mauritius.
4.3 Perceptions of mid and Sustainable Development among Marginalised Citizens
Most of my time in Mauritius was spent living and working in the disadvantaged urban neighbourhoods on the outskirts of the capital, Port Louis: Pointe aux Sables, Cassis, Roche Bois, and Baie du Tombeau. The people I knew in these neighbourhoods were relatively marginalised, with comparatively low educational backgrounds. Most did not read the daily newspapers or have access to the internet, gaining the majority of their news from television and radio. Given that mid was heavily promoted by the state-owned Mauritian Broadcasting Corporation (mbc), I asked people living in these neighbourhoods to tell me what mid meant to them. Their responses took three forms—first, energy: mid aimed to encourage the use of renewable energy instead of fossil fuels; second, technology: mid promoted the production of durable products and institutions; third, politics and society: mid represented a drive to advance the country by bringing improvements as well as reducing corruption and ethnic disharmony.
None of these respondents repeated Paul Bérenger’s comment that mid was an “empty shell”, but two individuals levelled similar criticisms to those cited above: one complained about corruption, while the other bemoaned the contradiction of cutting down trees to build roads while claiming to support the planting of trees. This statement was the only response that indirectly associated mid with environmental issues: all other responses focused on energy, technology, politics, or society. Given that ‘Environment’ is one of mid’s so-called ‘5Es’, I was curious about why so few people had drawn a direct association between mid and the environment. Public conceptions of mid as weighted towards energy solutions may be explained, firstly, by the fact that this was indeed mid’s initial focus and, secondly, by the continued disproportionate allocation of mid funding and media attention towards renewable and efficient energy projects. Since the concept of sustainable development tends to include ecological sustainability alongside economic development,96 I decided to probe my respondents’ understandings of ‘environment’ and ‘sustainable development’ as well as the relationship between the two.
Nature? No, but nature forms part of it; the authorities use it in relation to nature and cleanliness. The Minister of the Environment is concerned with cleanliness, keeping places clean, green spaces, but for me the environment is not only that: our environment is where we live.
My ethnographic material suggests that these marginalised urban Mauritians are holistic and “contextualist” when it comes to their understandings of nature and society:97 they do not see nature as somehow separate from society, but instead regard both as interconnected constituent parts of an anthropocentric lived environment.
I wondered if this holistic understanding of “environment” would correspond to a similarly broad understanding of “sustainable development” as incorporating the environment, the economy, society, and governance (as per the definitions given by members of the public and special interest groups who participated in the government’s national consultation process that led to the expansion of the scope of mid). In fact, however, most of these people told me that their first exposure to the concept of ‘sustainable development’ was through mid. As such, their understanding of ‘sustainable development’ was shaped by mid’s narrower focus on energy efficiency.
‘Sustainable development’ is usually rendered as développement durable in French and devlopman dirab in Mauritian Kreol. The word ‘development’ seems relatively unproblematic in translation between the English, French, and Mauritian Kreol: in all three languages it refers to growth, progress, advancement, and evolution. People in Mauritius whom I asked to define ‘development’ mentioned job creation, infrastructure, and construction. ‘Sustainable’, on the other hand, appears more problematic. While the English ‘sustainable’ is best translated into French as durable, the French word durable is perhaps better translated back into English as ‘durable’, the adjective meaning lasting, enduring, and constant. The same applies for Mauritian Kreol, in which dirab means hard-wearing and durable. When I asked people what they understood by the concept of ‘sustainable development’, most gave explanations that reflected these additional connotations of durability—namely, growth and progress through infrastructure and construction designed to last for the long term—but they did not spontaneously mention the environment.
I wondered how—if at all—people conceptualised the relationship between sustainable development and the environment. When I asked what sustainability means in relation to the environment, my interviewees responded by talking about the promotion of reuse, recycling, composting, and waste management. Thus, even when asked directly about the environment, their responses recall the remit of mid Working Group 3 (Environment—Pollution, Wastes, Environmental Health) rather than that of Working Group 2 (Environment—Preservation of Biodiversity and Natural Resources). In theory, the Mauritian government conceptualised mid broadly as a socio-political project encompassing the ‘5Es’ of energy, environment, employment, education, and equity. In reality, however, it would seem that the narrow focus of mid in practice reinforced the notion that sustainable development is principally concerned with energy efficiency and waste management. From the perspective of my marginalised respondents, the Mauritian government has yet to demonstrate convincingly that its concept of sustainable development (also) includes preservation of biodiversity and mitigation of climate change.
5 Conclusions
This chapter has deployed mid as a lens through which to examine debates about the environment, sustainability, and development in Mauritius. mid was supposed to encompass the environment, employment, education, and equity; yet its primary focus was on energy efficiency. This chapter has contrasted this narrow focus of Mauritian government actors with two other broad categories of citizen: firstly, environmentalists who argue that mid ought to have been able to also incorporate preservation of biodiversity and mitigation of climate change; and, secondly, marginalised urban citizens, many of whom came to see mid in particular—and, consequently, the concept of sustainable development in general—in terms of socio-economic development rather than (also) in terms of environmental sustainability. I would suggest that mid could had been more effective if environmental sustainability had been foregrounded. Furthermore, mid would have been seen as more inclusive if economic development had been more transparently and equitably distributed among the population as a whole rather than being seen as aimed at rewarding big businesses that support the governing parties.
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