In the article SPACESHIP EARTH, I asked how to enable 5 billion people and another 50 billion animals and plants to live together, in peace and harmony, on a narrow spaceship? Understanding how this spaceship operates is vital for such harmonious living. If, instead of “loving one another”, the crew and passengers fight among themselves(refer, for example to the film United 93) then a crash becomes inevitable.Soon our Spaceship is simply going to run out of fuel while the altenative fuels(almost illimited solar energy and enrgy from nuclear fusion) are not yet in place, how do we continue our choosen life-styles?

Today come with me on a query to apply the same to a tiny part of the globe, Spaceship Mauritius.

First let us consider if Mauritius could support all this by 2010/2020:

• Provide freshwater, food, housing, transportation and all services, recreation and education to 1.5 million citizens;

• Plus 100,000 very demanding IRS residents and 1 to 2 million variously demanding tourists, both the latter categories using roughly 10x more water per capita than the average local;

• To which add 100s of foreign experts (while the Mauritian counterparts sit or are called to service elsewhere!) and scores of missions, all of which propose/ request/demand changes which often suits them and their agencies and not us;

• Hundreds of people in power, with thousands in the corridors of power, many of whom instead of ensuring the best possible governance for all (for which they were elected) are busy amassing big chunks of the national cake, thereby leaving the rest poorer;

• Millions of tons of still unsorted detritus yearly, drastically reduced forested lands, reduced water catchments areas, our key national wealth (excellent agricultural land) threatened by policies which will get them fast under concrete;

• Energy deficit: with petroleum in a few years at 200 dollars a barrel and then unavailable at any price to tiny Mauritius, which has no known oil reserves and is taking a very short-term view by closing sugar factories and removing sugarcane plantations when this resource could in fact ensure it energy independence in the future. So far, absence of rapid transit systems running on renewable energy and no major drive in sight to become energy self-sufficient;

• Bad planning in the construction arena, fast reducing the island into a vast “rich-men’s slum”;

• A weak currency, less and less utilisable to purchase essentials which we do not produce as well as the key raw material and machinery for our export processing industries;

• Pollution of soil, beaches and lagoons, loss of agricultural land, sea-level rise, which reduce the effective land size of the Republic from 2000 km2 to something like 1500 km2;

• External curses such as AIDS, drugs, punk life-styles, terrorism which, coupled with our own(locally grown drugs, violence generating out of poverty or out of policies of exclusion and discrimination) which may affect social life on these islands.

The short answer to the above is a flat “no”. The long answer lies in better governance.

Governance is the exercise of human, economic, political and administrative authority to manage a country’s affairs at all levels. Today governance signifies a “system of government that is democratic: one in which the state is not the controlling player; one in which the machinery of government is in the service of the people. “Governance” signifies a system which engages more than just agencies of the state in the processes of policy formulation and implementation. It implies concern for the capacities of civic society and the private sector to take on governance responsibilities”(United Nations).

The world has moved from the 1970s focus on government and the public service as motor of economic and social development. A successful move from government to governance requires a strong understanding of 3 pillars which are: economy, ecology and energy. A personal assessment is that, today, at government level, we are strong on the former (i.e. economy), poor on ecology and so far close to nil on ensuring our future long-term energy viability.

The Spaceship, the whole Planet or tiny Mauritius, has governance problems in that, more often than not, demagogy prevails over rationality in decision-making. Thus the way in which we take care of this small island republic today( as of the whole Earth) will determine what life will be like in 2010/2020.

<B>Dr Michael ATCHIA <I>[email protected]</I>