The virus that is democratizing

Eight weeks have passed since the detection of the first case of covid-19 causing novel coronavirus in Bangladesh. While the incidence of this crisis was gradual when it started – a few telltale signs to pick up, like a strange fever in unknown Wuhan, then a spread of cases to Italy, Iran and then a jump to Canada, also a distant cruise ship quarantined in one of the Asian seas – now the reality seems sudden and stupefying, with a full-fledged pandemic in our very lifetime. It’s our behavioural inertia that helped us to maintain calm initially, but after that it felt as though we went from carefree lives to being intensely monitored overnight – facing repeated uncertainty, having to change our patterns of movement, curtails plans, limit our associations and claustrophobically, embrace a new normal for an unknown disease.

The mechanics of our everyday lives have changed so much and in such a short span of time that all impositions feel drastic … and shocking. This virus made us confine ourselves in our houses and apartments for those that are lucky enough to have them. We are experiencing times like we would in any crisis – a war or calamity. We have been called upon to act like we are in wartime (at least in the USA) and in the absence of a real visible threat, it was hard to train ourselves to comply. We learnt that the only way known to us to manage this pandemic and to ‘flatten the curve’ – more effectively than throwing an infinite amount of health sector resources at it – would to address it through population resources, i.e. through engaging the population in behaviour change. To beat this coronavirus, we would need to stay at home, to do less, to heed public directives more, and finally the hardest – to trust those at the helm even though they are as inexperienced as the rest of us fools.

I’m having trouble with these demographic requirements, but am struggling to do my bit. The trouble is that I may have a bit of a problem-solver DNA in my genes, and coupled with having worked in humanitarian and post-conflict settings, I am having a major itch to actively engage in crisis response. And in that same stroke, I am trying to calm that adrenaline-driven instinct and divert my energies towards what is an infinitely tougher ask for me – to be still, to follow orders and to remain in place.

This staying challenge, deserves some effort.

But I have already resolved to make a certain climate-related effort. This year, inspired by a certain Joshua Spodek and of course the environmental crusader brigades of Greta (Tintin Eleonora Ernman) Thunberg, Jamie Margolinand others, I have been blessed to be redirected towards greater introspection about my own actions in achieving climate justice, and I am using this (lock-)downtime to reflect on how many ways one can work towards it. It is already evident that we are being more protective of the environment as we stay in isolation, quarantine, lock-down or whichever state your authorities have placed you in. Moreover you may all already know the following ideas emanating from my climate-responsibility musings, but do hold on a minute.

-       As Dhaka’s AQI improves, I now know that I have had a direct part to play in it. We are using less transportation resources, which means burning less fossil fuel, both for travelling and for sitting in traffic jams, the latter being many measures higher than the former in Dhaka city. And when this is all over, we can promise ourselves to go to work by bike or on foot, or adapt our working modality (WFH) in consultation with our employers to keep things this way ever after. Many countries are doing it and it is the future;

-       In confinement, we are consuming less, using less, and wearing less. This is not just the casual outfits that we wear for online work meetings with pajama bottoms hidden underneath, but staying home means that we are changing clothes less, which means half the laundry per day per person, and less use of soap, water, electricity or Bua time depending on your machine, and less ‘wear’ on clothes which ultimately less buying. Laundering and ironing clothes lead to individual consumption of a very high level – even more so on steam irons that we can now happily do without. Each outfit may ‘only’ consume Tk 2 worth of electricity to iron, but our overarching habit causes a cumulation of consumption of thousands of kilowatts daily. This is even more concerning when only 3% of our electricity in Bangladesh is from renewable sources. This means that that crisp white ironed shirt came at a cost of about one glass-full of charcoal and corresponding about of carbon dioxide and monoxide released into the environment. After this crisis, expect to see me much more in crumpled clothing, that may or may not be a direct result of me running late;

-       These days, though we may be buying up all the toilet paper on the face of the planet, we of course are not pooping more than our regular daily average so I would imagine that toilet paper consumption has remained more or less constant. But one thing the crisis made us do is to forego the nice white TPs which were all gone before we got there, and forced us to buy the ugly pink one. But the ugly pink one is what is saving the planet because it is not using bleach! Yes, once the paper pulp is made, premium white toilet paper requires bleach whereas the ugly pink requires a bit of dye to be thrown in. While the dye effluent is problematic for our environment, bleaching is worse because the chlorine-based bleach has a by-product (dioxin) that is one of the most toxic human-released chemicals. Amazing isn’t it, how we are abusing our planet and its waterways, with every bleached bum-wipe? Let us make a pact to stay away from those Bashundhara white toilet papers – and Bashundhara products in general if you care even an iota about land rights and anti-corruption – and instead embrace those uglier bum wipes, if you must wipe at all;

-       We are using less rooms, and therefore turning on less lights, fans and less of them monstrous, power-guzzling air-conditioners! These air-conditioners even if they are your deshi Jamuna or Walton products that supposedly hardly even need electricity and run on … almost bhaat er maar … are some of our biggest environmental enemies, so whatever may be the reason for their use – social mobility and keeping up with the Jashims, or maybe this stifling humidity, we each can definitely reduce our use of environment control equipment. This appears to have been refreshingly practiced during this lock-down … families inhabiting the same room, watching the same tv, using the same fans (not a/cs hopefully). After all, Dhaka city is warmer than what it was in my childhood memory, because of the exorbitant use of lights, fans and air-conditioning and we can make a tangible difference with every degree that we lower our a/c temperature by. On a different note, drastic temperature differences are is not beneficial for our system as we go in and out of different rooms, buildings and cars, so to keep the variation minimal and allowing our bodies to adjust naturally, let us pledge to stay as close to the ambient temperature that we can afford to. As a start, we can each educate ourselves about our individual energy usage – it’ll be easy to calculate if we spend this entire month at home. Last month, I used 140 kW, out of which 135 kW is non-renewable.

-       We are now practicing exceptional hygiene to the extent that we can afford. Lots of handwashing and wiping down of essential use items is great, but it is imperative to turn *off* the tap for those 20 seconds while we are soaping our hands. Also, to disinfect our clothing, we now have to use the highest energy setting on the washing machine, which is 60⁰C to kill the virus, but the upside of that is that using a washing machine actually conserves water and uses less water than manual handwash would need. But on the flipside, we are using electricity. Well, once this crisis is over, we can move back to unheated wash, and wash as many things together in one load, as is possible. Washing clothing and reusing carefully handled handkerchiefs are the more sustainable approach to the coronavirus era than throwing away hundreds of tissues or using tens of Dettol wipes that are not biodegradable. Whatever we do, we must remember that there is a consequence and just because we can afford to buy the tissue doesn’t mean that our planet can afford it – we take from somewhere else to fill our need here.

-       The novel coronavirus is the ‘great democratizer’, an equalizer, because living in quarantine is simplifying our lives and is bringing different classes of people closer to each other in our habits, actions and most  consumption. We all need those same few things – rice, daal, oil, sugar, vegetables, paracetamols and orsaline (oral rehydration), and maybe some internet on the side. It is heartening to remind ourselves how little we are able to do with, once pushed to the edge. Boredom is a luxury that is appropriately dealt with by a healthy dose of alertness, consciousness, or shortage, not that I am wishing for it ... okay perhaps, maybe a little. 

         We can practice and return to the art of slow living. Yes, that is actually a concept, though our grandmothers would laugh at it – slowing down everything we are doing, by consciously avoiding and if possible, rejecting everything that is contrarily ‘fast’ – usually dressed up in the claim of ‘convenient’ – like fast fashion, fast food, fast travel, and even fast communication. While fast fashion, fast food and fast travel impact our planet by increasing our energy use footprint, fast communication affects our mental health; this lock-down has given me time to switch from texts and photo-shares to actual calls with close ones which have to be practiced and cherished, and if possible reintroduced into our lives.

Fast fashion is a bit complex for us – though it is the artery that our RMG industry flows in, it deals a massive blow for the planet as it hyper-consumes raw-materials like land, water, electricity and god-only-knows-what-else. Don’t think you are contributing to fair wages or equity when you buy at high-prices at Astorion. Those same low wages to produce in large quantities for (low-cost) fast fashion for a distant market, were paid. This industry needs reform and I don’t have an answer yet so I will leave fashion options for another day.

During this government proclaimed ‘holiday’, I am practicing slow eating in two ways – by buying fresh produce and deliberately staying away from processed and packaged goods, which includes everything from frozen paratas, samosas, cutlets, burger patties, fries, canned mushrooms, beans, tomato pastes, to juices, pasta sauces, salsas, tahinis, nuts, cereals and factory made jams and sauces – and then by making fresh meals more often that eating refrigerated. The food is much simpler no doubt, but taking time to prepare it, and spending time with household members in the kitchen is both a sustainable life-skill, as well as a sustainable environmental option. Packaged food even if it is as minor as a Heinz ketchup or Tabasco sauce should be ideally swapped out for their local variety because they entail the industrialization of our nutrition (think of additives, antibiotics, and unhealthy processing) as well as the huge carbon footprint of the freight and distribution of these things. Do we really need a pasta sauce that is made in remote USA, stored for 20 months on shelves with preservatives, transported on ships using fossil fuel and emitting black smoke over the pristine oceans, or can we choose to make do with our own ‘slow’ ingredients and home-made skills? I think if we want, we can do the latter and stop the vicious cycle of processed food industry, especially those with local alternatives. I’m not saying that I’m always going to eat bhaat-daal-aloo bhorta-rui maach always but I will be trying to source ingredients locally and prepare fresh as much as possible so that I am not leaving behind a trail of choked sea-gulls, or displaced orangutans (please Google “Rang-Tan in my Bedroom” if you want a heart-wrenching lesson in industrial food farming). If any of us can grow our own food in our kitchen garden, special environment points for them!

-       While some of us quarantine in relative comfort, more of us are reeling from income loss as Bangladesh’s proportion of monthly wage earners is relatively less. Factories have become non-operational – but to provide fair wages, decent labour laws and robust insurance schemes for each employee, many of these factories may not even be operational; such is the state of our social security which may be a shared responsibility between the state and the employer. Instead of having exploitative industries and claiming that we’re providing livelihoods, then we would really look into how we can provide the basic rights of food, housing, healthcare, education for more people by *reducing the gaping and rising inequality* between our classes. That is what aspiring middle-income countries strive to do – leave no one behind … and so far behind that they do not even have an inkling as to how they need to adjust the system to change their lives. While the marginalized cannot find their voice or a stable footing, we have to use our voices and change our choices to tip the system in a way that works out to ensure a reasonable amount of things to the most number of people rather than the absolute best biriyani for some, and well you know how that goes – rice and daal for the rest. It may still be trendy to turn out in flashy glitter, but after this crisis I hope that it would be more respected to share the same sparkle as in the eyes of the rest of our brethren.

-       One thing that this crisis is doing is making us newly aware, conscious, and proactive. Each one of us, that has access to material – online or printed – is seeking it out and consuming it and this is a hopeful trend towards greater knowledge, equity and an educated mindset. Experience is a timeless teacher and as we live through these times of the novel coronavirus, we are getting the chance to stop and introspect on those actions and choices that have created unprecedented wealth in some quarters while impoverishing and denuding other communities, while injuring the planet. We should heed this wake-up call to heal this planet and I want us to help each other do it consciously, and together.

-       - x - 

#coronavirus

Sunday 22 March 2020, Banani

Slow food, slowly chopped