Audacity, Biology, Sustainability, and Surfing

Last time here I was talking about the roles that surfers have played or might play in the trajectory of human activity on the planet. Big ideas, I know. Sometimes I wonder why I should have the audacity to toss my hat into this particular ring.

But then I see this person... looking back at me.

Surfers are not a series of lone wolves, peppering our coastal zones. They are a collective body that gathers breadth and depth as culture passes to the children, the spouses, the neighbor's latchkey kid, all of those who are touched by the -philia that drives one to a life of surfing.

Surfers, being human, are subject to the same impulses that lead any of us to be greedy, petty, blind, self-centered, etc. At worst, surfers are racist, sexist, elitist, heterocentric, neocolonialist. At best, however, surfers are environmentalists, humanitarians, pro-social entrepreneurs, and, let’s not forget, fathers, daughters, mothers, sons, aunts, uncles, and cousins who are out there on that leading edge, with something very positive to contribute. That something is a way of relating to the natural world where nature, rather than being regarded as a pleasant backdrop, becomes integral to the “field of perception." The passing to kin of this alternate relationship with the ocean is the reason that I believe surfers are already are saving the world. 

So in thinking about our kin, let’s turn attention to the topic of that next elephant.

Population. It’s out of control. This one is, I think, that is much harder to grasp. Because it goes against the biological, even spiritual, underpinnings of our beings. If you are like me, numbers in the billions are too abstract to fathom. The documentary How Many People Can Live On Planet Earth? (a part of the "Horizon" 2009/10 series from the BBC) illustrates the current population trajectory with sobering clarity.

From the film: "Over the last ten thousand years, in general, there's been very little change. It's a very boring picture. But from about the year 1800 onwards, you have a major increase, a very large increase, from about 1 billion to up to 7 billion today." -Professor Tim Dyson of the London School of Economics.

Something has to change. But what? And how? This question of population goes into the heart, the place where the urge to ride waves is born. It is the same place that drives us to reproduce and create life. And for those readers who were at the symposium, there’s a reason you “give your girlfriend full dick—not half dick—full dick." It’s called biology.

The surf world has begun to ask and even act on what its role might be in the global population crisis. In surf-tourism hot-spots, like the Mentawai and Nias Islands, Dr. Dave Jenkins of SurfAid is making strides to address population issues by promoting basic sanitation and clean water measures, introducing simple medical interventions that reduce infant mortality, and even promoting breastfeeding, which has been shown to reduce family size. Wow, surfers teaching women how to breastfeed… warms the heart, doesn’t it? This is welcome and ironic progress from the days when missionaries first convinced Hawaiian women to cover up.

Still, collectively, we do have a long way to go. In service of that journey, I believe that appearances are important. In recently screened Behind the Palms, Jenkins explained the work of his organization SurfAid almost entirely in his own words rather than featuring the words of locals telling the story of how their local challenges have been addressed by SurfAid programs. I, personally, became more sensitive to the efficacy of the latter technique through watching films like A Generation of Hope: Orphans of the Zimbabwe AIDS Crisis and Sudden Shock by filmmaker, surfer, and sea captain David Ryan. When people are filmed describing, in their own words, their experiences of a given situation or the benefits to them of a given program, this does two things. First, it allows those administering the program moments to listen and opportunities to reflect on this question: ”Is my program making a difference in a way that is meaningful to the people I intend to aid?” Second, it removes the unsightly appearance (whether deserved or not) of neocolonialism.

Of course, over-population is just one side of the coin that is pushing our global sustainability closer to the brink. Other side, next post.

Jaws

At last month’s surf research symposium, writer Steve Barilotti described surfers as “innovative” and “adaptable.” These are just a couple of the ethics I alluded to in my last post. When Polynesian surfing came to California, “innovative and adaptable” combined with “oceanic literacy” and created a new ethos, an ethos that continues today, where surfers are not riding on the underbelly of cultural hegemony; surfing quite certainly is not a reaction to society. Where it comes to societal placement, surfers are out in front, just like they are out in front of the waves they ride. And, I believe this is true of those making strides for a sustainable surf tourism, as well.

But here’s the rub. There were a few elephants in the room that day. I think I’ll just take them one at a time here. The first is best unveiled by this statement, made by one member of the non-profit CEOs panel, in answer to the question of what had motivated him to start his non-profit? “We were surfing in this village where all they had was this subsistence fishery, and we thought, ‘What can we do about that?’”

Mine seemed to be the only jaw in the room to hit the floor.

Here we were, in the middle of the day, in a massive, air-conditioned, artificially lit university building, gathered to discuss sustainability, each with our individual plastic water bottles--who knows what our collective “footprint” was for those five hours alone--and one premise around which much of the discourse focused was this: it is such a shame that the locals could actually subsist in their environment that someone ought to create a non-profit devoted to changing that. Hmmmm.

To be fair, what people do, what people hope to do, and especially, who they are, is rarely contained by one or two statements. Still, that was his answer. To me, that answer betrayed a cultural-centrity that, I believe, has us (Westerners) headed down our own unsustainable path. Elephant number one. We (in the United States) haven’t wrapped our collective heads around our abiding expectation that our diligent, human economic activity will rightfully lead to economic growth, if only properly carried out. Therefore we haven’t wrapped our heads around the true meaning of sustainability. If we look to our most-recent selves as the model, we are in trouble. We need to begin to see the relationship between subsistence and sustainability, where subsistence isn’t a dirty word.

When, in our youth, my brother and I traveled to Punta Eugenia at the tip of the Vizcaino, we marveled at the finely tuned abalone and lobster co-op in which the local, natural resources were carefully stewarded by the local community—not to mention the desalinization plant locally built and operated that allowed the village a great deal of political autonomy. Walking the surrounding reefs of their town was like stepping back into SoCal yesteryear. Abalones peeked from every crevice, and species of fish, like sheephead and white sea bass, indigenous but rare on the Alta California coast, were swimming to and fro, right in our sight. My brother turned to me, “This must be the California that Al (Nelson) and Carl (Ekstrom) used to talk about.”

Perhaps I wasn't the only one who noticed this particular elephant in the room. Perhaps I wasn't the only one to politely pick my jaw up off the floor either. Serge Dedina of WildCoast, in working closely with fishing communities in Baja, has apparently gleaned this simple insight, and he shared it during his symposium presentation: “We have a lot to learn from them.” This is an idea that I think is worth repeating. I hope to revisit it in coming posts.