Analysis of sustainability
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Level of analysis
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Typical characteristics of sustainability (cumulative)
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Typical determinants of sustainability
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Field/production unit
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Productive crops & animals; Conservation of soil & water; low levels of crop pests & animal diseases
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Soil & water management; biological control of pests; use of organic manure; fertilizers; crop varieties & animal breeds
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Farm
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Awareness by farmers; economic & social needs satisfied; viable production systems
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Access to knowledge, external inputs and markets
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Country
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Public awareness; sound development of agro-ecological potential; conservation of resources
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Policies for agricultural development; population pressure; agricultural education, research & extension
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Region/continent/world
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Quality of the natural environment; human welfare & equity mechanisms; international agricultural research & development
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Control of pollution; terms of trade; distribution
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Preservation of individual life is only possible for limited periods (limited sustainability)
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Individual species, ecosystems and habitats can be sustained as they involve reproductive and other essential processes - without which they would cease to exist
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However, many of these entities change and evolve as a result of such processes therefore:
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Sustainable processes does not necessarily lead to sustainable entities (i.e. precisely as they were originally)
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Most biological systems have physical components, therefore there is considerable overlap between the use of biological and physical resources
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Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone provided by Celtel Tanzania
Population growth is essential to the attainment of capitalist growth. Ask Spain and Italy who are now paying to have babies. What has continued to be the bane of our development is not just population exploision, rather it is inane corruption, worshipped, and adorned with the sagacious toga of political filiation and clique kinship that allows for the robustly enlarged and bulging primodial patrimonial system of patronage. Nigeria's population as many of the new mobile phone companies will attest, is necessary for economic and social vibrancy.
The problem with Nigeria, more than this kind of assuaged and massaging of the "Planned Parenthood" pun relative to Africa, is one of the absymal failure of leadership. Dr. Ola now that the population is a worrisome phenomenon in Nigeria, are you ready to use your scapel to mutilate anyone of those new entrants that come your way? Are you encouraging infaticide too as a reasonable solution?
Yes, manageable population control through social education is a desirable goal. But talking as if you already have a catepillar ready to bulldoze some elements of that population is more threatening than Hitler and Mengeles connieved Eugenics bio-scheme.
I am afraid that out of the many real and confronting artifiicial problems of Nigeria, created by rogues of power and rodents in power that population is the new indexical lexis defining Nigerian problems. I am afraid while you maybe somewhat right on this, you proposition is just ink-spitting that may be hitting on the wrong nerves.
More cogently, we must move for a conscientious leadership; knowledgeable and courageous to do the right thing. Talking about Nigeria there are still swath of uninhabited lands in many parts of the country that needs human beings to inhabit and develop. True, few years ago, especially in about eight states in the southern part of Nigeria are noted to be running out of inhabitable land, and thus putting pressures on neighboring states.
Not a problem actually, but equally a problem when one considers that the land issue here was not because of human land use but mainly due to the unrestrained forces of nature such as gully erosions, which is in fact controllable, where there is a reasoning and effective government, which understands the acute impact of such developments on human ecology, and in fact the state's own survival.
But in an atmosphere where most states rely on Federal fiscal largesse coming from the center, rather than on taxation, what difference does massive population shift entails. Nothing. Hence, we can see that the failure of policy and lack of implementation of such things like taxation, among other variables, with a skewed overreliance on free Federal money (soft and sweeter than banana), the states executives are not worried about raising internal revenue.
If this stuff where to be in place, we would equally see a reduction in ethnic, political, and assumed religious strives. Remember, how the late Sardauna Ahmadu Bello had to rely on southern civil servants to develop the northern civil service in the immediate pre and post-independence years? Under such terms there were fewer riots against Igbos or Yorubas in the north.
The issue is not immediately about population. In states with minimal populations how far have they developed with the huge Federal Government funds at their disposal. Rather, many chief executive of states are busy outwitting one another in who is driving the most efficient armoured car, and stealing Nigeria's money into their pockets and bank accounts where they may never really be able to benefit fully. The intellection and visionless redoundancy of our political and ruling class(es) constitutes the most immediate veritable problem against Nigeria's development. We need also on the long term to think about population control- but how?
The Babangida era introduced a one-man-one woman-two/three children policy in the 1990s but it was kicked against. Validly, such policy is counterproductive in Sharia states where a man can marry as many as four women, and by this fact (ipso facto) we can imagine the possible number of children, all conditions holding constant. Let say each of the four wives have four children, that amounts to sixteen children. Then, we also think that this four wives are the current ones, excluding those divorced but who have one or two children, we are almost talking about a conservative twenty children for one household.
Thus, given this scenario, how successful is your population control project likely to be successful where these religious and cultural factors are still overwhelmingly powerful constraints? Are you expecting a radical overnight change in cultural expectations and attitudes? What is the use of making policies that are bound to be useless from the start- like Obasanjo's no-siren blowing policy? Overall, the question of implementation continues to be a problem. Therefore, rhetoric alone does not carry weight if there is no backing action toward ensuring succesful execution and implementation of policies. I can see far ahead the hitch and the hiccups. Good luck!!!
--- On Thu, 1/1/09, olaka...@aol.com <olaka...@aol.com> wrote: |
From: olaka...@aol.com <olaka...@aol.com> |
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Population growth is essential to the attainment of capitalist growth. Ask Spain and Italy who are now paying to have babies. What has continued to be the bane of our development is not just population exploision, rather it is inane corruption, worshipped, and adorned with the sagacious toga of political filiation and clique kinship that allows for the robustly enlarged and bulging primodial patrimonial system of patronage. Nigeria's population as many of the new mobile phone companies will attest, is necessary for economic and social vibrancy.
The problem with Nigeria, more than this kind of assuaged and massaging of the "Planned Parenthood" pun relative to Africa, is one of the absymal failure of leadership. Dr. Ola now that the population is a worrisome phenomenon in Nigeria, are you ready to use your scapel to mutilate anyone of those new entrants that come your way? Are you encouraging infaticide too as a reasonable solution?
Yes, manageable population control through social education is a desirable goal. But talking as if you already have a catepillar ready to bulldoze some elements of that population is more threatening than Hitler and Mengeles connieved Eugenics bio-scheme.
I am afraid that out of the many real and confronting artifiicial problems of Nigeria, created by rogues of power and rodents in power that population is the new indexical lexis defining Nigerian problems. I am afraid while you maybe somewhat right on this, you proposition is just ink-spitting that may be hitting on the wrong nerves.
More cogently, we must move for a conscientious leadership; knowledgeable and courageous to do the right thing. Talking about Nigeria there are still swath of uninhabited lands in many parts of the country that needs human beings to inhabit and develop. True, few years ago, especially in about eight states in the southern part of Nigeria are noted to be running out of inhabitable land, and thus putting pressures on neighboring states.
Not a problem actually, but equally a problem when one considers that the land issue here was not because of human land use but mainly due to the unrestrained forces of nature such as gully erosions, which is in fact controllable, where there is a reasoning and effective government, which understands the acute impact of such developments on human ecology, and in fact the state's own survival.
But in an atmosphere where most states rely on Federal fiscal largesse coming from the center, rather than on taxation, what difference does massive population shift entails. Nothing. Hence, we can see that the failure of policy and lack of implementation of such things like taxation, among other variables, with a skewed overreliance on free Federal money (soft and sweeter than banana), the states executives are not worried about raising internal revenue.
If this stuff where to be in place, we would equally see a reduction in ethnic, political, and assumed religious strives. Remember, how the late Sardauna Ahmadu Bello had to rely on southern civil servants to develop the northern civil service in the immediate pre and post-independence years? Under such terms there were fewer riots against Igbos or Yorubas in the north.
The issue is not immediately about population. In states with minimal populations how far have they developed with the huge Federal Government funds at their disposal. Rather, many chief executive of states are busy outwitting one another in who is driving the most efficient armoured car, and stealing Nigeria's money into their pockets and bank accounts where they may never really be able to benefit fully. The intellection and visionless redoundancy of our political and ruling class(es) constitutes the most immediate veritable problem against Nigeria's development. We need also on the long term to think about population control- but how?
The Babangida era introduced a one-man-one woman-two/three children policy in the 1990s but it was kicked against. Validly, such policy is counterproductive in Sharia states where a man can marry as many as four women, and by this fact (ipso facto) we can imagine the possible number of children, all conditions holding constant. Let say each of the four wives have four children, that amounts to sixteen children. Then, we also think that this four wives are the current ones, excluding those divorced but who have one or two children, we are almost talking about a conservative twenty children for one household.
Thus, given this scenario, how successful is your population control project likely to be successful where these religious and cultural factors are still overwhelmingly powerful constraints? Are you expecting a radical overnight change in cultural expectations and attitudes? What is the use of making policies that are bound to be useless from the start- like Obasanjo's no-siren blowing policy? Overall, the question of implementation continues to be a problem. Therefore, rhetoric alone does not carry weight if there is no backing action toward ensuring succesful execution and implementation of policies. I can see far ahead the hitch and the hiccups. Good luck!!!
--- On Thu, 1/1/09, olaka...@aol.com <olaka...@aol.com> wrote: |
From: olaka...@aol.com <olaka...@aol.com> |
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Kenneth W. Harrow
Professor of English
Michigan State University
har...@msu.edu
517 353-7243
fax 353 3755
Then, why wait. Mutilate yourself. Kill yourself to make room for reduced consumption. You and me, by our existence are the burden. So why must we continue to create burdens. There can be no talk about population control without ethics. The ethical burden of the west, and the overall assault of the west on other nonwestern frontiers privileging a denigrating and destructive ethos must be understood within its limits as the problem. Other societies outliers to these problems, even though somewhat integrated into its schemes and logic, must not become slaves to its totalizing and essentializing non-rhythmic realities that desecrates life.
The logic of overconsumerism contrasts with the realities of poverty in societies, where the likes of Dr. Ola Kassim is intrusively waging a campaign for its radical demolition. The least of Nigeria's problem today is not about its population. America has a large population over $300m and still continues to sipphon from other national spaces to accrete itself, within the aggrandizing interests of capitalist helming and bulging forage.
It is true that while Planned Parenthood was being sold to African governments as the idea and ideal of the future in the past, that the same western interests were also enlarging its pro-life propellant, creating all avenues to ensure that they do not lose. Isn't it strategically noxious and disconcerting to municipal authorities in American cities when their experience population decline, especially within inner city residents internally deserting heading for nearby suburbs and exurbs? Why the outcry? Why are cities like Detroit, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Oakland, CA, and others worried when census records shows population decline? Just why? Population has no meaning and has no impact?
The west cannot continue to dictate human slaughtering around the world in the name of population control through its expansionist and imperial ideological schemes using indigenous agents to sell its failed policies to other spaces- using logics such as those adduced by Ola Kassim and his cohorts of suicidal idealists. Africans should know better and should not be fooled. Population growth is integral to a viable society. Population growth within the human evolutionary process without the greed of a few, so called civilized members of the human race consuming vociferously a humongrous percentage of the world resources, be able to cybernetically gear its appetite.
The consumerism and greed of the west more than anything else, together with a maddening orgy for global destruction through rushed and manufactured warfares constitutes the greatest danger to humanity and the ecosystem than any new human person that makes its entrance into the world as a purifying agent, unfortunately soon to be also consumed by consumerism, hate, ignorance, and bloated arrogance, glutted tapestries designed by the world of the Oyinbo- also marketed far afield to distant territories in creating zenith gloom.
If Spain and Italy are today paying enormous to have parents give birth to babies because of declining population and the fear that immigrants will "takeover" their civilization, then Africa and Africans must think twice before they ingest illogicalities dressed as objective or empirical sciences that are fast changing or reworked even within the spaces where they emanate.
Moreso, while essentializing is good, within the chess of intellection, the towering reality was that I did agreed with Ola Kassim to some extent that population control should be a long-term desirable goal, albeit using the African contextual situation, rather than some abstract and borrowed "ideoformat" toward looking at the issues of existence and population ethics in general.
As Africans we know our problems, and we know that even in spaces where population is not so much a problem development is not catching up, primarily because of malgovernance. This is thrust of my response. I reasoned that upon the construction of a viable and self-sustaining structures and systems through good and constructive governance that the very realities of economic and social contraints would create rationalizing agencies that would engender autonomous self-restraining and cybernetic modalities that would produce the kind of situation Ola Kassim propounds. It must not be construed more as advancing a monstrosity that could evolve into Eugenic routine schemes carried out beyond measured control in giving semblance to a totalizing and desecrating ethos intent at violating the African (broad painting in deed!) cosmic harmonic relationship that maps the connective tissues defining its the material
and spiritual and self-regulatory cosmological trajectories.
Without advocating an overt reversal to a purist mode (which even intended is absolutely impossibe), fundamentally, it is the ethical and relational dissonance between the traditional and contemporary (modern??) cosmogony propellant of the surging greed, violence, and massive desecration that is today's Nigeria- and in deed a vast portion of Africa that is beyond question the capital emphasis in handicapping progressive development.
In drastically advocating a noxious logic of desecrating life at the behest of development is a maddening and malaised concept, because life is not the subject of development, rather development is the subject of life. Development is an handmaid to a good life (at the pain of almost sounding philosophical here).
Life, therefore cannot be lumbered to make way for development. It would be a sick specter and one that makes decisions such as the cudging and congealed blood-vision from Iraq, richochette like a child's play, and more narsasistically Nazist. Arrowing life in order to have a less populated environment, an enjoyable one, amounts to genocidal stoking. Reasonable and responsible humans in good conscience would be so villanouisly vile to allow such logic to diffuse without restraints.
Ola Kassim and kenneth harrow (reflective of bell hooks) and mine constitutes a tangent given we do agree about the necessity of population control, while differing on its tactics and probably agency at some level, thus looking more like a mathematical abscissa point than an origin points, and in spite of all with linear lines that are not without outliers.
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----- Original Message -----From: Tony AgbaliSent: Friday, January 02, 2009 6:46 PM
My Headline Projections in Nigerian newspapers in the weeks to come.
CORRUPTION NO LONGER A PROBLEM - Canada-based expert
A highly-respected Canada-based Nigerian Physician, Dr Ola Kassim, has identified population explosion as Nigeria's numero uno problem, thus finally laying to rest the myth of corruption and government ineptitude that enemies of Nigeria have sold to the international community as the two major factors hindering the country's development.
WE ARE VINDICATED - Segun Adeniyi
In a related development, President Yar'Adua's spokesman, Mr Segun Adeniyi, has expressed the Federal government's gratitude to Dr Kassim for finally laying to rest the perception that President Yar'Adua's war on the anti-corruption war and his personal philosophy of governance as an extended siesta might have worsened the country's situation in the last two years. While urging Dr Kassim to do more of such patriotic studies, Mr Adeniyi reiterated the Federal Government's determination to import condoms from Togo, Niger Republic, and other neighbouring countries for accelerated population control. Our correspondents gathered that most state governors have ordered copies of Dr Kassim's study to be framed and displayed in all ministries and government buildings as a way of reminding the people that their overactive loins - not unbridled looting by the governors - are responsible for the nation's woes.
INDISCRIMINATE PROCREATION, BANE OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT - Expert.
The voracious sexual habit of Nigerians has been blamed for the nation's economic woes. A highly-placed Nigerian Physician in Canada revealed authoritatively that....
NIGERIANS BREED LIKE RABBITS - Expert
Dr Ola Kassim, a Nigerian expert based in Canada, has advised Nigerians to stop breeding like rabbits if we are to make any economic headway. Asked for his comments about this, Professor Bolaji Aluko, another Nigerian expert resident abroad, urged Nigerians to pray for population control.
Pius Pius Adesanmi, Ph.D. Associate Professor Director, Project on New African Literatures (PONAL) Department of English Carleton University Ottawa, Canada K1S 5B6 Tel: +1 613 520 2600 ext. 1175 www.projectponal.com --- On Fri, 2/1/09, Gemini <so...@multilinks.com> wrote: |