Contemporary society often worships at the altar of progress. It’s true that things are generally getting better – much better in some places, like Canada, than others, like sub-Sahara Africa.
This, despite the Nazi holocaust, the bombing of Hiroshima, mass starvation, global air pollution and ethnic cleansing.
Yet in his book A Short History of Progress, Ronald Wright warns that progress has destroyed civilizations.
One of Wright’s examples is ancient Sumer (today’s Iraq) in the fertile crescent fed by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Over several thousand years, marshes were drained, major irrigation projects established, land was held communally, food was grown in abundance and population expanded.
Read Also
Crop insurance’s ability to help producers has its limitations
Farmers enrolled in crop insurance can do just as well financially when they have a horrible crop or no crop at all, compared to when they have a below average crop
But the rich came to dominate the poor, irrigated land turned into massive salt pans, crop production dropped, the civilization died.
This reminds me of conversations with Don Rennie, soil scientist and former dean of the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Agriculture. He warned repeatedly about the continual degrading of prairie soils through farming practices. So did Canada’s Senate Agriculture Committee.
Wright also describes the problems of the Mayans in Central America. They experienced ecological problems by slashing and burning the jungle to make farmland. In addition, urban sprawl led to the paving of agricultural land, as had happened in Toronto, which covers some of Canada’s best farmland. The Mayan civilization collapsed.
In Saskatoon, where I live, urban sprawl is in full swing. Bigger and bigger “boxes” are rising on the city’s edges, while large blocks of land in the downtown sit empty. It is a style of development that has been rejected by most major North American cities. But those in Saskatoon who question the sustainability of this “progress” are dismissed as “anti-development” by the voices of boosterism.
Now, people are talking of drought-proofing Saskatchewan in the face of global warming. The proposal calls for vast irrigation projects.
It’s an interesting theory but shrinking glaciers and decreased snowfall in the Rocky Mountains will slowly diminish water flows in our rivers.
Irrigation leads to problems with salty, unproductive soil. Some soil types are not suitable for irrigation.
Existing irrigation projects have not proven to be entirely cost efficient. Building dams to create reservoirs causes problems for the surrounding ecology.
None of those issues is significantly addressed in the executive summary of the “progress” proposal called A Fifty Year Water Development Plan for Saskatchewan. Moreover, the proposed commodification of water rights, which can be bought and sold, will be problematic.
Droughts will still happen and people will be expected to buck the worldwide trend by moving from city to country.
I believe effective, sustainable resource management is essential. But we need answers to many significant questions about this proposal.
This major reorganization of Saskatchewan’s economy and society could have significant, though expensive, benefits but is it truly sustainable? Could today’s progress become next century’s disaster?
We need not be petrified by Ronald Wright’s warnings but we need to consider them carefully.
Rob Brown is a former agricultural writer and broadcaster now doing studies in ethics. He can be reached at rbcomm@sasktel.net.
