Populations of the poor and uneducated will be pushed to the high ground as the sea levels rise.  There the already denuded and desertified lands will face increased pressure.   In the less prepared countries where governments are not equipped to deal with the influx, law and order will soon collapse and marauding gangs will soon rise and become the law of the land.  Just as the Difaqane wars displaced the peoples of southern Africa, so will we have waves of displaced people escaping the gangs.   Murder and starvation will prevail.  I have a vision of a small nomadic family fighting its way through a sandstorm, dragging their prize possession, a goat.  Out of the miasma comes a group on horseback (or in a vehicle, if there’s any fuel to be obtained).  They are strong and consist of men.  They take the goat and kill the father and son for good measure.  They rape the women and move on.  Sound familiar?  Could be Zimbabwe or it could be Darfur right now.  Most people in Africa know what desperation feels like.  It is a visceral rather than cerebral knowledge, born out of immediate and personal experience.

The strong countries will put up barricades and run police states to combat the rising tide of environmental refugees.   Civil liberties will fall away and the average person in these so-called civilized countries will soon be living as people in Johannesburg already do, with security systems that diminish the enjoyment of every day life.

It doesn’t require much of an imagination.  All this is already happening and the likelihood that the situation will deteriorate further, before it improves, is substantive.

Ignoring the problem is a cop-out.  Believing that you’re so mighty you’ll be one of the winners is fantasy.  There will be no winners.  There will only be losers.  (The significance of 9/11!)

Personally I can’t think of anything more dull and unhealthy than a world that is centered purely around human beings – just as cultural diversity is stimulating, so too is biological and spiritual diversity.  Be that as it may, even for those people who don’t think there’s any merit in preserving biodiversity, there is the incontrovertible truth that the resources available cannot match the demand.

But what keeps me awake at night, and it truly does, is that it seems that everyone pussyfoots around the root cause of all this:  if all humans are to enjoy a comfortable, Western lifestyle ( and it seems that everyone aspires to this) then there are way too many people on this planet to support that luxury.  Never mind the projections of population growth.

So what can be done?  Try and convince all the developing nations that material comfort and good health are not really what they want?  Or try and reduce the breeding numbers?  It’s strange, but even educated people have a mental block about the latter.  When you mention that the numbers need to be reduced they immediately jump to the conclusion that some kind of die off is what you’re suggesting.  On the contrary, the educated world has had the means to prevent pregnancies for some decades.  Yes, there are concerns about aging populations having to be supported by a declining working population, but there is no problem-free solution to the pickle we’re in.

A two pronged approach would probably do the trick, with a leg up from education.  Reducing our consumption and reducing the number of children we have is an individual’s choice.   We see in international politics the theme of the South not prepared to toe the line because the North isn’t prepared to lead by example.  So it will take ordinary people, people like you and me, the grass roots if you like, to figure this out on an individual level and do what we think is right to avoid having future generations cursing us for our selfishness and short-sightedness.

Having been born and raised in Africa I often think about the reverence that Africans hold for the ancestors.  What if we get to a point that future generations curse us, the ancestors, for what we’ve left as a legacy?  It is time for us all to take responsibility for what we leave behind.

What the world really needs is a new ethos, a new culture, a new spirituality.  One that celebrates diversity and takes responsibility for the power, we as a species, possess.   I believe we should be looking for it in the arts, the space where creative energies flourish.   But as there is a definite correlation between power and ostentation, we should be looking for it on the fringes.  Did you know that the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, South Africa is second only to Edinburgh for its programme diversity?

One of Freud’s friends, Carl Jung, has had an even greater impact of the life of the modern.  The Swiss psychologist took the idea of the unconscious mind further and said that the libido (in the true sense of the word i.e. life force) lived therein.  He believed that if modern man was to retrieve his sense of meaning it was his task to bring aspects of the unconscious to light, as best as he was able. 

In his practical work with patients, and during his own personal journey into the unconscious, Jung observed that there were two facets of the unconscious mind.  One was the personal, where all the unconscious psychological material of the individual was stored.  This he called the unconscious.  The other was a much greater underground fount of material that is common to all humanity, the collective unconscious.  The constellations of commonalities that he discovered in the collective unconscious he called archetypes.  By exploring the worlds of dreams, art, mythology, world religion and philosophy he could identify many of the archetypes.  He also spent much time studying Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy, astrology, sociology, as well as literature and the arts.

By dint of his incredibly powerful intellect and personal courage (a journey into the unconscious is not for the faint-hearted) Jung determined that the malaise affecting modern man – psychoses, neuroses and addictions have spread  like a fungus on old bread– could be cured by the process he called Individuation.  This process is a journey of transformation and involves the bringing-to- consciousness of psychic material in the personal and collective unconscious.  Similar to the world’s major religions, the process is a journey which encounters the self and the Divine.   He believed that our main task is to discover and fulfill our deep innate potential, as individuals.

Jung believed neither in the good nor evil of the psyche.  Like Mother Nature it is capable of both great gentleness and violence.   It nurtures and it destroys.

Many Jungians understand that a wilderness experience can foster an encounter with the unconscious.  I can personally vouch for the transformative effects of the wilderness and it is this aspect that the Wilderness Leadership School seeks to promote.  Many people, including Al Gore, have learned to appreciate the wilderness from this esoteric standpoint. 

Jung was way ahead of his time and his contribution may only be fully appreciated by future generations.   In the meantime my biggest fear is that the human race will have destroyed the wilderness before it realizes how much it needs it – and then it will be too late. 

The CKGR was proclaimed in 1961 as a game reserve and “… the protection it offered to the Bushmen was written into the Constitution with the agreement of Botswana’s first democratic government.” This was at a time when the Bushmen were still leading their hunter/gatherer way of life and hunting with bows and arrows.

As Botswana progressed (it is one of Africa’s political and economic success stories) the government foresaw the inevitable social cataclysm when the 20th Century would meet the Stone Age. The Bushmen were ill-equipped to deal with what was to come. In order to ease this passage the government introduced the Remote Area Dwellers Programme (RADP) in the 1980s. Bushmen were allowed to hunt and gather certain species for resale in the towns. Government officers were located in several settlements in the CKGR to assist the Bushmen with transport and negotiating the best deals in town. Water was even trucked into these settlements by the government to encourage people to settle.

The first time I went to the CKGR was in 1987. We crossed the reserve diagonally from the south-east to the north-west. In the southern portion we followed diamond prospectors’ gridlines, so there is no doubt in my mind that the necessary research has been done. However, in Botswana (as in most African countries) ownership of mineral wealth falls to the State, as per the country’s constitution. So if viable mineral wealth has been discovered in the CKGR then constitutionally the State has a right to it, and it is doubtful that any government would allow a game reserve and the lifestyle of a few to stand in the way of benefiting the majority. Unlike other African countries where mineral wealth is exploited by international corporations with the collusion of local elites, the major portion of profit from Botswana’s diamond wealth goes back to the government. Debswana, the 50/50 partnership between De Beers and the Botswana Government, pays its taxes on profit in … Botswana. So the winning partner is the government. (The model is so successful and beneficial to the country that it is set up as an example to other African countries.) In Botswana’s solid democracy diamonds have financed development since independence. So the myth that the Bushmen removal from the CKGR is about diamonds just doesn’t ring true.

All the while inexorable change knocked at the CKGRs door.

Since the RADP terminated in the early 1990s, the Bushmen have been gradually encouraged to move out of the CKGR with the enticement of free primary schooling, free health-care and permanent water. As expected, there were some, especially the older ones, who couldn’t cope with this change. “… alcoholism, boredom and depression …” are disorders that afflict many indigenous people overwhelmed by a less sympathetic culture.

I don’t mean to sound unsympathetic to the Bushmen. On the contrary, as a First People, I feel they’ve had a rotten deal at the hands of many colonizers, of all ethic origins. To paraphrase Laurens van der Post, the Bushmen provide a mirror in which both Black and White people can reflect on the shadow side of their natures.

So here we sit in 2007 where a large segment of the Bushmen population has partially adapted to 21st Century life. They own rifles and guns and they hunt from vehicles. They are pastoralists with herds of goats. They wear Western-style clothing and they are accustomed to permanent water.

You can see the dilemma the Government of Botswana sits with. “Small” herds of goats become large herds of goats if they have water and forage. Goats are notorious for overgrazing and debilitating an ecosystem, if left unchecked. Taking a quick look at areas outside of the CKGR in Botswana, where permanent water is provided, will confirm this.

Also to expect hunters, who own rifles, to resort to using bows and arrows is naïve. Unrestricted hunting with rifles in a game reserve will soon decimate wildlife numbers.

The CKGR is opening up to non-consumptive photographic tourism with job creation being a government objective. Tourism is Botswana’s third economic pillar (diamonds and beef being the other two) and diversification makes sound managerial sense.

So in order to preserve the integrity of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, the government is trying to “… persuade the Bushmen not to return to the CKGR.”

The big mistake came in the forced removals carried out in 2002 and it is obvious from the judgment of the Botswana High Court in 2006 that the letter of the law was not followed. And while law abiding countries in Africa should be commended, this does not detract from the predicament the government now finds itself in. Just when the world is coming to realize the threat the environment is under and that continued human consumption cannot continue on the scale it has, we have a First People clamoring for their share of the spoils.

So which is paramount: human or environmental rights? As with most important issues, it’s not that simple. Perhaps the question should be reframed. Is Man dependent upon Mother Earth or is Creation somehow dependent on Mankind? And how should Man adjust to changing conditions to ensure his own long term survival as a species?

These are the questions of our Time.

The irony of all this is that it’s happening to a people who were, in their traditional spirit, utterly comfortable with the concept of a symbiotic relationship with the Earth.