I was in Mae Sariang, Mae Hong Son Province, along the Thai-Burmese border the other day when I SAW them: sustainable roofing panels made from dry teak leaves and bamboo.
It was the 1st of May. After several months of a so-called "government burning ban", it was suddenly OK and 'legal' for rural and indigenous people to burn agricultural and forest waste again. The air was thick with both smoke and judgement.
Image Source: Chiang Rai Times
Judgement from indignant city people offended that their tourism related income and comfortable alternative lifestyles were punctuated by unacceptable air quality.
Don't get me wrong - I find the burning season (as it's called locally in Asia) just awful. I have both allergy and lung issues, and I'm a mom. That said, I've equally lived in some semi-rural Thai houses where any leaves or dry vegetation left around the house become a HAVEN for cobras, scorpions and HUGE da-karp (think deadly centipedes). I get it that a sun-baked rice paddy is impossible to clear without expensive machinery - so much easier to burn it and pray the smoke will dissipate.
What hurts my heart each and every year when the burning season happens, is the arrogant assumption that Thai farmers and indigenous mountain people along the Burmese border are lazy and greedy and indifferent. I'm here to tell you they're not.
The Karen Community in Mae Sariang is learning about composting. They are learning about organic and sustainable. They are equally surrounded on all sides by huge mountains and teak forest which literally drops an astounding amount of dry leaves during the monsoonal dry season.
Looking at these few carefully crafted roofing panels - hand made from local bamboo and fallen teak leaves - I realized that WE are the problem. Because WE have stopped buying them.
If we, the people with money, still actually PURCHASED hand made teak leaf roof panels, there is not an indigenous person alive who would be stupid enough to burn them. Because these mountain people are endlessly looking for ways to create cash to feed their children, to make money for school books, housing and the basics of life.
The local Karen village houses still use teak leaf roofs.
They last for usually 2 years and provide wonderful insulation. They provide cash for the local indigenous people who make them.
If we don't buy them or find alternative uses for their teak-leaf panels, a part of me feels like we forfeit the right to complain. Maybe you don't roof your whole main house with it, but you find a way to use it in your garden?
I feel that the Burning Season debate each year should REQUIRE each of us to report in how WE have supported indigenous business and handicrafts so they don't have to burn.
If you didn't buy their gorgeous indigenous organic rice, you really DON'T get to complain when they need to burn back acre after acre of GMO corn waste from the international companies who WERE willing to pay them something for their crop.
I'm challenged as I travel, to put myself in the other person's shoes and to stop complaining. I'm challenged daily by the question, "Yes, but what did YOU PERSONALLY DO to make it different?"
Resolving all the big environmental issues starts with us - personally - in our spending habits and lifestyle choices. If you bought cheap crunchy corn chips and snacks, you contributed to the problem. If you bought commercially raised chicken fed with cheap corn based animal food, you contributed to this problem.
Me? I'm thinking about my choices and how I contribute to these big environmntal issues. And intending to make better choices.
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