A-B-Seas

In today's Philippines Starweek magazine Nathalie M. Tormada has written about the Sailing School of the SEAs, an extension of the experiential training center on the environment, renewable energy, and sustainable living in Bantayan, the biggest island in the Visayan Sea.

The banca uses solar and wind power. Fresh water supply is not a problem as the roof is reworked into a catchment for rainwater. Fuel use is minimal as the banca is fitted with sails. It takes care of waste disposal with its own septic tank. There’s also a hanging organic mini-garden to exhibit how, in the event of climate impacts, one will still be able to have food.

But more than just its host of eco-friendly features, the sailing school, true to its name, is on a single-minded mission to educate, going on roadshows around the coastal towns.

In a previous blog we asked "So if one is living on a tiny island, a bangka, how does one propose to fill basic human needs?" The work by the people at Sailing School of the SEAs contains suggestions and is a real model.

By focusing on a banka, thinking of it as a tiny island, we can prototype on a human scale the sort of efforts that need to be envisioned and ultimately implemented on a global scale. First we must satisfy basic human needs on an animal level, Maslow's physiological needs . Until we do that people will, in order to survive, focus upon those needs and let the devil take the environment. Thus basic human needs (economy) and ecological demands (sustainability) cannot be separated.

Bankas

From childhood on a Filipino living near the sea shore will be around the bangka, the classic outrigger "canoe" found throughout the Philippines.

Humans are tool using animals and a bangka is perhaps the most important tool for use in an island country. Like any general purpose tool the bangka comes in many sizes and shapes. Classically the term was used to describe a very narrow hull that was made from a log and balanced with outriggers. More generally the term now includes boats built will all kinds of techniques and sizes but having in common, outriggers.

Large bangkas capable of carrying as many as 100 passengers are used as ferries to outlying islands and are an essential component of the transportation system in this part of the world.

Programmer's Paradise

The evening star, Venus was occluded by the moon on Sunday, May 16, 2010. Here is how that good omen looked from Fortune Island.



Tonight we shall delve a little bit deeper into Fortune Island, an island in the Philippines.

The 27-hectare (66.7-acre) island lies about 14 kilometers (8.7 miles) off the coast of Nasugbu, Batangas, Philippines. The island is located at Latitude: 14° 3' 0 N, Longitude: 120° 28' 60 E. It just smudge of grey on Google Maps.

Such a small island is more of a place to visit, to reconnoiter, than to live. No doubt fishermen have bivouacked on the island since time immemorial but no sustained village is there. There is the vivid ghost of a run down resort that now looks for revival.

The islands of this part of the world are littered with the remnants of unsustainable dreams; high end resorts that fade away when the glitter of some charismatic fortune is gone. Fortune Island is a classic example deserving of a sustainable revival.

So a small group of people are dreaming the vision of reviving the island and its environment the surrounding coral seas and fisheries. Long years of terrible practices, dynamite and cyanide fishing. have damaged but not destroyed the local coral reefs. Now the lovers of Fortune Island have ended these practices and slowly the coral and undersea life is recovering.

But let us look deeper into the problem. What in the beginning led to these practices? Simply the reality that a poor man, ignorant and struggling to feed his family, will no look long into the future. Nor did the developers of the island look beyond it becoming a play pen for the elite as an economic mechanism, a mechanism that has proven to be unsustainable.

Sad really.

But where are we now? What can be done? Ideally the island would simply be left alone to recover. Nature unmolested is a powerful mother and would give birth to a new fresh island in a century or so. But that won't happen. Humans won't leave an island like this alone.

Still a vision that features a small footprint on the environment, a future that is ecologically and economically viable is emerging. Here are some thoughts.

First, the people I met on the recent diving trip understand that ecotourism, bringing divers and other water buffs, island lovers to these coral reefs is wholly dependent upon the coral reefs and the underwater life that these corals sustain. They know they must be keepers of the coral and protect the coral from future damage. Ecotourism is one means, potentially sustainable, that will help rebuild the island ecology.

But I want to point out another, a more radical alternative. We are developing with the Internet the technology needed to redistribute work. That component of work that is primarily communications can be done almost anywhere that one has bandwidth. Moreover bandwidth is ever becoming more widely distributed, ever more available all over the world.

Now an concrete example of this is found right here in the Philippines. Every major corporation in the world sells something, a product or a service. All of those products need support. They have 800 numbers that connect with a human on a phone, somewhere. More and more of the English speaking support goes to the Philippines and India. This business, answering incoming phone calls, is just a hint of the reorganization of business that the future is bringing. The technical means exists to locate such communication oriented businesses anywhere.

Another example is software development. Give me intelligence and bandwidth and I can do software development anywhere. The growth of Free and Open Source Software, e.g. Linux, Gnu and its many applications is testimony to the power of the net to locate skilled intelligence anywhere that there is bandwidth.
See Geographic distribution of Linux developers

Here is a table from an analysis of the geographic location of Source Forge developers

Region Developers
Africa 12560
Asia 127275
Europe 466792
North America 485679
Oceania 46422
South America 36330

While clearly biased toward historically dominant North America and Europe we see that large contributions are being made by the Rest of the World. This trend will grow as the Internet pushes more and more bandwidth to those parts of the world where intelligence is under utilized.

So what if Fortune Island were to become a Programmer's Paradise? A place where world class programmers could work in a beautiful environment, free from the harassments of urban life, in deep meditation, creating the future. Monasteries have always existed, dedicated to the intellectual and spiritual life. Why not on Fortune Island? Why not a secular monastery dedicated to software development? That I argue is a sustainable vision that could complement ecotourism.

I shall develop this theme further as this blog evolves.

Islands of the Philippines and Indonesia

There are over 7,000 islands in the Philippines and  more than another 17,000 islands in Indonesia.

AdoptAnIsland is wandering these islands and will now describe our wanderings, chance encounters, opportunities, and the mischances and mistakes that often accompany such a life. We do not seek the beaten path. I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

"pass the bottle,"

Fortune Island

This weekend my girl friend Thelma and I made a getaway from Manila.

By a chain of lucky events we wound up on a dive boat making its maiden voyage with about ten divers to Fortune Island.

Fortune Island fits the classic description of a tropical island paradise. It comes complete with a varied history and strong characters. Here is the Island from the sea shore at Nasugbu, Batangas, Philippines.

And then the next morning as the dive boat was making its landing.

Our friendly host, Peter welcomed us to the island. In the background you can see the big bangka built by Lou who stayed on board.

After the first dive we broke for lunch.

No doubt humans have been visiting this island for quite a long time. More on that and the history of this beautiful place in my next post.