Schmidtz Elephant Preservation April 15, 2007
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Brendan Mahoney
Notes for class on 4/12
-In class we discussed Schmidtz point of view on the preservation of Elephants in Africa.
-His main idea is that a main resource of the Africans is the elephant, from an elephant one can gather enough meet to feed a small African tribe, Africans may also sell of the ivory tusks for economic profit.
-What Schmidtz is trying to show the reader is that, elephant preservation is not up to the wealth Western world, rather it should be left to the Africans, who have little to no resources as it is.
-This discussion led us into another discussion on shipbreaking, in 3rd world countries and India in specific.
-This was especially interesting to me because I lived in India for 5 years of my childhood, and had experienced first hand the poverty that we were discussing.
-This discussion is very similar to the last, and the idea is that once again the wealthy western world should not meddle with third world country affairs. Though shipbreaking is causing an average rate of one death per day, and chemicals are being spilled into the ocean throughout the process, Indian natives are so poor that any work is good enough, so that they may feed themselves.
-The conclusion that we have come to is that it up to the western world to balance the amount of wealth spread through the world, in order that no one may be forced to live the way these Indians have. If the western world does this then cheap practices such as shipbreaking may come to an end.
Site:
I found this link to an article about shipbreaking of the Greenpeace website:
http://www.greenpeaceweb.org/shipbreak/india.asp
4/12
Schmidtz talks about his point of view on the preservation of elephants. The western preservationists need to respect that Africans need to benefit from the resources. Having very limited resources makes what they do have all the more important.
The next topic was shipbreaking in third world countries. Similar to the elephants, shipbreaking is the only option the people have. Although it is dangerous and hard work it feeds the worker’s families and that’s what they care about.