Visiting Namibia raisesan ethical issue

Take up the White Man’s burden, Send forth the best ye breed, Go bind your sons to exile, To serve your captives’ need.

Kipling’s white-supremacist paean to imperialism haunts the Brexiteer unconscious.

About to depart on a visit to Namibia, the evocative lines trouble me also. We Europeans pillaged the natural resources of Kipling’s ‘new-caught sullen peoples, half-devil and half-child’.

But imperialism, like the IRA, ‘hasn’t gone away you know’; it has morphed. The world’s tourist attractions are thronged with well-healed westerners. Many locals can’t afford to access the treasures of their heritage.

How do I plead to the accusation of eco-crime? Guilty as charged, I fear.

The carbon footprint of my Namibian jaunt will be massive. The amount of greenhouse gas released to the atmosphere, will be equal to what a car would emit, if driven to Sub-Saharan Africa and back.

The judge will ask if I have anything to say before passing sentence. What’s the case for the defence?

Make restitution; donate to the poor-box of carbon credits. But how to be sure that websites offering this service are genuine?

Will the purchased trees actually be planted?

What are the suspicious-looking ‘administrative costs’ they sometimes mention?

Spending carbon credit money on insulating your home, laying glass wool in the attic, or double-glazing the windows, is a better solution.

The eight solar panels, fixed to the roof of my house last week, will be the legacy of my Namibian guilt-trip.

But poorer countries don’t complain about tourism; on the contrary they welcome it.

Their people may not love the visitors, but they need them, a Stockholm syndrome response to their former colonial masters.

Our euros can be vital. Wild creatures mostly benefit. In subsistence economies, nature is seen as something to be exploited.

That rich people will pay huge sums of money to come and see wild animals and plants, seems insane to many of the locals but, if a pristine environment draws the tourists, it will be protected.

But there’s another downside; mass-tourism kills the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Gates are being installed to limit the flow of people through some streets in Venice, as cruise ships flood the place with visitors.

With ‘tourist processing’, the mystique is lost. Over 2.5 million pairs of feet pound Pompeii’s streets annually; the fabric of the ancient town is suffering.

The recent photo of climbers queuing for access to the summit of Everest says it all.

‘Yet each man kills the thing he loves’ wrote Oscar Wilde. ‘The coward does it with a kiss, the brave man with a sword’. We might add that ‘the tourist does so with a selfie on his mobile phone’.

Visiting Namibia raises a particular ethical issue.

The rains failed to deliver enough water this spring; the country is experiencing its worst drought in 90 years.

Rivers have dried up, over 60,000 farm animals have died and more will have to be culled. One-in-five Namibians is directly affected by water and food shortages.

Up to 1,000 ‘game animals’ are being taken from protected areas and sold. Giraffes and elephants are on the deportation list.

The measure will bring in about €1 million and help maintain grazing areas.

Facing this climate-change-induced disaster, President Hage Geingob has declared a state of emergency and the government is appealing for international aid.

Guess who’s to blame for this tragedy?