conservation and environmental protection always felt blindly obvious to me. my love for nature led me to quickly internalizing information about how the world and its animals were at risk. i then developed an even stronger concern for the fate of our planet and our species. rather than this world being solely ours to wander, i always felt as if we were lucky just to share it with the other creatures who have long inhabited it. 

but recently, my affirmed beliefs have been questioned. after spending six weeks as a wildlife and conservation intern at tacugama chimpanzee sanctuary in sierra leone, my clarity on the ethics of conservation work are as blurred as ever. the future seems dangerously uncertain. looming within the persistent dark clouds of the rainy season, every day at the sanctuary i felt more strongly the imminent reality of climate change, population growth, and species extinction. i felt the hopelessness of long-term, momentarily intangible projects, of underfunded programs, unfairly slow productivity levels, and infuriating legislation that allows a chimpanzee poacher to get away with less than a $1 fine.

what i had thought would be a reflective, meditative, and illuminating six weeks instead became the complete opposite. i envisioned spending my mornings practicing yoga and meditation with the backdrop of rainforest sounds, and my evenings reading my 1,000-page novel, “infinite jest,” and then journaling, pinpointing exactly what i wanted to pursue in this field of work in the future. 

instead, i spent many of my mornings patrolling the electric fences in the unrelenting rain, scrubbing chimpanzee poop off my pants, and making sure the millipedes hadn’t crawled back into my suitcase overnight. my evenings were spent most often in the candlelight, without power, struggling to write down my disorderly thoughts beneath the glow of my headlamp. i was totally exhausted. was all this even worth it? 

i would often find myself trapped in this pit in my mind: 

the problems are so overwhelmingly huge, i can’t possibly make a difference. how naive was i to think that i could come here for six weeks and change a situation that is so deeply corroded?

what good am i doing, killing myself over the small problems provoked by climate change, when there are just 100 companies who create 71% of all carbon emissions?! even if i dedicated my entire life to this particular cause, devoting every ounce of energy i have into bettering the lives of those living closest to the chimpanzee habitat in sierra leone, my impact would clearly be negligible to the irreversible environmental catastrophe that is looming. 

and if i did, i wouldn’t be happy — i can’t do this for more than a few months at a time. living in the middle of the rainforest is really, really hard. am i a phony conservationist and environmentalist? if someone who is as passionate as i am is unwilling to devote their life entirely to this issue, then who on earth is? 

should i just quit school then, and enjoy my life while i can? hey, maybe i could move to hawaii and become an artist, eating fresh papaya, and surviving off the grid with a self-sustaining garden. 

i thought about all these things, and more. i let my mind wander down the endless paths of what-ifs and worst-case scenarios. what i’ve realized is that all this worrying is doing far more harm than what i could be doing if i was doing anything but worrying.

the problem these days with conservation action, with considering climate change, is that we spend way more time deliberating and arguing about whether or not it is happening than actually implementing solutions. people are willing to put as much energy into arguing about how to save the planet as they are into actually getting about doing it.

i almost fell down this hole, too. but doing something, anything, is far more moral than doing nothing at all — and that in the end, it does add up. international development work is certainly not perfect; it is riddled with ethical conflicts and it’s important that we continue to examine these closely. but it also has dramatically improved and saved millions of lives, provided critical health care, education, jobs, infrastructure, and political stability. maybe these improvements aren’t seen right away, but over time they add up. slight positive developments do make a difference, especially when you’re dealing with small local communities and individual animals. 

there are institutional barriers that make improvements and solutions to entrenched problems nearly impossible. it’s important to recognize that volunteering or interning for a brief period of time does not provide a systematic solution to these problems. that’s not to say it has no value, just that we need to accept our contributions for what they are.

the truth is we need both: we desperately need large institutional changes, but we also need individuals who care about specific issues, who are willing to make day-to-day changes and have conversations that shift consumer habits. 

maybe i didn’t come away knowing what conservation-related career path i was going to pursue. my biggest takeaway was a perspective, an insight as to how complicated, sensitive, yet important conservation work can be, about privilege, about the power of storytelling. 

it was an insight into how it feels to face situations that seem doomed, but choosing to not let that shut you down. and lastly, it was an insight into how optimism and a positive outlook can change your perspective and can help you change the world.

since 2006, there have been no new shopping malls constructed in the united states (sanborn, 2017). this once-booming market has been affected mightily by the technological advancements achieved in the 21st century. a variety of factors have contributed to the decline of shopping mall visitation in recent decades, yet the most influential is the convenience of online shopping (ferreira and paiva, 2017). people no longer have to commute through traffic to physical malls, trouble themselves with long-lines, or deal with the commotion of a high-density environment (selvakumar and raghavan, 2017). the ease of shopping on devices from the comfort of homes have initiated a downward trend of visitation in physical shopping malls. between 2010 and 2013, mall visitation has dropped nearly 50% during the holiday season (mid-november through the end of december) than in years past. these peak times in shopping are when businesses rely on to meet end-of-year quotas.

major architectural, state-of-the-art facilities are closing down and remains are leaving a large footprint of empty buildings (rosenbaum, 2016). former shopping malls, that have once been a predominant wonder of the community, are closing and leaving a negative aesthetic appeal to communities. restoration potential for revitalization projects encapsulate the minds of city planners, contractors, and local residents to transform the architectural ghost-towns into something new (peterson, 2014). the large footprint and building structure of the malls contribute to endless possibilities of restoration projects.

i had the pleasure of interviewing a local resident residing in clay, new york, who has firsthand experienced the essence of mall history. numerous malls are located within 30 miles of clay, so 26-year-old corinna manzer is a key source of knowledge regarding shopping malls. from destiny usa, shoppingtown mall, and great northern mall, corinna has visited all three within her lifetime and remembers the prime of malls. living only two miles down the road from great northern mall, i was able to encapsulate a true history of the mall through a q&a session with her:

me: how do you think the mall has changed within the last 5-10 years?

corinna: the mall has become a ghost town. there are only a couple stores still in business there, and i don’t know how they’re still making money. all the parking lots are always empty and only dick’s sporting goods has more than maybe 10 cars parked in the lot. five years ago, the whole place has stores of all different categories, a movie theatre, and i used to go there more than once a week with my friends to hangout. it used to be such a convenience right down the road.

me: what is the reason for the decline of the mall?

corinna: definitely online shopping. there’s no reason to drive there and have to deal with people when i can just hop on my laptop and buy anything i want without sales people.

me: do you think the town should keep the mall standing?

corinna: i think the mall is taking up space and the huge building is being put to no use. [the town] should tear it down and put something else up like a restaurant some other food place. it’d be more popular.

me: what do you think of restoring [the mall] into a park or other green space?

corinna: that’s a great idea! it would really bring the community together and help better the environment rather than having it as an “industrial wasteland.” the mall is a huge eyesore where it is.

other uses for mall properties

the questions asked focused around the major areas of my research, and i was able to understand a consumer’s mindset regarding malls. i also asked corinna about how other malls are maintaining their business compared to the ones closing, and she replied by stating how other malls are transitioning to a more restaurant-based approach because “food keeps people interested.” she told me restaurants are the main reason [destiny usa mall] continues to flourish. restoring malls for green spaces were a point of interest in our interview, and would lead to a healthier community for the people and environment.

abandoned malls contribute restoration potentials from the sizable footprints of the buildings. while possibilities may seem endless for the future of the industrial sites, green projects wield a positive outlook. whether a green space for park leisure or an indoor-outdoor infusion of activity, the grass is most certainly greener on the other side of shopping malls.

—

works cited

staeheli, l. a., & mitchell, d. (2006). usas destiny? regulating space and creating community in american shopping malls. urban studies, 43(5-6), 977-992. doi:10.1080/00420980600676493

ferreira, d., & paiva, d. (2017). the death and life of shopping malls: an empirical investigation on the dead malls in greater lisbon. the international review of retail, distribution and consumer research, 27(4), 317-333. doi:10.1080/09593969.2017.1309564

rosenbaum, m. s., otalora, m. l., & ramirez, g. c. (2016). the restorative potential of shopping malls. journal of retailing and consumer services, 31, 157-165. doi:10.1016/2016.02.011

watson, sarah, “what is happening to commercial malls: evaluating contradicting opinions” (2016). accounting. 11.   https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/honorscollege_accounting/11

sanburn, j. (2017, july 20). why the death of malls is about more than shopping. time.

dong, j., & gong, s. (2017). restoration and regeneration of industrial brownfield. boletín técnico,55(12), 314-319.

to head off the threat of overgrowth, the global community has turned to solutions like birth control and family planning to help fast-growing populations slow their birth rates and assuage our sustainability fears. but when you look at who ends up carrying out our efforts to reach demographic sustainability, it seems that the growing countries of the global south are being unfairly saddled with a burden that is not theirs.

lowering birth rates in countries simply because they have high birth rates is not the fast track to a sustainable future because it ignores the major global inequalities in resource usage and environmental impact. wealthy, highly developed countries tend to encourage unsustainable choices at every turn, so even while their growth rates shrink, their harm to the earth and to future sustainability grows.

if carbon dioxide emissions per capita are used as the measure of impact on the planet, one person in the united states has the same impact as 46 people in bangladesh or 67 people in afghanistan. so while these countries may be growing very rapidly, the people in those countries are not to blame if we one day overwhelm the planet – the blame lies with the countries and people who are doing the most to harm the earth. we must focus our efforts on massive changes in consumption and production patterns, not on population growth.

family planning can be an effective tool of development when it is done in a way that benefits individuals. access to family planning has been found to give women more control over their lives by allowing them to make decisions that had previously been left up to their husbands, families, communities, and governments. it allows women to take more control over their educations, health, employment, and bank accounts and gives families opportunities to develop and grow in ways beside population.

but the benefits of family planning must be considered in the context of the global community’s ultimate goal: not just to improve the lives of individuals but to slow down population growth and improve our overall chances at survival. racialized, poor populations are not the primary perpetrators using our resources too quickly or destroying our planet through carbon emissions and plastic pollution, yet it has become their responsibility to reverse trends that they didn’t create.

many of our narratives around family planning are based in dehumanization, with the women of the global south viewed primarily as producers of children and not as people. global institutions celebrate dramatic drops in birth rate as development successes, but what is left unsaid speaks volumes: lowering the population growth of developing countries is helping us survive on this planet. the jump to a disturbing conclusion from this is a short one, as reducing the fertility of certain populations in the name of the greater good is clearly eugenics.

reducing birth rate in the 20th century was not about choice but control. institutions like the united nations and the international planned parenthood federation (ippf) have dark histories of participating in eugenic activities. for instance, the united nations population fund contributed to the fujimori sterilization campaign in peru in the 1990s, during which 100,000 women, mostly indigenous and rural, were forced to be sterilized. governments themselves are often perpetrators of eugenics, as was the case in 1976 when the government of india – supported by the american government – sterilized 6.2 million men against their will.

dramatic cases like these may seem like blemishes on an otherwise fair and successful global movement for demographic sustainability, but they are really indications that racism and classism are deeply embedded in our conceptions of population and development. in his controversial book fatal misconception: the struggle to control world population, matthew connelly writes that family planning can create and encourage racial divides and victimize vulnerable populations.

“even now, long after the demise of population control as an organized movement, fear of the fertility and mobility of particular groups continues to spark ethnic strife,” connelly writes.

the potential still exists for family planning to be an equitable and empowering tool for sustainability if utilized differently. this requires looking at populations and communities on an individualized basis at the local level, rather than the global, and identifying what specific environmental and socioeconomic problems they face. family planning may not be able to mitigate global climate change, but it can help communities adapt to their changing ecological conditions and enhance their abilities to survive and prosper on the small scale.

demographic sustainability in the future may not mean protecting the environment from populations, but protecting populations from the changing environment. hopefully, the future of sustainable development will prioritize the rights of individuals over the shrinking of the human population. it is the reduction of harmful activities that will save the planet, not the reduction of numbers.

last summer a crew of five alaskan explorers and filmmakers traveled 350 miles by packraft on the two rivers that run parallel to the road corridor to capture landscape footage and perform interviews of the inuit and athabascan people in six remote villages, as well as the owner of the brooks range wilderness lodge who was raised in this area. the question we posed to them, what is progress? most of the people answered that progress is, “the capability to live freely and directly connected to the land, to continue our traditional way of life and pass this down to our future generations.” it inspired me to create this short film.

the western perspective of progress is often served to develop a natural area for monetary gain. progress has been used as an umbrella-term to conquer and exploit landscapes and their cultures in north america for centuries. to recognize life and wild nature as an integrated system to be inherently valued, we may actually need a redefinition of progress. there is a requirement now more than ever for places to not only protected, but revered for their ecological integrity. this short piece offers an alternative consideration to the current paradigm. 

filmmakers lane brown and tom attwater also contributed.

i want to take a step back for moment and paint a picture for you of what urban areas experience in the developing world. so, picture this a young girl, no older than 10 years old, wakes up at dawn, in the midst of the morning dew. she wipes her eyes, pushes back her curtains and observes her mother packing the ground provisions in the market bag. their eyes meet and her mother yells, “hurry up, my daughter, before we miss the early bus to the city.” still dazzled, she throws on her shoes, wraps up her hair, and rushes to help her mother gather the rest of the goods. on the way to the market, they are seated on a crowded bus filled with people chatting religion, politics, and all sorts of topics. her mother whispers to her, “remember that it is christmas season, so make sure you’re extra careful of all sorts of thieves and conmen trying to cash in on the season”. the little girl then peers out the window, as the bus makes its way down from the mountainside, through the trees onto the flat, urban capital of their region. 

once at the market, the little girl helps her mother to pack out the goods on a small wooden stall, located among dozens more of similar sizes. as she awaits the morning crowd, she overhears her mother talking to the other vendors about the latest shooting that took place in the neighborhood behind the market. a vendor located across from their stall, who has her goods spread out on a sheet on the gravel, says, “i heard that the young boy they shot, was the same boy that held up mr. brown’s fruit stall in the market last week.” sandra laughs a deeply tragic laugh as she hears her mother say, “you’d think these crooks would know by now, how not to get caught.” the early crowd rushes in to begin their holiday shopping and all the vendors are toiling to bring consumers to their stalls. all the vendors are competing to get just one more sale. for that could make the difference between their children’s school uniform and books… or nothing at all. 

the little girl’s mother made a few sales off her perfectly ripe fruits and vegetables, but she just didn’t manage to distinguish herself from the dozens of other vendors offering the same crop. the day is dwindling down and the crowd is starting to fade. her mother decides to pack up early before the inspector comes around to collect the market fees. after buying lunch for herself and her daughter, she just didn’t make enough to afford to pay the inspector”. in the year that she has been in the market, some days she can afford it; but other days she has to leave just before the inspector gets to her stand. today she has neither has the fees or an excuse to keep him from confiscating her goods. the little girl quickly and silently helps her mother pack up the remainder of the goods. she sees the disappointment and the hurt in her mother’s face and whispers to her mother, “don’t worry mom, i am sure we’ll have better luck in the other market tomorrow.” 

you know, these sort of urban markets are present in almost every country in the world. in fact, according to the organization of economic coordination and development, 60% of the world’s labor force is employed in informal economies, such as urban public markets. this means that 60% of the world’s labor force is vulnerable to the challenges within these economies. that is an immense amount. often, no consideration is given to the sector for the role it plays in supplying employment and maintaining some degree of socio-economic stability for low-resourced persons. therefore, the sector is often left off of the agenda for development initiatives. the underdevelopment of public markets has left it and its participants vulnerable and low-resourced. as a result, urban public markets are plagued with issues like poverty, high-female participation, low-pay, transiency, and under-financing. as highlighted in the story, challenges such as over-saturation of suppliers and crime further the risks of operating in the market. we are late in the game of overcoming these problems, but it’s definitely not too late to turn things around. 

my innovative proposal to addressing the challenges within public markets are to establish collaborative impact networks that facilitate the development of worker-owned co-operatives for vendors in public markets. collaborative impact networks are networks made up of key agents that affect a group’s social mobility (e.g. government, ngos, community leaders, etc.) who all work collectively to ensure positive social outcomes. in this approach the collaborative impact network would connect the worker-owned cooperative to resources needed for them to sustain themselves. a co-operative is a worker-owned business model built around protecting the interests of those who work in the business. the cohesiveness that these models exemplify creates a sustainable environment due to the mutual benefit of all involved. this approach takes us back to the most basic levels of social organization which is the community, and the quintessential value it suggests; responsibility for one-another. 

aside from the compelling moralistic pull that this approach radiates, there is a vast array of tangible benefits that all stakeholders in the approach would enjoy. for market vendors, they benefit from an increased social protection from unexpected financial shocks or sudden emergencies; where due to the nature of the model, their investment in the business is protected and business operations remain stable. for example, if the young girl from our story is sick and her mother cannot afford childcare for the day, the business in the market would not have to close down operations. it would be sustained by the other members in the cooperative. as the world’s population continues to grow expeditiously and as our resources increasingly stretches to sustain a greater number of people, a call for more collaborative and integrated networks of social, economic, and political organization becomes much more crucial to maintain stability and ensure the inclusion of the marginalized in development efforts. public officials also 

benefit from the increase in revenue from market fees and licenses, as well as the decrease in unregistered businesses and unregulated activities. the businesses in the formal economy benefit from the connections with retailers in the markets, where they can reach more consumers in the market. in this approach, the benefits of collective action is tangible and can be actualized by all stakeholders. 

the transferability of this approach is what really makes it so neat! from india, to the middle east, to south america, to eastern europe, these markets are born out of people’s natural creativity and instinctive need to survive in our world’s toughest economic conditions. this idea can conform into almost any social, cultural, or economic context and can easily be modified to target the needs of vulnerable populations in any particular region! 

there is a need for us today to shift the way we view public markets, and its potential for development. our world’s urban marketplaces have been overlooked for too long. join me in my plight to revive the life of the marketplace, thus allowing its true potential as a flourishing economic hub to be recognized.