BMF_TT__July2010_en.pdf - Bruno Manser Fonds

ush over and remain on the surface. Bruno Manser’s efforts
were marked by a deep respect for the people in the rain forest,
for the complexity of the ecosystem and for their mutual dependence.
Whoever has respect maintains an initial distance to the
problem and takes time for analysis and obervation.
2. Understanding
Understanding can take different forms. As a natural scientist,
I myself practice a very specific and formally-structured way of
acquiring understanding. It is rational and impersonal, in other
words it is not fixed on the observer. The claim of scientific
knowledge is the independence of the person who has obtained
it. Bruno Manser has shown us that there is also an equally
important level of personal understanding: the directly experienced,
the locally suffered and the locally enjoyed. Bruno
Manser acquired this immediate understanding in Sarawak and
shared it with us through his visits and his books.
3. Action
An active response results from the understanding of a problem
and from the possibility of being able to assess future consequences.
Today we can comprehend the effects of overloading
an ecosystem, the hastily logged centuries-old rain forests, the
burning of coal and petroleum to generate energy. The result is a
weakening of the ecosystem as a provider of services, loss of
bio-diversity and climate change.
When we have reached an understanding for these problems,
then resolute action seems to be the only reasonable response.
Bruno Manser acted in his own way, with his own means. He
roused people through spectacular demonstrations, through his
own suffering and through public relations. Yet in the end he did
not achieve his goal. Why?
I have placed respect at the beginning of the chain: respect in
the eyes of the Penan, respect in the presence of the rain forest,
and respect before the earth’s ecosystem in its entirety. First of
all, it is the linking of respect and understanding that moves us
to act. If there is no respect, there is no need to act. Through his
work in Sarawak and his life with the Penan, Bruno Manser
exemplified how respect and understanding can lead to action.
But he failed for the lack of respect of those whom he wanted to
convince.
Thus the story and fate of Bruno Manser also have a direct
importance for confronting the global challenge of climate
change. For decades, science has been compiling and assessing
data relevant to an understanding of the earth as a system, the
effects of changes in temperature and percipitation, the rise in
the sea level, and the deglacification in Greenland and the
Antarctic. We have been providing this complex information, as
gathered in the UN Climate Change Reports – the 5 th is to be
published in 2013, to political authorities since 1990. These
facts, combined with respect before the earth’s ecosystem that