KivuWatt: God's gift or duel with nature, what does it matter? We have electricity

God created the earth, the sea and the sky and all living and non-living things in them. It all looked good and he was delighted with his handiwork. He then took a deserved rest. Upon reflection, he thought such good things couldn’t be wasted, but should benefit someone since he really didn’t need them for himself. So he created man in his image and gave him dominion over all the earth and all that it contained. This, broadly, is the story of creation as taught to generations of Christians. I suspect, though, that the bit about man dominating the earth and all that is in it was put in God’s mouth by cunning man. It is so distinctly human – to try to justify taking over everything, even what does not belong to us, by claiming it has been divinely ordered or that our superior intelligence gives us unique rights. Whether it is indeed by divine order or our humanisation of God or deification of ourselves, the truth is that human history has been about taming and dominating nature. But no one, even dumb nature wants to be dominated. So our relationship has been a perpetual duel. By and large we have been able to exert our will and put nature to our use in keeping with God’s directive or what we choose to interpret to have been his intention. Those societies that have done a better job at outwitting or subduing nature have generally been more successful and are advanced. Indeed all forms of technological advance have been victories over nature and bringing it to the service of mankind. There are many examples. For instance, revolutions in transport and communication over the centuries have been conquests over time and space and the limitations imposed by these. They have brought mankind closer to one another and might do more to create greater harmonious existence than all the teaching of the world’s religions have ever done. Take another example. Innovations in agriculture have meant that production exceeds what the natural world would otherwise support. With this and advanced transport systems, we are able to get food where there is a shortfall. Ultimately availability of food should make the world a more secure place. In this duel for dominance, wit and grit matter a great deal. Our superior intelligence, a good degree of cunning and even some amount of force play their part. Last week on May 16 Rwandans saw evidence of mankind putting to use what nature has given them. They cheered as President Paul Kagame inaugurated a power plant on Lake Kivu that converts methane gas extracted from the lake into electrical energy. Now Lake Kivu and the fabled hills of this fair country must be among those things made during that initial creative spurt mentioned in the Book of Genesis. They must be among those that God gave to Rwandans to rule over and to use for ourselves. For thousands of years we have used the hills almost to exhaustion. The lake we didn’t touch much. Until we realised that it harboured a potent force that could tremendously improve our lives. And so through a combination of our desire to obey God’s command and use this resource to make our existence better, the technology of our more technologically advanced brethren and the finance from our common pool (AfDB), Kivu Watt was built and now adds 26 MW to light our homes and power our industries. As everyone who has been involved with Kivu Watt will tell you, it has not been easy. It was a first and required creating and adapting technology to a totally new situation. It needed a never-give-up attitude to see it through. But that is the characteristic of most duels. To come out victorious requires wit and courage, patience, persistence and perseverance. We have won part of the duel with the lake and are adding to our electric power. But we are also involved in another duel to preserve our country. We are told that if the gas is allowed to build to certain levels, it could blast us off the face of the earth in no time. In the contest to bend nature to our will, mankind has often been the winner. Occasionally, nature hits back and hard. And so in some places we get excessively high temperatures that take the lives of some of the most vulnerable in our societies, and fires that rage on for days and make a wasteland of vast tracts of land. In others rain falls relentlessly and brings down mountainsides, or floods vast expanses of land making them unusable and killing their inhabitants. So the duel is more than who comes up on top. Often an agreement must be reached not to hurt the other to the point that they become useless, or to exploit one to extinction. After all there is another divine injunction to look after and replenish what we were given. If you didn’t know, conservation and environmental protection as much as the right to exploit natural resources were part of that generous offer from God. Of course we don’t mention this very much because it does not suit our greedy nature. It is an inconvenient truth. jorwagatare@yahoo.co.uk

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KivuWatt: God's gift or duel with nature, what does it matter? We have electricity