'Eating Chilli Crab in the Anthropocene'

Recently published 'Eating Chilli Crab in the Anthropocene' is an anthology of 12 stories written by 13 young authors. It's put together and edited by Dr Matthew Schneider-Mayerson. Each of the stories use an impressive number of endnotes to explain the various references to texts and citations. The first had the most- 89. The second had 71. Heh.

I felt like I was reading someone's thesis or final term essays. Essentially, these are, isn't it? They put it plainly across to readers what climate change is, and how our life affects the climate, and climate change affects us. They didn't hold back on the analysis or references to back up their claims or their perspectives, patiently explaining, through personal anecdotes, historical records and empirical evidence.

While an very engaging read, I couldn’t finish the book in one sitting. I read one story, and pondered, then I began on the next story. In an interview with TODAY published on 25 May, 2020, editor Dr Matthew Schneider-Mayerson explained his rationale for the title of the collection, and how chilli crabs bring home the pressing global environmental issues.

Explaining why the book only includes voices from authors born between 1993 and 1998, Dr Schneider-Mayerson said it is not about omitting the voices of older generations.

Rather, it is about “including and centring” the voices of those who will be most affected by climate change.

“We’re accustomed to thinking of elders as teachers and young people as students, but in this time of a global movement spearheaded by a Swedish teenager (environmental activist Greta Thunberg), familiar roles have been reversed,” he said.

“The sad truth is that those of us in our 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s failed to stop climate change when we had the chance to do so.

“If we let that sink in, it’s a call to humility, to accept that the solutions to our current crisis might require new ideas and new voices.”  

The first story in the book is the eponymous essay by Neo Xiaoyun. She talked about our Singaporean obsession with food, what we consider as 'national dishes', and of course, the mud crabs that are used to cook our famous Singaporean chilli crabs. She linked it back to our ecosystem, the mangroves, the subsequent urbanization that decimated the local population of crabs. I'm not sure if she will convince people to eat fewer crabs though. What will make people cut back on crabs would be shellfish allergies and cholesterol levels. LOL

Too often, we fail to respect what environmental educator David Orr has called the "older processes of evolution and integrity and balances of natural systems." In this context, a conversation restricted to more or less ethical means of killing feels inadequate. The broader question, which pits beloved though often surprisingly recently-developed cultural practices against environmental sustainability—by which I mean the long-term habitability of this planet—is the following: What might a transition to a low seafood and meat consumption lifestyle, which many scientists suggest is necessary, look like? How can this occur in a place that is currently defined by its carnivorous food culture? The fact that answers are unlikely to be forthcoming is indicative of the depth of the challenge of shifting cultural norms into alignment with real sustainability. 

The stories touched on displaced indigenous islanders, otters and the Singapore public's love affair with them (I don’t find them cute and I hate the hype and how they’ve been held up as conservation symbols when we decimate Bukit Brown), tigers, land reclamation and the issue of importing sand (major political thorn that has been swept under and hushed up), monkeys, Javan mynah birds (an 'invasive species' that has rooted totally), oil and fossil fuels somehow linked to 1950s Malay horror films focusing on the myth of the orang minyak, the displacement of culture and history, Changi Airport and carbon emissions versus our guilt of travel, flying, and finally, the way forward in this climate crisis that is still being denied by certain governments.

The story that stayed with me most is Fu Xiyao’s ‘Dumpster Diving in Semakau: Retrieving Indigenous Histories from Singapore’s Waste Island’. Compared to other countries' landfills which are "open dumping side and hazardous waste leaks into nearby water systems and waste avalanches endanger scavengers, Semakau Landfill is considered a model par excellence of waste management." Once known as Pulau Seking and Pulau Semakau, the islands were joined in 1999 with a man-made 7-km seawall of rock and sand, and became Semakau Landfill. According to the National Environment Agency (NEA), Semakau is expected to be filled in 2035. We're only 21 years in. This means that the landfill's projected life span has shortened from 46 years to 36. 

In this way, Semakau Landfill is a "tragic solution," defined by ethicist Jeffrey Chan as a solution that alleviates an existing problem but creates a new, equally problematic predicament. It demonstrates the paradox of waste management within a developmental capitalist state. The construction of Semakau, Singapore's omnipresent advertising and the acceleration of wasteful consumption all boost Singapore's GDP. As long as development is measured by consumption and GDP, we are trapped in a "take-make-waste" treadmill that will require building one Semakau after another, forever. The construction of Semakau Landfill in 1994 prepared a tremendous graveyard for the ashes of decades of economic growth, but it also created a path dependency for Singapore's throwaway consumer culture and fossil-fuel-driven economy. Landfills put the costs of consumption and development out of sight, out of mind, only to produce future crises of overflowing waste and postpone indefinitely a meaningful response to the destruction of land, oceans and communities.