Here in the United States, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco is one of the most popular sites where people choose to end their lives. With more than 1,600 known suicides, Californian legislators recently voted to add a “suicide net” to help mitigate the number of lives lost at the famous bridge. This suicide net has now been estimated to cost upwards of $400 million. When I found out that this net was set to cost taxpayers nearly half a billion dollars, I was as equally appalled as I was frustrated. With a cost that significant, I asked myself if there were better ways to allocate that money. Sure, the presence of the safety net on the bridge is certainly great in helping to save lives, but I keep telling myself that this solution does not fix the problem. Building a safety net does not stop people from committing suicide. Instead of allocating $400 million to address ‘where’ suicides occur in the Bay Area and ‘how’ individuals choose to perform the act, wouldn’t that money have been better spent addressing the reasons ‘why’ that person felt compelled to take their own life?
“Building a safety net does not stop people from committing suicide. Instead of allocating $400 million to address ‘where’ suicides occur in the Bay Area and ‘how’ individuals choose to perform the act, wouldn’t that money have been better spent addressing the reasons ‘why’ that person felt compelled to take their own life?”
Just this week, I returned to campus for my final semester of my undergraduate career at UMass-Amherst. In one of my Sustainable Community Development courses, I read a wonderful research paper, titled “Improving Rural Health Care Reduces Illegal Logging and
Conserves Carbon in a Tropical Forest”, which dives into a conservation–health care exchange in the rural regions across the Indonesian island of Borneo (Link at the end of blog post). What researchers found was that in Borneo, illegal logging and deforestation was increasing at alarming rates, prompting this group of researchers to investigate and propose an initiative to preserve the forest. In Borneo, where illegal logging is, “Estimated to represent as much as 61% of all logging activity”, researchers found that the primary motives behind this deforestation stemmed from the expensive, low-quality, and inaccessible health care. Researchers went as far as to assert that due to this lack of access to high-quality, affordable health care, “Which can lead to vicious cycles of poor health and expanding out-of-pocket costs”, the people of Borneo had become incentivized to turn towards illegal logging in an effort to raise cash and meet their critical health care needs.
“Simply addressing ‘why’ impoverished citizens felt compelled to illegally log and helping resolve said problem has reaped various rewards, whether it be by increasing the quality of health care across the island of Borneo, by protecting the trees in its national park forests, or by reducing carbon emissions.”
Rather than punish the individuals caught illegally logging or throwing money at the impoverished citizens of Borneo, researchers took matters into their own hands and sought to construct rural health care clinics in indigenous areas to see whether providing accessible and affordable health care would result in a reduction in illegal logging and thus conserve forest biodiversity and preserve carbon levels. By the end of the intervention, results “Offered objective evidence that increasing access to affordable, high-quality health… benefits both conservation and human health”, with researchers estimating that 27.4 km2 of deforestation was averted, and that nearly 28,400 unique patients visited the clinic and utilized its services. Simply addressing ‘why’ impoverished citizens felt compelled to illegally log and helping resolve said problem has reaped various rewards, whether it be by increasing the quality of health care across the island of Borneo, by protecting the trees in its national park forests, or by reducing carbon emissions.
“Building suicide nets and increasing prison capacity offers a short-term, responsive solution to suicide and incarceration. However, we need to adopt a new attitude, one that looks at the long-term rather than just the present, and one that serves as preventative instead of responsive, which can be done by asking ourselves one simple question: Why?”
When I think back to some of the problems we have here in the United States, such as suicide, homelessness, or incarceration rates, I realize just poorly we address these issues of utmost importance. Rather than properly tackle suicide and provide sufficient resources for those struggling with mental health, our legislators delegate $400 million towards building safety nets that do nothing to help end suicide apart from removing one potential site for ending one’s life. Rather than provide inner cities with resources and the attention required to prevent young men and women from going down dangerous paths, we throw money toward erecting more prisons. Here in the United States, we look at the problems at hand and hope to solve them by allocating money to resolve the ‘how’ or where’ but not the ‘why’. When you look at the reasons why people act the way they do or make the decisions they make, you gain far greater insight and can develop potential solutions. Building suicide nets and increasing prison capacity offers a short-term, responsive solution to suicide and incarceration. However, we need to adopt a new attitude, one that looks at the long-term rather than just the present and one that serves as preventative instead of responsive, which can be done by asking ourselves one simple question: Why?
LINK TO THE BORNEO, INDONESIA LOGGING RESEARCH PAPER: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2009240117
kyleneves.org 