a very strange passion

Below extracts from a message from Jean-Claude Roffe, Chairman of the Technical Committee, Chairman of the Organising Committee, 16th IRF World Meeting. For the uninitiated, the IRF is the International Road Federation, and the message was entitled Paving with Passion!

"Congratulations to everyone and my warmest thanks !
to you, the 1,500 passionate participants who came to Lisbon,
to you, the 100 passionate men and women who helped organize the event,
to you, the 80 passionate exhibitors and sponsors who worked hard to support the IRF in 2010

Despite the economic crisis, this event was still a success, thanks to so many strong-willed members of the Road industry.....
Once again, it was clearly demonstrated that Roads are a vector of exchange and development, creating both wealth and growth. Today, responsible development strategies adopted by the Road Industry along with a number of research projects that are currently underway should help pave the way to more sustainable development and better road safety, but only if public officials help us do so.
Roads are very profitable investments for society as a whole. They do not pollute and are not dangerous, if the needed investments are made in a timely manner. Last but not least, our networks must be improved and maintained. Remember that we are to leave them behind for our children and grand children.
In short, roads and their thousand facets will continue to attract future generations of men and women who will be paving the industry’s future, and perpetuating our passion."

I love the idea that roads don't pollute and are not dangerous. Is this man serious? What about the vehicles that go on the roads and their contribution to carbon emissions? What about road accidents, probably the number one killer in the world? What about the environmental impacts of road construction itself?

I hope colleagues in IFRTD will take this up.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Some thoughts on the White Saviour Complex of development consultancies

Image
photo taken from  https://e11e99.wordpress.com/2012/10/06/identity-in-a-post-colonial-world/ I am sharing some thoughts that I picked  randomly from a relatively progressive Christian facebook page (Sojourners)that I follow, mainly to help me counter the rather misinformed opinions of my true believer Christian friends (brown not white).  The article is called , 6 HARMFUL CONSEQUENCES OF THE WHITE SAVIOR COMPLEX, BY RYAN KUJA  and is so relevant to the northern development consultancy space that many of my (white) friends and colleagues occupy (and that I too sometimes venture into) that I thought to use it to write a blog post that I can share with that community.   R yan Kuja confesses that he was "never a missionary in the standard sense of the word, never proselytized or attempted to save souls"  but admits that "the engine driving [him] was the white saviour complex..... The other Westerners [he] worked with believed [they] had it all pretty much figur
Read more

Disturbing vignettes (a series) - Sept 26: the brutalising effect of war

Check this out if you haven't already. http://tinyurl.com/kw526a It is a video of the Sri Lankan army executing Tamils early this year and was shown on Channel 4 recently and did the rounds of emails, facebook etc. Naturally it sparked a huge row. GOSL denied it of course. Experts tried to prove it was a fake. Last heard, GOSL was going to sue Channel 4. The footage is udoubtedly quite horrific and irrespective of whether this video is a fake or not, I think it is quite possible that such incidents could have taken place. What I find disturbing is that responsible journalists, and responsible citizens are happy to accept 'evidence' that has so obviously not been triangulated, that is openly admitted to being 'unverified'. Is it not also an indictment of our times that no one is seeing the video as depicting the brutalising effect of war . Armed conflict creates monsters on both sides - and this for me is the most important message that this video needs to bri
Read more

Year 2014: Buddhist era 2557-2558

Image
There was an interesting debate among colleagues that was triggered by the simple fact that I shared the official government calendar for 2014.  The Calendar has, as it has had in the previous year, and possibly many years prior to that,  the sub title -  Buddhist Era 2557-2558. This triggered a discussion on whether it was appropriate to have that on the calendar or not.  The argument against seemed to be based on it being seen as an imposition by the State of Buddhism, into areas that are perceived as secular and non-religious. [Though of course, as was pointed out,  the Gregorian Calendar is not really secular at all, based on the fact that it counts the years from the birth of Christ!] What was interesting was that we were having this debate at all.  Obviously, the current context has made us all ultra sensitive to certain issues, and the whole question of a state religion led some of us to be uncomfortable, others to be resentful (not overtly manifest in this conversation)
Read more