The Sustainable Development Goals: A View from Bocas del Toro, Panama
Harper Dunne, (2024-25 Iowa UNA College Ambassador from the University of Iowa)
Living in Panama less than a half mile from 5-star resorts in an idyllic archipelago are the Ngobe indigenous people, 95% of whom live in what is classified as extreme poverty. I had the privilege to get to know these communities in Bocas del Toro for two weeks, working with a local non-profit called Give and Surf. Give and Surf’s mission is to provide sustainable empowerment through education, self-determined community development, and respect for culture and traditions, focusing on six UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs 1, 2, 4, 8, 10, and 11). In my undergraduate global health studies classes, I studied UN initiatives like the SDGs in depth. But, during my trip to Bocas, I saw in real life what is involved in working towards No poverty (SDG 1), Zero hunger (SDG 2), and Quality education (SDG 4). I am sharing a few moments from my travels to provide a glimpse into some human faces behind the following statistics. I hope that it can serve as an impetus to not only read about the communities we care about in global news stories but to truly understand the value of collaboration to work towards mutual goals.
Globally, the UN’s 2024 Sustainable Development Goals Report found that there has only been minimal or moderate progress made on half of those goals, while progress has been stalled or reversed on over 1/3 of the goals. Approximately 1.4 billion children throughout the world were still uncovered by social protection programs in 2023, 19.5 percent of children under age 5 will have stunted growth due to malnutrition by 2030, and only 58% of students worldwide had achieved a minimum proficiency in reading by 2019.
Some of the people making up these statistics live in indigenous communities in Bocas del Toro, Panama. The Ngobe people survive at extremely low income thresholds; approximately half of Ngobe children suffer from malnutrition. Overall, Panamanian students’ results in the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment ranked 71st out of 77 countries in 2019. We often hear those sorts of numbers, and it can be easy to forget that there are personal stories and lived experiences behind them. So, here are a few stories from my two weeks in Bocas del Toro.
No poverty (SDG 1): Removing the shells of cacao seeds by hand is a delicious, fragrant, and difficult task. I tried my hand at this skill (literally) during a rather muddy cacao farm tour on Isla San Cristobal. The shell-removal step in cacao production comes after the months-long process of growing cacao trees in a forest farm, the harvesting of cacao fruit three times annually, the removal of the seeds from the fruit by hand, the 15-day fermentation of these seeds, and the 7-day drying process. Once the dried seeds have then been de-shelled by hand, they are hand-ground into a fine powder with a specific technique using a large mortar and pestle. The powder is then dried out again before sending it to a cacao co-operative, where it is eventually put into the chocolate that is sold across the world. I was shocked to learn what minuscule monetary value the economy assigns to this highly specialized process: indigenous farmers in Bocas del Toro receive just $1,000-$3,000 a year for the thousand pounds of cacao powder they produce - between $2.74 and $11.54 per day. And these cacao producers are the community members who have a relatively prosperous income.
Zero hunger (SDG 2): One day, a Give and Surf team member saw a mother giving her baby a Coca-Cola. The scenario was astonishing to me: how does someone not know the health-harms of Coca Cola, and why might someone with very little income spend their money on soft drinks? However, I began to understand the situation more after some time living in Bocas. While shopping for my own groceries, it became apparent that the cheapest and most widely stocked items in Bocas were the packaged sugary snacks and drinks. And as Americans know, those types of items are also the most tempting to a hungry belly! Furthermore, because many homes in local indigenous communities do not have refrigerators and are not closed off from the elements (including eager wildlife), packaged and shelf-stable goods have an added appeal. Plus, in Bocas, there seems to be a perception that imported, Westernized products are to be revered – that they are the best products to give to people we care about, including our children. Combined with a general lack of education around nutrition, given those factors, I began to understand why many locals would of course reach for the chocolatey, nutty candy bar or cool Coca-Cola sitting at eye-level on every shelf.
Quality education (SDG 4): At the University of Iowa, snow days are not granted even when it’s negative 10 degrees Fahrenheit. Therefore, on the rare occasion that classes are canceled, American students treat those days as a holiday, maybe going ice skating, building snowmen, or even throwing parties. By comparison, school cancellations in Bocas don’t feel like lucky surprises to be savored by the indigenous communities. School is often canceled due to rain, job strikes, and teacher absenteeism. When the majority of students and teachers have to pay $5 to ride on an open-air water taxi, simply getting to school can become an ordeal in itself. Having waited between 5 and 40 minutes to catch water taxis myself, I can now understand at least a little bit of the challenges facing students and teachers in Bocas, even if the eventual scenic boat ride is much more pleasant than an icy walk on a bitter cold day in Iowa City!
Those are just three anecdotes about the people behind the statistics we read about in news coverage about global issues. Anyone reading this blog certainly cares about the wellbeing of our fellow humans, no matter who it is and where they live – but how do we know what actually makes a dent in these problems? In Bocas, I found an answer: investing in long-term, sustainable projects for a small community of people. The deeply positive impact of community-embedded interventions was made apparent to me in so many moments, such as having local kids banging on our volunteer house door, excitedly shouting “¡abren, abren!” (“open, open!”) or hearing a preschool teacher tell us how excited she was for her community when the Give and Surf preschool building opened 12 years ago. It is clear that Give and Surf is an integrated, valued, appreciated, and reliable part of the community – far more trusted and valuable than a once-annual WHO delivery of toothbrushes or high-powered Nutributter packets.
And most importantly, perhaps the most impactful lesson I learned is that a lack of material wealth doesn’t always mean a lack of happiness, or even a lack of prosperity. For someone like me who has never known a life without luxuries like running water or regular garbage removal, this is a more difficult concept to comprehend. This lesson was put into words for me in a book called We Will Be Jaguars by Nemonte Nenquimo, a Waorani indigenous activist from the Ecuadorian Amazon. Nenquimo sums up the interactions of well-meaning white NGO workers with another Amazonian indigenous group, writing: “They told us we were poor.” This line struck me deeply, because in Bocas, when we discussed the communities’ needs, the people I met never once described themselves as “living in extreme poverty,” as the humanitarian community has labeled them. For this important reason, at the beginning of this reflection, I was careful to write about the Ngobe people as being “classified as living in extreme poverty,” because that this is not how they would describe themselves. Certainly, the people on Bocas expressed what they needed and how they wanted Give and Surf to support them in meeting those needs. Yet those wants did not define their lives. As one teacher said to me, “I have never left Panama; I have everything I need here.” This can be a profound lesson to all who would hear it, and I believe it is an important reminder of the complexity behind the poverty statistics that we read about. Looking from the outside and telling people through our words, or even our actions, that they are poor, is an easy trap to fall into while trying to help. But it does not help, and we can do better. I have seen that instead, everyone benefits more from engaging in partnership, each offering the other the best of what they have.