Kindly Neighbours

Really, where would we be without our good neighbours? Lonely, perhaps. Or, in the case of neighbours whom we'd prefer not seeing too often, glad that we don't have to. You can't pick your neighbours, they're just there. Who, when contemplating the purchase of a house, walks next door to introduce themselves to their potential new neighbours, after all? And, in any event, would a brief acquaintance with people you'd never before seen alert you to the fact that they're either raving lunatics or wonderfully kind people? You take your chances.

Then if, upon moving and becoming familiar with your next-door neighbours or even those living several houses beyond, you find yourself living amongst people whose values and mores match your own, aren't you fortunate! Chances are, in any event, when people live among those whose traditions and values have been informed by similar backgrounds there will be much in common between them. All right, there's also the issue of personalities, and often enough they can grate; can't please everyone.

Still, neighbours don't really like to annoy one another for the very simple reason that they themselves don't like to be annoyed. So most people go out of their way to be at least civil to their neighbours and sometimes friendships develop so that the street can take on the characteristics of a true neighbourhood with neighbourly friendships and trust a healthy by-product. Neighbours will help one another, offer tools to one another, share evenings together on occasion. Makes for a nice warm atmosphere.

Pity the homeowners or even the apartment dwellers who have neighbours-from-hell. More common, doubtless, than those of us blessed with good neighbours can imagine. The neighbours who think nothing of infringing on the rights of others, who impose and demand and feel entitlement where none is actually there. The people who, if they're not hosting all-night parties of their own, permit their offspring to do so in the out-of-doors with pool parties and flinging beer bottles at random, voices raised high in the spirit of the occasion.

Wait, there are other kinds of neighbours too. Countries living side by side or adjacent one another are also neighbours, right? And sometimes things can go awry there too. Here's the example of several countries as neighbours. Tiny Singapore, with a population of 4.5 million people, located at the tip of the Malaysian peninsula has long-term plans to ease its crowded conditions by reclaiming land from the sea - ah, the sea around it, all around it.

When Singapore declared its independence from Malaysia in 1965 it was comprised of 581 square kilometres of swampy, malaria-infested jungle out of which it managed to create an affluent, highly-educated society. At present the island is 650 square kilometre with plans to 'acquire' another 100 square kilometres within 30 years, using 1.5 billion cubic metres of dredged silica a year. So where is Singapore obtaining the sand so necessary to its reclamation efforts? Why, from its neighbour.

Indonesia is comprised of 17,000 islands, some hugely sizeable, some minute with no feasible life forms on them. But gigantic Indonesia is apoplectic about its tiny neighbour's purchase of sand, building materials and landfill. Indonesia has levelled a very serious charge against its neighbour; that Singapore has been busy stealing their land. Last week 24 tugs and barges full of granite chips were stopped by the Indonesian authorities as they sailed toward Singapore.

Indonesia announced a ban on the sale of sand to its neighbour, claiming that its islands were being loaded onto ships to be carried away to Singapore. Yes, these fragments of islands jutting out into the sea all around Indonesia appear to have no practical function as they're not large enough to support human activities, let alone people. Yet Indonesia claims "Some of these islands are reduced to islets, and could even disappear below the surface."

"This could theoretically lead to a cartographic zero-sum game in which Singapore's gain could be at Indonesia's territorial loss", claims Indonesia's former intelligence chief. Oh dear, contrasting Singapore's obvious need and the disparity in size between the two, it's fairly simple to deduce that grumpy giant Indonesia is behaving like the baddest of bad neighbours. Grudging a tiny nation the wherewithal to build its surface resource through the reduction of minute islands of no value to its current owner.

Oh, right, with the potential disappearance of a few tiny islets out of the gigantic total comprising Indonesia's surface resource, there is the risk they might lose ocean rights according to the Convention on the Law of the Sea. Yet Indonesia should see its way through to being a good neighbour within reasonable bounds. Relinquish what is not practicably useful for a good cause.

Give a little, gain a lot. Neighbourly civility.