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Development
Studies
Development
Studies
Unit: Development in a Global Context topic: In what respects do global environmental/ecological factors operate as a constraint on development?
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Key
words: Environment
and Development . ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
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1.
The
environmental crisis and the serious effects of environmental
deterioration on development: The economic and environmental crisis of the global showed as many faces, but they all looked very similar: whether it is in Africa, Asia or Latin-America, the diagnosis is almost everywhere the same: the patient is very ill. The symptoms are: the spread of deserts, soil erosion, declining food production, pollution and the depletion of forests, range-land, water resources and bio-diversity. In over the last twenty years the actual and potential effects of some of the global environmental problems that most worry humanity have become more evident. These include the deterioration caused by the wasteful consumer model of the most developed countries, the loss of biological diversity, the pollution created by urban gigantism, the traffic across borders of dangerous waste, the pollution of underground and surface water reserves, of sea and coastal zones, deforestation, and the impoverishment of agricultural lands. Among all these very serious problems, one element that cannot help but be in the front line of the contemporary ecological debate is the awareness that, particularly in large sectors of the Third World where the immense majority of the population subsists in precarious conditions of poverty, the main endangered biological species is humanity itself.1 Throughout the Third World land is dying. Human action rooted in poverty and the pressures of the world economy is degrading the land. When disasters like drought or flood strike, it no longer returns to full productivity. Land degradation comes in many forms: bare slopes left without topsoil or scarred by deep gullies after protecting trees have been cut down; skeleton soils whose fertility has been leached out by water; dry but once productive land turned into barren desert, exposed to the ravages of win and blown thousands of miles into the ocean and atmosphere; ground poisoned by pesticides and other toxic chemicals; land invaded by plants unpalatable to live-stock, after natural vegetation has been removed. The results can be devastating. The Sahel drought of the early 1970s was a deadly trigger for starvation only because for years the land had been bankrupted through human misuse and over-exploitation —a process which has become known as ‘desertification’. As many as a quarter of a million people died in the disaster on the southern fringe of the Sahara, as well as three and a half million cattle, sheep and goats. In the ensuing social and political turmoil every government in the region fell. Nearly a million ‘environmental refugees’ —a sixth of the population - fled from Burkino Faso (then Upper Volta), and half a million from neighbouring Mali. 2 Less dramatic soil erosion and land degradation and can be just as disastrous of the 850 million people living in the world’s dry lands, 230 million live on land affected by severe desertification. The United Nations Environment Programme describes how the poor are affected as their ecosystem slowly breaks down: —As crops
fail, domestic animals die, water sources dry up and fuelwood becomes
more and more difficult to obtain, the prospects for survival dwindle.
Often they do so slowly, almost imperceptibly. Nutritious grasses are replaced by less palatable ones,
forcing livestock to search larger areas for food;
Farmers are forced to move on to steep hillside land or areas
previously considered too infertile to warrant cultivation. Water sources become polluted with silt and salt.
And the trees on which rural families throughout the developing
world depend ... become virtually unobtainable. 3
‘Sub-Saharan African countries have been virtually marginalized. Ironically, prevalent and imminent global ecological problems may bring Africa back to the international community. The threat of ecological disasters may condemn us to mutual human solidarity’. 4 In many Sub-Saharan African countries the population has quadrupled in the last 50 years. In the same span of time 65 million hectares of land have been turned into desert and the ‘scissors effect’ of poverty and increasing population has cut a tragic path. In the Southern African subregion the problems are: the spread of the Kalahari-Namib desert and the surrounding semi-arid zone, accelerated soil erosion, declining food and energy yields and increasing poverty for an increasing population. The constraints hampering sustainable use of resources are outlined in Tanzania. In spite of a relative abundance of natural resources, Tanzania is unable to achieve sustainable economic development. The intensive and extensive exploitation of natural resources did not stop economic and social deterioration: productivity in the agricultural sector per unit area cultivated has dropped; the industrial sector shows gross capacity underutilization; deforestation, devegetation and soil erosion are claiming the land; population growth and the country's unstable land tenure system have added negative implications to the country's grave problem. This is true not only for Tanzania but for the majority of Sub-Saharan African countries.
2.
Industrialisation
and the Environment,—Physical Constraints on Development: The modern environmental movement grew out of the seemingly unstoppable Western economic growth of the 1950s and 1960s. Despite the prosperity of the ‘never-had-it-so-good’ consumer society, unease was growing about pollution and the wasteful destruction of nature which was a hallmark of Western industrial development. An agenda of concern emerged which centred on pollution (acid rain, lead in petrol, pesticides); waste (nuclear and toxic); preservation of nature and the countryside (disappearing species of wildlife, habitats and beautiful scenery); and the conservation of natural resources and energy. While industrialization is a necessary economic activity for any country, the process can have far-reaching negative impacts on the ecosystem. Uncontrolled pollutants from industries —in the form of solids, liquids and/or airborne emissions —can degrade the environment beyond recovery. For example, dumping untreated industrial effluents in rivers and lakes may not only poison sources of drinking water for human beings but also destroy or poison the habitats of marine life or birds. While it is commonplace to find rivers and lakes in industrialized countries in which birds and fishes cannot thrive because of the dumping of toxic, industrial wastes. The magnitude of pollution problems in developing countries could grow to untold levels if urgent steps are not taken manage industrial wastes. Large hydro-electric projects such as the Aswan Dam in Egypt, the Tellies Dam on little Tennessee River in the United States of America, Lake Diefenbaker in Canada, or Volta Dam in Ghana, all have a serious impact on their surrounding ecosystems. Dams are built in order to store water but due to enhanced sedimentation the storage capacity is reduced year after year, and with the electricity generating level for which the dam was planned. This may force a replacement or redesign of the turbines, which should match the water capacity in the reservoir —as happened with the Sanmen Gorge Dam on the Yellow River in China. In the case
of the Aswan Dam, another serious impact of siltation in the reservoir
is the erosion of the Nile Delta, some 1,000 km away from the dam.
Erosion of the Delta is now a serious problem. The loss of silt in the Nile Valley has also affected the
agricultural productive capacity of the valley which previously used to
get regular deposits of sediments each year.
Further, lack of sediments downstream from the dam has also
contributed to a significant reduction of plankton and organic carbons.
As the consequence, the population of sardines, scombroids and
crustaceans has been significantly reduced.
This has created hardship for the fishing community along the
Eastern Mediterranean, who depended on sardines for their livelihood.5
Besides, other negative is the rising of the groundwater table increases soil salinity with adverse effects on agricultural production. Salinity can be pressing problem if the hydro-electric project is linked to an irrigation scheme. 6 In the Amazon, dams have flooded thousands of square miles of rainforest, of which little has first been used for timber. Instead, the decaying trees have starved the water of oxygen, killing of fish and other aquatic life. Rotting vegetation and dissolved minerals from the tropical soils have produced lakes so acidic as to damage the dam’s turbine.7 This harnessing nature for booting industrial output and food production. But in the other hand, environment is destroyed by dams. As a result, thousands of peasant farmers and tribal people have been forced to move to poor, erosion-prone land. Fishing communities have been devastated and local people have become the victims of water-borner killer diseases like malaria and schistosomiasis or river blindness. However , the long-term affect have serious impact on the environment. Here I should pointed out that the environment is destroyed by the dams that will have a serious affect as a long-term constraint on the economic development.
3.
The
effects of deforestation: The multiscale effects of deforestation, the local impacts such as increased soil erosion, decrease in fertility, and loss of flora and fauna are better known than the long-term and global effects of large-scale deforestation. The immediate effect of clearing the forest is accelerated soil erosion. Less water infiltrates into the ground after forest clearance. This increases runoff of over the surface, and the eroded sediment and water is quickly and simultaneously transported to the sediment river, causing it to overflow. An increase in flooding as a consequence of deforestation is to be expected. If steep slopes are cleared of forests, landslides start to occur in high frequency; —organic matter and other nutrients of the soil are quickly lost and not naturally replenished, leading to rapid declines in crop yields. Overgrazing in drier areas destroys the scattered vegetation leading to the same results of soil erosion and depletion. The loss of forest decreases the moisture in the soil, and is also expected to lead reduction in the rainfall of the region leading to changes in the flow patterns of local rivers. The surface of the deforested land reflects a great amount of solar energy back to the atmosphere. A macro-scale deforestation like that of the Amazon Basin may lead to changes in atmospheric heat flux and rainfall pattern on a global scale. The biggest modification of the earth’s climate is expected to come from an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere following widespread deforestation. Such an increase on a global scale may provide enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to absorb sufficient thermal infrared radiation to cause a worldwide rise in temperature, the so-called greenhouse effect. This global warming phenomenon, a consequence of the ‘greenhouse effect’, has important ecological, economic and social consequences. This might cause melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets and concomitant flooding of the low coastal areas of the world. Climatic transformations would, among other things, cause changes in rainfall and marine ecosystems, increasing the possibility of phenomena such as hurricanes, tropical cyclones and typhoons. Similarly, temperate zones would become more vulnerable to tropical diseases such as malaria, dengue and yellow fever and many of that area’s crops would be severely affected, as in the case of wheat. With development, however, rainforests are perceived as a storehouse of resources, mainly timber and charcoal or firewood. Between such extractive activities and cultivation of both shifting and sedentary types, the rainforests of the world are shrinking at a rapid rate. Each year thousands of square kilometres of deforestation occur in Central and South America, south-east Asia, and Africa. It has been estimated by various researchers that by the year 2000 the rainforest will disappear from most of its present location. Apart from timber, tropical forests supply oil, gum, rubber, fibres, dyes, tannin, resins, and turpentine. They are also sources of many varieties of fruits and ornamental plants. Many of tropical rainforests species have not been properly examined, or even discovered. Some of the known ones are tremendous importance. For example, tropical forests provide ingredients for drugs for leukemia and Hodgkin’s disease, and contraceptive pills. They also supply strychnine, ipecacuanha, reserpine, curare, quinine, and diosgenin —all invaluable raw materials for the pharmaceutical industries.. This great gene pool of the tropical forests should be preserved. The forests are also home for vast number of (both flora and fauna), and the destruction of the rainforests is likely to result simultaneously in the elimination of a large number of such species. Moreover, trees sustain life for million of rural people across the world. They protect the fragile soil cultivated by farmers, regulate local climate and water, and supply a host of daily needs. Whether in the form of large forests or as trees scattered across the countryside, it is hard to exaggerate their vital importance for rural people and the serious implications of their loss. Beyond the 200 million people who actually live in the rainforests, there are further billion who rely on the rivers which flow from them.8 There are million more, both in the rich and the poor world. Whose environment depends on the mediating effects of the rainforests. Its destruction could have far-reaching effects on the ecology of the globe and constraint on future economic development. Rainsforests do not exist in isolation, for they are the key part of a much wider set of complex, interacting natural systems. Human survival and economic development depend on these systems to sustain the soils, rivers, and the local and global climates which are the basis of food production, health, energy and raw materials, in short, —development.
4.
Environmental
Effects Constraint on Economic Growth : It is now accepted that new projects in a range of sectors may have an important impact on the environment that will affect production and consumption levels — and thus ultimately income —elsewhere in the economy. For example, · an industrial plant may discharge waste into a river and thus reduce the fish population; this will lower the production and income of fishermen in the area; · an irrigation scheme, if inadequately drained, may increase soil salinization, which is the long run might adversely affect agriculture yields and farm income on the surrounding lands; · a power project may create air pollutants with long-run consequences for human health in the area of the project; · widening of a road may increase traffic use, and reduce what is considered to be the quality of life of domestic residents close to the road by ruining their views and raising noise levels. Environmental effects may result in a change in output elsewhere in the economy, so that this output change becomes a measure of the environmental effect. For instance, where pollution of the river by the factory results in death of fish and a lower catch, the economic value of this drop in fish output gives the negative externality to be attributed to the factory. Although in principle this is the easiest type of externality to quantify two qualifications should be noted. — First, what must be estimated is the net loss in output, assessing whether any reduction in input cost will also result. If the catch is reduced but fishermen also now fish for less time, there will be lower running costs of the boats partially to offset the lower catch; net loss is therefore reduction in output minus any reduction in input costs. — Secondly, the important comparison is between output with and without the project. If the river was already polluted, it is only the cost of the additional pollution that must be attributed to the factory. Alternative projects, one with serious environmental consequences and the other which avoids these, can be compared to determine the best alternative. If the later is the least-cost alternative there will be no ambiguity as to which is to be preferred. However, in the more typical case the environmentally more suitable project will be more expensive. In this approach the decision-taker will be presented with information as to how much more expensive is the environmentally preferred solution. This gives a monetary cost to compare with intrinsically unquantifiable benefits, and the decision-taker can then decide if the latter are sufficiently important to outweigh the former. For example, there may be two routes for a road, one which destroys good farm land whilst the other does not but is more expensive. The additional cost of the latter route is the opportunity cost of preserving farm land. However, this approach does not provide a attention to the costs of decisions. Where a number of such decisions have been taken in the past., it may be possible to identify the implicit value that decision-takers place on environmental effects through the extra costs that they are willing to incur. The stress on economic growth as the goal for development also fails to take account of the future impact of present action. It places the emphasis on profitable living now without considering the price —environmentally (and therefore probably economically) —to be paid later. For many environmentalists the greatest weakness of the ‘more growth’ solution is its failure to anticipate the future threat to the environment. The problem of ‘more growth’ as a solution for the Third World has led some to attack economic growth itself as the cause of poverty and environmental destruction. Far from being the solution, economic growth itself was said to be the problem. The ‘no growth’ argument gained great popularity during the 1970s, particularly with the publication of the “Limits to Growth” report by the Club of Rome in 1972. It was argued that there was a trade-off —either economic growth or the environment. The world had to aim for a steady economic equilibrium to head off a ‘sudden and uncontrolled’ environmental nightmare of pollution, resource depletion, overpopulation and food scarcity as the planet reached its finite ecological limits.
5.
Conclusion
and An Alternative Approach: Global development has left a series of environmental problems, and the environmental / ecological operates as an integrated system and any type of modification, even if it is local in nature, may start a chain of events resulting in multifarious effects regional in scale, and thereafter, the long-term constraint on development. The spread of deserts, soil erosion, declining food production, pollution of aquatic resources and the depletion of forests and rangeland from the background to the problem of environmental degradation in the global. But underlying all of these factors is the problem of poverty. A common problem for a number of the Third World countries is the pressure on them to service their international debt. As a result some countries tend to over-exploit their natural resources which would lead to environmental degradation. We have to acknowledged the existence of a real environmental crisis aggravated by unfair international trade practices, foreign debt, technology gaps, civil wars and autocratic rule, whether military or civilian. The need for a holistic approach to the environment problems of global goes further to question the viability concerning developing countries, because the gap between industrialized and non-industrialized countries would not have been reduced substantially, - here I should to address to the fundamental question: - is development of non-industrialized countries possible in the conditions of the free world market? It is interesting to note that multilateral development banks (MDBs) such as the World Bank or the African Development Bank have been criticized for lending money on projects which would lead to environmental degradation. The colonization project of ‘Polonoroeste’, which involved degradation of the Amazon rainforest by highway construction is a case in point. The conflict between development and environmental protection or between the interests of developed and developing countries, is due to overlooking the fact that there is only one earth. If rainforests are to be preserved to the sake of the world, it is necessary to provide technical and financial help to the countries that still have the rainforests, so that development is possible without uncontrolled deforestation. Today we all agree that the global crisis is not merely economic, but entails the profound breakdown of social structures and political system, accompanied by environmental degradation. Thus the sustainability of the environment is related to the building of durable social, economic and political structures. Appropriate policies of sustainable development must address this context. Development should be localized, human-scale and intended to solve human problems. ‘Strategies for Environment -Balanced Development’ for rational utilization of technologies , with a minimum of waste and disturbance of the ecosystem. · The problems of deforestation, siltation and soil erosion have very serious implications for land productivity and hence human survival. These should be tackled on the basis of systematic planning as a matter of urgency, with the emphasis on afforestation, research and development in new and renewable sources of energy, and training in environmental management, including public awareness campaigns. I should pointed out that the important issue for global development is that holistic sustainable development must, as the first priority, ensure the means of survival (food, water and shelter) before advancing to higher aspirations. The ideology of classic economic development has failed in many developing countries. Pursuing economic growth, developing countries ended up with debt, poverty and ecological degradation. Sustainable development must be understood and implemented as people development. “The ecosystem or environment is the sole irreplaceable habitat of mankind and must therefore be jealousy protected and husbanded”.9 Developing world is rich in natural resources - biomass, water, biodiversity, etc. - as well as mineral resources. The balanced sustainable use of these resources, natural and mineral, is essential for the realization of alternative development strategies for the global. The time to apportion blame for the environment crisis of the global was over, and that the time to apportion responsibility for halting the damage was due. Action now! -“Tomorrow will be too late to do what we should have done a long time ago.”10 Nature is damaged, not dead. We could still save it, and by saving it save ourselves. There is still hope for all of us and for the global ‘environment-balanced development’. 
Notes
and References: 1 Cuba President FIDEL CASTRO, who spoke at the Earth Summit on the environment in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992.
2
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), ‘Sands of Time: Why land
becomes desert and what can be done about it’, Environment Brief
No.2, UNEP, Nairobi.
3
UNEP
4
Mohamed Suliman ‘Alternative Strategies for Africa - Environment’,
Vol.2.
5
Ibid
6
Ibid.
7
Charles Secrett,
‘Greater Carajas’: Sustainable development or environmental catastrophe?’, in
David Treece, Bound in Misery and Iron,
Survival International, London, 1987, p.82.
8
World Conservation Strategy, IUCN / WWF / IIED, 1980, p.24.
9 A. K. N. Reddy, ‘Choi of technology’, in J. Goldberg, T. Johansson, A.K.N. Reddy and R. Williams, Energy for a Sustainable World, Vol. 1 (Centre for Energy and Environment Studies, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, 1985).
10
Cuba President FIDEL CASTRO, who spoke at the Earth Summit on
the environment in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992.
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