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Environment
in Low Income Countries
In the past, environmental degradation and resource depletion in low-income countries has been rationalised as part of the necessary costs of economic growth. Citizens of these countries have been told that they would have to 'grin and bear it' while their countries industrialised. But many in those low-income countries are beginning to question this conventional argument.
Some are arguing that the priority given to economic growth is misplaced. Environmentalists such as Khor Kok Peng, research director of Friends of the Earth, Malaysia, argues that poverty has increased despite economic growth, and that the environmental destruction it has caused 'has disrupted the sources of livelihood and threatened the health and even lives of poor Third World communities' (1987, p. 12).
Others, such as Ponciano Intal, President of the Philippines Institute for Development Studies, argue that economic growth is a priority but it does not have to be accompanied by environmental degradation. Australia's aid agency, AIDAB, also argues that it is possible for low-income countries to grow as rapidly as high-income countries without putting additional strain on the environment (1990, pp. 5&endash;6). Some fear, of course, that this type of growth will not be as economically successful as development that occurs regardless of the environmental consequences.
Intal argues that insecure property rights over land and natural resources have discouraged efficient use of resources and private investment in long- term improvements of the land. The Worldwatch Institute also argues that 'poor but secure smallholders rarely overburden their land; dispossessed and insecure rural households often have no choice but to do so' (Durning 1990, p. 145). It argues that people are more likely to deplete forests, soils and water supplies if they are concerned they will lose access to them.
On the other hand, secure ownership of land has not always been necessary for sustainability. Commonly owned areas previously thrived under traditional management; but they have deteriorated because control has been moved from the traditional management by local people to government institutions that have not developed adequate management mechanisms.
Reliance on resource extraction for development
A second cause of environmental degradation and resource depletion in low-income countries is their heavy reliance on resource extraction in their development strategies rather than on human labour, which is in plentiful supply. The Philippines, like many other low-income countries, has encouraged the import of capital-intensive goods which substitute for labour-intensive activity within the country. This has meant that industrial growth has not been accompanied by a similar growth in employment.
Resource extraction, particularly mining, has caused environmental degradation in itself. Some notable disasters have occurred in low-income nations. One is the Panguna copper mine on the island of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea. The mine, before it was closed by its management in 1989, caused approximately 600 million tonnes of contaminated tailings to be dumped into the Kawerong River, killing life in the river and, it has been argued, contributing to the reasons for civil war in the area. What is more, those low-income countries that are most dependent on export revenues from minerals are among the most indebted nations in the world today because of falling prices (Young 1992, pp. 106, 112&endash;13).
Trade barriers in high-income countries
The trend towards reliance on resource extraction has been exacerbated by industrial protection in high-income countries&emdash;such as trade barriers against foreign products&emdash;which have discouraged imports of labour-intensive goods and processed raw materials from low-income countries. For example, tariffs on cloth imported by European countries are four times as high for poor nations as for rich ones. The World Bank estimates that each year trade barriers in high-income nations cost low-income countries $US50 billion to $US100 billion in lost sales and reduced prices (Durning 1990, p. 14).
Because employment growth has been limited in this way, there has been increasing population pressure on existing agricultural land. Aided by easy access to uplands and forest lands, there has been a surge of poor people into these areas and overfishing in coastal areas. It is generally recognised that desperate people overexploit their resource base. They are forced by the pressures of immediate survival to cut down forests in order to grow food, to plough steep slopes and to shorten fallow periods (the time that the land is left to recover from intensive cropping).
The adoption of western ways, products and technologies
Khor Kok Peng argues that much of the environmental degradation in low-income countries is caused by western products, technologies and development models (1987, pp. 12&endash;13). He gives examples such as the Bhopal disaster, where a western company adopted standards below those that would have been acceptable in its home country. Another example he gives is the so-called 'green revolution', which replaced locally grown rice varieties that were resistant to pests with high-yield varieties that required an increasing use of pesticides. These pesticides increased the dependence of local farmers and governments on multinational agricultural chemical companies and, he claims, has resulted in forty thousand pesticide poisoning deaths each year. The interlinking relationships between multinational chemical corporations, land degradation and debt are shown in the accompanying figure.
Low prices for commodities and natural resources
Intal argues that low prices for resources and their extraction have led to overexploitation of the resources and have discouraged investment in sustainability of the resources. However, the revaluation of these resources is politically difficult. In the Philippines, increases in taxes on extraction or exploitation of natural resources is opposed by powerful lobby groups who benefit from the low-cost extraction of resources. Concessions and licences to cut timber, for example, are owned by members of the local and national elite. In the area of agriculture, increases in food prices in low-income countries would be opposed by the more politically vocal city people who tend to provide the power-base for most governments.
Pricing is also affected by world markets. The large subsidies given by some high-income countries to their own farmers have depressed world prices for agricultural products, increasing rural poverty in low-income countries. This means that farmers in low-income countries do not have the funds to invest in farm equipment, water control, integrated pest management and other measures which would make them more competitive and more sustainable. Nor can they afford to invest in post-harvest facilities, which results in substantial food losses due to spoilage and poor handling.
Commodity prices are also affected by the oversupply of some resources such as mineral resources.
The Pacific islands and nations have special problems when it comes to sustainable development. They are increasingly dependent on imported fossil fuel; indeed, some of the smaller island nations, such as Niue, the Marshall Islands, Tokelau and Tuvalu, sometimes pay more for imported fuel than they earn from all their exports. The region is characterised by dispersed populations with long distances between major centres. Thus efficient energy production and distribution is a problem. Fuelwood is also scarce in some areas, and this is contributing to deforestation.
Other contributors to deforestation in the Pacific region include commercial logging, agricultural plantation establishment and expansion, cyclones, fire, landslides and massive slips. This forest loss has implications for conservation of soil, watershed maintenance and habitat diversity. Also, the displacement of traditional land management systems by introduced agricultural systems, mining and forest utilisation have put serious stress on land resources in the South Pacific.
Vili Fuavao, Director of the South Pacific Regional Environment Programme, says that marine resources, important to many island nations, are being depleted because of:
- overfishing and fishing techniques, including the use of poisons and explosives;
- pollution from sewage, fertilisers and biocides, toxic wastes and oil spillage;
- landfill and reclamation of coastal land for building and developments;
- mangrove damage caused by garbage dumps, the cutting down of trees for poles and firewood, and by poorly designed causeways, protection walls and seawalls;
- accumulation of sediments resulting from agriculture, mining, forest utilisation, beach mining, lagoon dredging and construction;
- seepage of contaminated groundwater into the sea;
- collection of corals and shells by or for tourists; people walking across reefs. (1992, p. 11)
The two other major factors affecting sustainable development in low-income countries are population and the debt crisis which will be dealt with in the next section.