NOT FAR AFIELD: U.S. Interests and the Global Environment

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Copyright © 1987 World Resources Institute. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 87-50723 ISBN 0-915825-24-4 ISSN 0880-2582 NOT FAR AFIELD: U.S. Interests and the Global Environment

Norman Myers

u WORLD RESOURCES INSTITUTE

A Center for Policy Research

June 1987 Contents

I. The Global Environment and U.S. Interests 1

II. Analytic Framework 7

Economic Linkages 8 Ecological Linkages 10 Economic-Ecological Linkages 10 Interdependence 12 The U.S. National Interest 12 III. Environment, Resources and Population: Critical Issues 15

Loss of Agricultural Lands 15 Mass Extinction of Species 21 Tropical Deforestation 22 The Marine Realm 23 Freshwater Shortages 24 Energy Shortages 24 Air Pollution 25 Climate Change 26 Population Growth 27 Urbanization 28 Environmental Refugees 29 Immigration into the United States 30

IV. Security 33

Resources, Population, and Conflict 33 U.S. Friends and Allies 37 V. The Case of the Caribbean Basin 39

Agriculture and Soil Erosion 41 Population Growth 42 Consequences for U.S. Interests 42 The Case of Haiti 44 Central America 45 Mexico 48

VI. Policy Implications 53

Constraints of Interdependence 56 A Strategy for Action 56

Notes 59 Acknowledgments

his paper reflects my 24 years of residence, work and travel in some 60 countries of the developing world, and some 20 T countries of the developed world. But it also reflects the experience and insights of hundreds of people cited in the references and my many stimulating discussions with a host of professional associates and friends. While it is invidious to pick out names from helpful col- leagues, I am specially indebted to Professors David Pearce and David Hall of the University of London, Dr. Michael Kelly of the University of East Anglia, Dr. Peter Raven of the Missouri Botanical Garden, Pro- fessor Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University, and Professor David Pimentel of Cornell University. At World Resources Institute, I have benefited from the informed and considered comments of Robert Repetto, William Burley, Irving Mintzer, Robert Kwartin, Mohamed El-Ashry, Janet Welsh Brown, Jessica Mathews, and Gus Speth. My thanks too to Craig Thomas, who tracked down many pieces of information; and to Frances Meehan for typing the final draft. Kathleen Courrier has labored long to smooth out the text and to eliminate redundancies. The paper has further benefited from two background papers written earlier for WRI by Ann L. Hollick and John G. Ruggie. At my office in Oxford, Jennie Kent has typed one draft after another. To all of these persons, I am grateful for their various contributions.

N.M.

in Foreword

or several years, the World Resources Institute has been at- tempting to define, explicate and communicate to a broad au- F dience the ways in which U.S. interests are, and increasingly will be, affected by population, resource, and environmental trends. In the 1970s, the concept of what constituted U.S. national security expanded to include international economics, because it had become obvious that the U.S. economy was no longer the independent force it once had been, but instead was being powerfully affected by economic trends and policies in dozens of other countries. A decade later, global developments suggest the need for another, analogous, broadening of the national security concept, this time to include resource, environmental, and demographic issues. The scope of human activities is now great enough to affect the natural environment on a planetary scale. Carbon released from fossil fuel burning has altered the natural carbon cycle and appears to have set off a global "greenhouse" warming. Synthetic chlorofluorocarbons are depleting the stratospheric ozone layer. Erosion and deforestation caused by human activities have accelerated the flow of sediments and nutrients to the ocean, while dams built for power and irrigation have interrupted the flow. Thus deforestation in the Amazon River will cause its discharge to rise steeply, while the Colorado and the Nile, which once discharged more than a million tons of suspended matter per year, now discharge essentially nothing. These changes have profound impacts on inland farming, fisheries, and coastal development—all of which affect, to varying degrees, neighboring states. Beyond nuclear accidents and chemical spills, less dramatic results of poor resource use have impacts felt around the globe, whether they be the consequences of massive species loss or the effects of one country's energy use on oil prices in countries thousands of miles away. Agricultural decline due in part to desertification has led to the movement of thousands of "environmental refugees." Rapid population growth—in some areas doubling in less than 20 years—puts potentially unbearable strains on nations' abilities to provide food, housing, and jobs. This stress, in turn, imperils the future political stability of friendly governments. There are dozens of similar examples. Generally, they are ignored in scholarly geopolitical analyses and by policymakers in the dark about what is occuring and untrained in the relevant disciplines. Again, the analogy to international economics is apt. Demographers, environmen- talists, and resource managers have not done their parts in providing reliable data on what the physical trends are, and more important, in tracing their impacts on economic and political conditions. This last is, to say the least, a difficult task. Environmental change both affects and is affected by the physical and policy context in which it occurs and is therefore intricately tied to everything from national policies and ethnic conflicts to regional military instability. There is no question, for example, that many of the Haitian boat people who fled to the United States left because of the brutality of the Duvalier regime. But there is also no question—and this is what is generally ignored—that a great many left because of soil erosion so severe that many Haitian peasants were faced with the impossible task of farming land eroded down to bedrock. The policy significance, of course, is that the flow of boat people cannot be stopped by replacing one regime with another if the erosion problem is not also recognized and corrected. The challenge, therefore, is to recognize the environmental com- ponents of complex problems and to assign them their appropriate role, and this is the task attempted in this study. It is, as appropriate to a new field, a wide ranging tour d'horizon. Other WRI publications have looked in more detail at particular regions (Bordering On Trouble: Resources & Politics in Latin America; Adler & Adler, 1986) and individual countries (case studies of Mexico; Costa Rica; Egypt, Kenya, Sudan and the Philippines—forthcoming, 1987). In contrast, this paper explores the full range of this immense subject, covering the whole planet and everything from international trade and debt to conflicts over the availability of water. The treatment is necessarily general and exploratory, but Norman Myers has here performed the valuable task of laying the base on which others can build. The World Resources Institute expresses its deep appreciation to the Carnegie Corporation of New York, The George Gund Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for their vision in providing generous support for WRI's work on the U.S. Stake in Global Resources Project.

Jessica T. Mathews Vice President and Research Director World Resources Institute

VI I. The Global Environment and U.S. Interests*

".. .our world is at present faced with two unprecedented and supreme dangers. One is the danger not just of nuclear war but of any major war at all among great industrial powers.... The other is the devastating effect of modern industrialization and overpopulation on the world's natural environment. The one threatens the destruction of civilization through the recklessness and selfishness of its military rivalries, the other through the massive abuse of its natural habitat. Both are relatively new problems, for the solution of which past experience affords little guidance. Both are urgent... the environmental and nuclear crises will brook no delay."

George F. Kennan

he global environment is being stressed and degraded on a scale that entails severe economic costs—costs that can readily T translate into political instability, even into threats to security. At the same time, there is an increase in economic and ecological linkages among nations. These linkages make interdependence a predominant feature of the international community. As a result, U.S. interests are increasingly affected by environmental degradation in other lands, as in the global commons of the high seas and the planetary atmosphere.

Consider some examples of the reach of U.S. interests in the world's natural resources and ecological systems.

• Transboundary pollution—notably, acid precipitation—now causes so much economic injury that it threatens international relations in northeastern North America and Western and Central Europe. In

*The author is deeply indebted for concepts, ideas, and illustrations to two earlier papers prepared for the World Resources Institute by Ann L. Hollick, "The U.S. Stake in Global Issues," 1985, and by John Gerard Ruggie, "The State of the World and the State of the Nation: Some Population and Resource Connections," 1984. several other parts of the world, there are growing diplomatic skirmishes over pollution that respects no borders.

• The combination of over-burdened environments and fast-growing human numbers in Central America aggravates the economic breakdown and political turmoil in this region of special interest to the United States.

• Deforestation, soil erosion, water depletion, and other forms of resource run-down in Haiti and other Caribbean islands undermine agriculture and help create "environmental refugees"—a phenomenon that looks likely to become widespread not only in the Caribbean Basin but in several other parts of the world.

• Acute competition for water in the Middle East, especially for the scarce water flows of the Rivers Jordan and Litani, has long been a source of conflict among Israel and Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. Egypt's government now considers the most likely source of future hostilities to lie with potential disputes with upstream states over the waters of the River Nile.

• Decline of the agricultural resource base in Ethiopia contributed to the downfall of Emperor Haile Selassie, a leader well disposed to the United States. More recently, shortages of fuelwood and food, plus water disputes, undermined the regime of President Numeiry of Sudan, another U.S. ally.

• Soil erosion in the Ethiopian highlands helped trigger the Ogaden war, which eventually involved both superpowers since the Horn of Africa is strategically located vis-a-vis the Middle East and the oil- tanker lanes along Africa's east coast.

• In Mexico, the pressure of a burgeoning rural populace on over- loaded farmlands, along with failing urban systems and a troubled economy, helps foster the mass migration of Mexicans into the United States.

• In fuelwood-short developing countries, animal dung is often used as fuel rather than fertilizer. The result is a loss of at least 14 million tons of food production foregone each year—more than all relief food shipped in 1985. The leading supplier of relief food is the United States.

• Degradation of watersheds in the Third World reduces the quanti- ty and quality of water supplies for domestic use, aggravating the scale of water-borne diseases that account for 80 percent of child mortality—with adverse repercussions for birth-control motivation and population planning. • Several dozen disputes over ocean fisheries have erupted, occa- sionally to the point of open hostilities, among leading maritime nations, including the United States.

• Mass extinction of species, especially in the tropical Third World, reduces the genetic variability available to support modern agriculture, medicine, and industry, especially in the gene-poor developed nations of the temperate zones. U.S. agriculture is based almost entirely on "foreign" crops, insofar as corn, wheat, and other staples originate from outside the United States, and depend for their continued productivity on regular infusions of genetic variability from the "native homes" of these crops, almost all outside the United States (and mostly in the tropical developing world).

• Carbon dioxide build-up in the global atmosphere, due primarily to burning of fossil fuels in developed nations, looks likely to cause climatic dislocations that could markedly affect agriculture in temperate-zone nations, particularly the United States.

True, there are not always immediately apparent connections between these environmental problems and U.S. interests. The relationships can vary widely. In such cases as the acid rain conflict with Canada or the influx of environmental refugees from Haiti and other Caribbean nations, the impact on U.S. interests is direct. In cases where environmental degradation has contributed to the downfall of Third World leaders friendly to the United States, the impact is indirect. In some instances—among them, the one-time dispute between the United States and Canada over the Newfoundland fishery, which was resolved through recourse to the International Court of Justice— the impact is short-run. In others, such as the conflicts over water in the Middle East and the Nile Valley, or the consequences of tropical deforestation, the impact is longer term. Sometimes, the impact is so diffuse and deferred that the entire planetary ecosystem and all nations are affected: for instance, the depletion of Earth's genetic reservoirs or the build-up of greenhouse gases in the global atmosphere. In other instances, impacts can be broadscale and generalized both in space and time—as they are now through the decline of environmental resources (and, hence, of development prospects) in Central America, the tropical Andean nations, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Indian sub-continent.

However subtle the linkages to U.S. interests, the economic hopes of resource-degraded countries will be set back and their political stability undermined. Moreover, impoverished populaces readily become disaffected, supplying breeding grounds for dissident groups and guerilla movements—including Soviet- or Cuban-backed insur- gents. All too often, the repercussions are inclined to spread (as in the case of El Salvador and Ethiopia) until they involve neighbors or even threaten relations among entire groupings of nations. Certain of the most far-reaching and complex linkages at work among the community of nations are apparent with respect to Deforestation in the deforestation and desertification. Deforestation in the Himalayan foothills costs the 500 million people of the Gangetic Plain at least $1 Himalayan foothills billion a year in damages to crops and other property, and it accen- costs the 500 tuates water-related tensions between India and Bangladesh. In million people of several other major river valleys of Southern Asia with their dense agricultural communities, deforested watersheds no longer supply the Gangetic Plain dependable year-round flows of irrigation water. Water shortages may at least $1 billion a eventually prove to be the single largest constraint on increasing the year in damages to region's rice production. In much of the humid tropics, deforestation is far and away the biggest cause of mass extinction of species and crops and other their genetic resources. property, and it accentuates water- Desertification, drought, and famine pervade many countries of sub- related tensions Saharan Africa and threaten to plunge much of the region into enduring disarray. In terms of U.S. interests, the prospective cutoff of im- between India and portant minerals is less (probably far less) the issue than the ensuing Bangladesh. instability in such strategic localities as the Horn of Africa. More broadly and importantly still, Africa-wide turmoil enhances opportunities for adventurism by such regimes as Libya, Cuba, and the Soviet Union. Also at issue are the loss of trading partners, the waste of U.S. aid (amounting to $8 billion for Africa during the past 11 years), and the humanitarian reaction to human suffering on an unprecedented scale.

It is the frequent failure of many Third World nations to achieve sustainable development—the foundation of economic and political stability—that is at issue here. Sustainable development depends on the natural-resource base that ultimately underpins all economies- soils, water, forests, grasslands, fisheries, atmosphere, climate, and the like. So we can define sustainable development as the permanent process of generating economic benefits while maintaining the natural- Sustainable resource base. In the tropics where most developing nations are located, the natural-resource base tends to be richer biotically and development is the more diverse ecologically than in the temperate zones. Yet it is often permanent process more vulnerable to disruption and injury. Moreover, tropical nations of generating of the Third World generally do not have the scientific skills or the management know-how to exploit their natural resources sustainably. economic benefits While environmental degradation is common in the temperate zones while maintaining too, the greatest damage is being done in the tropical Third World, the natural-resource where the need for sustainable development is greatest. base. Regrettably, environmental problems seldom generate the sense of urgency that accompanies economic crises and political instability, no matter how closely they might be related in the long term. If the urgent drives out the important today, the important can become the imperative tomorrow—when there may be much less room to maneuver in response. Of course, it is easy to over-state the case for greater U.S. involve- ment in global resource management and protection. It would be a mistake to suppose that environmental problems are often the main, let alone the sole, factor at issue in economic slowdown. It would equally be a mistake to suppose that environmental problems do not often play a role. No more, and certainly no less.

For illustration, consider the debt crisis. As of 1986, developing countries owe around $900 billion. Of that sum, $400 billion is owed by Latin American countries, primarily to private U.S. banks. In many debtor countries, one third to one half of export earnings are absorbed by payment of interest on debt—a debt load that distorts their economies. In Sahelian nations, for instance, peanuts and cotton are grown for the export trade at the expense of food for local consumption. In turn, land-hungry and food-short peasants open up new lands for agriculture—often lands with desiccated and friable soils that are unusually susceptible to desertification. Thus, the debt factor encourages unsustainable development; and the lending banks have every incentive to promote sustainable development as the only viable long- term way for debtor countries to honor their obligations. The lending banks Against this background of multiple interacting factors, only some of have every incentive them environmental, let us envisage a future where Third World to promote resource problems persist, slowing economic advance.1 Government sustainable policies play their part too, insofar as much poor economic perform- ance in the Third World stems from ill-conceived development strat- development as the egies. The overall outcome could be a continuing downward spiral of only viable long- poverty and unemployment that in turn precipitates frustration, term way for debtor political eruptions, and even government paralysis or collapse. countries to honor What happens when the negative cycle takes hold in countries that their obligations. are important to the United States by reasons of trade and investment, political affinity, strategic location, and security interests? The United States could find itself increasingly beset by requests for further foreign aid and humanitarian help. It could even face "economic aggression"—new trade cartels, market closures, nationalization of assets, and debt cancellations. Were the governments of troubled countries to try to relieve their domestic tensions at any cost, they could become increasingly autocratic and repressive, building up their militaries to contain internal conflicts or resorting to international adventurism to gain leverage abroad. If many other developing nations followed suit, political instability could threaten the United States and other developed nations, and even aggravate the rivalry between the superpowers.

We cannot predict exactly how these factors could interact, or how far—in light of the growing global traffic in arms, the prevalence of terrorism, or the proliferation of nuclear devices—they will lead to violence. But it is realistic to suppose that tensions and conflicts, whether domestic or international, could easily escalate and multiply. The fact that it is sometimes difficult to perceive all the connections between decline in environmental wellbeing and rise in instability and violence, may tell us less about the nature of the connections than about our limited capacity to think concisely and systematically about environmental concerns that have long fallen outside policy-makers' ken. Those connections that are more apparent may not lend themselves to quantification, by contrast with "conventional" connections that are readily measurable, and thereby carry greater weight with policy-makers. We should not prefer what can be counted to the detriment of what also counts. In the case of connections that are difficult We should not even to define, we should remember that, as in other situations of uncertainty where a negative outcome carries unusually adverse prefer what can be penalties, it will be better for us to find we have been vaguely right counted to the than precisely wrong. detriment of what also counts. Whatever the connections of Third World and global environmental problems to U.S. interests, the documentation and analysis that follow indicate that they are real and important—and that they are growing more numerous and influential. Taken together, they already affect many U.S. interests around the world. Fortunately, they are all amenable to remedial measures through policy initiatives, provided they are recognized in due time. The key question raised here is whether the United States will recognize its interests in their full scope, and act accordingly. II. Analytic Framework

"The primary direct benefits to the U.S. of assisting the developing nations are simple... The developing nations now provide us a larger export market than all the developed nations put together, excluding only Canada... The developing nations are an important source for us of commodities and raw materials which are vital to our own productive capacity, as well as to our security and quality of life.. .Many developing nations are our close friends and allies, cooperating with us on security matters and helping to contain Soviet expansionism. Extreme poverty is the breeding ground for excesses of both the far left and the far right. Such excesses can easily in turn stimulate unrest and prove extremely expensive to close neighbors, and even those far away."

David Rockefeller

mong leading environmental issues today are soil erosion and desertification, mass extinction of species, tropical A deforestation, marine degradation, freshwater shortages, fuelwood deficits, air pollution including acid rain, and climatic dislocations. Many of these environmental problems are linked with high population growth, which further manifests itself through broadscale unemployment, ultra-rapid urbanization, the emergent phenomenon of "environmental refugees," and broadscale international migration.

These environmental problems differ in at least three ways from those of the past. First, they mainly concern natural resources (land, soil, forests, fisheries, water, species, etc.), especially in the Third World, and they are broader and more complex than traditional manifestations of pollution, especially in the First World. Second, much environmental degradation in the Third World is closely con- nected with poverty. Each factor reinforces the other—witness the impoverished peasant who cannot afford to safeguard the soil cover of his farmlands, whereupon his neglect leaves him yet more impoverished. Third, environmental problems can be readily transmitted from one country to another via ecological linkages of the unitary biosphere, such as water systems and climatic regimes, or via such growing economic linkages as international trade and investment. The first is exemplified by deforestation in Nepal that causes flooding and property destruction in India and Bangladesh, and by British factories whose sulfur emissions cause acidification of forests, lakes, and croplands in Scandinavia and Central Europe. The second is manifest in the "hamburger connection"—the influence of North American demand for cheap beef on deforestation in Central America. In short, what starts out as a domestic problem in one country becomes the "imported" problem of another country.

Compared to those of a decade ago, environmental values and economic concerns are no longer in such conflict. Indeed, they appear increasingly compatible and even complementary. To cite former World Bank President A.W. Clausen, speaking of the Third World, "Envir- onmental precautions are essential for continued economic development over the long run ... The goal of economic growth itself dictates a serious and abiding concern for resource management."2

These new perceptions are emerging at a time when the United States' stake in the global economy is greater than ever. The nation is now the world's largest exporter and importer of both raw materials and manufactured goods, the largest overseas investor, and the largest international debtor as well as the largest creditor; and the dollar remains the primary reserve currency. As a result, U.S. prosperity increasingly depends upon and influences the economic success of many other nations. 3 Today 5 million Economic Linkages From 1950 onward, the world economy has steadily become more American jobs—or 5 internationalized and hence inter-linked4 through the steady liberaliza- percent of the tion of the global economic order, notably in terms of trade, invest- total—and one in ment, currency flows, and interest and exchange rates. True, there has been a slowdown, even some reversal, during the past few years. But six of all jobs in the longer-term pattern is apparent in expanded trade, greater mobili- industry, depend on ty of capital and labor, major expansion of transport and communica- exports. The Third tions, and the rise of multinational corporations. Since 1950, global trade has expanded almost sixfold in real terms. In the case of the World now accounts United States, import of goods as a percentage of domestic supply for roughly 40 amounted to only 6 percent in 1960, but 16 percent by 1980.5 U.S. percent of U.S. export of goods as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) amounted to only 3 percent in 1950, but 8.8 percent by 1980. So im- exports and supplies portant has the export market become to the U.S. economy and about 40 percent of employment that today 5 million American jobs—or 5 percent of the 6 U.S. imports. total—and one in six of all jobs in industry, depend on exports. As for U.S. trade with developing nations, the Third World now accounts for roughly 40 percent of U.S. exports and supplies about 40 percent of U.S. imports. American exports to developing nations have been growing on average by 20 percent annually, compared to only 15 percent for exports to other developed nations.7 By 1984, these exports were worth $84 billion, or 27 percent by value of all such exports from developed nations—meaning that U.S. exports to the Third World were far greater than those of any other developed nation. As a proportion of U.S. total exports by value, these exports increased from 30 percent in 1973 to 37 percent in 1980. (If Third World nations can resume their erstwhile economic growth and expanding incomes, they could account for 50 percent of U.S. exports by the year 2000.) This rising proportion of U.S. trade with the Third World contrasts with a decline in the proportion of exports to developed nations, from 65 percent in 1973 to 58 percent in 1980. Indeed, the United States now exports more to the Third World than to all developed nations combined except Canada. From 1973 to 1980, U.S. imports from developing nations rose from 28 percent to 47 percent of U.S. total imports, while imports from developed nations fell from 69 percent to 50 percent. After 1980, when the global community was in the throes of an economic recession and U.S. exports to developing nations fell, the United States lost $18 billion in export earnings (and more than one million jobs).8

From the developed world as a whole, exports to the Third World declined during the 1982-83 recession by $43 billion. Had these exports remained at their 1982 level, growth rates in the developed world would have been at least half a percent higher in 1983.9

The United States has a further economic stake in the Third World, this time as an area for private investment.10 During the 1970s, American investment in the Third World (excluding petroleum) grew almost twice as fast as that in the developed world. As of 1984, Manufacturers Hanover had made loans worth 262 percent of its capital shares to just five nations, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Chile, and Argentina. Another 10 banks had each lent these same five nations sums worth between 125 and 200 percent of the capital shares.11

Certain of these investments now seem at risk, due to economic slowdown in recipient countries. It has been projected that default by Brazil alone would cost the United States $25 billion in GNP and some 400,000 jobs within the first year.12 And default might well trigger bankruptcy in affected American banks.

As these figures show, the United States has an emphatic stake in the stable development of the global economy, especially in the sustainable economic growth of the Third World. Its stake in the environmental resources that underpin sustainable growth is commen- surately great. Ecological Linkages Ecological linkages are not always so discernible as economic link- Many once-local ages. Ecological effects—for example, degradation of watersheds and incidents of coastal zones, concentration of pollution in food chains, and climatic dislocations—are often diffuse and otherwise cryptic in their workings. pollution in small- They slowly modify ecosystem processes and deplete natural resources scale water systems that are critical to economic development. In addition, they readily or air basins have "spill over" onto other nations far removed from the site of original problems. They thus defy traditional relations within the international become broader- community; and they challenge established forms of governance. In scope affairs— short, we are moving beyond an erstwhile situation of acute, local- witness the spread ized, and relatively simple ecological linkages that could be remedied at limited cost and were confined to one or two political jurisdictions. of acid rain across We now face chronic and complex syndromes of ecological linkages, entire regions of that feature feedbacks through industry, energy, agriculture and North America and forestry, frequently at the international or even global level. Many once-local incidents of pollution in small-scale water systems or air Europe. basins (the River Thames, Minamata Bay, Los Angeles) have become broader-scope affairs—witness the spread of acid rain across entire regions of North America and Europe.

There are many other instances of international scope. Tropical deforestation can affect several nations at once: deforestation in a 105,000 sq. km. sector of the Himalayas, mainly in Nepal, imposes widespread damage on the 1.25 million sq. km. Ganges River system with its 500 million people in India and Bangladesh.13 More generally, degradation of many watersheds of the world's 120 major international river systems reduces the supply of good-quality domestic water in downstream areas—with consequences for human health in all nations that share the water flows. Soil erosion, while intrinsically local, impinges on the world's capacity to feed itself: the loss of topsoil in Ethiopia or Iowa has international ramifications. Extinction of species, together with depletion of genetic reservoirs, especially in the tropical Third World, reduces the genetic diversity available to maintain the productivity of corn and other major crops throughout the world. The build-up of carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse gases" in the atmosphere, due mainly to combustion of fossil fuels in developed nations, is expected to bring warmer temperatures to all nations, but to bring more rainfall for some and drought conditions for others—and no area may be more critically affected than the North American grain belt. Economic-Ecological Linkages Economic and ecological linkages can reflect and reinforce each other through "linked linkages." As the global economy becomes evermore integrated and the global ecosystem more stressed, the influence of these further linkages will surely become more pronounced. A couple of examples show how.

10 From the late 1950s until the early 1980s, U.S. demand for beef- especially for the lean, grass-fed variety used for hamburgers, frank- furters, and other "fast foods"—grew rapidly. The beef became one of the most inflationary items in the American consumer's shopping basket. So, from the early 1960s until just recently, the U.S. government authorized increasing imports of Central American beef, which costs only half as much as similar-grade U.S. beef.14 American consumer demand now seems to have slackened, and imports are declining. But what were the costs of two decades of the "hamburger connection?"

The so-called cheap beef is produced on Central American pasturelands established almost entirely by clearing tropical forests. Since 1960, the expanse of pasturelands and the number of beef cattle in Central America have increased almost threefold, while exports, nearly all to the United States, have increased fivefold. Of course, the price Americans pay for a hamburger does not cover all the costs of its production—notably, environmental costs from southern Mexico to Costa Rica. As recently as I960, forests still covered around 60 percent of the Central American region; today, no more than 33 percent.

In Africa, a connection of another kind is in force. Right from the start of the recent Sahelian drought in the late 1960s, most countries in the Sahel region have consistently increased their gross agricultural output every year.15 But virtually all the increase has been in the form Most countries in of cash crops for export to developed nations, notably peanuts and cotton—an approach often fostered by development-aid programs and the Sahel region commercial investment for advanced nations. In 1961, the Sahel's five have consistently leading nations harvested 23 million tons of cotton, a total that soared increased their gross to 154 million tons in 1984. Also in 1961, the Sahel imported 200,000 tons of cereals, compared to 1.8 million tons in 1984, albeit at the agricultural output height of the drought. Much of the cereal aid, together with other every year but forms of "bail out" assistance, was from the United States. Because virtually all the cotton- and peanut-growing croplands expanded so much, large increase has been in numbers of small-scale farmers—especially in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger—have been displaced from their traditional farmlands into the form of cash marginal areas where desiccated and friable soils that get little rain are crops for export to readily desertified. developed nations. The Sahel exemplifies the links between marketplace demand in consumer nations and agricultural malpractice in producer nations, and between impoverished communities in the Sahel and foreign aid programs and investment patterns in developed nations. In some countries the emphasis on cash crops for export has worked to the detriment of food crops for local consumption. Between 1975 and 1981, only 16 percent of all foreign aid received by Sahelian countries was directed to growing rainfed food crops. Only 1.5 percent went to associated projects that support the environmental underpinnings of

11 Sahelian food production, such as tree planting and soil/water conservation.16

We can draw parallel illustrations with respect to developed-world demand for specialist hardwoods, that encourages Japan's over- logging of tropical forests, and with respect to the European Com- munity's demand for calorie-rich cassava as a livestock-feed supple- ment from Thailand, where it is grown almost entirely at the expense of remaining forest. In all instances, the price paid by the developed- world consumers for their end-product does not reflect all costs that have gone into its production—especially environmental costs in far- away lands. While these economic-ecological linkages are becoming a pervasive feature of the international community, their causes and effects still go for the most part unnoticed. Interdependence The linkages described here highlight a predominant feature of the contemporary world—interdependence.17 What nation A does can depend on activities, and thus the policies, of nation B, perhaps of Y and Z as well—and vice versa. Moreover, interdependence manifests itself between both pairs and groups (such as the European Economic Community and the ASEAN bloc) of nations. Some nations and groups of nations are more interdependent than others. The United States is more involved with its neighbors Canada and Mexico than with Nigeria or Papua New Guinea; likewise, with Latin America than Africa.

Overall, interdependence shapes governments' responses to North- South relations, long-term political stability in the Third World and safeguards for the global environment. Yet, not all political leaders recognize the character and extent of interdependence and not all are ready to articulate it through systematic policy measures. In short, interdependence usually works by default rather than by design- witness the very restricted decision-making capacity of an international economic institution, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and an international environmental institution, the United Nations Environment Programme.

The U.S. role in These limitations notwithstanding, interdependence—now an estab- interdependence is lished fact—should be managed to our advantage. In this respect, the unusually U.S. role is unusually significant since the United States possesses unique leadership capacity by virtue of its pre-eminent economic significant since the status, its environmental expertise, and its track record during the United States 1970s as a pioneer in the international environmental arena. possesses unique leadership capacity. The U.S. National Interest How do these diverse linkages and interdependencies impinge on the U.S. national interest?18 Amorphous as the concept of national interest tends to be, it embodies a broad consensus on political, eco-

12 nomic, security, and humanitarian values that reflect American traditions and ways of life. Four of particular interest here are the physical integrity of the U.S. territory and its people; the maintenance of its democratic traditions and political ideals; the economic welfare of American citizens, based on long-established principles of the open marketplace and capitalist enterprise; and scope for the U.S. government, large corporations, and other major institutions to pursue their activities without undue restrictions.

If any of these core factors is significantly reduced for long, the U.S. interest can be considered diminished or at risk. For instance, as U.S. Attorney-General William French Smith remarked of the large-scale and unregulated influx of aliens into the United States—migration driven in large part by population pressures and environmental decline in the immigrants' homelands—"The nation has lost control of its borders." Similarly, one aspect or another of the U.S. interest—its economic welfare, its trade relations, its democratic values, its humanitarian ideals, its very climate—can be threatened, even impaired, by soil erosion, acid rain and freshwater shortages, carbon-dioxide build- up, population growth and other environmental problems around the world.

The four values—the integrity of the sovereign state, democratic traditions, economic freedom, and institutional latitude—translate into more concrete policy goals and purposes vis-a-vis the world outside. These include maintaining peace in critical areas of the world; foster- ing orderly and constructive relations among nations; safeguarding and strengthening the political and economic stability of U.S. allies, also of non-aligned states; preventing undue expansion of states and influences directly opposed to U.S. values; and maintaining an open global economy, especially to protect U.S. access to foreign markets and resource supplies.

To these long-established goals, this study argues, we now need to add a further one that complements and reinforces the others. It is safeguarding the global environment, thereby promoting sustainable development throughout the world, especially in the Third World, to foster those economic and political processes that will assure a se'cure natural-resource base for all. This additional goal will help maintain stability in international relations, at a time when environmental degradation and resource depletion increasingly threaten the orderly conduct of international affairs.

The last goal is far from widely accepted as yet. But it deserves to be considered an explicit part of the national interest. As the world's leading economic power, the United States has a pre-eminent stake in the environmental health, as in the economic welfare of the global community. In other words, it has a solid interest in such remote- seeming activities as deforestation in Latin America, desertification in

13 Africa, soil erosion in Asia, mass extinction of species throughout the tropical Third World, degradation of the marine realm, and climatic change wherever it arises.

14 III. Environment, Resources and Population: Critical Issues

"The stage is being set for one of the greatest human tragedies of all times.. .the destruction of renewable resources in the developing world poses a threat as great to the human future as the prospect of nuclear war." Maurice F. Strong

hat are the leading environmental issues, and how do they w tie in with the related issue of population growth? Loss of Agricultural Lands Given the U.S. interest in stable and sustainable development, the capacity of nations to feed themselves is paramount. While the average per-capita supply of calories has been increasing in most countries of the world in recent years on an average basis, this often conceals depressed nutritional levels among large sections of their populaces who do not enjoy average consumption. Consequently, there is growing hunger among large numbers of people in Mexico, Nigeria, and India, to name but three leading nations in which the United States has a sizeable interest. The resulting backlash (rural frustration, urban disorders, etc.) may eventually destabilize the economies and undermine the political systems in these countries.

While developing countries outside Africa have steadily increased their food output in both absolute and per-capita terms, the total number of malnourished people has been increasing too. [That number is 435 million today (or just over 16 percent of Third World populations outside China); and this figure is projected to rise to 590 million (still 16 percent) by the year 2000—even to 685 million (19 percent) if low-income countries cannot purchase enough food from other countries.] Tables 1 and 2 illustrate the dilemmas many developing countries face.

Despite the mounting demands of growing human numbers and nutritional needs, the agricultural resource base of many countries is

15 Table 1. Selected Developing Countries: Agriculture and Food

Country Index of Food Production Per Person Dietary Imports of Cereals/ Per Person 1980-83 Energy Supplies as Food Aid in Cereals (kgs. per year 1974-76 = 100) % of Requirements (100 metric tons)

1980 1983 1982 1982 Latin America* Mexico 109 103 128 2194/na Colombia 108 103 110 886/3 Venezuela 97 91 103 2575/na Brazil 113 113 110 4492/3 Haiti 92 89 84 197/90

Asia Jordan 121 108 105 668/73 Pakistan 101 105 99 361/368 India 102 114 93 2402/416 Bangladesh 104 101 82 1375/1076 Sri Lanka 146 127 93 481/195 Thailand 106 113 103 133/5 Indonesia 115 124 110 1912/107 Philippines 112 112 106 1287/54 P.R. of China 109 126 n/a 20,365/78

Africa Morocco 99 88 110 1913/465 Egypt 94 92 130 6703/1952 Sudan 94 87 96 611/185 Kenya 86 86 88 194/115 Nigeria 98 90 96 2280/1

*For details of Central American countries, see Tables 7 and 8. Note: Due to uneven distribution of food, large proportions of populations may receive rather less food than average figures suggest. Sources: Food andAgriculture Organization of the United Nations, 1985, State of Food and Agriculture, 1984 (Rome,Italy: FAO); and World Bank, 1985, WorldDevelopment Report, 1984 (Washington, DC: World Bank).

deteriorating, notably through soil erosion and desertification. (See Figure 1.) Mexico and the Philippines, both food exporters in the mid-1970s, have recently become net importers—the results of a declining agricultural resource base and rapid population growth, together with faulty government policies. Behind many recent gains in agricultural productivity are, for instance, new hybrid seeds that grow

16 Table 2. Selected Developing Countries: Some Basic Indicators

Country Population Total Projected Population (in millions) Year 2000 and When (Growth Rate %) Stationary 1985 (in millions)

Latin America* Mexico City 79.5 (2.6) 113 199 Colombia 29.4 (2.1) 39 62 Venezuela 17.3 (2.7) 25 46 Brazil 138.4 (2.3) 187 304 Haiti 5.8 (2.3) 8 14

Asia Jordan 3.5 (3.8) 7 16 Pakistan 101.7 (2.7) 139 377 India 761.2 (2.2) 991 1707 Bangladesh 101.2 (2.8) 146 454 Sri Lanka 16.4 (2.1) 21 32 Thailand 51.6 (1.9) 68 111 Indonesia 168.9 (2.2) 227 370 Philippines 56.8 (2.5) 78 127 P.R. of China 1042.1 (1.1) 1197 1461

Africa Morocco 24.3 (2.9) 38 70 Egypt 48.3 (2.7) 67 114 Sudan 21.8 (2.9) 33 112 Kenya 20.6 (4.1) 37 153 Nigeria 95.2 (3.5) 157 618

in low-rainfall areas. Yet, many of these areas have some of the world's most highly erodible soils. Thus, what now appears to be pro- gress in terms of food production may well turn out to be a deferred cost in terms of sustainable productivity. At a time when we are making ever-greater demands of our agricultural resource base, can we be so sure it will stand up under the burden, especially when it is already showing signs of strain?

One sign is soil erosion. Another sign is desertification: some 100,000 square kilometers of croplands and rangelands, mostly in the

17 Table 2. (Continued)

GNP Per Person External Public Debt Service 1983 (in $) (and Debt as % of GNP, as % of Exports Average Annual 1983 1983 Growth Rate, 1960-82, %)

2240 (3.7) 49 36 1410 (3.1) 18 21 4100 (1.9) 20 15 1890 (4.8) 29 29 320 (0.6) 27 5

1710 (6.9) 48 11 390 (2.8) 31 28 260 (1.3) 11 10 130 (0.3) 38 15 330 (2.6) 44 12 810 (4.5) 18 11 560 (4.2) 29 13 760 (2.8) 30 15 290 (5.0) n/a n/a

750 (2.6) 70 38 700 (3.6) 49 28 400 (-0.4) 79 11 340 (2.8) 43 21 760 (3.3) 18 19 *For details of Central American countries, see Tables 7 and 8. Sources: World Bank,1985, World Development Report, 1984; various publications of the Population Reference Bureau, Wash- ington, DC.

developing world, become so degraded each year that they lose much of their productivity, at a cost in agricultural output of an estimated $26 billion. Worldwide, some 45 million square kilometers with a population of almost 850 million people are at risk from desertification.19

Erosion and desertification alone will make it harder for the Third World to meet FAO's minimum goal of a 3.7-percent annual increase in agricultural output until the end of the century. Officially, India has recently become self-sufficient in food, but per-capita calorie consumption averages only 93 percent of requirements. Will India remain self-

18 Figure 1. Land Cover and Degradation, 1980 to 2000 (Data in Million Square Kilometers Unless Specified Otherwise)

Natural Desert 48 Million km2

Man-Made Deserts: 9 Million km

Other Lands* : 24 Million km

I! 7%

OOOOOOOOOOQOOOOOOonononnonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnobOOOOOOOOOOOOOO JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO - » » 11 2QOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO° oooooooooooooooooiCroplands• 15 Million km »oooooooooooooooo iriririnnrsnnnrinnnnrinn r 20%

45%

Projected Rangeland Degradation, 1980 to 2000: 2 million km2 or 7% of 1980 Total Rangelands

• 100,000 km2 Lost to Desertification per Year

Projected Cropland Degradation, 1980 to 2000-' 3 million km2 or 20% of 1980 Total Croplands

• 20,000 km2 per Year Lost to Desertification • 20,000 km2 per Year Lost to Wind and Water Erosion • 30,000 km per Year Lost to Salinization and Chemical Degradation • 80,000 km per Year Lost to Urbanization, Transportation, and Other Degradation

Projected Tropical Forest Degradation, 1980 to 2000: 4 million km or 45% of 1980 Total Tropical Forests

• 100,000 km2 per Year Lost to Complete Forest Conversion • 100,000 km per Year Lost to Other Major Disturbances which Deplete Biological Richness and Degrade Watershed Services

* These are areas which are not expected to be significantly altered by human activities over the period 1980 to 2000 (e.g. temperate forests, montane areas, etc.).

Source: N. Myers, The Gaia Atlas of Planet Management, (New York: Doubleday, 1984).

19 sufficient if it continues to lead the world in allegedly losing 6 billion tons of soil each year?20

In 1975, some 1.2 billion people were living on agricultural lands with low productivity (at low levels of technological inputs) that could not support their populaces. These were also lands where, generally speaking, soil erosion was high, desertification was spreading, and pressures of expanding populations, with primitive farming methods were leading to rapid degradation of the agricultural resource base. The 1984 FAO appraisal from which these comments derive is the most sophisticated attempt to date to estimate the "carrying capacity" of developing countries. It is less than a final analysis, but it,is indica- tive—no more, no less. The study shows that without increased use of inputs such as fertilizers and mechanization, and markedly increased soil conservation and rehabilitation measures, 64 countries will by this century's end be unable to feed their populations from their own lands. Even with substantial improvements, 36 of these countries, with a total population of more than 1.2 billion people, will remain "critical" in terms of agricultural productivity; and even with advanced improvements, 19 of them will remain "critical." Fortunately, some of these countries have secure sources of foreign exchange with which to buy sufficient food elsewhere. But of the 64, at least 29 countries are likely to face severe difficulty in meeting their food needs adequately, whether locally or from outside.21

These 29 countries include several that are important to U.S. interests. In Africa, there is Morocco, significant because of its location next to the Straits of Gilbraltar and because of its moderating influence in the Arab world. Between 1970 and 1984, Morocco's per capita food production declined from an index level of 105 to an index level of 86 (based on 1974-76 = 100). Over the same period 1970 to 1983, the total value of Morocco's food exports increased only 50 percent, while the value of food imports multiplied fivefold.22 Of course, Morocco, like many other Third World countries, may be able to purchase enough food abroad, provided it exports even more raw materials and manufactures. Moreover, by the end of 1984, Morocco's external long- term public debt reached $10 billion, about 83 percent of GNP. Debt service was 38 percent the size of total exports.23

Also in Africa and among the 29 countries at risk according to the FAO analysis of carrying capacity are Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya, all countries important to the United States because they dominate the Horn of Africa, a territory adjacent to the oil-tanker lanes from the Persian Gulf. In Southern Africa there are Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland—important to the United States because they help stabilize a strategic and fragile region. In Asia and the Middle East, there are Jordan, Afghanistan (important because of its location on the USSR southern border), and Bangladesh (important because of its location in the Indian sub-continent that dominates the Indian

20 Ocean region). In Latin America, there are Guatemala, El Salvador, and Haiti—U.S. neighbors that are in the throes of economic and political turmoil.

Several countries that barely manage to stay off the FAO "critical list" can also expect problems in meeting their food needs. One is Egypt, a principal U.S. ally because of its moderating influence in the Middle East and throughout the Arab world. The nation imported 8.6 million tons of cereal grains in 1984,24 and this volume of food could well double by the year 2000, when Egypt's 1987 population of 49 million will probably reach 64 million.25 Egypt's external long-term public debt reached $15.8 billion in 1984, or 50 percent of GNP; debt service in 1984 was 34 percent of exports.26

As important Third World countries lose the ability to feed themselves, they turn elsewhere—notably to the United States, which now supplies way over half of total food exports. (American exports rose from 15 million tons in 1950 to 205 million in 1981, with a value of $44 billion, or one-fifth of all U.S. exports.) Although American agricultural exports have recently declined, the 1985 level of $33 billion was still 13 percent above the 1973-84 average, and one-fifth of U.S. croplands grow food for export to the Third World. However, this export trade has encouraged many American farmers to overwork their croplands and to open up marginal lands. Between 1972 and 1982, the U.S. area planted to wheat, corn, and soybean increased by over 30 percent. Much of the additional land was less than suitable for cultiva- tion since its soils tend to be highly erodible. Although the spread into marginal areas is now reversing, much more moderate- or poor- quality land remains under the plough today than in 1970. The result has been a rapid spread of soil erosion.27 Mass Extinction of Species The great bulk of extinctions are occurring in the tropics, which are roughly co-extensive with the Third World. Remote as is this zone from the United States, the nation has a pronounced stake in the issue. "Gene poor" like other developed nations of the temperate zones, the United States depends heavily upon species' genetic resources from the tropics. Moreover, it possesses an unmatched technological capacity to exploit genetic resources for economic benefit, especially through the emergent industry of bio-engineering.

But will enough genetic resources remain available for plant breeders and bio-engineers? In light of best judgment estimates and abundant circumstantial evidence, we can realistically surmise that species are disappearing at a rate of 1000 or more each year.28 By the year 2000, we may lose as many as 1 million of Earth's 5-10 million species, and a good many more during the next decades. This leads to loss of genetic materials to support agriculture, medicine, and industry.29 Today, regular infusions of genetic variability, to boost crop pro-

21 ductivity and counter diseases, contribute some $1 billion to the farm- gate value of U.S. crops each year. Virtually all these genetic resources have derived originally from foreign lands, mostly from the tropical developing world.

Consider the American corn crop. In 1970, a severe blight spread so swiftly that some states lost half their crop. Costs to corn growers, and hence to consumers totalled $2 billion. The situation was saved with new strains that resisted the blight, the genetic materials coming originally from corn's native home, Mexico. In 1978, a wild relative of corn on the brink of extinction was found in southern Mexico. This perennial is resistant to seven major diseases and has the capacity to grow in cooler and moister environments than conventional corn. Benefits to corn consumers worldwide could eventually be reckoned in billions of dollars a year.30

The future of medicine too depends partially on genetic resources. Around half of all drugs and pharmaceuticals purchased by American consumers owe their manufacture, in one way or another, to genetic resources of wild species, most of them from tropical developing nations. The commercial sales of these products now amount to some $12 billion a year.31 A single plant, the rosy periwinkle, a native of Madagascar's tropical forests, has produced two potent drugs for use against Hodgkin's disease, leukemia, and other blood cancers; commercial sales of these two drugs worldwide now run to around $150 million a year. If all economic benefits, including avoided losses of worker productivity and the like are added in, the value to American society climbs to $350 million a year. Cancer researchers believe that there are at least another ten plant species in tropical forests alone that could be used to generate similar superstar drugs against cancer—provided the scientist can get to them before the chainsaw gets to their habitats.

Similar examples of wildlife-derived benefits can be cited for industry and energy. Yet, scientists have so far intensively investigated only one plant species in 100, and a far smaller share of animal species, to assess their economic applications. We can reasonably assume that there are whole cornucopias of improved and new foods, pharmacopias of new medicines, and stocks of industrial raw materials awaiting us in the wild, provided the species in question do not become extinct meantime. Tropical Deforestation The greatest spasm of extinctions is occurring in tropical forests. Although they cover only 7 percent of Earth's land surface, these forests harbor at least 50 percent of all species—sufficient reason for the United States to take a marked interest in tropical deforestation.

Today's forests amount to some 9 million square kilometers out of an original total of perhaps 15 million square kilometers. Almost

22 100,000 square kilometers per year are destroyed outright, and at least another 100,000 square kilometers are grossly disrupted.32 (See Figure 1.) For the tropical forest nations themselves, this loss reduces timber exports, which now generate revenues of $7 billion a year but are projected to decline to $2 billion by the year 2000.33 Still more important, it undermines watershed services in deforested catchments that now total 1.6 million square kilometers. Consequent flooding in the Ganges Plain costs India and Bangladesh $1 billion a year.34 In South and Southeast Asia, two thirds of all farmers live in the rich alluvial valleys of such rivers as the Brahmaputra, Irrawaddy, Salween, and Mekong, which support some of the highest-density agricultural communities on Earth—and that depend on the declining forest cover of their upstream catchments. The number of people in the humid tropics affected by deforestation-caused flooding (and the complementary phenomenon of droughts) has increased by more than 50 percent between 1960 and 1980.35 The Marine Realm Habitat destruction in coastal zones and pollution of the oceans im- pair many environmental services of the marine realm. Because the realm is an ecological continuum, the repercussions can readily extend to many nations. Of 80,000 square kilometers of estuarine waters in the "lower 48" of the United States, and especially in the states bordering the Caribbean, two thirds rank as commercial shellfish waters—and 27 percent of these waters are now closed to shellfishing because of habitat disruption (mainly through pollution), with an annual cost of more than $80 million. One sixth of the world's oil is produced in, or shipped through, the Caribbean.36 Coastal refineries, off- shore oil rigs, and supertankers now spill more than 100 million bar- rels of oil into its waters each year. This pollution harms not only fisheries, but also tourism—not only in Florida, but in those islands, such as the Bahamas, that gain over half their foreign earnings from tourism.

As for marine fisheries in the high seas, human beings derive 20 percent of their animal protein directly from fish and a further 5 percent from fish fed to livestock. The annual harvest from the seas has grown from 14 million tons in 1950 to 61 million tons in 1970, where- after it has levelled off at around 65 million tons a year, worth some $29 billion.37 Over-exploitation has depleted 25 valuable fisheries, ranging from the North Atlantic herring stocks to the Peruvian ancho- veta stocks. Yet, world demand for marine fish is projected to almost double by the year 2000.38

Not surprisingly, there is much competition and some conflict over marine fisheries. In the North Atlantic, where over-fishing has been worst, Britain and Iceland have twice come to the verge of hostilities over cod stocks. Iceland threatened that if the United States did not back its cause in the dispute, it would seek the removal of the Ameri- can military base at Keflavik.39 At least 16 other significant clashes

23 have broken out elsewhere in the world, including skirmishes between fishing vessels of the Soviet Union and Japan, Thailand and Malaysia, and Peru and the United States. Within the past year, Canada and the United States have resolved their conflict over the Newfoundland fishery only by recourse to the International Court of Justice. These disputes portend what could become a more frequent phenomenon in light of the failure of fisheries around the world to produce ever-greater yields. Freshwater Shortages The combination of fast-growing demand and mismanagement has led to freshwater shortages that in many areas could become as im- Fast-growing portant in the late 1990s as energy shortages were in the late 1970s. demand and The consequences for U.S. interests will be exceptionally diffuse and deferred, but there could be a pronounced impact on economies of mismanagement water-short areas from the Middle East and North Africa, to much of have led to sub-Saharan Africa, and to northern Mexico and western United freshwater shortages States. In the Middle East, North Africa, and the Sahel, as much as 50 percent (a crucial level) of stable runoff from rivers is already being that in many areas used, and much more in certain localities. Another crucial measure is could become as the amount of water available per head: when it falls below 2000 cubic important in the meters per year, outright deficits are likely. Nations now facing such physical limits include Egypt with only 1,200 cubic meters, Kenya with late 1990s as energy 720, and Israel with 500.40 shortages were in the late 1970s. Water deficits are especially severe for agriculture and public health. Crop irrigation, about half (by area) in the Third World, accounts for 65 percent of all water used. Much of India's achievement in attaining food self-sufficiency reflects a doubling of irrigated area since 1960. Yet, because of surging demand for domestic needs and industry, as well as the rise in human numbers (plus disruption of major water flows through deforestation), India faces the prospect by 2005 of an acute water shortage in much of its territory.41 Elsewhere in southern Asia—notably, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Thailand, Vietnam, and the In- donesian island of Java—the biggest constraint on expanding rice production may prove to be lack of water for irrigation.

As for public health, the greatest resource-related threat lies with lack of quality freshwater for domestic use. Water-related pathogens account for 80 percent of all disease and for 80 percent of the 15 million child deaths each year—with all that implies for family planning motivation, and hence for prospects for population stabilization, as indeed for development programs overall. Energy Shortages Despite the recent and temporary easing of the oil crisis, we must accomplish rapid transition to an energy era based on more efficient consumption of conventional energy sources, plus alternative and renewable sources. Any nation without assured access to sufficient

24 and affordable supplies of energy, wherever located, faces severe threats—economic, political, and even security-related.42 The United States has a major ultimate stake in the world's common energy future, partly by virtue of its status as the major energy consumer and of its significant dependence on external sources of energy, and partly by virtue of its vulnerability to a "greenhouse effect" (around half of which stems from burning of fossil fuels). Dependent on Furthermore, we must come to grips with a further energy problem external energy that for at least 1.5 billion people in developing countries is a real sources and 43 energy crisis—fuelwood shortages. These multitudes obtain their vulnerable to a energy only by extracting fuelwood faster than it regrows. Worse still, at least 120 million people simply cannot find enough fuelwood to "greenhouse effect," meet even their minimal needs. For many Third World households, it the United States now costs as much to heat the supperbowl as to fill it. Moreover, has a major many Third World people who can't find or buy enough fuelwood utilize cattle dung and crop residues that would otherwise be used as ultimate stake in fertilizer, a practice that reduces cropland productivity. The opportu- the world's common nity cost—the food production foregone—amounts to at least 14 energy future. million tons of cereal grains per year (some experts calculate the total at twice as much).44 This amount could feed 100 million people and fetch $3 billion on world markets. Equally significant, it surpasses all the relief food shipped during 1985, much of which was supplied by the United States. Air Pollution As a major generator of insidious pollutants, the United States has a stake in controlling air pollution not only when the pollutants affect its own economy, but also when they spill over onto another country, such as Canada, whereupon the political ramifications become severe. Complex mixtures of pollutants, including acidic deposition, cause widespread damage to crops, forests, lakes, and buildings. Acid rain (one form of acidic deposition), scarcely recognized until a few years ago, builds up steadily and cryptically, often from emissions generated far from the site of impact. As such, it is becoming a classic case of transfrontier pollution.

Much acid rain stems from burning of coal.45 As oil supplies dwin- dle and energy demand grows, world coal consumption may well tri- ple by the middle of next century. Already, problems with its use are pronounced. In the United States, acid-rain damage to forests in the early 1980s totalled an estimated $200-$600 million a year; to agriculture, somewhere between $1 billion and $2 billion (some observers estimate twice as much); and to buildings, $7 billion.46 Damage in Canada, much of it from U.S.-derived acid rain, is large too. In West Germany, where 55 percent of forests have been injured by acid rain and other pollutants, timber and related industries incur costs various- ly estimated at between $0.5 billion and $1 billion (or even much more) per year.47 The forests of another 15 countries throughout

25 Europe are affected, including East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and others of the Soviet bloc. The European Community calculates that damage to forests apart from those in West Germany amounts to $200 million a year. Damage to Community-wide crops amounts to at least $1 billion a year, possibly several times more.

In many places where air pollution's toll is severe, the source of emissions is partly from beyond the borders of the nation. During a recent visit to Britain the Foreign Minister of Norway, whose country has been severely hit by acid rain it claims originates mainly in Great Britain, declared that the problem is as serious for relations between the two countries as are trade and defense. This example typifies a pattern of ecological-economic linkages that are growing more pervasive among the international community.

Acid rain is also appearing in other parts of the world.48 It is already marked in China, which is the second largest producer of coal and the third largest source of sulphur dioxide emissions, and some of China's industrial pollution blows over onto Japan. Signs of damage are also appearing in countries as diverse as Malaysia, India, and Brazil—and tropical vegetation is especially sensitive to acidification of water and soil. Acid rain originating in industrial emissions from North America and Europe 4500 kilometers away even appears to be extending into the Arctic, taking the form of a winter haze.49 The sulfate concentrations, which are on a seasonal par with those in the northeastern United States, could well damage the fragile ecosystems of the Arctic, disrupt climatic systems reaching far outside the Arctic, and injure fisheries worth $22 billion a year in the northern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Climate Change The carbon dioxide content of the global atmosphere is building up steadily from anthropogenic sources, mainly via burning of fossil fuels but also burning of tropical forests. At the current rate of increase, which is itself increasing, the pre-1850 "natural" amount of CO2 will double by the year 2075. In addition to CO2, other "greenhouse gases," e.g., methane, chlorofluorocarbons, and nitrous oxide, will accelerate global warming. If current trends in the emissions of these gases continue, their combined effects could be equivalent to doubling the preindustrial concentrations of CO2 as early as the 2030s. Tem- perature increases, from 1.5 to 4.5 degrees C, will be least pronounced at the equator and higher than average at the poles. The increase in the temperate zones is expected to be about equal to the global average warming—possibly 3 degrees C.50 The predicted temperature changes will almost certainly be accom- panied by shifts in precipitation patterns. Rainfall is likely to increase slightly worldwide, but more significant will be changes in timing and

26 distribution of rainfall. Certain zones that are now dry, such as the Sahel, could receive the benefit of some equatorial rain. But, the climatic conditions of the Sahara could extend further north into the Mediterranean Basin—and into the extensive food-growing region of the southwestern USSR, where drought is already a problem for agriculture. Probably even more important, there could be less rainfall across much of the U.S.-Canadian belt, substantially reducing output of cereal grains and possibly raising prices to U.S. and other consumers.

Of course, a warmer temperature regime would extend the growing season for crops in both North America and Eurasia. Whereas the Russians could possibly avail themselves of Siberia's good soils (if enough water were available) and thus expand their growing season, North America's grain belt cannot readily migrate northward since it would encounter thin and infertile soils. While there is much uncertainty about the agricultural impacts, some analysts propose that a temperature increase of 2 degrees C, with a reduction in precipitation of 10 percent, could reduce the U.S. corn and soybean crop by 20 percent and 10-15 percent, respectively, while there would be similar repercussions for wheat.51 Population Growth Not an environmental issue in itself, excessive population growth aggravates many of the problems discussed here—or rather population growth beyond the support capacities of the natural-resource base and beyond the planning and adaptive capacities of governments.52 At the same time, environmental deterioration reinforces the poverty of the most impoverished people, among whom fertility rates are highest.

The interactions between population growth and environmental resources can be more complex than is often supposed. They reflect the economic systems, political structures, and development strategies of Third World nations, as well as such exogenous factors as international trade.53 So population growth need not, in and of itself, be so directly and immediately deleterious as is sometimes suggested. In the Caribbean Basin, for instance, Barbados has a high population density, and Costa Rica and Panama feature high rates of population growth. Yet all (so far) have achieved sound economic advance, and all enjoy political stability. (Of course, they might have progressed even further with lower population-growth rates, and they may not maintain their recent successes as the pressures of fast-growing human numbers become increasingly burdensome.) By contrast, Dominica and Grenada, with much lower rates of population growth, have remained volatile. Similarly in Africa, at least five factors besides high rates of population growth have contributed to the present emergency: misconceived development strategies, desertification, recurrent drought, heavy trade dependence on advanced nations, and growing external debt.

27 These crucial qualifications notwithstanding, rapid population growth has surely dimmed the outlook for sustainable development in many Third World countries. In late 1985, a statement signed by heads of state of countries comprising more than half the world's population was presented to the United Nations.54 In part, it says, "If this unprecedented population growth continues, future generations of children will not have adequate food, housing, medical care, education, natural resources, and employment opportunities." Signatories included China, India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Indonesia, Egypt, Morocco, Kenya and Nigeria—diverse countries that nonetheless share population-associated problems.

The case of Nigeria is illuminating. Nigeria is the United States' number one trading partner in black Africa, and it is also the region's economic and political leader. But its current population of 98 million is projected to reach 157 million by the year 2000 and 618 million by the time growth levels out in the first half of the 22nd century. Its population is currently expanding at 3.5 percent per year, but its food production per head has been declining since 1980 by 1.6 percent per year. Moreover, Nigeria's agricultural resource base has been suffering much soil erosion, a decline in nutrient stocks, a fall-off in water supplies, and desertification. Nigeria will shortly see its oil flows tail away. Already, its over-strained economy (the growth of which has been declining by 6.5 percent per year since 1980) can hardly keep up with rising food imports—up from $127 million worth in 1970 to $1.5 billion in 1984. Nigeria's external debt reached $20 billion in 1983, or 159 percent of exports. Were the nation to embark forthwith on a vigorous 30-year effort to bring fertility down to replacement level, the population would stabilize at (only) 270 million. But if the nation postpones such a family-planning program by a mere 10 years, the population will eventually be 400 million—a difference of an extra 130 million people, or almost half as many again as in today's overcrowded Nigeria.55 Urbanization Urbanization reflects population growth in the Third World in conjunction, of course, with such related factors as rural poverty. In 1950, only 29 percent of the world's population lived in urban areas. By 1985, 42 percent did. By the year 2020 the percentage is projected to reach 60.56 In 1950, only six cities were larger than 5 million; in 1985, 29 were; and by the year 2000, the total is projected to reach 60—of which all but 12 will be in the Third World. (See Table 3.) All too often, the result is an urban agglomeration half made up of shanty- towns and slums, where unemployment and underemployment reach high levels, where pollution is rife, where disease flourishes, and where social organization verges on breakdown. Not surprisingly, many of these cities feature large volatile concentrations of people who are young and jobless, educated enough to feel

28 Table 3. Mega-Cities

1950 Population 1980 Population 2000 Population (in millions] (in millions) (in millions)

New York-NE New York-NE Mexico City 31.0 New Jersey 12.3 New Jersey 20.2 Sao Paulo 25.8 London 10.4 Tokyo-Yokohama 20.0 Shanghai 23.7 Rhine-Ruhr 6.9 Mexico City 15.0 Tokyo-Yokohama 23.7 Tokyo-Yokohama 6.7 Shanghai 14.3 New York-NE Shanghai 5.8 Sao Paulo 13.5 New Jersey 22.4 Paris 5.5 Los Angeles-Long Peking 20.9 Greater Buenos Beach 11.6 Rio de Janeiro 19.0 Aires 5.3 Peking 11.4 Greater Bombay 16.8 Chicago-NW Rio de Janeiro 10.7 Calcutta 16.4 Indiana 4.9 Greater Buenos Jakarta 15.7 Moscow 4.8 Aires 10.1 Calcutta 4.6 London 10.0

Source: United Nations Centrefor Human Settlements, various publications. frustrated about their plight and inclined to seek extremist solutions to their problems. Hence, many Third World cities are prone to civic disorder, political unrest, and eventual violence—witness riots in such diverse cities as Sao Paulo, Bogota, Tunis, Casablanca, Cairo, Khar- toum, Lusaka, Karachi, New Delhi, and Manila. Given the growing prominence and deteriorating conditions of mega-cities, these are the most likely sites of political turbulence in developing nations. Environmental Refugees Environmental refugees are a growing group of people who feel obliged to leave their homelands because of declining means of livelihood—a decline that stems at least in part from too many people pressing on a deteriorating resource base. The immediate cause of departure may often appear in the form of economic deprivation, social inequities, political repression, or military activity. But the underlying cause often has more to do with degradation of a country's resource base to the point at which it can no longer offer them even a subsistence lifestyle.

How numerous are these refugees? Several million people have reportedly left their home countries in the Caribbean and Central America to escape environmental rundown and generally overcrowded conditions, together with associated problems of poverty. In Indonesia, at least one million people, perhaps many more, have spontaneously left the eroded lands of Java for Borneo, Sulawesi, and

29 other "outer islands."57 There are further large throngs of environmental refugees in the Indian sub-continent. But environmental As the ranks of refugees are most numerous in sub-Saharan Africa. Since 1980, some 5 million Ethiopians are believed to have become displaced, and at environmental least half a million have crossed into neighboring countries, many if refugees swell, U.S. not most of them to escape environmental impoverishment. By interests will be mid-1985, at the height of the Africa-wide drought, more than 10 million people in or from Ethiopia, Sudan, Mozambique, Angola, and affected not so much half a dozen other countries had abandoned their homelands for through the numbers reasons of agricultural degradation and hunger, among other environ- of people who arrive mental problems, plus population growth (together with, in certain in- on U.S. shores as stances, political persecution and military repression). through disruptive The destabilizing phenomenon of environmental refugees is likely to impacts on recipient grow apace. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, the population is projected countries elsewhere, to increase fivefold before it reaches zero growth, and the number of famished people may well grow from a 1985 level of 30 million to 65 especially million by 1990 and to 130 million by the year 2000. As the ranks of developing environmental refugees swell, U.S. interests will be affected not so countries. much through the numbers of people who arrive on U.S. shores (significant as they are), as through disruptive impacts on recipient countries elsewhere, especially developing countries. Sudan, one of the world's most impoverished and food-short countries, has had to take in at least 1.1 million refugees from Ethiopia, Uganda, and Chad. In Ivory Coast, unofficial immigrants from the Sahel make up one-fifth of the 10-million populace and aggravate deforestation due to land hunger. One third of all landless people in Ivory Coast are immigrants. Immigration into the United States The United States now takes in well over 500,000 legal immigrants a year, far more than the nation has ever accepted before and more than twice as many as the rest of the world combined. If illegal immigrants who remain permanently within the country are also counted, the number surely rises to anywhere from 750,000 to well over one million—mostly Hispanics, Caribbeans, and Asians.

Can the United States continue to be a "pressure valve" for the deprived of dozens of other nations? While American opinion on this issue is divided, immigration is certainly the most immediate and direct way in which U.S. interests are affected by population buildup and environmental factors in lands outside its borders.58 When people start to move from the Third World to the First World at a rate of one million or more a year, their action amounts, in the view of a Council on Foreign Relations expert Michael S. Teitelbaum, to "both a consequence and cause of potentially dangerous domestic and international tensions," and some nations even consider that migration can be used as "a handy tool of foreign and domestic policy."59 These policy rami-

30 fications are of paramount interest for the United States, given its relations with Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean.

Most migration into the United States is spurred by a mixture of population growth and endemic poverty in the Third World, plus such associated problems as unemployment. Throngs of unemployed people generate plenty of would-be migrants, "pushed" by adverse conditions in their own countries and "pulled" by hope of a better life in the United States. The scope of what lies ahead can be judged by current trends in the Third World. During the last two decades of this century, the number of developing-country adults aged 20-39 will increase by 800 million—or more than the entire number of jobs in the developed world today.60 Moreover, the number of unemployed, plus underemployed, in the Third World already totals at least half a billion. In Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean—the region of most interest to the United States—the labor force is projected to expand from a 1983 level of 58 million to 103 million by the year 2000—and the numbers of unemployed and underemployed from 18 million to 27 million.61

Already, the impact of immigration on the United States is ap- preciable, especially at the state level. California now contains 23 percent of all legal recent immigrants, plus an estimated one quarter, possibly one third, of illegals. It supports more than 40 percent of all Asian immigrants, who now number well over 5 million persons nationwide—a figure that (barring major changes in immigration policy) could swell to almost 10 million by the year 2000. California also supports 35 percent of all Hispanics, whose numbers have increased nationwide from four million in 1950 to an estimated 17.6 million (roughly two thirds from Mexico) in 1984. In Los Angeles, almost one third of the population is Hispanic, including two million Mexicans, or more Mexicans than in any other city except Mexico City itself. If Hispanics were to continue to arrive in the United States at recent rates, by the year 2000 they would total 30 million, by which time they would be close to outnumbering black Americans. Already, in Miami, where two thirds of all residents are Hispanics, many blacks cannot find work because they do not speak Spanish, a prerequisite for jobs in most hotels, stores, and restaurants. Not only in Florida but in ten other states, there is "safeguard" legislation proposed to declare that the sole official language is English.

Of course, Hispanics, like Asians, supply manifold benefits to U.S. society. In many areas, they take on work that would otherwise remain undone. They are often industrious, enterprising, and self- reliant—virtues widely prized by Americans. How far they constitute a net "gain" for the United States is a strongly disputed question. Suf- fice it to say here that mass immigration of recent proportions is a phenomenon that Americans have not encountered before—and the repercussions, whether positive or not, will surely be profound.

31 IV. Security

"War is often thought of in terms of military conflict, or even annihila- tion. But there is a growing awareness that an equal danger might be chaos—as a result of mass hunger, economic disaster, environmental catastrophes and terrorism. So we should not think only of reducing the traditional threats of peace, but also of the need for change from chaos to order." Willy Brandt

he concept of national security tends to be narrowly inter- preted in heavily military terms. Its perception often extends T beyond armaments to embrace a healthy economy, friendly neighbors, like-minded and able allies, and a generally stable international order. But, the notion of military prowess as the backbone of security seems simplistic in light of the environmental dimensions of national interests—watersheds, croplands, forests, genetic resources, climate, and other environmental factors.62 These factors rarely figure in the minds of military experts and political leaders. But they both contribute to conflict and stimulate the growing use of force to repress disaffection among those who suffer the consequences of environmental decline. Resources, Population, and Conflict First off, consider agricultural decline as a source of conflict. In Ethiopia, traditional farming areas in the highlands, totalling some 90,000 square kilometers, were losing an estimated one billion tons of soil a year by the early 1970s. Combined with rural economic stagna- tion born of an archaic feudal system, the soil loss led to a fall-off in agricultural production and food shortages in the cities. The ensuing disorders precipitated the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974.63

The new Dergue regime did not move fast enough, despite some efforts, to restore agriculture. Throngs of impoverished peasants started to trek into the Ethiopian lowlands, including the Ogaden—an area that straddles the long-disputed border with Somalia. Hostilities broke

33 out in 1977, threatening the security of the oil-tanker lanes off the Horn of Africa, leading from the Persian Gulf toward the Western in- No more than $50 dustrialized nations. Both superpowers became involved, supplying arms to their client states. Besides the materials it received gratis from million a year the Soviet Union, Ethiopia between 1976 and 1980 spent an average of would have $225 million a year on military activities (in Tigre and Eritrea too, but 64 countered much of mainly in the Ogaden). If the sums spent on the Ogaden hostilities had been assigned earlier to safeguarding topsoil, tree cover, and Ethiopia's land other agricultural resources in Ethiopia's traditional highland farms, degradation if the there need have been far less migration, if any, toward the Ogaden. investment had been Ironically, the amount that the United Nations recently budgeted for anti-erosion, reforestation, and related measures in Ethiopia under its made in due time. Anti-Desertification Plan suggests that no more than $50 million a year Relief measures would have countered much of the problem if the investment had alone to counter been made in due time. By comparison, relief measures alone to counter Ethiopia's famine during 1985 accounted for more than $500 Ethiopia's famine million. during 1985 accounted for more The outlook for Ethiopia isn't much brighter. Its population of 42 million is projected to increase to 61 million by the year 2000, when, if than $500 million. the country continues (as expected) with low-input agriculture, it will not be able to feed even half its citizenry from its own land. Nor is Ethiopia likely by 1990 to have the financial means to purchase food from outside; yet, the World Bank estimates that food deficits will jump from 214,000 tons in 1980 to 3,061,000 tons in 1990.

In a lengthening list The example of Ethiopia shows how environmental factors tie in of countries, decline with security concerns. In a lengthening list of countries, decline of of the natural- the natural-resource base for agriculture has led to rising food prices and, ultimately, to outright shortages of food at a time when the great resource base for majority of nations have become dependent on outside sources for agriculture has led part of their food supplies. In turn, these shortages have triggered to rising food prices civil disorders and rioting in countries as disparate as Brazil, Bolivia, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, and, ultimately, to Sierra Leone, Sudan, Zambia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the Philip- outright shortages pines. True, other factors are generally at issue too, notably maldistri- of food at a time bution of farmlands and poor agricultural policies. But if environmental factors are less than exclusively causative factors, they are often when the great strongly contributory ones. majority of nations have become Another source of conflict lies with access to water supplies. In the Middle East, water is a major factor in political confrontation. Nations dependent on of the region compete more for water than those in any other part of outside sources for the world, and shortages are projected to grow yet more acute. Israel part of their food consumes roughly five times as much water per head as its less industrialized and intensively-farmed neighbors; and, by 1990, the nation is supplies. expected to suffer severe water deficits. In 1967, Israel fought in part because of the River Jordan basin, which it shares with Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, when the Arab States tried to divert the river's

34 headwaters on the Golan Heights and elsewhere.65 Israel still occupies the West Bank in part to safeguard its access to the river's flows. The nation also has a strong interest in the River Yarmuk, a West-Bank tributary of the Jordan with headwaters in Syria; and in the River Litani in southern Lebanon. Competition for access to both has given rise to military flare-ups. Jordan, too, needs much more water. In 1980, it produced only 77 percent as much food per head as in 1970,66 in part because the nation's population is growing at an extremely high 3.8 percent a year.

Similar river-related disputes67 have erupted between India and Pakistan over the River Indus' headwaters, and between India and Bangladesh over the River Ganges. Water budgets in many Asian nations, together with such related factors as salt balances, could soon become as critical to national wellbeing as balance of payments and foreign exchange reserves.68 As political leaders become more aware of water's critical importance, and as the resource grows scarcer and ceases to be treated as a free good, tensions and conflicts are likely to proliferate.

Further water-supply problems have arisen over the River Basin of the Mekong, shared by Laos, Thailand, Kampuchea, and Vietnam; of the Euphrates/Tigris, shared by Syria and Iraq; of the Parena, shared by Brazil and Argentina; of the Lauca, shared by Bolivia and Chile; and of the Mejerdah, shared by Tunisia and Libya.69 Of 200 first-order river systems, almost 150 are shared by two nations, and more than 50 by three to ten nations. All in all, these major arteries support 40 percent of the world's population, and two thirds of them are located in developing nations, which often have less water to go around than developed nations have.

By almost any reckoning, growing shortages of water will increase pressures on these international rivers. Consider the River Nile, on which Egypt (a major U.S. ally in the Middle East) depends for almost all its water, and which rises in nine other countries. Ethiopia has designs on headwaters of the Blue Nile tributary for irrigation to support the 1.5 million impoverished peasants it proposes to resettle from its degraded highlands into the fertile valleys of the southwest. The White Nile tributary in southern Sudan is being rerouted via the Jonglei Canal, planned in part to save extra water for Egypt. The engineering works have recently been attacked by separatist insur- gents, who claim they are losing "their" water. In 1978, former Egyp- tian President Anwar Sadat declared "We depend upon the Nile 100 percent. We shall not hesitate, because it is a matter of life and death." In 1985, Egypt's Foreign Minister Butros Ghali asserted: "The next war in our region will be over the waters of the Nile, not over politics... Washington does not take this seriously, because everything for the United States relates to Israel, oil, and the Middle East."70

35 To varying degrees, these various environmental problems are sources of economic disruption and political tension in an already unstable world. Indeed, several current "flashpoints" of conflict—not only the Horn of Africa and the Middle East, but also Central America and the Caribbean—are areas where human communities are pushing against the limits of their natural-resource base. They are also areas where the Soviet Union has seen scope for intervention. In Africa, there are three other nations, Chad, Angola, and Mozambique, that are among the most underdeveloped economically—and that suffer from severe environmental impoverishment, pronounced political instability, and regular military upheavals. Angola and Mozambique are also nations where the Soviet Union and Cuba have actively intervened.

The April 1985 coup in Sudan, during which President Numeiry, a U.S. friend, was overthrown, also highlights the security implications of environmental degradation. There appear to have been four main environmental factors that contributed to the coup. First was the civil war in the south, exacerbated in part by fears that water that "belongs" to southerners was being diverted to the northerners and to the northerners' Arab friends, the Egyptians. Second was a 500-percent rise in many areas in price of basic food staples as a result of drought and agricultural decline. (Per-hectare cereal yields in the Sudan have been falling since 1970.) Third was a severe shortage of fuel wood in the north after local supplies had been sorely depleted and the main sup- plementary supplies from the south had been cut off (precipitating a 300-percent demand-driven increase in the prices of kerosene and petrol). Fourth was the mass migration into the Khartoum area from the Kordofan and Darfur Provinces, where the gross deterioration of grazing lands had been exacerbated by drought.

Strongly associated with environmental problems is rapid population growth.71 Bangladesh, for instance, already totals 104 million people, almost all of them farmers within a territory the size of Wisconsin. With a 2.8 percent annual growth rate, the population is projected to grow to 266 million within 40 years and to 454 million before stabil- izing. Yet, due to over-loading of the agricultural resource base and poor agricultural policies, per-hectare and per-capita grain production is today lower than it was in 1960. When Bangladesh became independent in 1971, some 10 million land-hungry and food-short people crossed the border into India, provoking bloody clashes. They were impelled by religious and political reasons too; but sheer "people pressure" on a limited land-resource base was also a significant com- ponent of the migratory impulse.72 Throughout Bangladesh's nation- hood, there have been periodic incursions into India—most recently in 1983, when 3000 Bangladeshis were killed. Given these tensions and Bangladesh's history of conflicts with India over water, there is plenty of scope for continuing tensions between the two countries—as throughout the sub-continent, where the present populace of 1,090 million is projected to reach an ultimate total of 2,570 million.

36 Another country that is "outgrowing its borders" is Kenya. This nation is of strategic interest to the United States because it lies along- side the oil-tanker lanes from the Persian Gulf and because it provides port facilities to the U.S. Navy. With 21 million people in mid-1987, growing at 4.2 percent per year, Kenya's population is projected to reach 38.5 million by 2000,73 with a hypothetical stable population of 111 million that will eventually be reached in the late 21st or early 22nd century.74 Yet, even with high-level (American-type) inputs for its agriculture, Kenya could continuously feed no more than 51 million people from its own land. Kenya's straits recall General Maxwell Taylor's comment on the linkage between population and conflict:

"Our national security interest in maintaining a global balance of power and global restraints on Soviet aggression depends on the continued viability, and economic, social and governmental stability, of a number of strategically located developing nations.... These countries are all suffering from degenerative and disruptive forces resulting from demographic growth rates which will double their populations in the next 20 to 25 years."75 U.S. Friends and Allies Many Third World nations with environmental and population problems are friends and allies of the United States. They include not only Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Sudan, Kenya, and Nigeria (countries exam- ined here in some detail), but also the Philippines and Thailand (both suffering from broadscale deforestation), and El Salvador (deforestation, soil erosion, and population pressures). These nations support the United States on security matters by, for instance, helping contain Soviet and Cuban expansionism and maintain regional stability. Yet, poverty afflicts many, and in these nations a major obstacle to sustainable development lies with environmental-resource rundown. Their impoverished communities may be breeding grounds for excesses of the far left or the far right, paving the way for social disorder and political turbulence. Certain of these nations may falter in their role as friends and allies of the United States.

The Third World is the site of most conflict today. Since World War II, there have been 160 sizable outbreaks of hostilities in 66 countries, 105 of them serious enough to rank as wars. In all, these hostilities have taken the lives of 16 million people.76 While the great majority of the outbreaks have been Third World affairs, they often feature a built-in element of West-East rivalry. In an extreme context, indeed, it is not going too far to say there is no small connection between the scope for Third-World War and Third World War. To cite former Secretary of State Dean Rusk:

"One of the oldest causes of war in the history of the human race, the pressure of peoples upon resources, is being revived in a world in which thousands of megatons are lying around in the hands of frail human beings."

37 V. The Case of the Caribbean Basin

"The fundamental causes for the present conflict are as much environmental as political, stemming from problems of resource distribution in an overcrowded land... almost complete deforestation, massive soil erosion and loss of fertility, siltation threatening hydropower development, large- scale extinction of flora and fauna, diminished groundwater resources, deteriorating water quality, and widespread health-threatening environmental pollution."

Agency for International Development (AID)

he U.S. AID's assessment resembles many others made in recent years, not only in reference to Central America's war- T wracked countries, but also to other countries of the Carib- bean Basin, such as Haiti and the Dominican Republic. How far are these assertions supported by evidence?

The Caribbean Basin—not only the island nations and Central America, but Mexico, Colombia, and Venezuela—is vitally important to the United States because of sizable trade, particularly with Mexico. American banks have recently built up their investments in several countries of the region, Mexico and Venezuela alone accounting for $60 billion. More important still, the Basin is strategically significant to the United States. (See Figure 2.) Washington, D.C. is closer to Cuba and El Salvador than to San Francisco. Through the Basin's sea straits and passages, including the Panama Canal, pass two thirds of all U.S. sea-borne foreign trade, including half of all imports of strategic minerals and three quarters of all imports of vital raw materials (including three quarters of U.S. imports of oil).77 By the year 2000, U.S. imports of raw materials are expected to rise from the current 20 percent to some 50 percent of total U.S. consumption, and most of these materials will pass through the Caribbean Sea.78 Yet, no other part of Latin America is so disturbed, politically and militarily, as the Carib- bean Basin and especially Central America.

These various American interests in the Caribbean Basin have environmental dimensions. Most obvious is the natural-resource base

39 Figure 2. The Caribbean Basin Showing Major Shipping Lanes.

•#«/New York w\ /Philadelphia If ATLANTIC UNITED STATES JSN'orfolk BERMUDA ^> . . to and from US (U.KA OCEAN _^^ •7X i East Coast ports ^Charleston / / 1 ^ >° and from

i ^r*^ Galveston W^4 4/*S^»\. lJO lacksonvillc ^T •••i[a """""' •»s \ '% / X \ N o York—Maracaibo \ V 175 statute miles to and from 1/ 1 " Europe / GULF OF Miam\\\ j 1 MEXICO v \ r / S J CUBA- •\\^r^^««AP' ' REPUBLIC •\MEXICO -^ x - *~~-^) *^., • PUERTO "*• .». ,/.-™,us. \/~-•* 4-BE1.IZH IN- 1 RICO We,,n . .„,,*.«, V;UAT[: MAi;.c § _^ (U.S.) % — DOMINICA HONDURAS < .» /7^ CARIBBEA— ——3fN /I ^ - y~ 5f/ SEA // ' _, ^- ST. LUCIA X. EL/***^ ~ "^*S^ ©—\ BARBADOS \^'' I ST. VINCENT AND — J^V^ ,o\d from SoBlk AmHc, THE GRENADINES —> ^ Soulhera Africa. *. Ui« to and from j^-^^V. \N« AHM.iA, the far East '-5>^fr\^ / m Ocean, the Persian Gulf. etc. GRENADA _#v l> I\\ / . ^-*-ii TOBAGO ^••8^1 i :•:::.!! -M- ¥ ••• ^ J '•'' •* \ls w v \± -on . .

^ 1* vr.Mizi: •.I A ) <•'• tANA ,i

PACIFIC '? OCEAN I C COLOMHIA \ \. ,-•' ;o and from 1 South Am, . .: ""\ ,•' miA/ii \X. ••" r ; •

Source: W. La Feber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America, (New York W.W. Norton & Co., 1983), pp. 6-7.

40 that underpins the region's agriculture—the predominant means of livelihood in the region and a major factor in its economies and political fortunes. Agriculture and Soil Erosion In most Caribbean countries, food production does not keep pace with population growth and nutritional needs. So these countries must steadily increase their imports of cereal grains—a practice that draws down foreign-currency reserves and makes debt repayments to U.S. banks all the harder. Of course, agronomic advances, development policies and other factors bear on agriculture. But a central factor is soil erosion.

Soil erosion is widespread in the mountainous Caribbean region, particularly in heavily populated farming areas.79 Much of this farmland has a gradient of more than 20 percent—steeper than any arable lands in North America, where soils are generally less erodible and rainfall is less heavy. (See Table 4.) Due to population growth, plus maldistribution of land, the number of small farms in these steep- sloped areas has been increasing and the size of the farms declining. As farmers overwork their tiny holdings, they accelerate soil erosion. In Guatemala, where some 35 percent of farmlands are seriously or severely eroded,80 40 percent of the land's productive capacity has been so lost.81

Table 4. The Caribbean Basin, Selected Countries: Steeply Sloped Land

Country Area, % of National % of Arable Land % of 1980 Agricultural Territory 1980 Population Cultivating Steep-Sloped Land

Mexico 45 20 45 Guatemala 75 30 65 Honduras 80 15 20 El Salvador 75 40 50 Costa Rica 70 25 30 Panama 80 10 30 Haiti 80 70 65 Dominican Republic 80 15 30 Jamaica 60 50 30 Colombia 40 25 50

Source: J.L. Posner and M.F. McPherson, "Agriculture on the Steep Slopes of Tropical America: The Current Situation and Prospects," World Development (May 1982), pp. 341-354.

41 Soil erosion in the Caribbean Basin is closely related to land shortages for small-scale farmers. Such shortages stem from two main factors. One is population growth. If there were fewer people in rural areas (other things being equal), there would be less pressure on smallholdings. The other factor is the prevailing land-tenure system, which leads to the inefficient use of farmlands.82 In Guatemala, 2 percent of all landowners control 80 percent of arable land, while 50 percent of the rural population live on small farms, and 26 percent are landless.83 The breakdown is only slightly more equitable in Colombia, for most countries of Central America, and for Mexico.84

In some countries resource pressures in the Caribbean Basin would be immediately eased through redistribution of land. But relief would be partial and temporary if population continued to grow and agricultural productivity were not also greatly improved. In any case, significant land reform seems unlikely in most Caribbean countries in the foreseeable future, so too many people will continue to demand too much of too little land. Moreover, many of these "marginalized" people head for marginal lands, usually forests, and the deforestation that follows makes energy supplies tighter. In Costa Rica, for instance, the watershed catchment above virtually every large hydropower facility has been deforested. At the Cashi Dam, operating for only two decades, revenues lost to sedimentation are estimated at between $133 million and $274 million.85 Population Growth The Caribbean Basin has experienced three decades of rapid population growth. By the time the region achieves zero population growth late next century, Colombia is projected to have grown from a mid-1985 level of 29 million people to 62 million; Central America from 27 million to 80 million; and Mexico from 80 million to 199 million. (See Table 5.) Given the difficulties that most countries already have feeding their populaces, employing them, housing them, and keeping them healthy, the region's future is going to be made more problematical by the main population explosion still to come.86 As former Secretary of Defense and World Bank President Robert S. McNamara has put it,

In any proper accounting of the forces making for international strife in the contemporary world, there are always interwoven layers of causality: domestic political forces, economic interests, the intrusion of great power rivalries, and so on. Changing demographic configurations must similarly be factored in here. The current conflict in Central America is a prime example in which demographic pressures have played such a role.S7 Consequences for U.S. Interests As noted, an inadequate or deteriorating agricultural resource base militates against sustainable development and political stability in the region. But three further issues for U.S. interests are also at stake.

42 Table 5. The Caribbean Basin: Population Projections for Selected Countries (in millions)

Country Total, Current Annual Total, Total, when 1985 Growth Rate, % 2000 Stationary (roughly 100 years hence)

Mexico 79.5 2.6 112.8 199 Central America (countries with populations of more than 0.5 million) Guatemala 8.4 3.5 12.2 25 Honduras 4.4 3.4 7.1 17 El Salvador 5.6 2.1 7.8 17 Nicaragua 3.3 3.4 4.9 12 Costa Rica 2.6 2.7 3.6 5 Panama 2.2 2.0 2.7 4

Caribbean Cuba 10.1 1.1 11.6 15 Dominican Rep. 6.2 2.5 8.4 15 Haiti 5.8 2.3 8.4 14 Jamaica 2.3 2.2 2.8 4

South America Colombia 29.4 2.1 39.0 62 Venezuela 18.4 2.7 24.7 46

Sources: World Bank 1985, World Development Report, 1984; anPopulatiod n Reference Bureau, various publications.

The first relates to the Panama Canal, an obvious interest of the United States. By the mid-1970s, deforestation-caused sedimentation had so clogged the Canal that large ships were being diverted around Cape Horn.88 The second consequence relates to the surge of migrants, often impoverished rural people, who head toward the United States in ever-increasing numbers. The third relates to the long-established links between U.S. interests and the orderly and enduring development of the Caribbean Basin.

Soil erosion, farmland shortages, deforestation, declining water supplies, hydropower problems, population growth, and other environmental factors plainly impinge on the region's hopes for sustainable economic growth and political security. The Nicaraguan revolution owed much of its origin to rural resentment against the Somoza oligarchy. The more recent ouster of the Duvalier regime from Haiti is also due in part to the environmental impoverishment of most of the

43 rural populace. In general, a tide of political instability may weaken U.S. friends and friendships in the region, offering scope for Cuban and Soviet intervention. It may even bring to power governments that curtail American access to resources and markets, that nationalize American property and investments, that threaten sea lanes, or that allow a Soviet power base in the region.

Given the geopolitical importance of the Caribbean region, the U.S. government in early 1982 launched its Caribbean Basin Initiative. Ac- cording to President Reagan, the wellbeing and security of U.S. neighbors in this region are among vital U.S. interests. The Initiative, together with the associated Economic Recovery Act, seeks to promote economic development as a principal means toward political stability. But it scarcely examines the basis of sustainable economic development. Its authors—perhaps overly concerned with conventional definitions of national security—took next to no account of environmental degradation, even though many of the area's economic problems derive from the depletion of natural resource stocks, inequitable land tenure, and associated problems of population growth. The Case of Haiti Recent events in Haiti reveal how economic problems, culminating in political upheaval and the overthrow of the head of state, can be brought about in major measure by environmental problems.89 True, the recent violent changes, and especially the coup, are attributable primarily, as a proximate cause, to the extraordinarily oppressive Duvalier regimes. But environmental factors have likewise made a solid contribution, especially as ultimate causes. Whereas almost all of Haiti was originally forested, only 6 percent remains so today.90 As a result, there has been widespread soil erosion. In some localities, half the landscape is bare rock.91 Almost three quarters of today's populace of 5.8 million people depend directly on agriculture. Yet, between 1935 and 1980 the amount of productive arable land declined, through erosion and other soil degradation, by almost 40 percent.92 Per-capita grain production averaged 135 kgs. per year at mid-century, then declined to an average of only 75 kgs. from 1982 to 1984. At the same time, deforestation reduced stream flows and irrigation capacity. The Avezac Irrigation System, planned to cover 3800 hectares, now supports less than 2000 hectares. The sediment-clogged Peligre Dam, which represents half the nation's hydropower potential, will operate only half as long as expected.93

Today, Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere and one of the most destitute nations anywhere, with an average per- capita GNP in 1983 of only $320. Only nine of Latin America's 36 nations are below $1000, and no other is below $500. Small wonder that as many as one million Haitians have reportedly left, most of them illegally entering other Caribbean countries. The bulk of these environmental refugees (some of them political refugees too) come

44 from northwestern Haiti, where deforestation is worst, almost 90 percent of all farms are smaller than 1.3 hectares, and 80 percent of children suffer from malnutrition.94 By 1981, between 68,000 and 80,000 migrants (or two or even three times that number, according to some observers) had made their way to the United States and Canada. The most desperate of these migrants reached the United States via the hazardous 950-km. boat trip to southern Florida, where an estimated 24,000 today reside. To support these new arrivals, Florida's government has been spending more money than the federal government has been spending on foreign aid to Haiti.95

Migration as a response to local environmental problems (coupled with other factors), is common in several other Caribbean islands too. For sure, the predominant motivation can be the "pull" of a better life elsewhere, especially in the United States, but many migrate because declining local conditions leave them little choice.96 Then too, much of the migratory impulse stems from population pressures: the Caribbean islands are some of the most densely populated territories anywhere. Whatever combination of factors drives Caribbeans from their homelands, environmental deterioration surely exacerbates the individual problems of poorly performing economies and inadequate development policies.

How big is the migratory surge? In 1950, legal migrants from the islands into the United States totaled only 5000 or so. But their numbers swelled to 15,000 a year during the 1950s, to 60,000 in the 1960s, and to 120,000 in the 1970s.97 Between 1950 and 1980, more than 4 million people left the islands, many for the United States, Canada, and Europe. On average, Caribbean countries lost 5 to 10 percent of their populations—more than anywhere else in the world. Haiti lost 20 percent. Given the continuing high population growth rates in the Caribbean, the United States can expect migration to continue apace. Central America The greatest economic problems and political upheavals in the Caribbean Basin are in Central America.98 (See Tables 6 and 7.) Its recent history stands as a classic instance of how GNP can move ahead while most people fall behind. Despite sound, even outstanding, economic growth from 1960 to 1974, average calorie supply in 1980 fell well below nutritional requirements, and such basic facilities as domestic water supply and sanitation services are today available for only about half the population.

Partly because most citizens live in poverty, and partly because regimes are oligarchic (if not repressive), Central America features widespread discontent. In most countries, violence breaks out periodically. Worse, the potential for future trouble is great and growing: inadequate food supplies, economic deficiencies, unemployment, broadscale migration both within and among countries, civil disorders,

45 Table 6. Central America*: Some Basic Indicators

Country Population Total Population Growth Average Annual Projected Population 1985 Rate 1985 Growth Rate of in 2000 and When (in millions) (percent) Agricultural Stationary Output 1970-82 (in millions) (percent)

Guatemala 8.4 3.5 3.9 12.2 25 Honduras 4.4 3.4 2.4 7.1 17 El Salvador 5.6 2.1 2.0 7.8 17 Nicaragua 3.3 3.4 2.5 4.9 12 Costa Rica 2.6 2.7 2.3 3.6 5 Panama 2.2 2.0 2.0 2.7 4

Table 6. (Continued)

GNP in $ Per Person Infant Mortality Life Expectancy % of Population External Public 1983 (and Average 1985 at Birth 1985 with Access to Safe Debt as % of Annual Growth Rate (per 1000 live (years) Drinking Water/ GNP, 1983 1960-82) births) (U.S., 10.5) (U.S., 1975) Sanitation Services, early 1980s

1120 (2.4) 62.4 59 51/36 16 670 (1.0) 82 60 68/44 56 710 (0.9) 42.2 65 51/48 29 900 (0.2) 76 60 55/19 133 1020 (2.8) 19.3 73 82/87 126 2070 (3.4) 26 71 83/45 74

*Except for Belize Sources: Food and Agriculture Organization ofthe United Nations, 1985, State ofFood and Agriculture, 1984 (Rome, Italy: FAO); in

and political turmoil. Many of these problems are rooted in environmental factors. Regional income derives mainly from the renewable natural resources that support agriculture, forestry, fisheries, and hydropower-derived energy. Indeed, more than half of all economic

46 Table 7. Central America*: Agriculture and Food

Country Index of Food Daily Calorie Imports of Cereals, and Food Aid in Production Per Supply as % of Cereals, 1982 Person 1982-84 Requirement, (1000 metric tons) (1974-76 = 100) 1980-82

Guatemala 100 96 105 11 Honduras 103 96 89 34 El Salvador 89 92 179 132 Nicaragua 78 100 70 103 Costa Rica 83 118 164 45 Panama 99 103 110 3

*Except for Belize Sources: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 1985, State of Food and Agriculture, 1984 (Rome, Italy: FAO); and World Bank, 1985, World Development Report, 1984 (Washington, DC: World Bank). production (including indirect outputs) is based on natural resources, which also account for half of all employment and for most export earnings."

The precarious state of this natural-resource base is little recognized by policy-makers within the region or outside. Indeed, some of the resource depletion stems from development-aid policies. Too often, the financial contributions of AID, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the World Bank have fostered cattle ranching at the expense of forest cover and other projects that deplete the region's environmental capital.100 The Kissinger Commission emphasized rural development, but scarcely mentioned such environmental factors as soil erosion—even though in a mountainous and heavily populated region with poor agricultural technologies soil erosion is difficult to overlook. In Central America and on the Caribbean islands, from 45 to 80 percent of the land is steep-sloped (i.e., greater than 8 percent). A high portion of the arable land and a significant percent of the agricultural population are found on those steep slopes, which have some of the worst poverty in the region.101

The soil erosion is compounded, and to some extent caused, by maldistribution of farmlands. In Guatemala, 2 percent of landowners control 80 percent of arable lands, while 83 percent of farmers subsist off plots too small to support a household.102 In Honduras, 5 percent of land holdings account for 60 percent of arable lands; and in Costa Rica, 3 percent and 54 percent, respectively. As a result, in Guatemala 57 percent of the rural population lives on small or very small farms,

47 and 26 percent are landless; in Honduras, 34 percent and 31 percent; and in Costa Rica, 44 percent and 26 percent.103

Environmental decline manifests itself vividly in that Central American country with greatest resource impoverishment, civil strife, and political instability—El Salvador. Within a Vermont-sized territory live 5.6 million people, 80 percent of them farmers—and the populace is still growing at a rate of 2.1 percent per year. With its forests large- ly a matter of history and much of its soil cover eroded or subject to agricultural mismanagement, El Salvador is increasingly unable to feed itself. Per-capita grain production has declined from an average of 142 kgs. from 1950 to 1952 to 129 kgs. from 1982 to 1984.

El Salvador's main agricultural problem is reputed to be land tenure working in conjunction with population growth.104 Almost half of all Salvadoran farmers are confined to a mere 5 percent of all agricultural lands, and the average smallholding is half a hectare or less. Between 1970 and 1980, the number of landless peasants rose by 50 percent, until today almost two thirds of the farming population can be cate- gorized as near-landless or landless.105 As a result, throngs of impoverished peasants are pushed into marginal environments, often steep-sloped areas where the friable volcanic soil erodes readily. Yet, on the largest farms, an average of 60 percent of land remains uncultivated.

Whether skewed land distribution or population growth or such factors as inequitable share-out of economic and political power or all of these influences are at fault, migration, much of it illicit, from El Salvador into neighboring countries has been steady. By the late 1960s, when there was an average of 158 persons per square kilometer in El Salvador and only 22 in Honduras, every eighth Salvadoran had made his way into Honduras. (Tensions over this migration erupted in 1969 in the so-called Soccer War.) Another half million Salvadorans had migrated into other countries of the region.106 By the mid-1970s, migration to the United States had also accelerated. By 1982 an estimated 300,000 and 500,000 Salvadorans—stimulated now also by civil strife, and many of them entering illegally—had made their way this far north.107

Similar population and political pressures, though not so acute, obtain in the Guatemalan highlands. As a result, somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 Guatemalans have entered other countries in the region, generating friction especially with Mexico.108 Many Guate- malans have also migrated to the United States, many of them illegally. Mexico Mexico, a nation that with 80 million people dominates the region,109 is specially significant for U.S. interests. The United States has a deep

48 and long-standing desire to see political stability on its southern border, notably in light of Mexico's connections with Central America. Moreover, by late 1982, American banks had lent $30 billion to Mexico, or half of all private-bank loans to the country. (Mexico's total external debt now approaches $100 billion.) In addition, Mexico has recently overtaken Britain to become the United States' third largest trading partner. Indeed, Mexico's financial crisis and austerity program in 1983, which led to reduced imports, cost an estimated 200,000 American jobs.110 By early 1986, the price of oil, which constitutes 75 percent of Mexico's exports, had plunged to half its 1983 level, send- ing shock waves through Mexico's economy that could reverberate roundly in the United States. If Mexico defaults on its debt, the backlash would be felt from end to end of the American banking system. In the long run, enduring economic distress could lead to political upheavals with ultimate repercussions that could exceed those the United States now grapples with in Central America.

Yet another linkage lies with the common border. More than 3000 kilometers long, this is a unique conjunction of the Third World with the First World. Across this border comes a flood of Mexican migrants, most of them illegal—and growing economic troubles in Mexico could trigger wave upon surging wave of additional migrants. Many North Americans, fearing job losses and cultural disruptions, want the flow stemmed, if not stopped. Many Mexicans, fearing for their hard-pressed economy and population growth, want the migration maintained, if not expanded. Were this "safety valve" to be eventually restricted through tighter U.S. controls, the result could well be an increase in social turmoil and political instability in Mexico.

Among the mixture of factors that impel Mexicans toward the United States, environmental decline and population growth are significant. Because of its troubled economy and its limited agricultural base, Mexico can scarcely support its rapid increase in human numbers. (See Table 4.) In 1960, Mexico's population totalled 34 million people. Today, it is 80 million. By the year 2000, it is projected to reach 113 million people. The number of unemployed and underemployed workers already exceeds 10 million, and by the year 2000 it is expected to at least double.111 The work shortage is worst in rural areas, where the rate of unemployment and underemployment reaches 65 percent and the numbers of near-landless and outright landless reaches 60 percent of all farming households.112

The shortage of agricultural land also reflects the capacity of large farmers to buy out small farmers and the spread of capital-intensive cash cropping for export. But while the fastgrowing rural populace increasingly exceeds the carrying capacity of the agricultural land- resource base, it is the over-loading of many farmlands that leads to environmental degradation, which in turn reduces the carrying capacity of agricultural lands.113

49 More than two thirds of Mexico is semi-arid or arid, an expanse that is increasing through desertification and soil erosion. Some 45 percent of the farming community occupies the 20 percent of cropland that is steeply sloped, and hence highly erodible.114 Many irrigated areas have become salinized, and as early as 1990 at least one million hectares of such lands will need to be rehabilitated or retired from production.115 Some forest cover remains, but it is disappearing fast at the hands of landless peasants and large-scale ranchers alike. Deforesta- tion in turn disrupts river flows, and water supplies are the main limiting factor on agricultural productivity in two thirds of Mexico's arable lands. From the late 1950s to the early 1970s, the area under staple crops—corn, wheat, rice, and beans—expanded by almost half, reaching into marginal lands with readily erodible soils. But by the mid-1970s, crop yields in these opened-up lands were declining too— precisely at a time when population growth rates peaked. Domestic calorie production as a percentage of total supply reached 105 percent in 1970; but by 1982, it had slipped to 94 percent. Today, Mexico is again a net importer of food.

The upshot is that during the past ten years, and particularly since 1980, there has been an upsurge in migration from Mexico's rural areas. Many of the migrants head for Mexico's cities, which, after growing by 5 percent or more annually since 1960, are showing signs of strain and are less and less capable of absorbing more arrivals. For every two rural Mexicans who come to the city, one now crosses the border into the United States, not only drawn by the prospect of a better life in the United States, but also escaping poor and declining opportunities in Mexico. Push becomes a factor of pull, and vice versa.

How large has Mexico/U.S. migration been in recent years? Legal immigrants totalled 640,294 during the 1970s, after which the rate accelerated to more than 150,000 in 1984 alone. Even more to the point is the number of illegal entrants.116 Between 1963 and 1983, U.S. arrests of illegals along the southern border increased almost tenfold. Arrests in early 1986 were almost 40 percent higher than in early 1985, and immigration officials expect to apprehend 1.8 million illegal aliens during 1986. For every border arrest, at least two and possibly three Mexicans succeed in making illegal entry. While most illegal immigrants return home after just a few months, an annual total of somewhere between 150,000 and 350,000 (possibly many more) are believed to stay on permanently in the United States. Best guesstimates suggest that between 1 million and 2.6 million illegal Mexicans now reside in the United States. The overall total of Mexican immigrants, both legal and illegal, amounts to between 2.4 million and almost 4 million persons. Each year, their numbers probably swell by 300,000 to 500,000 persons, perhaps a good many more.

50 Will immigration from Mexico continue apace? By the end of the century, Mexico is projected to have almost half as many people as the United States, but proportionally far less good-productivity cropland. The number of unemployed and underemployed Mexicans is estimated to top 20 million. At least half of the jobless will be rural poor: the number of landless peasants is projected to increase by at least two million, possibly twice as many. Meantime, the United States is likely to install some sort of a brake on immigration—a difficult solution since Mexico's workless and landless throngs are likely to undermine the economic security and political stability of the United States' immediate neighbor.

51 VI. Policy Implications

"The environmental problems of the poor will affect the rich as well, in a not too distant future, transmitted through political instability and turmoil." Gro Harlem Brundtland

hat can the United States do to protect its interests in the global environment? Certainly, step one is for U.S. policy- W makers to understand the resource and population factors in their proper scope and character. Without clear insight, they will not grasp the ramifications of the U.S. stake in the global environment.

As an economic and political superpower, the United States has Not only the many interests in the orderly and sustainable development of the Kissinger global economy and thus in the environmental resource base that Commission on ultimately supports all economies. Furthermore, security interests are at risk. Yet, not only the Kissinger Commission on Central America, Central America, but also the earlier Carlucci Commission on Security and Economic but also the earlier Assistance, almost entirely overlooked the multiple and far-reaching Carlucci ramifications of environmental degradation. Commission on Environmental issues are exceptionally interwoven, especially as Security and concerns their causality and impacts. Not only the pace and scale of Economic accumulating problems, but also their multiple inter-relationships must be taken into account. Energy strategies affect crop production, and Assistance, almost vice versa. Tropical deforestation influences climate change, and, in entirely overlooked turn, global warming due to the greenhouse effect is likely to affect the multiple and distribution of the world's forests. And so on. What's more, most of far-reaching these diverse interactions will grow more numerous and more significant, and will have greater quantitative and qualitative influence on ramifications of more sectors of development and on more human communities. environmental degradation. This increasing scope and complexity has many implications for U.S. policy with regard to environmental issues themselves and in wider policy frameworks.117 For instance, the build-up of acid rain and car-

53 bon dioxide from fossil-fuel combustion (especially in the United States, the largest single consumer of fossil fuels) affects the global atmosphere. At issue are energy policy questions with international ramifications—the role of fossil fuels, hidden subsidies for extraction of fossil fuels, and tax support for large vehicles. Policy-makers cannot afford to focus simply on problems' effects and to take corrective Policy-makers measures. More important is preventive action—policies that help us cannot afford to anticipate and forestall. focus simply on The importance of prevention is clear too in tropical deforestation, problems' effects desertification, and several other forms of broadscale resource deple- and to take tion. The problems tie in intimately with various policy frameworks, especially with those of enhanced and sustainable economic growth in corrective measures. the Third World. Both tropical deforestation and desertification derive More important is essentially from the pervasive poverty that afflicts much of the Third preventive action. World—which, in turn, reflects the policy failure to formulate strategies for sustainable development.

The brighter side of the environmental situation is that just as problems tend to be interlinked, so do solutions. Tree planting in the Third World not only supplies commercial timber and fuelwood. It also reduces flooding and drought, conserves topsoil, assists irrigated agriculture, supplies good-quality domestic water, and may slow the build-up of carbon dioxide. So too with energy: as we increase the efficiency of production and consumption, it is possible both to foster greater economic growth for each unit of energy and to reduce acid rain, and slow carbon-dioxide build-up. Probably the greatest example of these impact-reinforcing linkages lies in population planning. One of the best ways to control population growth is to reduce infant mortality, thus enhancing motivation for family planning; and one of the best ways to reduce infant mortality is to supply more potable water—which brings us back to tree planting. Plainly, the more that Third World nations come to grips with population growth, the better they can deal with other problems—witness successes in China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Cuba in rapidly bringing down their fertility rates.

How much time do U.S. policy-makers have to act? Certainly, even with outsize efforts, we are not likely to halt or reverse such problems as freshwater shortages and marine pollution before the end of this century. Desertification and tropical deforestation already under way will leave their mark for many decades at best, more likely centuries— unless we move promptly to counter them. As for population growth, the consequences will take even longer to bring under control. And with regard to mass extinction of species and climatic dislocations, much longer—thousands, if not millions, of years.

As various as these time frames are, all are unusually long compared to policy-makers' conventional horizons.118 Life in the year 2000 will prove to be profoundly shaped by the environmental actions—and

54 inaction—of policy-makers today. And just as the effects of decisions made or foregone today will generally not materialize until well into the future, it may take equally long to reverse such effects. Nonetheless, urgent interventions often yield a highly positive payoff in reducing the ultimate impact of environmental problems. The key factors are foresight and commitment.

Consider, for example, the build-up of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in conjunction with the climatic dislocations they are very likely to cause. The main repercussions will not become apparent until the start of the next century. Yet, right now we are losing valuable time by not taking anticipatory counter-measures: we will not again have so much maneuvering room. Decisions now being made on energy planning, agricultural land-use, drought problems, irrigation works, and hydropower facilities reflect the assumption that future climatic patterns will be an extension of past patterns, even though there is mounting evidence that this will be far from the case.

While delay will cost us dearly, immediate action can make a sur- prising difference.119 The efficiency of energy use has been increasing in industrialized countries by roughly 1 percent per year since 1978—or about half the rate of increase in fossil-fuel use projected for the forseeable future. Yet, this breakthrough represents only a small part of the scope to increase efficiency. If all available measures were taken immediately and supplemented by efforts to internalize the pollution effects of coal and shale-oil burning, then carbon dioxide build-up by the year 2050 could be limited to perhaps 400 ppm instead of the approximately 550 ppm expected without these interventions.120

Of course, it will be difficult to modify energy policies, especially those governing fossil fuels, in part because of hidden subsidies and other market-distorting factors. But policy decisions made now should be viewed in terms of a crucial choice between a difficult but still tolerable transition to a radically altered energy future, and a far more difficult transition to a profoundly modified climate with many adverse consequences for human welfare and political stability.

The costs of inaction, together with the scope for action, apply strik- ingly to population growth—for instance, in the case of Bangladesh. The present total of 104 million people is projected to expand to 157 million by the year 2000, to 266 million by 2025, and ultimately to 435 million. Yet, Bangladesh could still aim to reach replacement-level fertility by the year 2000—an ambitious goal that is no more than on a par with recent family-planning accomplishments in China, Java, parts of Thailand, and Cuba. Such a program would result in an ultimate population of only 200 million, or 235 million less than the projected total.121 The family-planning challenge can be put in perspective when we consider that even with high-input agriculture on a par with North

55 America's, Bangladesh could probably not feed that many people from its own territory. Much the same holds true in other countries of special economic or security importance to the United States—among them, Jordan, Pakistan, Philippines, Morocco, Nigeria, Kenya, Mexico, and Guatemala (all countries with population growth rates of 2.5 percent or more). Constraints of Interdependence No nation can shield itself from various forms of environmental degradation in other nations. Not even the United States, the most No nation can advanced and powerful nation, can insulate itself from many en- shield itself from vironmental problems and the economic difficulties they generate in other parts of the world. environmental degradation in other Given the challenge of interdependence, there is a growing premium on collective action to tackle collective problems. As the exam- nations. ple of greenhouse-gas build-up in the atmosphere shows, there are environmental problems to which all nations contribute, by which all will be affected. Similar considerations apply, though on a more limited scale, to such problems as mass extinction of species. So while there is now less leeway for the United States to "go it alone," more scope is emerging for the nation to cooperate with other nations. In turn this postulates a policy framework that reflects the new constraints—the creative constraints—of interdependence.

Accepting the challenge of interdependence means recognizing that many environmental problems—and the opportunities they imply— constitute a distinctive category of international issues, unlike any of the past. The new agenda lies beyond the scope of established diplomacy and international relations, and requires a new emphasis on enlightened self-interest of individual nations and the community of nations, plus an unprecedented degree of international cooperation. A Strategy for Action A comprehensive strategy for action must be directed toward safeguarding the planet's natural-resource base while promoting a better life for all.122 In essence, it will require five major global transitions. Daunting as these five transitional programs may appear, they can be accomplished through means within our grasp right now—and they will surely prove more cost-effective than traditional approaches to environment and development.

1. An economic transition toward sustainable development, together with an equitable distribution of benefits. The dual purpose of this transition is to engage in forms of development that maintain and even enhance the natural-resource base and to step up the direct attack on the poverty that afflicts one billion people. The means to this end includes "bottom up" development (decentralized, with strong local participation),

56 increased productivity for small-scale farmers (buttressed by agrarian reform), and broadscale advances in the status of women.

2. A natural-resource transition, from depletion of nature's "capital" to reliance on its "income." This requires much greater attention to the maintenance of intrinsically renewable resources as forests, grasslands, fisheries, most water bodies, and atmospheric systems. It also requires greater attention to such intrinsically non-renewable resources as topsoil, groundwater stocks, and climatic stability.

3. A demographic transition toward early stabilization of population growth. This requires a full range of fertility-control technologies made available through an increase in family-planning funding from today's level of around $1 billion to at least $3 billion a year. It also requires a broad array of complementary programs for improved health, nutri- tion, and sanitation throughout Third World communities, with emphasis on reproductive-age women and children, plus greatly expanded opportunities, both economic and educational, for women.

4. An energy transition, from an oil-dominated era to an energy future based on renewable sources and high efficiency of production and consumption. This requires an outlook that sees beyond the present easing of oil prices, that accepts the urgent need to anticipate a post-oil era, and that emphasizes new and renewable sources of energy.

5. A political transition toward a global bargain of complementary concerns between North and South. This transition includes questions of restruc- turing debt, liberalizing trade, managing natural-resource stocks and flows, and safeguarding the global commons. To achieve these political changes, which is essential to the other four transitions, requires a keener appreciation of the merits and benefits of enlightened long- term self-interest on the part of individual nations, as of the community of nations, especially in terms of sustaining the indivisible biosphere that supports us all.

As the United States moves to safeguard its stake in the global environment, it will need to cooperate increasingly with other nations to achieve these five transitions. As more and more nations come to recognize their stake in the common global environment, the attack on collective problems through collective effort should gather force. This collective approach places a premium on U.S. leadership—and is all the more pertinent in light of the pre-eminent scientific skills, technological know-how, and economic resources of the United States.

When faced with crises, policy-makers can do more than react. They can turn crises to advantage. As old presuppositions and the policy regimes they supported are overtaken by events, the process opens up new opportunities for creative initiative.

57 The most over-riding factor of all is this. Change will come, whether we positively pursue it or not, whether it arrives by design or by default. Fortunately, there is still time—though generally only just time—to choose the courses we prefer. Through immediate and in- cisive action, the United States can generate a sizable payoff for itself as it moves to safeguard its stake in the global environment.

Norman Myers is a consultant in environment and development. Cur- rently living in Oxford, England, he was based for twenty-four years in Kenya, from where he traveled to more than forty developing countries. Recently, he has undertaken policy analyses for The World Bank, the World Commission on Environment and Development, and a number of multinational corporations and commercial banks.

58 Notes

1. James G. Speth, Environment, Economy, Security: The Emerging Agenda (Washington, DC: Center for National Policy, 1985).

2. A.W. Clausen, Osborn Lecture, Conservation Foundation, Washington, DC, November 12, 1981.

3. Material in this section on "Economic Linkages" is drawn in part from A. L. Hollick, "The U.S. Stake in Global Issues."

4. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Inter- futures: Facing the Future (Paris, France: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 1979); Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Economic and Ecological Interdepen- dence (Paris, France: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 1982); Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Economic Outlook (Paris, France: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 1983); J.W. Sewell, et al., eds., U.S. Foreign Policy and the Third World: Agenda 1985-86 (Washington, DC: Overseas Development Council, 1985); and The World Bank, World Development Report (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 1985).

5. R.E. Feinberg, The Temperate Zone: The Third World Challenge to U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: W.W. Norton, 1983).

6. The Commission on Security and Economic Assistance, Report to the Secretary of State (the Frank Carlucci Commission), (Washing- ton, DC: Department of State, 1983).

7. W.D. Eberle, et al., The Next Four Years: The U.S. and the World Economy (New York: Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, 1984); E.H. Preeg, et al., eds., U.S. Trade Policy and Developing Countries (Washington, DC: Overseas Development Council, 1985).

59 8. For general reviews of U.S. trade linkages with the Third World, see E.H. Preeg, "Overview: An Agenda for U.S. Trade Policy Toward Developing Countries," in E.H. Preeg, ed., Hard Bargain- ing Ahead: U.S. Trade Policy and Developing Countries (Washington, DC: Overseas Development Council, 1985); and J.W. Sewell, et al., U.S. Foreign Policy and the Third World: Agenda 1985-86.

9. W.D. Eberle, et al., The Next Four Years: The U.S. and the World Economy.

10. R.E. Feinberg and V. Kallab, eds., Uncertain Future: Commercial Banks and the Third World (Washington, DC: Overseas Develop- ment Council, 1984); D. Rockefeller, "Help Wanted: Apostles of Aid," speech presented to American Bankers Association at the International Banking Policy Forum, Washington, DC, September 22, 1984.

11. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Perspec- tives of the World Economy (Paris, France: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 1984).

12. H.F. Jackson, "The African Crisis: Drought and Debt," Foreign Af- fairs 63 (1985), p. 1081.

13. N. Myers, "Environmental Repercussions of Deforestation in the Himalayas," Journal of World Forest Resource Management, 2 (1986), pp. 65-74.

14. N. Myers, "The Hamburger Connection: How Central America's Forests Become North America's Hamburgers," Ambio 10 (1981), pp. 3-8; N. Myers, The Primary Source (New York: W.W. Norton, 1984), pp. 127-142.

15. R. Dumont and M. F. Mottin, Stranglehold on Africa (London: Andre Deutsch, 1983), pp. 177-221; and R.W. Franke and B.H. Chasin, Seeds of Famine: Ecological Destruction and the Development Dilemma in the West African Sahel, revised edition (New York: Universe Books, 1984).

16. N. Twose, The Sahel: Behind the Weather (Oxford, U.K.: Oxfam, 1984), p. 5. See also R.W. Franke and B.H. Chasin, Seeds of Famine: Ecological Destruction and the Development Dilemma in the West African Sahel, pp. 162-189.

17. R.O. Keohane and J.S. Nye, "Two Cheers for Multilateralism," Foreign Policy, 60 (1985), pp. 148-167; and M. Scott, The Dynamics of Interdependence (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1982). For some analysis of ecologic interdependence, see N. Myers and D. Myers, "From the 'Duck Pond' to the

60 Global Commons: Increasing Awareness of the Supranational Nature of Emerging Environmental Issues," Ambio 11 (1982), pp. 195-201; N. Myers and D. Myers, "How the Global Community Can Respond to International Environmental Problems," Ambio 12 (1983), pp. 20-26; also N. Myers, "The Exhausted Earth," Foreign Policy 42 (1981), pp. 141-154. With regard to environment and resources generally, and the U.S. interest therein on global scale, see A.L. Hollick, The U.S. Stake in Global Issues; and J.G. Ruggie, The State of the World and the State of the Nations: Some Population and Resource Connections.

18. The author is indebted to A.L. Hollick, "The U.S. Stake in Global Issues" for analysis of the national interest. For additional reviews of the subject, and of its changing nature in a changing world, see J. Frankel, National Interest (New York: Praeger, 1970); R.C. Johansen, The National Interest and the Human Interest (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1984); A.A. Jordan, and W.J. Taylor, American National Security: Policy and Process, revised edition (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984); H.A. Kissinger, "On the National Interest," in American Foreign Policy (New York: W.W. Norton, 1973); K. Knorr, The Power of Nations: The Political Economy of International Relations (New York: Basic Books, 1975); and S.D. Krasner, Defending the National Interest: Raw Materials Investments and U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1978).

19. J.L. Cloudsley-Thompson, "Water into the 1990s: The Problems of the Desert Biome," International Journal of Environmental Studies 25 (1984), pp. 149-158; H.E. Dregne, "Aridity and Land Degrada- tion," Environment 27 (1985), 16-20, pp. 28-33; J.A. Mabbutt, "A New Global Assessment of the Status and Trends of Desertifica- tion," Environmental Conservation 11 (1984), pp. 103-113.

20. A. Agarwal, The State of India's Environment 1984-85 (New Delhi, India: Center for Science and Environment, 1985).

21. Food and Agriculture Organization, Potential Population Supporting Capacities of Lands in the Developing World (Rome: Food and Agricul- ture Organization, 1984). For a succinct description of the study's methodology and limitations, see World Resources Institute and International Institute for Environment and Development, World Resources Report 1986 (New York: Basic Books, 1986), p. 46. See also, World Bank, Poverty and Hunger: Issues and Options for Food Security in Developing Countries (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1986).

22. Food and Agriculture Organization, 1985 Country Tables (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization, 1985).

61 23. The World Bank, World Debt Tables, 1985-86 Edition (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 1986).

24. Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO Trade Yearbook, Volume 38, Table 36 (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization, 1985).

25. United Nations Population Division, World Population Prospects, Estimates and Projections as Assessed in 1984 (New York: The United Nations, 1986), Table 16.1.

26. The World Bank, World Debt Tables, 1985-86 Edition (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 1986).

27. S.S. Batie, "Environmental Limits: The New Constraints," Issues in Science and Technology 2 (1985), pp. 134-143; Conservation Foun- dation, The Future of American Agriculture as a Strategic Resource (Washington, DC: Conservation Foundation, 1983); R.M. Hatha- way, "Food Power," Foreign Service Journal 60 (1983), pp. 24-29; B. Insel, "A World Awash in Grain," Foreign Affairs 63 (1985), pp. 892-911; L. Soth, "The Grain Export Boom: Should It Be Tamed?," Foreign Affairs 59 (1981), pp. 895-912. See also generally, M.B. Wallerstein, Food for War-Food for Peace: The U. S. Food Aid in a Global Context (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1980).

28. N. Myers, "Tropical Deforestation and Species Extinctions: The Latest News," Futures 17 (1985), pp. 451-463. See also P.R. Ehrlich and A.H. Ehrlich, Extinction (New York: Random House, 1982).

29. See N. Myers, A Wealth of Wild Species (Boulder, Colorado: West- view Press, 1983).

30. A. C. Fisher, Economic Analysis and the Extinction of Species (Berke- ley, California: University of California, Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics, 1982); N. Myers, A Wealth of Wild Species, pp. 13-21; L.R. Nault and W.R. Findley, "Primitive Relative Offers New Traits for Corn Improvement," Ohio Report 66 (1982), pp. 90-92.

31. N. Myers, A Wealth of Wild Species, pp. 13-26.

32. Food and Agriculture Organization, Tropical Forest Resources (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization, 1982); J.M. Melillo, "A Com- parison of Recent Estimates of Disturbance in Tropical Forests," Environmental Conservation 12 (1985), pp. 37-40; N. Myers, "Tropi- cal Deforestation and Species Extinctions: The Latest News."

33. World Resources Institute, Tropical Forests: A Call For Action (Wash- ington, DC: World Resources Institute, 1985).

62 34. N. Myers, "Environmental Repercussions of Deforestation in the Himalayas." See also N. Myers, Tropical Moist Forests: Over- Exploited and Under-Utilized?, (Gland, Switzerland: International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, 1985).

35. N. Myers, "Tropical Deforestation and Species Extinctions: The Latest News."

36. A. Rodriguez, "Marine and Coastal Environmental Stress in the Wider Caribbean Region," Ambio (1981), pp. 283-294; J. Rowley, "Protecting the Caribbean," Earthwatch, 14 (1983), pp. 4-5. See also, N. Myers, A Wealth of Wild Species, pp. 140-41.

37. Food and Agriculture Organization, World Fisheries Yearbook (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization, 1985).

38. M. A. Robinson, Prospects for World Fisheries to 2000, FAO Fisheries Circular No. 722 (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization, 1982).

39. C. Archer and D. Scrivener, "Frozen Frontiers and Resource Wrangles: Conflict and Cooperation in Northern Waters," Interna- tional Affairs 59 (1983), pp. 59-76.

40. R.P. Ambroggi, "Water," Scientific American 243 (1980), pp. 101-116; M. Falkenmark, "New Ecological Approach to the Water Cycle: Ticket to the Future," Ambio 13 (1984), pp. 152-160. See also, J. Lundqvist, et al., eds., Strategies for River Basin Management (Boston, U.S.A. and Dardrecht, Netherlands: D. Reidel, 1985).

41. A. Agarwal, The State of India's Environment 1984-85, p. 28.

42. For some detailed analysis, see D.A. Deese and J.S. Nye, eds., Energy and Security (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Balinger, 1981); A.B. Lovins, and L.H. Lovins, Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for Na- tional Security (Andover, Massachusetts: Brick House Publishing Co., 1982); H.W. Maull, Raw Materials, Energy and Western Security (London, MacMillan, 1984); M.S. Wionczek, "Energy and Interna- tional Security in the 1980s: Realities or Misperceptions?," Third World Quarterly 5 (1983), pp. 839-847; and D. Yergin and M. Hillenbrand, eds., Global Insecurity: A Strategy for Energy and Economic Renewal (Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1982).

43. E. Eckholm, et al., Fuelwood: The Energy Crisis That Won't Go Away (London and Washington, DC: Earthscan, 1984).

44. N. Myers, The Primary Source, p. 120.

63 45. See J. McCormick, Acid Earth: The Global Threat of Acid Pollution (London and Washington: Earthscan Ltd., 1985); G.S. Whetstone and A. Rosencranz, Acid Rain in Europe and North America: National Responses to an International Problem (Washington, DC: Environmen- tal Law Institute, 1983).

46. R.M. Adams, et al., "Pollution, Agriculture and Social Welfare: The Case of Acid Depositions," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics 34 (1986), pp. 3-19; R.M. Adams, "Agriculture, Forestry and Related Benefits of Air Pollution Control: A Review and Some Observations," American Journal of Agricultural Economics (1986) (in press); A.V. Kneese, Measuring the Benefits of Clean Air and Water (Washington, DC; Resources for the Future, 1984), pp. 112-113; W.W. Heck, W.W. Cure, D.S. Schreiner, RJ. Olson, and A.S. Heagle, in Proceedings of Symposium on Effects of Air Pollution on Farm Commodities (Washington, DC: Izaak Walton League, 1982), pp. 147-176.

47. On Western Europe, see Environmental Resources Ltd., Acid Rain: A Review of the Phenomenon in the EEC and Europe (report prepared for Commission on the European Communities) (London: Environ- mental Resources Ltd., 1985); Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Economic Measuring of Benefits of Environ- mental Policy, in Background Papers for International Conference on Environment and Economics (Paris, France: Organisation for Eco- nomic Co-operation and Development, 1984), p. 49; and I.M. Tor- rens, Acid Rain and Air Pollution: A Problem of Industrialization (Geneva, Switzerland: World Commission on Environment and Development, 1985). With respect to West Germany, see Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Forestry, 1985 Forest Damage Survey (Bonn, West Germany: Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Forestry, 1985).

48. J. McCormick, Acid Earth: The Global Threat of Acid Pollution, pp. 155-175.

49. J. Harte, Ecological Implications of Arctic Air Pollution (Berkeley, California: Department of Energy and Resources, University of California, 1986). Prepared for the World Resources Institute.

50. See National Research Council, Changing Climate (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1983); S.H. Schneider and S.L. Thomp- son, "Future Changes in the Atmosphere," in R. Repetto, ed., The Global Possible: Resources, Development, and the New Century (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1985), pp. 397-430; S. Seidel and D. Keyes, Can We Delay a Greenhouse Warming? (Wash- ington, DC: Environmental Protection Agency, 1983); UNEP/WMO/ ICSU, An Assessment of the Role of Carbon Dioxide and of Other Greenhouse Gases in Climate Variations and Associated Impacts, Report

64 of Conference at Villach, Austria, 9-15 October, 1985 (Nairobi, Kenya: United Nations Environment Programme, 1985); and R.E. Dickinson and R.J. Cicerone, "Future Global Warming From At- mospheric Trace Gases," Nature 319 (1985), pp. 109-115. On burning of tropical forests, see G.M Woodwell, "Global Deforestation: Contribution to Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide," Science 222 (1983), pp. 1081-1086.

51. D. Abrahamson and P. Ciborowski, "Harvest of Sand," Amicus Journal (Spring, 1984), p. 41; P. Ciborowski, "The Greenhouse Problem: Physical Dimensions and Possible Impacts" (unpublished paper, 1985), p. 12.

52. R. S. McNamara, "Time Bomb or Myth: The Population Prob- lem," Foreign Affairs 62 (1984), pp. 1107-1131.

53. McNamara, "Time Bomb or Myth: Population Problem"; R. Repet- to and T. Holmes, "The Role of Population in Resource Depletion in Developing Countries," Population and Development Review 9 (1983), pp. 609-632.

54. Statement presented to the U.N. Secretary-General on October 24, 1985, by parliamentary heads of state representing more than half the world's population (New York: United Nations, 1985).

55. The Futures Group, Nigeria: The Effects of Population Factors on Social and Economic Development (Washington, DC: The Futures Group, 1985); United States Department of Agriculture, World Indices of Agricultural and Food Production 1950-84 (Washington, DC: Eco- nomic Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture, 1985).

56. United Nations, Population Division, Urban, Rural and City Popula- tion: Estimates and Projections of 1950-2025: The 1982 Assessment (New York: United Nations, 1985).

57. N. Myers, "Tree Crop-Based Agroecosystems in Java," Forest Ecology and Management (1986) (in press).

58. See R.L. Bach, Western Hemispheric Immigration to the United States (Washington, DC: Center for Immigration Policy and Refugee Assistance, Georgetown University, 1985); L.F. Bouvier, and C.B. Davis, Immigration and the Future Racial Composition of the United States (Alexandria, Virginia: Center for Immigration Research and Education, 1982); M.M. Kritz, ed., U.S. Immigration and Refugee Policy: Global and Domestic Issues (New York: Lexington Books, 1983); D.F. Swartz, and S. Sassen-Koob, Migration and Foreign Policy (New York: Study Group on Latin American Immigration and U.S. Foreign Policy, Council on Foreign Relations, 1983); M.S.

65 Teitelbaum, Latin Migration North (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1985). For a caution about over-estimation of numbers of illegal immigrants, see D.B. Levine, et al., eds., Immigration Statistics: A Story of Neglect (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1985).

59. M.S. Teitelbaum, "Right Versus Right: Immigration and Refugee Policy in the United States," Foreign Affairs 59 (1980), pp. 21-59.

60. L. Gomez, "Feet People," in R.S. Leiken, ed., Central America: Anatomy of Conflict (New York and Oxford, U.K.: Pergamon Press, 1984), pp. 219-229; C.B. Keely, "International Migration and Development," paper presented at United Nations Fund for Popu- lation Activities Conference on Population, Development and Peace, London 15-17 May, 1985 (New York: The Population Coun- cil, 1985); J.E. Nahan, personal communication from Director of Office of Plans and Analysis, Immigration and Naturalization Ser- vice, Washington, DC, 1985; M.S. Teitelbaum, Immigration, Refugees and American Business (Washington, DC: National Chamber Foundation, 1984); M.S. Teitelbaum, "Immigration Refugees and Foreign Policy," International Organization 38(3) (Summer, 1984), pp. 429-450.

61. J. Saunders, ed., Population Growth in Latin America and U.S. Na- tional Security (Boston, Massachusetts: Allen and Unwin, 1986).

62. See, for example, A.L. Hollick, "The U.S. Stake in Global Issues," and R.H. Ullman, "Redefining Security," International Security 8 (1983), pp. 129-153.

63. T.J. Farer, War Clouds on the Horn of Africa (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1979); J. Shepherd, The Politics of Starvation (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1975).

64. R. Luckham and D. Bekele, "Foreign Powers and Militarism in the Horn of Africa," Review of African Political Economy 30 (1984), pp. 8-20, and 31 (1984), pp. 7-28.

65. J.K. Cooley, "The War Over Water," Foreign Policy 54 (1984), pp. 3-26; R.C. Matson and J. Naff, Water in the Middle East: Conflict and Cooperation (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1984); R.L. Thompson, "Water as a Source of Conflict," Strategic Review 6 (1978), pp. 62-71.

66. M.G. Weinbaum, Food, Development, and Politics in the Middle East (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1981).

66 67. M. Falkenmark, "New Ecological Approach to the Water Cycle: Ticket to the Future.'

68. J.C. Cool, Factors Affecting Pressure on Mountain Resource Systems (Kathmandu, Nepal: Agriculture Development Council, 1984).

69. M. Falkenmark, "New Ecological Approach to the Water Cycle: Ticket to the Future."

70. Cited by J. Starr, Egypt is African and Its Principal Problem is Water (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, George Washington University, 1985).

71. See N. Choucri, ed., Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Population and Conflict (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1984).

72. R. S. McNamara, "Time Bomb or Myth: The Population Prob- lem," p. 1123.

73. United Nations, Population Division, World Population Prospects: Estimates and Projections as Assessed in 1984 (New York: United Na- tions, 1986).

74. The World Bank, World Development Report 1986 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 228.

75. General Maxwell Taylor, letter of April 30th, 1980, cited by Ambas- sador Marshall Green, Population Crisis Committee, Washington, DC, 1980.

76. E. Laslo and J. Youlyoo, eds., World Encyclopedia of Peace (Elmsford, New York: Pergamon Press, 1986).

77. Report of the President's National Bipartisan Commission on Central America (The Kissinger Commission) January 1984, (Washington, DC).

78. W.J. Taylor, Jr., "U.S. Security and Latin America: Arms Transfers and Military Doctrine," in J. Saunders, ed., Population Growth in Latin America and U.S. National Security (London: Allen and Unwin: in press, 1986).

79. M. Blasco, "La Tierra en el Desarrollo Rural da la Zona Andina," Desarrollo Rural en as Americas 11 (1979), pp. 155-165; CEPAL, El Medio Ambreite en America Latina (New York: United Nations Economic and Social Council, 1976); J.L. Posner and M.F. McPher- son, The Steep-Sloped Areas of Tropical America: Current Situation and Prospects for the Year 2000 (New York: Agricultural Sciences Divi-

67 sion, Rockefeller Foundation, 1981). See also, Inter American Development Bank, Natural Resources in Latin America (Washington, DC: Inter American Development Bank, 1983).

80. J.L. Posner and M.F. McPherson, "Agriculture on the Steep Slopes of Tropical America: The Current Situation and Prospects," World Development (May 1982), pp. 341-354.

81. World Resources Institute and International Institute for Environ- ment and Development, World Resources Report 1986, p. 53.

82. P. Blaikie, The Political Economy of Soil Erosion in Developing Coun- tries (New York and London: Longman Publishers, 1985), pp. 31-32.

83. R. Hough, et al., Land and Labor in Guatemala: An Assessment (Washington, DC: U.S. Agency for International Development, 1982).

84. B.R. DeWalt, "The Agrarian Bases of Conflict in Central America," in: K. Coleman and G. Herring, eds., The Central American Crisis: Sources of Conflict and the Failure of U.S. Policy (Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1985), pp. 43-54; M.J. Esman, Landlessness and New Landlessness in Developing Coun- tries (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University, 1979); Food and Agri- culture Organization, Proceedings of World Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization, 1980); J. Saunders, ed., Population Growth in Latin America and U.S. National Security (London, U.K.: Allen and Unwin (in press, 1986); and R. Sinha, "Landlessness: A Growing Prob- lem," Food and Agriculture Organization Economic and Social Develop- ment Series No. 28 (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization, 1984).

85. H.J. Leonard, Natural Resources and Economic Development in Central America: A Regional Environmental Profile (New Brunswick, New Jersey: TransAction Press, 1986).

86. The Futures Group, Central America: The Effects of Population on Economic and Social Development (Washington, DC: The Futures Group, 1983).

87. R.S. McNamara, "Time Bomb or Myth: The Population Problem," p. 1123.

88. L.A. Alvarado, Sedimentation in the Madden Reservoir of the Panama Canal Watershed (Balboa, Panama: Panama Canal Commission, 1985); F.H. Robinson, A Report on the Panama Canal Rain Forests (Balboa, Panama: Panama Canal Commission, 1985).

68 89. L.A. Lewis and W.J. Coffey, "The Continuing Deforestation of Haiti," Ambio 14 (1985), pp. 158-160; R. Maguire, Bottom-Up Development in Haiti (Washington, DC: Inter-American Foundation, 1979); A. Stepick, "Haitian Boat People: A Study in the Conflict- ing Forces Shaping U.S. Immigration Policy," Law and Contem- porary Problems 45 (1982), pp. 163-196. See also, A. Waldman and C. Foster, eds., Haiti: Today and Tomorrow (Lanham: University of America Press, 1984); and M.S. Laguerre, Haitian Odyssey: Haitians in New York City (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1984).

90. L.A. Lewis and W.J. Coffey, "The Continuing Deforestation of Haiti."

91. M.J. Dourojeanni, Renewable Natural Resources of Latin America and the Caribbean: Situation and Trends (Washington, DC: World Wildlife Fund-US, 1980).

92. A. Stepick, Testimony to Hearings before the Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees, and International Law, Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, 97th Congress, 1st Session on Immigration Reform, Serial No. 30, Part I., pp. 698-753, Commit- tee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Washington, DC, 1981.

93. H. J. Leonard, ed., Divesting Nature's Capital: The Political Economy of Environmental Abuse in the Third World.

94. A. Stepick, "Haitian Boat People: A Study in the Conflicting Forces Shaping U.S. Immigration Policy." See also D. F. Swartz and S. Sassen-Koob, Migration and Foreign Policy.

95. Comptroller General of the United States, Central American Refugees: Regional Conditions and Prospects and Potential Impact on the United States (Gaithersburg, Maryland: General Accounting Office, 1984).

96. R. L. Bach, Western Hemispheric Immigration to the United States; R. Pastor, ed., Migration and Development in the Caribbean: The Unex- plored Connection (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1985); B. C. Richardson, Caribbean Migrants: Environment and Human Survival on St. Kitts and Nevis (Knoxville, Tennessee: University of Tennessee, 1983); M. S. Teitelbaum, Latin Migration North; and E. Thompson- Hope, Environment and Perception in Caribbean Migration (Warwick, U.K.: Monograph Centre of Caribbean Studies, University of War- wick, 1986).

97. R. L. Bach, Western Hemispheric Immigration to the United States; V. M. Briggs, Immigration Policy and American Labor Force (Baltimore,

69 Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984); E. M. Chaney, Migration from the Caribbean Region: Determinants and Effects of Cur- rent Movements (Washington, DC: Center for Immigration Policy and Refugee Assistance, Georgetown University, 1985); and R. Pastor, ed., Migration and Development in the Caribbean: The Unex- plored Connection.

98. See K. Coleman and G. Herring, eds., The Central American Crisis: Sources of Conflict and the Failure of U.S. Policy (Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1985); J. I. Dominguez, "The United States and Its Regional Security Interests: The Caribbean, Central and South America," Daedalus 109 (1980), pp. 115-133; R.R. Fagen and O. Pellicer, eds., The Future of Central America: Policy Choices for the U.S. and Mexico (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1983); W. LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (New York: W.W. Norton, 1984); R.S. Leiken, eds., Central America: Anatomy of Conflict (New York: Pergamon Press, 1984); L.A. Motley, "A National Response to the Crisis in Central America," Department of State Bulletin 84 (1984), p. 77; H.J. Wiarda, ed., Rift and Revolution: The Central American Im- broglio (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1984). See also A. Maguire and J.W. Brown, eds., Bordering on Trouble Resources and Politics in Latin America (New York: Adler & Adler, 1986). See also H.J. Wiarda, ed., The Crisis in Latin America: Stra- tegic, Economic and Political Dimensions (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1984).

99. H.J. Leonard, Natural Resources and Economic Development in Central America: A Regional Environmental Profile.

100. N. Myers, "The Hamburger Connection."

101. Posner and McPherson, "Agriculture on the Steep Slopes of Tropical America: The Current Situation and Prospects."

102. R. Hough, et al., Land and Labor in Guatemala: An Assessment.

103. J.L. Posner and M.F. McPherson, "Agriculture on the Steep Slopes of Tropical America: The Current Situation and Prospects."

104. See M. Diskin, ed., Trouble in Our Backyard (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983); W.H. Durham, Scarcity and Survival in Central America: Ecological Origins of the Soccer War (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1979); L. Simon, et al., El Salvador, Land Report 1980-81: Impact Audit (Boston, Massachusetts: Oxfam America, 1981).

70 105. D. Paarlberg, et al., Agrarian Reform in El Salvador, report presented to the U.S. Agency for International Development (Wash- ington, DC: Checchi and Co., 1981, p. 96); S.L. Wiggins, "The Economics of Soil Conservation in the Acelhuate River Basin, El Salvador," in R.P.C. Morgan, ed., Soil Conservation: Problems and Prospects (New York and London: John Wiley, 1981), pp. 399-417.

106. A. Berryman, Central American Refugees: A Survey of the Current Situation (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: American Friends Service Committee, 1983).

107. L. Gomez, "Feet People"; L.S. Peterson, Central American Refugee Flows, 1978-83 (Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1984).

108. Berryman, 1983, Central American Refugees: A Survey of the Current Situation; L.S. Peterson, Central American Refugee Flows, 1978-83; Comptroller-General of the United States, Central American Refugees: Regional Conditions and Prospects and Potential Impact on the United States.

109. For some recent overview studies of Mexico, see J.G. Castenada, "Mexico at the Brink," Foreign Affairs 64 (1985), pp. 287-303; W.A. Cornelius, Immigration, Mexican Development Policy, and the Future of U.S.-Mexican Relations (San Diego, California: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California, 1981); W.A. Cor- nelius, Building the Cactus Curtain: Mexican Immigration and U.S. Responses (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1986, in press); M.H. de la Madrid, "Mexico: The New Chal- lenges," Foreign Affairs (Fall 1984), pp. 62-76; G.F. Erb and C. Thorup, U.S.-Mexican Relations: The Issues Ahead (Washington, DC: Overseas Development Council, 1984).

110. G.F. Erb and C. Thorup, U.S.-Mexican Relations: The Issues Ahead.

111. V.M. Briggs, Immigration Policy and American Labor Force; W.A. Cornelius, Mexican Immigrants and Southern California: A Summary of Current Knowledge (San Diego, California: Research Report Series 36, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of Califor- nia, 1982); W.A. Cornelius, Building the Cactus Curtain: Mexican Immigration and U.S. Responses; P.H. Smith, Mexico: The Quest for a U.S. Policy (New York: The Foreign Policy Association, 1980), p. 25.

112. R. Sinha, "Landlessness: A Growing Problem."

113. M.L. Carlos, "State Policies, State Penetration, and Ecology: A Comparative Analysis of Uneven Development and Underdevel-

71 opment in Mexico's Micro-Agrarian Regions," Working Papers in U.S.-Mexican Studies 19, Program in United States-Mexican Studies (La Jolla, California: University of California at San Diego, 1981); W.A. Cornelius, Immigration, Mexican Development Policy, and the Future of U.S.-Mexican Relations; W.A. Cornelius, Building the Cactus Curtain: Mexican Immigration and U.S. Responses; H.E. Cross and J.A. Sandos, Across the Border: Rural Development in Mexico and Recent Migration to the United States (Berkeley, California: Institute of Governmental Studies, 1981); M.S. Grin- die, "Official Interpretations of Rural Underdevelopment: Mexico in the 1970s," Working Paper in U.S.-Mexican Studies 20, Program in United States-Mexican Studies (La Jolla, California: University of California at San Diego, 1981); I. Restrepo, "Mexico's En- vironmental Crisis," Earthwatch (publication for International Planned Parenthood Federation) 18 (1984), pp. 1-7; A. Schumacher, "Agricultural Development and Rural Employment: A Mexican Dilemma," Working Papers in U.S.-Mexican Studies 21, Program in United States-Mexican Studies (La Jolla, California: University of California at San Diego, 1981).

114. Posner and McPherson, "Agriculture on the Steep Slopes of Tropical America."

115. S. Whiteford and L. Montgomery, "The Political Economy of Rural Transformation: A Mexican Case," in B.R. DeWalt and PJ. Pelto, eds., Micro and Macro Levels of Analysis in Anthropology: Issues in Theory and Research (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1984), pp. 146-164.

116. R.L. Bach and A. Portes, Latin Journey: Cuban and Mexican Im- migrants in the United States (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1985); W.A. Cornelius, Immigration, Mexican Development Policy, and the Future of U.S.-Mexican Relations; W.A. Cornelius, "Mexican Immigrants and Southern California: A Summary of Current Knowledge."

117. World Commission on Environment and Development, Mandate for Change, Key Issues, Strategy and Workplan (Geneva, Switzerland: World Commission on Environment and Development, 1984). Im- plications for U.S. policy are discussed also in A.L. Hollick, The U.S. Stake in Global Issues.

118. For a discussion of the dimension of time and policy, see J.G. Ruggie, The State of the World and the State of the Nation: Some Population and Resource Connections.

119. D. Abrahamson, Responses to Greenhouse-Gas Induced Climate Change, Statement Before the Senate Subcommittee on Toxic Substances and Environmental Oversight (Minneapolis, Min-

72 nesota: Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota, 1985); and J. Goldemberg, et al., "An End-Use Oriented Global Energy Strategy," Annual Reviews of Energy 10 (1985), pp. 613-688.

120. I.M. Mintzer, A Matter of Degrees: The Potential for Controlling the Greenhouse Effect (Washington, D.C.: World Resources Institute, 1987), pp. 55-56.

121. McNamara, "Time Bomb or Myth: The Population Problem," pp. 1113, 1131.

122. J.G. Speth, Environment, Economy, Security: The Emerging Agenda. See also, R. Repetto, ed., The Global Possible: Resources, Develop- ment, and the New Century; and R. Repetto, World Enough and Time (New Haven, Connecticut and London: Yale University Press, 1986).

73 World Resources Institute

1735 New York Avenue, N.W. The World Resources Institute (WRI) is a policy Washington, D.C. 20006 U.S.A. research center created in late 1982 to help governments, international organizations, the private WRI's Board of Directors: sector, and others address a fundamental question: Matthew Nimetz How can societies meet basic human needs and nurture Chairman economic growth without undermining the natural JohnE. Cantlon resources and environmental integrity on which life, Vice Chairman economic vitality, and international security depend? John H. Adams Robert O.Blake The Institute's current program areas include tropical JohnE. Bryson forests, biological diversity, sustainable agriculture, Richard M. Clarke global energy futures, climate change, pollution and Marc J. Dourojeanni health, economic incentives for sustainable Alice F. Emerson development, and resource and environmental John Firor information. Within these broad areas, two dominant Curtis A. Hessler concerns influence WRI's choice of projects and other Martin Holdgate activities: James A. Joseph Ian K. MacGregor The destructive effects of poor resource Alan R. McFarland management on economic development and the Robert S. McNamara alleviation of poverty in developing countries; and Paulo Nogueira-Neto Ruth Patrick The new generation of globally important James Gustave Speth environmental and resource problems that threaten M.S. Swaminathan the economic and environmental interests of the Mostafa K. Tolba United States and other industrial countries and Russell E. Train that have not been addressed with authority in Arthur C. Upton their laws. George M. Woodwell Independent and nonpartisan, the World Resources James Gustave Speth Institute approaches the development and analysis of President resource policy options objectively, with a strong Jessica T. Mathews grounding in the sciences. Its research is aimed at Vice President and Research providing accurate information about global resources Director and population, identifying emerging issues and Mohamed T. El-Ashry developing politically and economically workable Vice President for Policy Affairs proposals. WRI's work is carried out by an Wallace Bowman interdisciplinary staff of scientists and policy experts Secretary-Treasurer augmented by a network of formal advisors, collaborators, and affiliated institutions in 30 countries.

WRI is funded by private foundations, United Nations and governmental agencies, corporations, and concerned individuals. \\ O K I I) K I () I." K ( I s I \ S I I I i: 1 I I ' '••> \c\v Yolk wniii1. \\\ \\.i-.hiM;;lnM. IX