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

NOT FAR AFIELD: U.S. Interests and the Global Environment \orni.isi Mwr- VV () RLI) R L S () U RCHS IN S T ! T U T V. Kathleen Courrier Publications Director Myrene O'Connor Marketing Manager Hyacinth Billings Production Supervisor National Park Service and U.S. AID Cover Photo Each World Resources Institute Report represents a timely, scientific treatment of a subject of public concern. WRI takes responsibility for choosing the study topics and guaranteeing its authors and researchers freedom of inquiry. It also solicits and responds to the guidance of advisory panels and expert reviewers. Unless otherwise stated, however, all the interpretation and findings set forth in WRI publications are those of the authors. 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 n 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 infor- mation; 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 pro- found 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 individ- ual 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 ef- fect 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.

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