The Ecologist Vol 21 No 6 November/December 1991 J £3 (US $6)
• Quotas and the Great Car Economy
•FAO: Sustaining the Hunger Machine
• The Case Against Climate Aid
Environment's Dangerous Liaison
ISSN D2bl-3131 1 1 The Religion and Politics of Earth First!
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Vol 21 No 2: including An Open Letter to Edouard Saouma, Director-General of FAO. The Ecologist The Ecologist Vol 21 No 1: including Larry Khalil Sesmou, FAO: An Insider's View; Lohmann, Who defends Vandana Shiva, The Failure of the Green Biological Diversity? Risto Revolution: A Case Study of the Punjab; Isomaki, Paper, Pollution Barbara Dinham, FAO and Pesticides: and Global Warming; Tim Promotion or Proscription? George Deere-Jones, Back to the Marshall, FAO and Forestry; Douglas Cross, Land: The Sea-to-Land FAO and Aquaculture: Ponds and Politics Transfer of Radioactive in Africa; Patrick McCully, FAO and Pollution; Richard A. Forest, Fisheries Development; E. Goldsmith and N. Japanese Aid and the Hildyard, World Agriculture: Toward 2000, Environment. FAO's Plan to feed the World; Miguel A. Promoting World Hunger Altieri, Traditional Farming in Latin America. o Best »f»?BR Vol 20 No 3: Including Jim Jeffery, Vol 20 No 2: including R.D. 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Editors The EDWARD GOLDSMITH NICHOLAS HILDYARD Ecologist Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 PETER BUNYARD PATRICK McCULLY Editorial Associate Editors PATRICIA ADAMS Quotas Against the Great Car Economy 234 Probe International (Canada) Simon Fairlie MARCUS COLCHESTER World Rainforest Movement (England) FAO 'Sets the Record Straight' 236 RAYMOND D ASM ANN University of California, Nicholas Hildyard Replies for The Ecologist 237 Santa Cruz (USA) SAMUEL S. EPSTEIN University of Illinois (USA) Feature Articles ROSS HUME HALL (USA) Sustaining the Hunger Machine: A Critique of FAO's SARD Strategy 239 SANDY IRVINE Nicholas Hildyard The Green Party (England) The UN Food and Agriculture Organization has recently announced an Agenda MICK KELLY for Action for Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development (SARD). Taken University of East Anglia (England) at face value, SARD represents a significant victory for many of FAO's critics. MARTIN KHOR KOK PENG A close look behind the rhetoric of the new strategy, however, shows that FAO Consumers Association of is using the language of sustainability to promote many of the same discredited Penang (Malaysia) policies as before. SMITHU KOTHARI Lokayan Social Action Group (India) The Case Against Climate Aid 244 SIGMUND KVAL0Y Ecopolitical Ring of Cooperation Patrick McCully (Norway) A huge increase in international aid is seen by many as an essential element of LARRY LOHMANN (USA) any effort to deal with global warming. However, the history of aid and JOHN MILTON technology transfer is one of discredited economic theories, corruption and (USA) failure. There is no reason why climate aid should be any different. Emphasis JIMOH OMO-FADAKA ing the cost of dealing with global warming obscures the fact that the solutions African Environmental Network (Kenya) are political not financial. JOHNPAPWORTH Fourth World Review (England) Environment and Development: The Story of a Dangerous Liaison 252 ROBERT PRESCOTT-ALLEN Wolfgang Sachs PADATA (Canada) Governments and institutions have managed to overcome the critics of the JOHN SEED ecological and social costs of their activities by interpreting the problems as Rainforest Information Centre being due to poverty and inefficiency. These, in turn, are seen as a result of the (Australia) insufficient application of development policies. Development is thus trans VANDANASHIVA Research Centre for Science formed from destroyer to redeemer. and Ecology (India) HENRYK SKOLIMOWSKI University of Michigan The Religion and Politics of Earth First! 258 (USA) Bron Taylor ROBERT WALLER Commonwealth Human Ecology Centre Underpinning the ethics and actions of the radical US environmental group (England) Earth First! are fundamentally religious sentiments. The recent schism in the RICHARD WILLSON movement has less to do with disagreements about biocentric beliefs and more (England) with judgements about strategy and tactics. DONALD WORSTER University of Kansas (USA) Books 267 EDITORIAL OFFICE AGRICULTURE HOUSE, BATH ROAD, Letters 271 STURMINSTER NEWTON, DORSET, DT10 1DU, UK. Cover photo: Dave Foreman at Idaho Earth First! gathering in 1986 (David Cross/ TEL +44-258-73476 FAX +44-258-73748 Impact Visuals). The Ecologist is printed on recycled paper whitened with hydrogen E-MAIL GN:ECOLOGIST peroxide. The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 233 Quotas Against the Great Car Economy "We are not going to do away with the great car economy" carbon in the atmosphere: the reduction required from the car Margaret Thatcher, 1990. economies of the industrialized world will be far greater. Let us then imagine a rigorous level of taxation: one geared Mrs Thatcher's words are memorable, and will doubtless find to reducing drastically Britain's emissions of C02 and other pol their way into future dictionaries of quotations. Whether or not we lutants; and to reflecting properly the costs that the car economy agree with her sentiments, there is no denying that her pithy imposes upon society. For the sake of argument, let us assume characterization of modern society is apt. We could not talk with measures that would reduce car traffic in Britain by 60 per cent, such conviction of the "great fridge economy", the "great television putting us back to the dark days of 1965. And suppose also that economy", nor even of the"great Coca Cola economy". If any one the revenue from this taxation was reinjected into the economy commodity is central to our way of life, it is the motor car. via measures such as public transport subsidies and VAT Since Mrs Thatcher's demise, the Conservative party has reduction. What might we expect? been publicly less gung-ho about "the great car economy". But Clearly, increases in petrol prices would hit rich and poor alike it continues to stand by the Department of Transport's forecast with the same impartial force; the financially strong might wince that road traffic will increase in Britain by between 83 and 142 per a little, the weak would be out for the count. A proportion of cent by the year 2025; and it retains its touching faith in the ability middle-income motorists, helped by tax breaks elsewhere in the of technology and market forces to lessen the ecological impact economy, would opt to keep their cars. But the poorest would of road transport, with only a minimum of fiscal prodding. have to sell theirs; leaving the well off to cruise around on an According to the Department of Trade and Industry, road overbuilt road system. Car density would be the same as in the transport accounts for 18 per cent of Britain's C02 emissions. mid-sixties; but improved car performance and a half-empty Moreover, cars and lorries need to be built, maintained and road system would accentuate the gulf between the haves and provided with tarmac; a significant proportion of emissions from the have-nots. manufacturing industries, oil refineries and electricity production should therefore also be attributed to the motor industry. The car also imposes many other costs upon society, in the A Two-Tier Society form of chemical pollution, roadbuilding, accidents, policing and so on. So pervasive has been its influence that there is hardly a It might be argued that the vast amount of money gathered from sector of society that has not been burdened with problems and petrol taxation could pay for a public transport network so perfect rising costs. Whatever our special concern — be it the preser that nobody would object to being without a car. But this is to vation of old buildings or the protection of natural habitats, the indulge a misapprehension that has consistently dogged much safety of children or the control of rioting joyriders, the mobility of the discussion of this issue: namely, that private cars are of the blind or the prevention of obesity — close to the heart of simply another form of personal transport. the problem we are likely to find the motor car. Consider the benefits of owning a car — I list them at length John Whitelegg of Lancaster University estimates that motor because environmentalists and social engineers tend to forget ists pay only 27 per cent of the more obvious costs they inflict them: you do not have to change at stations; you can stop when upon the nation, and that they are subsidized to the tune of more you like; if you forget something you can go back and get it; you than £20 billion annually, (about £1000 per car). To represent can put a fishtank in the boot, a wardrobe on the roof-rack, and their true cost, he calculates there would have to be a fivefold tow a pleasure boat behind; you can lock your belongings up and increase in fuel tax, plus additional taxation upon roads, car leave them safely; you can lock yourself in and other people out; parks and related developments. you can snooze, fart, sing or swear in privacy; you can make love on the back seat; you can live in it; you can smoke, or play your favourite tape; you can make as much, or as little mess as you Cruising on Overbuilt Roads like; you can decorate it with bumper stickers and go-faster stripes; you can personalize your number-plate; you can wash it Of the British political parties, only the Liberal Democrats and the every weekend, and respray it every year, spend hours tinkering Greens advocate significant additional petrol taxation, and of with the engine, tuning it to perfection; you can pounce from 0 to these only the Liberal Democrats have volunteered any figures. 60 in 6 seconds; you can exult in the mastery of power, as your They envisage an annual increase of 4.3 per cent per year in fuel machine ploughs remorselessly through the night. prices, so that in 2005 the real price of petrol would be 87 per cent In short, a car is a mobile locker and private palace, a servant more than it is today. This would be part of their target of a 30 per and a lover, an alter-ego and a way of life. No public transport cent reduction in the UK's carbon emissions by 2005. The pro system, however lavishly subsidized, however extravagant its ceeds of the tax would be ploughed back into the economy through Club Class facilities, can provide anything remotely like it. "environmental subsidies, higher social security payments, in Any realistically stringent level of petrol tax will, in the name vestment in public transport infrastructure, reduction in other of the environment, restrict to an elite, and deny to a majority, a taxes such as VAT and so on." way of life that we have grown up to believe is everybody's Promising though these proposals may be, there is little doubt birthright. It will create a two-tier society by crushing the dreams that they fall short of the measures ultimately needed to reduce and the identity of the less privileged, engendering jealousy, atmospheric carbon. A reduction of more than 60 per cent in envy, resentment. .. and a massive increase in car theft. This global emissions is necessary to stabilize the concentration of is emphatically not the way to protect our planet. 234 The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 Transferable Petrol Quotas would increase demand and push the price up. The value of quotas would thus be a partial indicator of the state of public transport: and the threat of inflation would be an incentive for any The motor industry is a threat to our existence because we are government to ensure a decent public service. running out of atmosphere to absorb C0 and other pollutants; 2 We may also envisage the revival of an infrastructure of and less urgently, running out of raw materials for cars, and services that would accommodate the non-car owner. Shops, space for roads. schools, hospitals and places of work would once again be sited The traditional response, when an industry runs out of re close to residential communities; and regular deliveries of basic sources, is not to tax these resources, but to issue quotas. When commodities such as groceries, bread and meat would be herring stocks run low, we do not tax herring: we give out herring revived. For this reason it would not be necessary to allocate quotas. When the market for dairy products declines, we do not additional quotas to those who lived in isolated rural areas. The tax milk production: farmers are given milk quotas. motor car, by opening up the countryside to second home Since very few of us wish to fish for herring or raise dairy owners and urban commuters, and by centralizing services in cattle, the dispensing of such quotas has been a relatively small- large country towns, has contributed more than any other factor scale, straightforward affair. On the other hand, the majority of us to the breakdown of village life. want or need to use cars, and all of us breathe. If we were to issue Finally, there is one other advantage to a quota system. With quotas of "atmosphere", which would mean the right to pollute it, a petrol tax, no government can reliably predict how the public or in this context petrol, these quotas would have to be allocated will react, how much petrol will in fact be consumed. Rather than equally to every citizen, or alternatively to everyone old enough driving less, motorists might choose to cut down on other less to hold a driving license. environmentally damaging forms of conspicuous consumption. Suppose that the British government decided that it could With a quota the government does not need to predict the safely and sustainably allow nine billion litres (two billion gallons) amount — it stipulates it. of petrol to be combusted by private vehicles throughout one The above is not presented as a confident blueprint for the year—about one-third of today's level. That would be about 200 future; it is merely the sketchiest of models, designed to provoke litres (44 gallons) for each adult, who would receive her or his planners to think in other directions. There are inevitably prob quota for that amount of petrol for the year. This could be issued lems that cannot be tackled here: to what extent, and how, as coupons to be handed in at the petrol station; but it would more should one distinguish between commercial and private use? likely be in the form of a plastic computerized Quota Card (or How to prevent fraud without infringing upon civil liberties? KwotaKard?), obtainable from the central Vehicle Licensing Yet it is not that hard to organize a quota system to keep Centre. This would be inserted, like a phonecard, into a slot in the consumption beneath an externally imposed limit. It was done in petrol pump. Britain during and immediately after World War II; and we did not To anyone over the age of 40, the word coupon will recall even have computers. "rationing". Yet there is one difference: a petrol quota, like herring and milk quotas, is legally transferable. You can sell it — all of it, or part of it—or if you prefer you can buy someone else's. A Short Term Repairing Lease It is a commodity obeying all those laws of supply and demand, so beloved by free market economists. There should be no A quota system is intriguing because it tips its cap to the current objection to this. It is quite appropriate that citizens who refrain enthusiasm for market forces, and yet its net effect is to transfer from polluting their share of the environment should benefit from money from the rich, directly into the hands of the underprivileged. their modest lifestyle. We cannot give everybody a car, but we We have come to expect market systems to be more efficient; we can give everyone a stake in an automobile society. do not often expect them to be more just. It should, in theory, Within such a scheme we could identify three different kinds appeal to conservative and socialist alike. of consumer. At one end of the scale, motorists who insisted on The explanation for this benign paradox lies in the fact that driving their own car whenever they liked would have to pay very there can be no accumulation of capital. Whereas conventional dearly for the privilege, by acquiring other people's quotas, as free market economies have consistently led to the monopoli well as paying the market price for petrol. They would be buying zation of common resources — land, buildings, mineral rights etc the right to indulge in all the perks that go with full ownership: — in our quota system this is impossible. The commodity being personal locker space, freight potential, privacy, ego-boost, etc. traded is not a resource (atmosphere), but a short term lease In the middle would lie those drivers who consumed more or upon that resource. Non-drivers rent out their allocation of less than their quota of petrol. They would be paying only the atmosphere for others to pollute to an accepted level; at the end market price of the petrol, up to the point that they decided to buy of the year they get it back — it is inalienable. a few extra litres of "quota". If the number of miles they covered It is illuminating to extend the principle of leasing into other did not justify the expense of owning a vehicle, they might enter areas. Already the British Green Party, with its Community into a car sharing scheme; or they might hire a vehicle, once a Ground Rent scheme, is working towards a system where land week for the shopping, twice a year for family holidays. is not owned, but can only be rented from the common pool. At the other end of the scale we would find those who chose Such projections are not within the scope of this article. But we not to drive at all, particularly the elderly, poorer people and would do well to remember that the Earth and its four elements those living in inner cities. They would be rewarded for their — atmosphere, energy, oceans, land — belong to all of us, to our forbearance with a fat dividend for the sale of their quota. children, to no one. They are our "Common Inheritance". Margaret The price of the quotas would fluctuate according to supply Thatcher once remarked that "we have a short term repairing and demand, in the same way as any other commodity. We may lease upon the Earth". We should devise solutions that properly imagine a flourishing new sector of the business economy, reflect this self-evident truth. bristling with flashy brokers and dealers, busy buying up quotas ^ Simon Fairlie in anticipation of a summer rush, trying to unload surplus stock in December, checking the Futures Index in the Financial Times. Simon Fairlie Is a freelance writer and stonemason. A major influence on the price would be the state of public transport. A cheap well-run public network would tend to lower demand for quotas, and reduce their price. An inefficient system The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 235 FAO "Sets the Record Straight" The following text is the summary of a 20-page document received from FAO in September. It is a revised version of a reply dated 12 April, entitled "The Disinformation Campaign of The Ecologist". In Its March/April 1991 issue, The Ecologist launched a developing human resources and institutions, and achieving campaign against the UN Food and Agriculture Organization sustainable development that protects rather than plunders (FAO). A 3,000-word editorial in the form of an Open Letter the environment. to FAO's Director-General and some of the accompanying This paper is intended to set the record straight by summa articles on the Organization distort FAO's roles, policies and rizing and then outlining in some detail FAO's actions as programmes. opposed to some of the glaring false accusations by The Journals like The Ecologist can play a useful role by Ecologist. criticizing the work of publicly funded bodies such as FAO and taking issue with the general international consensus on "The Corporate Stranglehold" — There is no instance in how agricultural development should be tackled. In a complex which "agrochemical corporations" and "farm machinery field like this no one has all the answers. Informed and manufacturers" have succeeded in "pushing FAO" into poli constructive suggestions on how to improve FAO's per cies favouring them. Rather than allowing these "powerful formance are always welcome. However, The Ecologist's lobbies" to influence FAO policy, as The Ecologist asserts, special issue attacking FAO, tall on fantasy and short on the Director-General with the agreement of the Member facts, goes well beyond the limits of responsible journalism. States discontinued FAO's Industry Cooperative Programme To hold FAO responsible for all the problems facing world in order to ensure this did not happen. agriculture, fisheries and forestry, for rural poverty, hunger and environmental degradation, is like blaming a doctor for Fertilizers — FAO promotes integrated plant nutrition sys illness, a pacifist for war and an ecologist for environmental tems that are ecologically, economically and socially viable. degradation. Where mineral fertilizers are essential to maintain soil fertil ity, they are part of a system that also makes efficient use of FAO assists its member nations, particularly those from all organic sources of plant nutrients that are available the Third World, in their agricultural and rural development, locally. but it is not a Global Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry with the power to set policies and programmes. The Pesticides — FAO favours the use of integrated pest man Ecologist asserts repeatedly that the Director-General of agement, which utilizes all suitable means of control in a FAO "imposes" policies.This is incorrect. FAO's policies and compatible manner. For instance, the rice programme in programmes are decided by its members, all of which are Southeast Asia, involving more than 500,000 farmers, greatly sovereign states. FAO's role is to act as a catalyst by reduces the need for pesticides by using natural biological providing advice and guidelines on policy, to serve as a control. It was FAO that established the now widely accepted neutral forum for global accords and to offer the technical International Code of Conduct on the Distribution and Use of assistance that member countries need to implement their Pesticides. food, agricultural and rural development policies. FAO is not a donor agency. What monetary assistance it Mechanization — FAO supports mechanization only where does give is only a minute portion of the total flowing to it is appropriate to physical and social conditions. At the same developing countries. All multilateral assistance, including time, it promotes local production of hand tools and animal what the World Bank provides, amounts to 6 to 8 per cent of draught equipment and helps train blacksmiths and farmers official development assistance, the bulk of which is bilateral, to use and maintain them. government-to-government. And this, in turn, is far less than Crops — FAO does not encourage monocultures and export what developing countries themselves spend on development crops at the expense of food crops. The Organization helps programmes. Third World countries to diversify crops. No more than 15 per In personalizing its attack on the FAO Director-General, cent of its agricultural projects involve cash crops. These are The Ecologist distorts his views, holding him responsible for recommended where they would bring the farmer signifi policies and programmes that are set by member-nations cantly more income than would food and so promote household themselves. By calling on governments to withhold payments food security through self-reliance rather than self-suffi to FAO, the magazine is, in effect, asking them to punish ciency. themselves for not agreeing with The Ecologist. The food crop projects in which FAO has generated The editorial lists policies that, it states, FAO does not investment outnumber those for cash crops by a ratio of six pursue. A rudimentary knowledge of the Organization's to one. FAO is active in promoting such local food crops as policies would show that FAO most often espouses what the cassava, yams, sweet potatoes and plantains and has pio editorial says it should. FAO's long-term strategy aims to neered the technique of making "wheatless bread" from local meet four basic challenges: encouraging economic growth crops to reduce Third World dependency on imported wheat. with equity; alleviating poverty and ensuring food security; But FAO does not share The Ecologist's view that devel- 236 The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 oping countries, many of which still depend on agricultural countries to advise governments on the issues of agrarian commodities to generate foreign exchange earnings, should reform, rural development and the alleviation of poverty. stop all production for export. Food Security — Food security is the Director-General's Trade — FAO has consistently assailed artificial barriers and overriding concern. Mr Saouma proposed the introduction of unfair practices that restrict the access of Third World agricul a Plan of Action for World Food Security which was adopted tural products to trade. It provides advice to developing by FAO Governing Bodies and then broadened to bring in the countries to strengthen their trade positions. elements that The Ecologist erroneously claims are missing. The plan moves beyond promoting food production to explor The Small Farmer — FAO has not abandoned small farm ing the conditions for providing a stable supply of food "to ers. Most of the Organization's programmes are designed to ensure that all people at all times have both the physical and help smaller farmers, especially the poor and women, and economic access to the basic food they need." A World Food FAO acts as their champion in the international arena. Security Compact adopted in 1985 embodies a moral com It was the World Conference on Agrarian Reform and mitment by governments, organizations and individuals to Rural Development, convened by FAO in 1979, that adopted world food security. the historic "Peasants' Charter", endorsing the concept of The Need for Changes — FAO is constantly evolving to equity in the development process. In 1987, the Organization meet changing situations and requirements. The Ecologist mounted a year-long campaign in some 150 nations to fails to mention a comprehensive and independent two-year highlight the importance of small farmers and to lobby for review of FAO's goals and operations completed in 1989 and improved land ownership, credit, education, inputs and in reported to the FAO Conference. The review concluded that come. FAO is "sound, solid, innovative and dynamic." It added that Land Reform — FAO supports land reform and opposes "there was room for improvements in some aspects of FAO's policies that permit the concentration of land ownership in a work," and the Organization is now working to achieve these few hands while increasing the numbers of the landless poor. improvements." The Organization has sent high-level policy missions to 24 The Ecologist Replies ... It is indicative of FAO's cavalier attitude to facts that it should of the criticisms we raised might be well-founded, or even have been forced to withdraw its initial reply to The Ecolo- worthy of investigation. On the contrary, FAO's stance is gisfs 'Open Letter to Edouard Saouma' after an official from entirely defensive, reinforcing the fears of many critics that the Colombian government complained that the reply was the organization is now so inward-looking, so beset by a misleading. In an attempt to rebut the charge that the Tropical bunker mentality, that it is beyond hope of reform from within. Forestry Action Plan was responsible for furthering defores In that respect, it is alarming that FAO's immediate response tation, FAO claimed that the handing over of a huge area of to The Ecologisfs 'Open Letter' was to ban the issue from the tropical forest in Colombia to Indian communities was FAO library — thus denying its staff the possibility of judging undertaken under the auspices of TFAP. The Colombian for themselves the validity of the criticisms we raised. Given official rightly pointed out that the initiative had nothing to do that the Open Letter has now been signed by over 80 with TFAP and nothing to do with FAO. environment and development groups from around the world That FAO made such a claim (ironically in a document that such censorship does little to inspire confidence in FAO's accused its critics of "waging a disinformation campaign") professed commitment to greater NGO participation in the suggests either that it does not know the projects it is involved formulation of its policies. with or that it is prepared to doctor the record in order to portray itself in a more favourable light; or, indeed, a rich combination of the two. Like its earlier response (which it now FAO's Power and Influence claims was simply a "draft"), FAO's attempt to "set the record straight" reveals the top echelons of the organization to be FAO's first line of defence — that it is simply a servant of self-serving, utterly devoid of any honest self-criticism and national governments and not a "Global Ministry of Agricul pervasively economical with the truth. ture, Fisheries and Forestry" — is misleading in the extreme. From the moment that it received The Ecologist's special The Ecologist has nowhere blamed all the world's agricultural issue, FAO has retreated behind a wall of half-truths and and related problems on FAO; we have consistently pointed outright falsehoods in order to defend its reputation. Indeed, out that the majority of these problems can be traced to the in stark contrast to the World Bank (which, for all its faults, has model of industrial development espoused by all the major at least been candid enough to admit that many of its projects agencies and the governments which fund them. have been environmental and social failures), FAO has Whilst it is true that the implementation of policy is a matter refused to concede that its policies are in any way deficient. for national governments, it would be wrong to infer from this Nowhere in its reply is there a glimmer of recognition that any that FAO does not have a major — and often decisive — say The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 237 in drawing up such policy. That power and influence, as The poor: yet FAO resolutely ignores this criticism of its policies. Ecologist special issue pointed out, derives not from the In that respect, the emphasis it now chooses to put on IPM is funds that FAO controls, which by the standards of the doubly deceptive, since it not only implies that FAO has taken international development community are trifling, but rather up the cause of biological husbandry but also that it is from the role that FAO plays in providing technical advice and espousing a less "top down" approach to pest control. In fact, assistance. The bulk of the 320 forestry projects in which the IPM programme is highly technocratic, aimed more at FAO is currently involved, for example, are funded by bilat promoting the "efficient use" of pesticides rather than elimi eral or multilateral sources, with FAO providing "technical nating their use. As Winnin Pereira of the Maharashtra assistance". Yet it is that technical assistance that effectively Centre for Holistic Studies points out: shapes the projects. "IPM uses biological pest control but does not exclude For FAO to shift the blame for the abject failure of its the use of synthetic pesticides. It requires formal scientists policies entirely onto the shoulders of governments is simply to identify pest types and quantify their damage. It needs dishonest. The truth is that FAO's policies reflect the interests the artificial multiplication of natural parasites and of governments — and vice versa. Indeed, it is this conver predators. And it has been designed for commercialization gence of interests that lies at the root of the degradation and and control by 'experts' and big business." misery that FAO's projects have brought to the people of the Third World. FAO's claim that it "does not encourage monocultures and export crops at the expense of food crops" is so at odds with the recommendations of its own reports, let alone with the Hand-in-Glove Relationship With Industry record of the Green Revolution, that one can only assume that the organization is suffering from collective amnesia. Equally misleading are its responses to specific points we Even today, FAO specifically recommends that the best land raised. Whilst it is true that Edouard Saouma discontinued in the Third World — what the organization terms "high FAO's Industrial Cooperative Programme, under which rep potential areas" — should be used primarily for intensive resentatives of the pesticide industry had offices within chemical agriculture, with "maximum efficiency in the pro the FAO building, it is wrong to imply that this has put an end duction process [being] sought by specialising in one crop or to corporate influence on FAO's policies. One has only to look in one type of animal product" (see pp.241, this issue). It also at the composition of its committees to see the hand-in-glove states that the primary purpose of zoning such land for relationship that FAO enjoys with the major industrial lobbies. intensive monocultures "is to meet the needs of the urban and Typical is the composition of the FAO/World Health Organi rural non-farming communities" and goes on to list a range of zation Codex Alimentarius Commission, a body whose ob crops which it apparently deems appropriate for growing in jective is to "harmonize" international regulations concerning such "specialised production systems". These include coffee, food safety. Its pesticide committee currently has 197 par tea, cocoa, oil palm, rubber and fibres — all of which are ticipants, of which 50 are from the agrochemical companies, major export crops, many of which are non-food crops and 14 from food companies and only two from consumer organi few of which are likely to be consumed by the urban poor in zations. the Third World. FAO's comments on fertilizers and pesticides are also mendacious. Although FAO has indeed had an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Programme for the last 25 years, its Enemy of the Small Farmer impact has been minimal. Like other "special programmes" set up by FAO (its women's programme is another example), Likewise, the claim that FAO acts as the small farmers' its very status as a "special programme" has led to it being "champion in the international arena" is cynical in the extreme. ghettoized within the organization, thus reducing its impor Despite regular pronouncements on the need for land reform, tance to the mainstream. Indeed, FAO's claim that it only FAO has consistently pushed policies — from the further advocates the use of chemical inputs where "nature" (in its intensification of agriculture to the promotion of industrial view) necessitates them, reveals a willingness to rewrite fisheries and the logging of tropical forests — that actively history that is worthy of George Orwell's 1984. Were we to contribute to the problems of landlessness and rural impov accept such a claim, we would not only have to ignore the erishment. In that respect, FAO's "Peasants' Charter" is not central role that FAO's policies played in hooking farmers worth the paper it is written on — and it will remain a worthless onto the chemical treadmill through the Green Revolution scrap of paper until FAO adopts policies that place the (significantly not even mentioned in FAO's reply), but would security of peasant livelihoods above the security of Third also have to turn a blind eye to FAO's continuing espousal of World governments and corporate interests. This it has intensification through increased chemical inputs as the "only refused to do. Indeed, were FAO sincere in its self-appointed option" open to Third World governments if they are to "raise role of "champion" of the rural poor, it would, at a minimum, production in line with needs" (see pp.241-242 this issue). have opened up its own organization to scrutiny by those groups that genuinely represent the interests of rural pro ducers, the poor and the landless. Yet such groups are Increased Chemical Inputs excluded from FAO's policy-making process. FAO accuses The Ecologist of making a case that "is tall It is hard to reconcile such a strategy of further intensification on fantasy and short on facts". Would that this were so. — with or without elements of biological pest control — with FAO's mandate to "better the conditions of rural populations". Nicholas Hildyard As The Ecologist has amply documented, chemical intensi fication has already led to the concentration of food produc tion in fewer and fewer hands, to the detriment of the rural 238 The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 Sustaining the Hunger Machine: A Critique of FAO's Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development Strategy by Nicholas Hildyard FAO's recent adoption of SARD — Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development — seeks to answer many of the concerns of the organization's critics. But despite the rheto ric of "participation ligreater recourse to biological processes n and ucombating environmental degradation the strategy recommended by SARD differs little from past policies. The agenda remains one of intensification through increased chemical inputs, albeit with an emphasis on efficient use. More disturbingly, FAO now advocates that the best land in the Third World be "zoned" for the intensive production of cash crops. Meanwhile in marginal lands peasants are to be "encouragedyf to "transmigrate ". Throughout history, local cultures have resisted the appropria Beguiling Rhetoric ... tion, be it by outsiders or local elites, of the forests, rangelands, fields, fishing grounds, lakes, rivers, streams, plants and ani FAO's recently announced Agenda for Action for Sustainable mals that they rely upon to maintain their ways of life and ensure Agriculture and Rural Development (SARD)2 is firmly rooted in their wellbeing. In the modern era, such resistance has become this tradition. Drawn up as part of FAO's effort to insert its commonplace as local people have fought successive attempts policies into Agenda 21, the "action plan" being prepared for the — first by colonial regimes and then by their "own" post- forthcoming "Earth Summit" in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, SARD independence governments, acting in consort with commercial was launched officially in April 1991, at a conference jointly interests and international development agencies — to trans held by FAO and the Dutch Government at 's-Hertogenbosch in form their homelands and themselves into "resources" for the the Netherlands. The conference culminated in the Den Bosch global economy, an economy over which they have no control Declaration and Agenda for Action, described by FAO as a and in which both they and their environment are counted as "consensus" representing "the best collective judgement" of expendable. Timber operations have been sabotaged, logging "governments, intergovernmental institutions and NGOs". The roads blockaded, dams delayed, commercial plantations up concept of SARD has since been endorsed by the World Bank, rooted, crops burned and rallies held in an endless effort to keep UNESCO, UNEP and IFAD and is currently being "formulated 3 outside forces at bay.1 into a global strategy" for the Rio conference. At best, the major actors in the development industry — Taken at face value, the Den Bosch Declaration and the five governments, aid agencies, companies and the like — have sets of background documents that provide its rationale signal viewed such resistance to development programmes as a failure a significant shift in policy. Banished from the documents are on the part of the authorities to involve local people actively phrases that might suggest the gung-ho promotion of western enough in "project planning and implementation", the assump technology and the market as panaceas for rural impoverish tion being that opposition does not stem from objections to ment.4 Banished is the uncritical promotion of pesticides and development programmes per se, but simply to the manner in fertilizers that has pervaded past FAO policy statements.5 which they are implemented. The contrary view — that in Banished are the diatribes against "subsistence agriculture" opposing projects, local people are voicing different priorities, which characterized FAO policy documents in the 1970s and different views of how they want to run their lives, and a 1980s.6 And banished is the overt espousal of policies that different vision of the future — is one that is distinctly unwel suggest a "top-down" approach to agricultural development.7 come, not least because it implies that by its very nature the Instead, FAO adopts some of the language of its critics and development lobby creates more problems and conflicts than it repeatedly calls for a "holistic approach" to agriculture, for can solve. "greater recourse to biological processes"8 and, above all, for a Developers thus cast about for a vocabulary that enables policy that involves local people.9 Typical of the new tone are them to approximate the language of opposition in an attempt to passages in which SARD calls upon governments to ensure: defuse the demands that lie behind this language. • "The active involvement and participation of rural people The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 239 through their organizations, such as co-operatives and in formal groups in the research and development of integrated farm management systems compatible with maintaining the essential biological processes": "Decentralization by devolving more decision-making authority and responsibility down to the local level, by providing in centives and resources for initiatives by local communities, by enhancing their management capacity, including that of women, rather than relying on 'top-down' administrative mechanisms"; and, "The [allocation of] clear and fair legal rights and obligations Penan tribespeople in Sarawak blockading a logging road on their lands. with regard to the use of land Large-scale logging in Sarawak started after an FAO field mission to the and other natural resources, province in 1970 recommended a huge increase in its timber exports. In including land reforms where SARD, FAO calls for the active involvement and participation of local necessary."10 people in development decisions but it is silent on how this participation can be achieved or on how to counter the vested interests of logging companies and states. ... And Shattering Reality peasants with tenancies on land owned by large companies, in effect using "land reform" to provide Were SARD truly committed to a "bottom up" development labour for national and transnational corporations, would policy, however, it would surely have begun by taking seriously be an acceptable (even desirable) "solution" to the the demands of popular movements, and then proceeded to set problem of landlessness. By contrast, a land reform out how it could best help implement them. Instead, it either programme based on giving communities title to land ignores those demands or distorts them, with the result that the would require, at a minimum, breaking up large estates. policies it advocates run directly contrary to those being articu To recognize in addition their right to control local water lated at the grassroots: resources, forests, fishing grounds and the plants and • Whereas SARD couples its recommendations for greater animals therein would present a direct challenge to the status quo. public "participation" in agricultural development projects with the proviso that "local leaders" should • Whereas SARD recommends that local people should be receive "training" so that "they can effectively address encouraged to market more of their produce, local the issues in the new and more difficult circumstances of movements — particularly women's groups — are 11 the late 20th century", local people see no need to be increasingly taking action to move out of the cash crop educated in the task of running their own affairs. In economy, giving priority instead to growing food crops demanding a decisive say in the decisions that affect their and selling only what is surplus to their requirements. In lives, they are not seeking to have their communal India, "Peasant women know the nutritional needs of organizations incorporated into the state, or to act as the their families and nutritive content of the crops they grow lowest tier of local government. They are seeking to ... That is why women in Garhwal continue to cultivate translate their own ability to decide what they want into mandua and women in Karnataka cultivate ragi in spite action. As one farmer in Zimbabwe has put it: "We don't of all attempts by state policy to shift to cash crops and call ourselves groups but rather amalima, which means commercial foodgrains, to which all financial incentives meeting together for working and helping ourselves . .. of agricultural 'development' are tied."14 We know what we want. We did not come into being as beggars: we have something to contribute to development 12 ourselves." Best Land for Cash Crops • Whereas SARD sees land reform and the allocation of rights over resources as primarily the allocation of rights Indeed, it quickly becomes apparent that, despite the rhetoric of of access to and use of land and other resources, local "building upon" traditional systems, of "participation", and of movements are demanding the outright control of such "the clear allocation of rights to resources", SARD'S true resources.13 The distinction is critical. Under SARD, a priorities lie in a very different direction. land reform programme which consisted only of providing Thus, SARD'S starting point is identical to that of FAO's 240 The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 previous policy statement Agriculture: Toward 2000, namely, sification does SARD recommend that farmers be allowed to that the central aim of future agricultural policy should be both grow their own food for their own use. Even then, it adds the to increase output and to increase rural incomes, food shortages caveat that "In many cases, achieving food security through being viewed as the result of low incomes rather than the denial local self-sufficiency may not be environmentally and/or eco of access to the means to produce food. But whilst Toward 2000 nomically sustainable. It may have high opportunity costs and justifies this primarily on the grounds of the need to transform lead to subsidizing crops on land which is only marginally agriculture into a "dynamic, productive sector", SARD adds the suitable, foregoing the benefit of producing suitable crops and language of sustainability. Intensification thus becomes the products that could be traded favourably for food."22 means to "protect" the environment, to "enable" land reform, to "secure" biodiversity and to "relieve" rural poverty. Or, as SARD puts it: Transmigration "Intensification appears as the only option for raising pro duction in line with needs . . . Most developing countries Coupled to this "zoning policy" is the recommendation that will have to intensify their agriculture to meet future de governments should "evaluate the carrying and population mands, to avoid encroachment of agriculture on areas supporting capacity of major agricultural areas", and, where which should be protected or used otherwise, and to relieve such areas are deemed to be "overpopulated", take steps to production pressures on fragile marginal arable lands and change the "man/land ratio" by "facilitating the accommodation 15 grazing lands." of migrating populations in better-endowed areas".23 Else In that context, "participation" is only relevant to the SARD where, SARD is more candid, specifically recommending strategies in so far as it promotes intensification: environmental "transmigration" programmes.24 degradation only in so far as it helps to justify it. Thus, in order Peasants who have been forced onto marginal lands as a to "protect" the environment and move agriculture towards result of "high potential areas" being taken over for intensive "sustainability", SARD recommends that national governments export-orientated agriculture will thus be liable to resettlement should take rapid steps to "zone" agricultural lands, rangelands at the whim of any government that deems them a threat to the and forests. Predictably, the focus is on boosting aggregate environment. Since FAO itself admits that there are few "better production rather than ensuring peasant control and security. endowed areas" that can be opened up for agriculture, the Under this zoning policy, "high potential areas" would be set majority of the new transmigrants will have no option but to aside for intensive monocultures or livestock rearing.16 Because move to the slums of the large cities or to clear land in forests. such "intensive systems export large quantities of nutrients"17 Many of the displaced are likely to wind up as labourers or "tied- and because "waste recycling possibilities are limited" (in producers" growing cash crops under contract to large corpo effect, the crops will not be consumed locally and their biomass rations — a trend that the corporations have already set in train, cannot therefore be returned to the land), "reliance on external since it effectively places the risks of production onto the inputs" to compensate for the lost biomass is recognized to be shoulders of their peasant "contractees". Predictably perhaps, inevitable.18 As a consequence, "such systems must generate SARD does not even consider the possibility that ecological sufficient income to meet the cost of environmental protec stress in marginal areas would be better relieved by reclaiming tion"19 — in other words, they must grow cash crops, in all "high potential areas" for peasant agriculture. likelihood for export. In effect, SARD is not only recommending that the best land in the Third World be degraded in the pursuit of "sustainable Two Track Agriculture agriculture" but also, by equating "sustainability" with "inten sification", it is seeking to institutionalize as "environmentally The combined effects of SARD'S twin policies of zoning and desirable" the very patterns of land use that have forced peasants transmigration are likely to be devastating. Quite apart from the onto more and more marginal lands and denied them access to social impact of resettlement, SARD will effectively set in stone food (See The Ecologist, 'FAO: Promoting World Hunger', the ruinous "two track" system of agriculture — with intensive Special Issue, Vol. 21, No. 2, 1991). farming on the best land and peasants eking out a living in SARD'S recommended policy for less fertile lands is no less marginal areas —that has brought environmental degradation undesirable. Such lands, it states, should be subject to a policy and impoverishment to millions in the Third World. Although of "intensification through diversification", whereby "maxi SARD insists that its policy will promote "a myriad of production mum efficiency in the use of natural resources is sought through units operating in very diverse natural and socioeconomic mixed cropping, associated with livestock and trees." But here environments",25 it neglects to mention that those "myriad too, SARD recommends that "higher inputs of energy, fertilizers, production units" are unequal and that where they find themselves better seeds, water and other inputs, and particularly increased in competition with each other, the dominant intensive systems knowledge" must be "selectively applied to areas with low- will win out — not because they are more efficient, nor because input agriculture" in order to increase production.20 To achieve they are better for the environment, but because they have the those ends, SARD argues for "increased investments that are backing of power and money. Just as the best land is appropriated matched by improved marketing facilities."21 No consideration for commercial monocultures, so other resources, when allocated is given to who will control these marketing facilities and no through the market, flow towards those with the greatest eco mention is made of the social consequences — particularly in nomic and political clout. If the villages of Maharashtra lack terms of increasing poverty — of drawing peasants further into water for their own dryland agriculture, for example, it is not the market. because their water consumption is high but because local water Only in those areas where "natural resource limitations", or resources have been diverted for sugarcane production.26 "environmental or socioeconomic constraints" preclude inten Indeed, to expect intensive chemical systems to be able to co- The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 241 exist alongside traditional "low input" agriculture is to ignore reality. Eventually, the bulk of the traditional farmers will be forced out of production, simply because they cannot afford the inputs upon which they rely — water and seeds, for example — and which were previously free to them. Only the more power ful farmers — those who have managed to work the system — will remain in business. It is a story that has been repeated in country after country, in the Third World and the First, yet FAO seems oblivious to its implications. The ecological impact of SARD is also likely to be severe. SARD estimates that African countries will need to quadruple fertilizer use and Asian and Latin American countries to double it. The use of "plant protection chemicals" under the SARD programme — even allowing for the "more efficient use" of pesticides through the introduction of integrated pest manage ment programmes — is predicted to rise by 50-60 per cent in the next ten years alone.27 Although NGOs attending the 's- Hertogenbosch meeting persuaded FAO to recommend that pesticide use should not be increased, it is dubious that this could be achieved if SARD is implemented as proposed. Indeed, to claim that SARD will "protect" the environment, let alone promote rural development, plunges the depths of cynicism. Dubious Assumptions Following the common line of the major players in the devel opment industry, SARD justifies its policies for further inten sification on the grounds that traditional "low external input technologies" are no longer able to meet the food and other needs of farm households", due principally to population Cotton being packed for export. While recognizing that 28 pressure. In support of that view, it quotes data that purport to an export-led agricultural policy "may be in contradic "indicate that in all regions except Asia, the long-term agricultural tion with the objectives of sustainability", SARD production growth rate has lagged behind demand."29 Yet, as nonetheless calls for the best land in the Third World to Philip Raikes points out, such data (long cited by FAO in favour be used for the production of cash crops. These would of further intensification) are misleading: most likely go for export. "There is simply no way of getting accurate estimates for either area cultivated or yield [and] there exists no basis for When quoted in conjunction with estimated projections for estimating production, except what is marketed ... Where population increase (which, for all we know, may also be marketing is not state controlled, primary purchasing tends to be dominated by small to medium operators . . . few of inaccurate), SARD'S figures on declining production make a whom are likely to make a voluntary gift of tax to the case for intensification which many may find persuasive. But government by declaring their levels of sales. Even where analyze those figures on a country by country basis and the marketing is officially monopolized by a state agency, this "crisis" may be of a different order and complexity to that which will seldom handle more than a minority of total produce."30 SARD seeks to suggest. In the mid-1980s, for example, FAO's figures appeared to show that per capita grain availability in Official production figures thus tend to underestimate the amount Kenya had fallen by between two-thirds and three-quarters over produced, a bias which is reinforced by the increasing tendency the previous decade at a time when population was estimated to for many peasants to sell their produce on the black market or to 31 be increasing at four per cent per year. In fact, a close look at the consume it themselves. An honest interpretation of the figures relevant FAO Production Yearbooks shows that the apparent would simply admit that the proportion of food marketed via decrease in grain output was due to comparing a mid-1980s' official channels is declining. FAO and others, however, have figure for the area under cereals with an earlier 1970s' figure preferred to interpret this trend as a decline in production. There which had grossly overestimated the relevant acreage, putting it are a number of reasons for this: at 10 per cent more than the total area of arable land.33 "Firstly, it is a simpler thesis and fits well with the assump Moreover, even if the figures were reliable, further intensifi tion held by many officials and experts that peasant con cation in the absence of deep structural changes to the national servatism and resistance to innovation are the real roots of and international economy would not enable even current the problem. Secondly, to admit that produce is being populations to be fed. Quite apart from the ecological damage diverted onto the black market is an indication of the ineffectiveness of government policy ... But most impor that intensification (as promoted by SARD) would cause, the tantly, it points to conclusions which most policy-makers problem is not simply one of inadequate output but rather of the would like to draw in the first place: that more food needs denial of access to food and the means to produce it: people are to be imported and that rapid technical change is needed to starving and malnourished because the production and distribu increase aggregate production."32 tion of food has become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, 242 The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 primarily as a consequence of the very process of intensification human misery on an unprecedented scale. Indeed, within the that SARD seeks to extend. context of increased population growth, SARD'S policy of Similarly, SARD'S attempts to blame environmental deg taking over the best land for export crop production — rather radation (for example through shortened fallow periods) on than feeding local people — is a recipe for disaster. overpopulation grossly oversimplify a much more complex problem. In particular, SARD studiously ignores both the role of past agricultural policies in creating localized population Old Wine in a New Bottle pressure — for example where peasants have been squeezed onto marginal lands or, conversely, where encroachment has Popular movements have long made explicit their opposition to denied communities access to their traditional lands — and the patterns of agriculture and resource use which undermine their connection between such ecological stress and increased con livelihoods and deny local people both the right to decide their sumption, both in the North and by Southern elites. Similarly, own future and the means to do so. They know that the changes no consideration is given to how fallow periods are reduced as they seek will not come about whilst land ownership patterns a result of the lack of labour in many rural areas, due to out- remain skewed in favour of the few or whilst corporate and state migration. Yet in Africa, there are many areas where "a more interests are encouraged to encroach on communal resources intensive cutting of trees and a shortening of the fallow periods and community institutions. Had SARD made those concerns have occurred as households adapt to the lack of farm labour in central to its proposals, it would have been worthy of its name. the absence of men."34 In this instance, it is difficult to blame the But it gives no substantive consideration to such issues. No problem on "overpopulation": if anything, it results from local where are there concrete proposals for securing local rights over depopulation. resources or for countering the power currently enjoyed by such Raising such issues should not be taken to imply that popu established interests as large landowners, corporations, the lation is not an issue. It is — particularly in those Northern military and the state: nor any discussion of how "participation" countries whose consumption patterns place such an intolerable is to be achieved. stress on the resources of the South. Using "population growth" In that respect, SARD should be recognized for what it is. A as a justification for intensifying agriculture, however, is in cunning attempt to co-opt the language of sustainability to tentionally to divert attention from the deeper structural forces promote the same worn-out policies. It is simply old wine in a that are denying people food and creating famine, poverty and new bottle. Notes and References 1. Lohmann, L. * Resisting Green Globalism', unpublished ms, 1991. "inefficient" and "environmentally destructive", SARD acknowledges that 2. FAO/Ministry of Agriculture, Nature Management and Fisheries of the many of the features of sustainable agriculture "can be found among Netherlands, The Den Bosch Declaration and Agenda for Action on traditional practices" and that these "have been disrupted by excessive Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development, VHertogenbosch, The reliance on modern technology". Moreover, FAO has shifted its position on Netherlands, April, 1991. common property resources systems which it now suggests should be 3. World Bank, The World Bank Experience in Sustainable Agriculture and encouraged through "fostering self-managed community organizations". Strategies for the Future, Draft Report, Washington, 1991, p.2. 7. See e.g. FAO/Ministry of Agriculture, op cit. 2, pp.7, 8; Draft Proposals, 4. See in particular: FAO/Ministry of Agriculture, op. cit. 2, p.3; SARD Draft pp.11, 2-1—2-11; Summaries of Background Documents, pp. 19-20. Proposals, pp.16, 26; SARD Main Document 1, p.l 1. SARD states that 8. FAO/Ministry of Agriculture, SARD Draft Proposals, pp. 17, 21. "technological fixes for individual problems have proved unable to provide 9. FAO/Ministry of Agriculture, SARD Draft Proposals, pp.11, 2-1—2-11; lasting solutions" and that intensification "encourages consumption patterns SARD Summaries of Background Documents, pp. 19-20. that are ecologically and economically unsustainable."Lifestyles in the North 10. FAO/Ministry of Agriculture, op. cit. 2, p.8. are criticized for placing "excessive claims on global resources". There is also 11. FAO/Ministry of Agriculture, SARD Draft Proposals, p. 17. criticism of the free market ("unfettered free trade and free market economies, 12. Quoted in Rau, B. From Feast to Famine, Zed Books, London, 1991. pursued with a view to maximizing profits for the participants, do not appear 13. SARD states that "poverty is often associated with landlessness, inequitable to be geared to protecting natural resources and ensuring sustainability, since access to land and land tenancy malpractices rather than with land or resource they are not by nature concerned with longer-term issues") and of the ownership". FAO/Ministry of Agriculture, Main Document 1, p. 10. "inappropriate policies" which have proved "one of the chief contributors of 14. Vandana Shiva, Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Survival in India, Kali unsustainable agricultural practices in most developing countries" (although, for Women, New Delhi, India, 1988, p. 129. predictably perhaps, there is no mention of FAO's role in framing and 15. FAO/Ministry of Agriculture, SARD Main Document 1, p.v; and SARD Draft promoting those policies). Specifically, SARD acknowledges that "many Proposals, p.iii. developing countries have undertaken an environmentally damaging 16. FAO/Ministry of Agriculture, SARD Draft Proposals, p. 10. expansion of cash crop production for export". 17. Ibid, p.1-1. 5. See in particular: FAO/Ministry of Agriculture, SARD Background Document 18. Ibid, p.10. 1, p.4; SARD Draft Proposals, pp.2-7, 21; SARD Main Document 1, p.14. 19. Ibid, p. 10. SARD recognizes that "intensification has often been accompanied by large 20. FAO/Ministry of Agriculture, SARD Background Document 1, p.iv. demands on non-renewable resources, environmental pollution, problems of 21. Ibid. waste disposal, an accelerated rural exodus and the development of 22. FAO/Ministry of Agriculture, SARD Draft Proposals, p.7. unsustainable production patterns." As an alternative to "massive injections of 23. Ibid, p. 16 and FAO et al., op. cit. 2, p.9. external inputs", says the report, greater attention should be paid to "more 24. FAO/Ministry of Agriculture, SARD Draft Proposals, p. 12. productive methods using internal inputs and improved traditional systems, 25. Ibid, p.l. such as multiple cropping associated with livestock raising". In coastal zones, 26. Bandyopadhyay, J. 'The Ecology of Drought and Water Scarcity*, The there should be an outright ban on "agrochemicals which are toxic to fish" Ecologist 18, 2/3, 1988, p.91. and, in general, "greater recourse to biological processes (nitrogen, fixing 27. FAO/Ministry of Agriculture, SARD Main Document 1, p. 15. plants, crop rotations, use of trees as nutrients, use of trees as nutrient pumps, 28. FAO/Ministry of Agriculture, SARD Draft Proposals, p. 1-4. recycling of wastes) is highly recommended." Whereas Agriculture: Toward 29. FAO/Ministry of Agriculture, SARD Main Document 1, p.5. 2000 called for bringing more land into production, particularly through 30. Raikes, P. Modernizing Hunger, Catholic Institute for International Relations, irrigation, SARD recognizes that "the prospects for major expansions in in collaboration with James Currey, London, 1988, p.20. irrigated area in the 1990s and beyond are limited." 31. Ibid. 6. See in particular: FAO/Ministry of Agriculture, SARD Miscellaneous 32. Ibid. Document 1, p.2; SARD Draft Proposals, pp.10, 2-2, 18; SARD Miscellaneous 33. Ibid, p.21. Document 2, p.26. Whereas previously "shifting agriculture" was castigated as 34.Ibid. The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 243 The Bataan nuclear power plant has cost the Philippines $2.3 billion yet design flaws and its siting in an earthquake zone mean that it will never produce electricity. The reactor was bought from the US company Westinghouse after a vigorous sales campaign which allegedly included a $40 million bribe to the Marcos regime. The Philippine government are now suing Westinghouse. It is certain that the nuclear industry would lobby heavily for a share of any new climate funds for developing countries. The Case Against Climate Aid by Patrick McCully A huge increase in international aid is seen by many as an essential part of any effort to deal with global warming. However, this ignores the fact that aid has left a legacy of neo colonialism, debt, dependency, corruption and failure. The history of the transfer of western technologies to the Third World has been similarly dismal Emphasis on the need for trans fers of money and machinery to the Third World obscures the urgent need for radical changes in First World consumption patterns and global economic and political structures. "Do not attempt to do us any more involvement in any international conven abatement strategy ... to pay for more good. Your good has done us too much tion on global warming.2 efficient infrastructure and deployment harm already."1 NGOs have also stressed the impor of non-fossil sources; and to speed up the tance of huge sums of money flowing to development process in order to give the It is widely assumed that an essential the South. The New Delhi-based Centre best prospects for population control. "4 In element in any international agreement for Science and Environment (CSE), for 1988, the Washington-based Worldwatch on climate change is a massive transfer of example, have suggested a system which Institute proposed a $28 billion fund to money and technology to the Third World. would result in the high greenhouse gas pay for "massive investments in energy Without this, it is argued, it will be im emitting nations paying over $ 100 billion efficiency and reforestation in develop possible for developing countries to curb annually to the rest of the world.3 Energy ing countries", and more recently Green their huge projected growth in green analyst Michael Grubb of the UK Royal peace have advocated a $30 billion fund house gas emissions. Indeed the develop Institute for International Affairs, who to be made available to Third World sig ing countries have made the transfer of also quotes a figure in the order of $100 natories of a climate convention as well "adequate, new and additional resources" billion annually, states that: "Resource as to support the development of renew from the First World a condition of their transfer is a crucial element of any global able energies.5 244 The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 While some observers have suggested age such a tax being imposed in the US. that a climate fund should be financed The world's biggest polluter refuses to from a carbon tax levied on all global make any commitment to cut its C02 fossil fuel-related emissions,6 inter emissions, disputing both the scientific national disparities in wealth, exchange evidence for global warming and the eco Schumacher rate problems and incompatible fiscal nomic advantage of trying to do anything systems, as well as the differing historic about it even if the projected warming College contributions which countries have made does occur.10 The rest of the OECD coun to the problem make a global tax both tries which do admit the need for at least Time to ponder on unworkable and unfair. A better system some steps to be taken to cut greenhouse ecological and global issues would be for contributions to a climate gas emissions, will have to make the US's in the light of new fund to be funded from an energy tax position increasingly unacceptable to the thinking, spiritual values applied in the 24 countries of the OECD; international community by committing and traditional wisdom. together they account for almost half of themselves to strong action. With regard Gain clarity and direction global energy-related carbon releases yet to tackling climate change, it may well be in the company of inspiring contain only 16 per cent of the world's more cost-effective to spend the funds teachers and fellow 7 population. Historically their contribu from a non-North American energy tax students from all over the tion to the problem is much greater, espe on environmental education projects, world cially when their past and present politi energy efficiency offices and political cal and economic influence on the rest of lobbying in the US than in the Third 1992 the world is taken into account. World. Programme of Study Although there are structural differ An important use to which an energy now available ences between them, all the OECD tax should be put is the global climate countries have industrial market-based insurance fund which has been suggested Jan. 6 - Feb. 6 economies, already tax energy in various by Papua New Guinea and some of the ARNE NAESS on forms and have a history of economic and members of the Alliance of Small Island Deep Ecology other forms of co-operation. The OECD States. The fund would pay for disaster formally adopted a form of "polluter pays relief for those hit by rising sea levels and A New World View principle" in 1974 as a guide to environ the increasingly damaging cyclones and of Relationships mental policy and several OECD countries floods expected. It could also pay for the between People — Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark eventual costs of moving the inhabitants and the and the Netherlands — have already in of small islands to safer locations if sea 8 11 Environment troduced carbon taxes. The European levels rise to threatening levels. Commission has recently proposed an Also courses with EC energy tax which would increase to Wendell Berry the equivalent of $10 on a barrel of oil or Dependency and David Bohm $83 per tonne of carbon by the year 2000. Impoverishment Fritjof Capra Half the charge would be on all non Herbert Girardet renewable energy, while half would be an Despite the above it would still be politi additional levy on fossil fuels. A tax at cally and economically possible to create Francis Kinsman this level applied across the EC would a large climate fund to help the Third Victor Papanek raise a sum in the order of $70 billion with World pay for limiting its greenhouse gas Patrick Pietroni present patterns of energy consumption. emissions. Much more difficult would be James Robertson Across the OECD as a whole it would spending the money — the total global Anthony Rooley 9 raise $228 billion. aid disbursed in 1989 was only $46.5 Kirkpatrick Sale 12 Massive sums could therefore be raised billion — in a way which would actu Vandana Shiva by even a quite moderate level of energy/ ally limit carbon emissions while not ex carbon taxes in the industrialized coun acerbating international and national in Charlene Spretnak tries. However not all this money could equalities. be made available for the Third World. If The experience of the Third World in Write to: the energy tax was to be made politically the post-War era has been that the trans The Administrator, Schumacher College, acceptable, roughly commensurable tax fer of capital from the First World has led The Old Postern, cuts and benefit increases would have to to dependency, debt and impoverishment. Dartington, Totnes, Devon be made elsewhere in national econo Far from helping the Third World, the TQ9 6EA, U.K. mies, with the loss to treasuries being economic instrument which goes under Please state whether this made up with income from the energy the ironic misnomer "aid" has been used is a first-time enquiry. tax. The new tax would also be expected to turn political colonialism into eco to fund research and development of re nomic colonialism. In the words of the newable and energy efficient technolo Ethiopian economist Fantu Cheru: gies in the industrialized countries. "The overwhelming consensus am Another important proviso is that at ong the poor in Africa today is that present it is almost impossible to envis development, over the past 25 years, The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 245 has been an instrument of social con lion to its bilateral aid programmes. that, "local staff are unable to run the trol. For these people, development Out of this substantial sum, around equipment and are thought unlikely to has always meant the progressive 80 per cent is typically spent on the learn to do so . . ,"19 modernization of their poverty. The purchase of British goods and serv As low-interest loans are an important absence of freedom, the sacrifice of ices — a share that approaches 100 element of aid financing, countries may culture, the loss of solidarity and self- per cent in the case of some recipi be paying off the cost of failed projects reliance ... explains why a growing ents, like Bangladesh."18 for decades. For example, in 1983 an number of poor Africans beg: please do not develop us!"13 Such tied aid is notorious for resulting Italian contractor built a road in Somalia in imports of overpriced goods and with funding from a $100 million EC While many of those in the develop inappropriate or obsolete technologies as contract which is supposed to be repaid ment and environment community are well as for favouring capital- rather than over 40 years. Five years after its const aware of the disastrous history of aid, it is labour-intensive projects in areas with ruction the road was impassable.20 generally assumed that these problems high unemployment and scarce financial Indeed as Cheryl Payer explains in her can be "ironed out" with a bit of extra care resources. It gives little stimulus to local incisive book on the subject, Lent and and, usually, the greater involvement of suppliers, and the maintenance, staffing Lost: Foreign Credit and Third World NGOs. Thus, most critics of the develop and administration costs are usually left Development, the present Third World ment industry see little contradiction be to the recipient country to pay, normally debt crisis is "the direct result of the tween lambasting the industry's failures in foreign exchange to the donor country. ideology . . . which insists that. . . poor and calling for it to be given more money A recent leaked internal report from the countries require large and sustained in 14 to spend. However, while the current British Overseas Development Adminis flows of foreign capital for their devel patterns of economic and political power tration revealed that three out of six power opment."21 Payer shows that the belief prevail, there is little hope that a massive stations funded by an ODA programme that the debt crisis was caused by the influx of new aid to enable developing and largely built by British companies OPEC price hikes of the 1970s is pure countries to limit their greenhouse gas were "seriously unreliable". The report myth. In fact, the crisis was around long emissions would do anything other than said of the power plant built in Bangladesh before the oil price rises and is a direct exacerbate the plight of the impoverished of the Third World. Given that aid projects are so rarely successful, it is also very doubtful whether it could actually have any impact upon global warming.15 NEW FROM THE ECOLOGIST Who Benefits From Aid? Nuclear Power Perhaps the most damaging misconcep SHUT IT DOWN! tion of "aid" is that it is donated as a magnanimous gesture by rich countries A 2- VOLUME, 800-PAGE DOSSIER ON NUCLEAR POWER AND THE AL TERN A TIVES to assist the poor. Instead, aid is an instru ment of foreign policy which is given to Compiled and Edited by promote the donor's economic and sec Crispin Aubrey, Danielle Grunberg and Nicholas Hildyard urity interests. As development econo mist Cheryl Payer notes, the US aid pro This collection of reprints of key reports and articles from journals, news gramme, "was originally set up by those letters and newspapers, and extracts from books, has been prepared to help who wished to wage a propaganda war campaigners argue the case both against further nuclear expansion and in favour of alternative sources of energy. against communism and those (such as US farmers) who wished to export their surpluses on credit."16 It would be naive Volume 1: The Case Against Nuclear Power to think that the objectives of US aid have Includes sections on: since changed: in 1986, according to the • Uranium Mining * Radiation and Health • Accidents > Waste and Decomissioning World Bank, only eight per cent of the • The Economic Case + The Nuclear State budget of the US Agency for International Development could be identified as "de velopment assistance devoted to low-in Energy Strategies come countries".17 The record of other Includes sections on: # Campaigns • Renewable Energy countries is little, if any, better, although • Fossil Fuels * Low Energy Strategies for most commercial interests take prec 4 Nuclear Power and Global Warming edence over those of national security. The cost of each volume is £15 Postage for one volume is £4 surface, £10 air mail Well over half of Western bilateral aid is Postage for both volumes is £6 surface, £20 air maiL Cheques should be made "tied", that is it is used to buy goods and payable to The Ecotogist. Groups which are unable to afford the purchase price should services from companies in the donor write to us. Those in Eastern Europe and the Third World will receive priority for free or country. According to Graham Hancock: subsidized copies of the dossier. Orders should be addressed to: "The UK allocates some £850 mil WEC Books, Worthyvaie Manor, Camelford, Cornwall PL32 9TT, England. 246 The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 result of the aid policy followed by the Western powers after the Second World War. According to Payer: "... interna tional flows of funds must be subjected to stringent controls of a strictly non-politi cal nature if the disaster of the 1980s is not to be repeated."22 Who Will Control the Flows? The control of any new climate funds has been the subject of much debate in the international climate talks with most ind ustrialized countries favouring channel ling the funds through existing institu tions, in particular the Global Environ ment Facility (GEF). The GEF, launched in November 1990 by the World Bank in co-operation with the UN Environment and Development Programmes (UNEP The World Bank headquarters in Washington, DC. While the Bank is lending $22 billion a year for development projects — and demanding that the money and UNDP), has come in for strong criti be repaid with the "help" of the IMF and "structural adjustment" measures — cism from environmentalists who have its Global Environment Facility can be little more than a sticking plaster on a called on donor governments to halt fur gaping sore of failed economic theory. ther funding until the Facility is made more accountable and responsive to the desires of local communities.23 activists. The shortcomings of the multi climate fund is to pay for the transfer of Considering the harsh treatment that lateral development agencies are largely "environmentally-friendly" technology they have received from the World Bank a product of the international system in from the First World to the Third. Within and its sister institution the IMF, it is not which they operate; environmentalists' the context of international environment surprising that the developing countries experience in campaigning against them negotiations, technology transfer is pre are fiercely opposed to the new funds has shown that they are largely unre- sented as a simple matter of shipping they are calling for being channelled formable without wider changes in that pieces of machinery and "know-how" through any institution connected with international system. It would be naive to from North to South. The only problems the Bank. The "G-77" group of 127 de suppose that they can change their ways arise over the financing of the process veloping countries and China favour the just because they are given funds to spend and the issue of patent ownership. setting up of a new institution to deal with on climate-related projects. Technology transfer is not so straight the climate funds which should be man If the climate fund is as big as CSE or forward. Ian Smillie, an ex-Director of aged "on the basis of equitable represen other NGOs advocate, any new institution the Canadian voluntary aid agency CUSO, tation from developing and developed may end up doing even more harm than calls the expression 'transfer of technol countries and should ensure easy access the World Bank, if only because it would ogy' "Perhaps one of the greatest wrongs for developing countries". have more funds at its disposal. Even in in the misguided lexicon of international Yet any new institution set up within the unlikely event that those who con development": the existing economic and political tribute to the fund discard the principle of "... in the hands of governments, framework will be little different from self-interest which has motivated foreign foreign engineers, experts, amateurs, the present international funding agen policy since the birth of the state, and give bureaucrats and aid officials, the les cies. Its staff would be likely to be made up control over their contributions, there sons of technology in history have up of bankers, economists and "develop is still little chance that the money would largely been ignored. In the quest for ment experts" transferred from existing actually promote the long-term benefit of sales and the search for the big break agencies. These people would bring with the majority of the Third World and help through, they have colluded in one of them the same values, beliefs and theories to deal with climate change. The.Third the most expensive and tragic hoaxes which have caused the existing agencies World elites who wish to gain access to of all time. Vast numbers of inapp to do so much harm to the people and the funds differ little in their view of the ropriate tractors and threshers and environment of the Third World and world from their counterparts in the rich factories have been shipped south, at ever-increasing prices, to be used at a would be doing business with the same countries; they just feel that they are not fraction of capacity or to end prema government officials and business elites. being given a fair crack of the whip of 24 turely, simply rusting in the rain." Moreover, the new fund would inevi industrial growth. tably have to channel its money through The current enthusiasm among gov the existing "implementing agencies" ernments and NGOs in both First and such as FAO and UNDP, whose policies The Greatest Wrong Third Worlds for the transfer of technol and practices have come under fierce ogy has interesting historical parallels. In criticism from environmental and social The main use advocated for a prospective the late 1950s and early 1960s, it was The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 247 Bank report stated that "Bank support for appropriate technology will have a sig nificant long-term impact on the choice and effectiveness of technological opera tions in the developing world."27 In the same year an OECD report echoed an earlier generation of misguided techno logical optimists: "... in a few years time, the con sumer of appropriate technology will probably find himself in the equiva lent of a supermarket with dozens of different tools or technologies to meet every single one of his needs."27 Naturally "the consumer" had little say in what was actually "appropriate" for him (women were rarely even allowed into the technology supermarket). These de cisions were made in the offices of aid agencies and ministries by people whose lives are ruled by modern Western tech nology and who have little idea of the desires and social relations of rural peo ple and the communities in which they live. The results, in the words of Ian Smillie, "left the Third World littered with windmills that didn't turn, solar water heaters that wouldn't heat, and biogas experiments that were full of hot air be fore they started."29 Like a succession of development fads — rural development, the eradication of poverty, basic needs, women and envir onment — "appropriate technology" was chewed up and spat out by the big devel opment agencies, its original aims mas ticated out of recognition. It is difficult to see why the fate of climate aid should be any different. The Acheampong Weed Taksang Monastery in Bhutan with solar cells which provide electricity for More important than the failure of trans lighting. Small solar and other renewable systems are more likely to be installed where there is a lack of capital for bigger schemes rather than ferred technologies to achieve what was where funds for power supply projects are readily available. In Kenya, 10,000 intended for them is their many unpred- small photovoltaic systems have been installed in rural homes and schools icted effects. In the early 1970s, the and are supported by a growing cottage industry of local technicians. Japanese agreed to construct a network of Meanwhile, the photovoltaic systems promoted by aid agencies and foreign power lines for Ghana's rural electrifica companies are too large and expensive for most rural households. tion programme (using "carbon-free" current generated by the Akasombo Dam). Unfortunately, the Japanese engineers widely believed that Western science and in by the end of the first UN Development soon discovered that a local plant would technology would play a major role in Decade in 1970, and led to the rise of the rapidly grow up their pylons and interfere eliminating poverty, hunger and disease.25 concept of "appropriate technology". It is with the lines at the top. Attempts to spray In the words of Lord Blackett, poor perhaps rarely realized now how much and cut the rampant climbers proved countries would be able to draw up a the idea was taken up by the official fruitless so the Japanese decided to use an "shopping list" of what to buy in "the agencies. Appropriate Technology Inter "environment-friendly" alternative — an world's well-stocked supermarket for national in the US, for example, was equally rampant non-climbing plant from production goods and processes".26 given a direct mandate from Congress Japan which they planted around the bot Disillusionment with the results of the and funded by the US Agency for Interna tom of the pylons. The idea was a brilliant products on the supermarket shelves set tional Development. In 1976, a World success as far as the power lines went — 248 The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 but a disaster for the farmers of southern jab's Sikh farmers, the technologies of derricks in distant deserts. The whole Ghana who now struggle to keep their the Green Revolution have widened both chain only guarantees an adequate plots free of the invasive "Acheampong ethnic and class divisions. and prompt delivery if every one of weed", named after the Ghanaian presi New technologies affect the relation its parts is staffed by armies of engi dent at the time the pylons were con ships not only between rich and poor but neers, planners and financial experts, who themselves can fall back on ad structed. also between men and women. By red ministrations, universities, indeed The transfer of technologies will in ucing the importance of the subsistence entire industries (and sometimes even variably have unintended results. Most economy in which women play a major the military) . . . Whoever flicks a damaging of all can be the social role, introduced technologies often erode switch on is not using a tool. He or "Acheampong weeds", the changes in women's independence and make them she is plugging into a combine of social structures and values which tech more dependent on men.32 In Africa, the functioning systems. Between the use nologies — no matter how environmen small-scale production by women of beer, of simple techniques and that of tally-appropriate — can cause. The intro cloth and clothing, bread, bricks and modern equipment lies the reorgani 33 duction of methane gas digesters (which cookware has been progressively taken zation of a whole society." turn animal dung into gas for cooking and over by factories controlled by men. The role of technology in changing heating) into Indian villages, for exam cultural attitudes is made explicit in a text ple, had the unexpected effect of worsen prepared for a pre-UNCED seminar or ing the lot of the village poor. Only the The Trojan Horse ganized by the Norwegian government wealthy villagers could afford to run the and attended principally by representa digesters, and dung, which had previously Perhaps the most common misconception tives of the large dam-building industry. been available free, gained a cash value of technology is that it is socially "neu This states that hydropower projects, "are which lessened its availability to the tral", that it is purely machinery. But often very appropriate vehicles for intro landless villagers who depend on it for western technology in the Third World is ducing an appropriate mechanical culture 30 fuel. a Trojan Horse of western economic and into a developing country".34 The "Green Revolution" is perhaps the social values and beliefs. Wolfgang Sachs A real danger of a massive influx of best known example of the promotion of gives an excellent illustration of this Western money into energy efficient and a technology (or rather a package of re process using the seemingly innocuous renewable technologies in the Third lated technologies) with terrible social example of an electric mixer: World is that it will strengthen the tech and environmental consequences. As "Whirring and slightly vibrating, it nological dependence of the South on the Vandana Shiva notes of the Punjab, the makes juice from solid fruit in next to North. In fact, Southern dependence heartland of the rural revolution: no time. A wonderful tool! So it would be one of the main reasons for "... after two decades of the Green seems. But a quick look at cord and Northern governments to support such Revolution, Punjab is neither a land wall-socket shows that what we have transfers, as it guarantees markets for of prosperity, nor peace. It is a region before us is rather the domestic ter Northern companies. There is also the riddled with discontent and violence. minal of a national, indeed world danger that the people of the Third World Instead of abundance, Punjab has wide system. will be used as guinea pigs for untested been left with diseased soils, pest- "The electricity arrives via a network Western technologies. infested crops, waterlogged deserts of cables and overhead utility lines, As David Burch points out, looking and indebted and discontented farm upon overseas aid as a major source of ers."31 which are fed by power stations that depend on water pressures, pipelines appropriate technologies is to undermine By concentrating land ownership and or tanker consignments, which in turn the autonomy and "self-reliance" which impoverishing the majority of the Pun require dams, off-shore platforms or is an explicit goal of these technologies. INSTITUTE OF DEVELOPMENT STUDIES Subscribe to the IDS BULLETIN for 1992 A quarterly journal which publishes brief, direct articles on themes of relevance to all involved in development. Issues cover: agriculture and rural problems, political and economic development, women, health and education, employ ment & technology, international issues and the environment. For full details of subscription rates and free Publications Catalogue contact: Publications Office (EA) Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex Brighton, BN1 9RE. Tel: (0273) 606261 Fax: (0273) 621202 Telex: 877997 IDS BTN G The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 249 Burch also shows that if the means for equal to the country's foreign debt of $8 passed on, adopted and adapted since the manufacturing western technologies are billion, while a recent UN report esti emergence of our species and the process transferred this will almost inevitably mated that $40 billion left Africa in capital cannot be stopped now, even if this were mean the transfer of capital-intensive, flight between 1986 and 1990.39 desirable. However the emphasis on high-tech production methods.35 Susan Any suggestions to restrict the pay technology transfer within the climate George also comments on this problem: ment of the climate funds to countries change debate obscures the fact that the "All Western technology has been aimed with "approved" environmental policies processes which are causing increased at getting greater productivity for fewer are fiercely resisted by Third World gov emissions of greenhouse gases are ess man hours .. .All underdeveloped coun ernments, with good reason given the entially political and economic and not tries have . . . only one really abundant effects of previous outside interference in technical in nature. The reason that the capital resource: people".36 their countries. In any case, "creditors US is the most polluting nation in the Expressions like "environmentally- only fool themselves if they believe they world has little to do with a lack of energy friendly" and "appropriate" are of course can control [the uses of their capital]. efficient technologies or renewable relative; their meaning depends upon And conditions imposed by outsiders far methods of producing electricity: it has a those who use them. The nuclear indus from the site of the investment usually do lot to do with the size of the country's oil, try, for example, believes that its power more harm than good."40 coal and automobile industries and the stations are an appropriate technology for Strict conditions on the use of climate influence they have on the political est cutting emissions of C02 and it is certain funds would have the effect of making ablishment. In the UK, the public trans that they will try to bribe and lobby them them extremely difficult to disburse. It is port system is expensive, unreliable and selves a share of any funds for this purpose. perhaps not often realized that practically infrequent, not because the government The intense lobbying undertaken by all agencies have a "disbursement prob cannot afford to improve it or does not Electricite de France to sell nuclear reac lem" — they cannot find enough attrac know how, but because the vested inter tors to Hungary gives an example of what tive projects to put their money into: ests behind public transport have negli could come.37 The promoters of large dams gible power compared to the influential "It is left to the aid officials on the in both North and South would also fight road and car lobbies. Similarly, in the ground to figure out how to turn tons for their share of the cake. of liquidity into economies that can developing world plenty of funds have Despite the rhetoric of environmental profitably absorb only quarts or gal been found in the past for expanding and social concern used in international lons — without wasting the amounts energy supplies yet little has been made negotiations, governments see the aim of that can't be absorbed. Of course it available for energy efficiency.43 Huge technology transfer as being to sustain can't be done, and something has to sums have been spent on large dams yet development, which in political terms give. Either the money is "wasted" little on micro-hydro schemes. means to sustain the vested interests of on projects whose profitability has That the Southern countries are being those whose decisions have led the world been exaggerated by doctored cost- impoverished by the current international into its present predicament. benefit exercises, or it is siphoned financial system is not in doubt. Since into the pockets of recipient country 1982 the Third World has been paying an officials who have an obvious pecu average of $30 billion a year more to the niary interest in not revealing that it Green Conditionality cannot be profitably invested."41 North in debt repayments than they have received in new lending. But the answer Even if pressure from environmental It is an indication of the assumption of is not to increase the financial flows within groups succeeded in having tight condi Western superiority inherent in discus the framework which has caused the tions imposed on the use of the climate sions on environmental technology present problems, but rather to halt the funds, this would not stop them from transfer that so few observers remark on flows — for the Third World to repudiate freeing up capital for the construction of, the irony of the situation where the most the debt and to take on a minimum of new for example, the nuclear plants and large heavily polluting countries in the world lending so that it does not get into the dams planned for India or indeed for are supposed to be helping the rest to same situation again in another few dec military purchases (increased arms sales clean up. Indian ecologist Vandana Shiva ades. Any massive new flows of resources for the donor nations would provide a has eloquently expressed the conundrum: from North to South — loans or grants — major incentive for them not to try and "The leadership of the North in the gen will merely deepen Third World dep stop this). eration of environmentally unsound endency and repeat the mistakes of the It is also probable that a large amount technologies does not automatically last three decades of development.44 of the funds would very quickly end up in translate into a leadership to generate Western bank accounts and other capital environmentally sound technologies."42 havens. In the three years from 1980 to With the above in mind it would be much Putting Our Own House in 1982 — the climax of the debt bubble — more logical to advocate the transfer of Order $71 billion from eight of the world's technology from South to North rather largest debtors (Brazil, Mexico, Argen than vice versa. Those in the industrialized countries who tina, Venezuela, Indonesia, Egypt, the want to see both firm action on global Philippines and Nigeria) was lost in capi warming and a better deal for the Third tal flight. This figure equals 70 per cent of Technology Diffusion World would do best to concentrate on these countries' new borrowing in those reducing the massive and wasteful use of years.38 The overseas assets of President The above arguments are not anti- energy in their own countries. First World Mobuto of Zaire are reputed to be roughly technological: technologies have been energy consumption is the largest single 250 The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 cause of global warming, the effects of 71; 'Prevent Climate Holocaust — Greenpeace', 17. World Bank, World Development Report 1990: Geneva ECO NGO Newsletter 3, 21 June, 1991. Poverty, World Bank, Washington, 1990, p. 128. which are going to strike the Third World 6. See e.g. Flavin, ibid; 'Claiming Green Kudos', 18. Hancock, G. Lords of Poverty, Macmillan, first and hardest (if they have not already The Times (editorial), 26 September, 1991. Basingstoke, 1989, p. 156. begun to do so). A radical change in this 7. OECD Environmental Data Compendium 1991, 19. 'Report "Doctored" to Hide Failure of Projects to Aid Third World', The Guardian, 20 Sept., 1991. pattern of consumption would have a pro OECD, Paris, 1991. Although the ex-Soviet Union and Eastern Europe burn huge amounts of 20. Hancock, op. cit. 17. found effect on the overall structure of fossil fuels (accounting for around one-quarter of 21. Payer, op. cit. 1, p.x. 22. Ibid, p.xi. Western society and also perhaps on the energy-related C02 emissions), their chaotic fundamental economic beliefs which have political and economic condition militates against 23. World Rainforest Movement, 'NGO Statement including them in a convention with fixed on the GEF', Penang, 30 April, 1990. The GEF done so much harm to the world both financial commitments in the near term. In any gives loans and grants which are supposed to counter ozone depletion, global warming, water North and South. case, C02 emissions from these states should fall Demands for huge amounts of climate considerably over the next decade with the pollution and the loss of biodiversity. Environ phasing-out of energy subsidies and the closure mentalists fear that the GEF is being used to aid for the Third World give First World of much heavy industry. (See e.g. Kats, G.H. "grease the skids" for prospective loans by governments an excuse to do nothing 'Energy Options for Hungary: A Model for superficially "greening" otherwise environmen except point out to their electorates the Eastern Europe', Energy Policy 19, 9, Nov. tally-destructive schemes. 1991.) 24. Smillie, op. cit. 13, p.242-3. huge costs of dealing with the problem 8. 'Cool It: A Survey of Energy and the Environ 25. For an excellent summary of attitudes to and enable them to shift the blame for ment', The Economist, 31 August, 1991, p.42. technology and development see Burch, D. global warming from the historic and 9. While taxes on this scale could raise considerable 'Appropriate Technology for the Third World: sums of money they would do little to reduce Why the Will is Lacking', The Ecologist 12, 2, present high emissions from industrial March/April 1982. C02 emissions. If market mechanisms alone were countries onto the projected future emis to be used prices would have to be raised several 26. Blackett, P.M.S. 'Planning for Science and sions from the Third World. It also gives times above current levels to achieve even Technology in Emerging Countries', New moderate cuts in C0 emissions (see e.g. Grubb, Scientist, 14 February, 1963, cited in Burch, op. Third World governments the excuse of 2 op. cit. 4, p.88). High energy taxes are, however, cit. 24. not doing anything because they can claim already accepted in many countries — petrol 27. World Bank, 'Appropriate Technology in World it is too expensive and the First World taxes in some European countries are levied at Bank Activities', Washington, 1976 cited in will not stump up the money. But dealing the equivalent of a carbon tax of around $200 per Smillie, op. cit. 13, p.88. tonne. (The Economist, op. cit. 8, p.44.) The 28. Jequier, N. (ed.) Appropriate Technology: with global warming is not a question of tradeable emissions permits suggested by CSE Problems and Promises, OECD, Paris, 1976 cited expense — it is a question of economic and others are a possible mechanism for the in Burch, op. cit. 24. and political restructuring. OECD to use to help it reduce emissions. For the 29. Smillie, op. cit. 13, p. 133. reasons of the structural differences between 30. Burch, op. cit. 24. economies and the horrific problems of 31. Shiva, V. The Violence of the Green Revolution: monitoring and implementation it is difficult to Third World Agriculture, Ecology and Politics, envisage this type of scheme working on a global Third World Network, Penang, 1991, p. 19. An Notes and References level. It would be much better to try tradeable edited extract from this book was published as permits within a limited group of countries first 'The Failure of the Green Revolution: A Case and so assess the advantages and drawbacks of Study of the Punjab' in The Ecologist 21,2, 1. Egyptian Pan-Islamist Sheikh Mohammed Abdou the idea. March/April 1991. is reported to have made this remark in 1884 to 10. See e.g. National Academy of Sciences, Policy 32. See e.g. Stamp, P. Technology, Gender, and the British who were then occupying Egypt. Implications of Greenhouse Warming, NAS, Power in Africa, IDRC Technical Study 63e, Quoted in Payer, C. Lent and Lost: Foreign Washington, DC, 1991. This astonishingly Ottawa, 1989. Credit and Third World Development, Zed complacent report argues the US will be able to 33. Sachs, W. 'Six Essays on the Archaeology of Books, London and New Jersey, 1991, p. 115. adapt to climate change at "reasonable cost". Development', Interculture 109, 4, Fall 1990. 2. The International Negotiating Committee on a Science described the report as reading "like a 34. Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Framework Convention on Climate Change virtual paen to human adaptability, technological Administration, 'Hydropower: Its Potential and (usually shortened to "INC") has been brought innovation and the market." (Roberts, L. Environmental Properties in a Global Context* together under the auspices of the UN General 'Academy Split on Greenhouse Adaptation', (Draft), Oslo, 1991. Assembly to prepare a convention to be signed at Science 253, 13 Sept., 1991, p.1206). 35. Burch, op. cit. 24. the UN Conference on Environment and 11. Leggett, J. 'The View From Tuvalu', Nairobi 36. George, S. How the Other Half Dies: The Real Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in June ECO NGO Newsletter 8, 18 Sept., 1991. The Reasons for World Hunger, Pelican, 1992. The INC has met three times and will Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) was set Harmondsworth, 1976, p. 100. Original emphasis. probably meet at least twice more before Rio. up at the Second World Climate Conference in 37. Kats, op. cit. 7. EdF have commissioned opinion Progress has been painfully slow with the US, the Geneva in November 1990 to co-ordinate the polls whose results they have distorted, produced biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, refusing to positions of the nations most threatened by global a series of television adverts, and joined up with the Hungarian nuclear industry in political agree to any commitments to limit C02. warming. Greenpeace have also advocated a 3. Agarwal, A. and Narain, S. Global Warming in global climate insurance fund. lobbying. Kats says that the size and expense of an Unequal World: A Case of Environmental 12. Financial Times, 28 September, 1990. the campaign "is reminiscent of a western Colonialism, Centre for Science and Environ 13. Cheru, F. The Silent Revolution in Africa: Debt, presidential campaign". ment, New Delhi, 1991, p.20. The complicated Development and Democracy, Zed Books, 38. Payer, op. cit. 1, p.86. system of charges and fines on carbon dioxide London and New Jersey/Anvil Press, Harare, 39. 'Swiss Banks Urged to Take the Lid off African and methane emissions suggested by CSE is 1989, p.20. Deposits', The Daily Telegraph, 25 Sept., 1991. unsuited to an international agreement due to the 14. For example see Timberlake, L. Africa in Crisis, 40. Payer, op. cit. 1, p. 125. flawed scientific assumptions on which it is Earthscan, London, 1985; Clark, J. Democratiz 41. Ibid, p. 118. based (see McCully, P. 'Discord in the ing Development, Earthscan, London, 1991; 42. Shiva, V. 'Transfer of Technology', Briefing Greenhouse: How WRI is Attempting to Shift the Smillie, I. Mastering the Machine: Poverty, Aid Paper for UNCED, Third World Network, Blame for Global Warming', The Ecologist 21, 4, and Technology, Intermediate Technology, Penang, 1991. July/August 1991, p. 161-162; and Kelly, M. 'The London, 1991. 43. While power projects account for 20-40 per cent Allocation of Responsibility', unpublished 15. A suppressed World Bank internal report on of Third World debt (The Economist, op. cit. 8, manuscript, Climatic Research Unit, School of 1000 of its projects undertaken between 1976 and p.37), the World Bank spends just one per cent of Environmental Sciences, University of East 1986 showed that half of them failed to meet its average £1.8 billion annual investment on Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK). their original goals. Some had closed down energy projects on promoting energy conserva 4. Grubb, M. Energy Policies and the Greenhouse totally, while others had only ever existed on tion and efficiency ('World Bank's Conservation Effect: Volume One: Policy Appraisal, RIIA, paper — yet the Bank still insisted that the loans Record Under Fire', New Scientist, 19 October, London, 1990, p.287. for the projects were repaid. See Ziegler, K. 1991). 5. Flavin, C. 'Slowing Global Warming: A 'Accountability Needed at World Bank', letter in 44. See Payer, op. cit. 1 and Cheru, op. cit. 21 for Worldwide Strategy*, Worldwatch Paper 91, Wall Street Journal, 22 October, 1990. discussions on the necessity and the conse WorldWatch Institute, Washington, 1989, pp.70- 16. Payer, op. cit. 1, p.46. quences of debt repudiation. The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 251 Environment and Development: The Story of a Dangerous Liaison by Wolfgang Sachs The analysis that the natural world and human cultures are being destroyed by industrial society has posed a formidable challenge to states and development institutions. They have largely managed to overcome the challenge by redefining the myriad local ecological crises as being caused by the insufficient management of resources on a global level Under this inter pretation, poverty and inefficiency are seen as the real causes of the destruction of the natural world, and economic growth, more efficient production methods and better monitoring of the Biosphere the only answers to the problem. Thus the fundamental issues which society must address — how it should live, how much it should produce and consume — are ignored. Neil Armstrong's journey to the moon is now raised like a banner to announce a Environment held in Stockholm in June brought us under the spell of a new image new era of development. Indeed, after 1972, the occasion on which "environ — not of the Moon but of the Earth. "ignorance" and "poverty" in previous ment" arrived on the international agenda, Looking back from the Apollo spaceship, decades, "survival of the planet" is likely was first proposed by Sweden, which was Armstrong shot those pictures which now to become the emergency of the 1990s, in worried about acid rain, pollution in the adorn the covers of so many reports about the name of which a new frenzy of devel Baltic and the levels of pesticides and the future of the planet: a small and frag opment will be unleashed. Significantly, heavy metals in fish and birds. Countries ile ball, shining blue against the dark of the report of the World Commission on discovered that they were not self-con outer space, delicately covered by clouds, Environment and Development (the tained units but contingent on actions oceans, greenery and soils. Never before Brundtland Report), after having evoked taken by others. Thus a new category of had the planet in its entirety been visible the image of the planet floating in space, problems, the "global issues", emerged. to the human eye; space photography concludes its opening paragraph by stat The Stockholm Conference was the prel imparted a new reality to the planet. In its ing: "This new reality, from which there ude to a series of large UN meetings beauty and vulnerability, the floating is no escape, must be recognized — and throughout the 1970s (on population, globe arouses wonder and awe. For the managed" food, human settlements, water, desert first time it has become possible to speak ification, science and technology, and of our planet. renewable energy) that set out to alter the But the possessive noun reveals a deep The Emergence of Global post-War perception of an open global ambivalence. On the one hand, "our" can Issues space where many nations can individu imply participation and highlight human- ally strive to maximize economic growth. ity's dependence on an encompassing For better or worse, the vicissitudes of the Instead a different view began to be reality. On the other hand, it can imply international development discussion promoted: the concept of an interrelated ownership and emphasize humanity's follow closely the rise and fall of political world system operating under a number supposed vocation to master and to sensibilities within the Northern countries. of common constraints. manage this common property. Conseq Unfettered enthusiasm for economic The cognitive furniture for this shift uently, the image of "our" planet conveys growth in 1945 reflected the West's de was provided by a particular school of a contradictory message; it can either call sire to restart the economic machine after thought that had gained prominence in for moderation or for megalomania. a devastating war, the emphasis on man interpreting the significance of pollution The same ambivalence characterizes power planning echoed American fears and non-natural disasters. In the US during the career of the concept "environment". after the shock of Sputnik in 1957, the the 1960s, environmental issues forced While it was originally advanced to put discovery of basic needs was stimulated their way into public consciousness: due development politics under indictment, it by Johnson's domestic war on poverty in to Los Angeles smog and the slow death the 1960s. What development means de of Lake Erie, oil spills and the planned pends on how the rich nations feel. "En flooding of the Grand Canyon, the number Wolfgang Sachs is at the Institute for Cultural vironment" is no exception to this rule. of articles on the environment in the New Studies, Hagmanngarten 5, 4300 Essen 15, Germany. The UN Conference on the Human York Times skyrocketed from about 150 252 The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 Growth made it seem illusion that global strategies can be ef natural to imagine fective. And even if the ideal of growth the future of the crumbled, there was, for those who felt in globe as being de charge of running the world, still some cided by the interac objective to fall comfortably back to: tion of quantitative stability. growth curves. The global eco systems approach The Marriage Between was not without Environment and Development competitors; but both the biocentric However, there was still a long way to go and the humanist until, in 1987, the Brundtland Report could perspective were finally announce the marriage between foreign to the per craving for development and concern for ception of the inter the environment. As the adamant rejec national develop tion of all "no-growth" positions, in par ment elite. Attribut ticular by Third World governments at ing absolute value to the Stockholm Conference demonstrated, nature for its own the compulsion to drive up the GNP had sake, as environ turned many into cheerful enemies of mentalists in the tra nature. It was only in the course of the dition of Thoreau, 1970s, under the additional impact of the Emerson and Muir oil crisis, that it began to dawn on govern did, would have ments that continued growth not only barred the way to depended upon capital formation and a continuing, albeit in skilled workforce but also on the long- a more sophisticated term availability of natural resources. Indira Gandhi being welcomed to the 1972 UN and flexible manner, Concerns about the conservation of in Conference on the Human Environment in Stock the exploitation of puts to future growth, led to development holm. Mrs. Gandhi's statement at the conference that planners gradually adopting a strand of poverty was the greatest polluter helped shift the nature. And recog emphasis in environmental thinking from pollution nizing the offences thought which goes back to the introduc caused by growth to pollution caused by a lack of against nature as just tion of forest management in Germany growth. This interpretation was vital in justifying the another sign of the around 1800: that — in the words of actions of governments and development agencies. supremacy of tech Gifford Pinchot, the steward of Theodore nological expansion Roosevelt's conservation programme — over people and their "conservation means the greatest good in 1960 to about 1700 in 1970. Local lives, as humanist authors like Mumford for the greatest number for the longest incidents, which were increasingly seen or Schumacher suggested, would go time." Tomorrow's growth was seen to as adding up to a larger picture, were put against the grain of development aspira be under the threat of nature's revenge. into a global perspective by scientists tions and could hardly please the guard Consequently, it was time to extend the who borrowed their conceptual frame ians of the growth machine. In fact, only attention span of planning and to call for work from ecosystems theory in order to an interpretation which magnified rather the "efficient management of natural re interpret the predicament of a world than undermined their managerial res sources" as part of the development pack rushing towards industrialization. Infi ponsibilities could raise their hopes in the age: "We have in the past been concerned nite growth, they maintained, is based on face of a troubled future. The global eco about the impacts of economic growth self-delusion, because the world is a closed systems approach perfectly suited their upon the environment. We are now space, finite and of limited carrying ca vantage point from the heights of interna forced", concludes the Brundtland Re pacity. Perceiving global space as a sys tional organizations for it proposed glo port, "to concern ourselves with the im tem whose stability rests on the equilib bal society as the unit of analysis and put pacts of ecological stress — degradation rium of its components, like population, the Third World, by denouncing.popula- of soils, water regimes, atmosphere, and technology, resources (including food) tion growth, at the centre of attention. forests — upon our economic prospects." and environment, they foresaw — echo Moreover, the model simplified and ren Another roadblock on the way to wed ing Malthus' early challenge to the dered intelligible an otherwise compli ding "environment" to "development" has assumption of inevitable progress — an cated and confusing situation by dis- been an ossified vision of growth. The imminent disruption of the balance be embedding resource conflicts from any decades of smoke-stack industrialization tween population growth (exacerbated particular local or political context. The had left the impression that growth was by technology) on the one hand, and re language of aggregate data series sug invariably linked to squandering ever sources and environment on the other. gests a clear cut picture, abstract figures more resources. Under the influence of Paul Ehrlich's Population Bomb, The lend themselves to playing with scenarios, the appropriate technology movement, Ecologist's 'Blueprint for Survival', and, and a presumed mechanical causality be however, this notion of development be especially, the Club of Rome's Limits to tween the various components creates the gan to crumble and give way to an aware- The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 253 ness of the availability of technological only be protected through a new era of breed of technocrats feels the vocation to choices. It was, after all, in Stockholm growth. As it says in the Brundtland Re steer growth along the edge of the abyss. that NGOs had gathered for the first time port: "Poverty reduces people's capacity to stage a counter-conference which called to use resources in a sustainable manner; for alternative paths in development. it intensifies pressure on the environment A Successful Ambivalence Later, initiatives like the Declaration of ... A necessary but not sufficient condi Cocoyoc and the Dag Hammarskjold tion for the elimination of absolute pov Ecology is both computer modelling and Foundation's "What Now?" helped — erty is a relatively rapid rise in per capita political action, scientific discipline as perhaps unwittingly — to challenge the incomes in the Third World." The way well as all-embracing worldview. The assumption of an invariable technologi was thus cleared for the marriage be concept joins two different worlds. On cal process and to pluralize the road to tween "environment" and "development"; the one side, protest movements all over growth. Out of this awareness of techno the newcomer could be welcomed to the the globe wage their battles for the con- logical flexibility grew, towards the end old family. of the 1970s, a new perception of the ecological predicament: the "limits to The ecology movement growth" are no longer seen as an insur The Rejuvenation of may be the first anti- mountable barrier blocking the surge of Development growth, but as discrete obstacles forcing modernist movement the flow to take a different route. "Soft- "No development without sustainability; which attempts to path" studies in areas from energy to no sustainability without development" health care proliferated and charted new is the formula which establishes the justify its claims with beds for the misdirected river. newly-formed bond. "Development" the enemy's own means Finally, environmentalism was re emerges rejuvenated from this liaison, garded as inimical to the alleviation of the ailing concept gaining another lease poverty throughout the 1970s. The claim on life. This is nothing less than the repeat servation of nature, fighting with evi to be able to abolish poverty has been — of a proven ruse: every time in the last 30 dence offered by the scientific discipline and still is — the single most important years that the destructive effects of devel which studies the relationships between pretension of the development ideology, opment were recognized, the concept was organisms and their environment. On the in particular after its enthronement as the extended in such a way as to include both other side, academic ecologists have seen official priority goal after the speech at injury and therapy. For example, when it with bewilderment how their hypotheses Nairobi by the then World Bank Presi became obvious, around 1970, that the have become a reservoir for political slo dent, Robert McNamara, in 1973. Pov pursuit of development actually intensi gans and been elevated to principles for erty had long been regarded as unrelated fied poverty, the notion of "equitable Some post-industrial philosophy. The li development" was invented so as to rec aison between protest and science can oncile the irreconcilable: the creation of hardly be called a happy one. While the Brundtland suggests poverty with the abolition of poverty. In researchers have resented being called on the same vein, the Brundtland Report to testify against the rationality of science further growth, no incorporated concern for the environment and its benefits for humanity, activists longer in order to into the concept of development by have, ironically enough, adopted theo erecting "sustainable development" as the rems like the "balance of nature" or the achieve the happiness conceptual roof for both violating and "priority of the whole over its parts" at a of the greatest number, healing the environment. moment when they had already been but to contain the Certainly, the new era requires devel abandoned by the discipline. opment experts to widen their attention However, without recourse to science, disaster for the span and to monitor water and soils, air the ecology movement would probably generations to come. and energy use. But development remains have remained a bunch of "nature freaks" what it has always been, an array of in and never acquired the power of a histor terventions for boosting GNP: "Given ical force. One secret of its success lies to environmental degradation, which was expected population growth, a f ive-to ten precisely in its hybrid character. As a attributed to the impact of industrializa fold increase in world industrial output movement highly suspicious of science tion; the poor entered the equation only as can be anticipated by the time world and technical rationality, it plays anew future claimants to an industrial life style. population stabilizes sometime in the next the counter-melody which has accompa But with spreading deforestation and century." Brundtland thus ends up sug nied the history of modernity ever since desertification, the poor were quickly gesting further growth, but no longer, as romanticism. But as a science-based identified as agents of destruction and in the old days of development, in order movement, it is capable of questioning became the targets of campaigns to pro to achieve the happiness of the greatest the foundations of modernity and con mote "environmental consciousness". number, but to contain the disaster for the testing its logic in the very name of sci Once blaming the victim had entered the generations to come. The threat to the ence. In fact, the ecology movement seems professional consensus, the old recipe planet's survival looms large. Has there to be the first anti-modernist movement could be offered for meeting the new ever been a better excuse for intrusion? attempting to justify its claims with the disaster: since growth was supposed to New areas of intervention open up, nature enemy's own means. It bases its funda remove poverty, the environment could becomes a domain of politics, and a new mental challenge not on the arts (like the 254 The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 chairs, journals and ence again prevailed. Ecology was ripe professional asso for a restructuring along the lines of posi- ciations — only tivist methodology; like any other sci during the first two ence, it was supposed to produce causal decades of this hypotheses which are empirically test century. It inherit able and prognostically relevant. The ed from its precur search for general laws, however, implies sors in the 19th concentrating attention on a minimum of century a predilec elements which are common to the over tion for looking at whelming variety of settings. The appre the world of plants ciation of a particular place with a par (and later animals) ticular community lost importance. in terms of geo Moreover, these elements and their rela graphically-dis tionships have to be measurable; the tributed ensem quantitative analysis of mass, volume, bles. The tundra in temperature and the like replaced the Canada is evi qualitative interpretation of an ensem dently different ble's unity and order. Following physics, from the rainforest at that time the leading science, ecolo in Amazonia. gists identified energy as the common Consequently, pre- denominator that links animals and plants ecology organized with the non-living environment. Gener its perception of ally, the calorie became the unit of meas nature, following urement for it permitted description of the core themes of both the organic and the inorganic world romanticism, ar as two aspects of the same reality — the ound the axiom flow of energy. that place consti In this way, biology was reduced to Norwegian Prime Minister and chairwoman of the tutes community. energetics. But the holistic tradition of World Commission on Environment and Develop From an emphasis ecology did not wither away. It reappeared ment, Gro Harlem Brundtland. The global manage on the impact of in a new language: "system" replaced the ment advocated by the WCED assumes that plan ners, scientists and other "experts" have the tools, climatic and phys concept of "living community", and the knowledge, the capability and the right to decide ical circumstances "homeostasis" the idea of evolution to how the rest of humanity should lead their lives. on communities, wards a "climax". The concept of "sys the attention shift tem" integrates an originally anti-modern ed, around the turn notion, the "whole" or the "organism", of the century, to into scientific discourse. It allows one to romanticists), on organicism (like the the processes within these communities. insist on the priority of the whole without conservatives), on the glory of nature The competitive/cooperative relations vitalist overtones, while it acknowledges (like preservationists), or on a transcen between organisms in a given environ an autonomous role for the parts without, dental creed (like fundamentalists), al ment and, under the influence of Darwin however, relinquishing the idea of a supra- though all these themes are present, but ism, their adaptive change through time individual reality. This is accomplished on ecosystems theory which integrates ("succession") emerged as the new disci by interpreting the meaning of wholeness physics, chemistry and biology. This pline's field of study. Impressed by the as "homeostasis" and the relations bet unique achievement, however cuts both mutual dependency of species in biotic ween the parts and the whole, in the ways: the science of ecology gives rise to communities, ecologists began to won tradition of mechanical engineering, as a scientific anti-modernism which has der just how real these units were. Is a "self-regulatory feedback mechanisms" largely succeeded in disrupting the domi given ensemble only the sum of indi steadily maintaining that homeostasis. It nant discourse, yet the science of ecology vidual organisms or does it express a was the concept of ecosystem that thus opens the way for the technocratic recu higher identity? Up to the Second World combined the organicist heritage with peration of the protest. This ambivalence War, the latter concept was clearly domi scientific reductionism. And it is this of "ecology" is, on the epistemological nant: plant/animal societies were seen as concept of ecosystem that simultaneously level, responsible for the success as well super-organisms that evolve actively, gave to the ecology movement both a as the failure of the movement. adapting to the environment. In opting quasi-spiritual dimension and scientific for organicism — the postulate that the credibility. whole is superior to its parts and an entity Since the 1960s ecology has left the Ecology Between Organicism in its own right — the ecologists were university biology departments and mi and Mechanism able firmly to constitute the object of grated into the common consciousness. their science. The scientific term has turned into a While its roots go back to 18th century This anti-reductionist attitude was worldview. As such, it carries the prom natural history, ecology became a fully- doomed after the war when, across disci ise of reuniting what has been fragmented, fledged discipline — with university plines, mechanistic conceptions of sci of healing what has been torn apart, in The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 255 short of caring for the whole. The numer more development nature can take or the water and a reliable climate has to be ous wounds inflicted by modern, goal- aim of adjusting her feedback mecha closely watched. On the other, society's specific institutions provoked a renewed nisms through human intervention. Both innumerable actions have to be kept un desire for wholeness, and that desire found strategies amount to completing Bacon's der sufficient control in order to direct the a suitable language in the science of ecol vision of dominating nature, albeit with exploitation of nature into tolerable chan ogy. The conceptual switch that connected the pretension of manipulating her re nels. To carry out these formidable objec the biology circuit with that of society at venge. In this way, ecosystem technol tives, the state has to install the necessary large was the notion of ecosystem. In ogy turns finally against ecology as a monitoring systems, regulatory mecha retrospect, this comes as no surprise, since worldview. A movement which bid fare nisms and executive agencies. A new the concept is well equipped to serve this well to modernity ends up in welcoming class of professionals is required, while function: in scope, as well as in scale, it it, in new guise, through the back door. eco-science provides the epistemology of has an enormous power of inclusion. It intervention. In short, the experts who unites not only plants and animals — as used to look after economic growth now already the notion of living community Survival as a Reason of State claim to be presiding over survival. did — but also includes within its pur view the non-living world on the one In history, many reasons have been put hand, and the world of humans on the forward to justify state power and its Global Knowledge Versus other. Likewise, ecosystems come in claim on citizens. Objectives like law and Local Knowledge many sizes, small and big, nesting like order and welfare through redistribution babouschka dolls, each within the next, have been invoked time and again. More Many rural communities in the Third from the microscopic to the planetary recently, development has become the World, however, do not need to wait until level. The concept is free-ranging in scale. goal in the name of which many Third specialists from hastily founded research Omnipresent, as ecosystems appear to World governments sacrifice the vital institutes on sustainable agriculture swarm be, they are consequently hailed as keys interests of huge sections of their out to deliver their solutions for, say, soil to understanding order in the world. More populations. "Survival of the planet" is erosion. Provision for the coming genera so, as they appear to be all-essential for on its way to becoming the justification tions has been part of their tribal and the continuance of the webs of life, they for a new wave of state interventions into peasant practices since time immemorial. call for nothing less than care and rever people's lives all over the world. What is more, the new centrally designed ence. A remarkable career, indeed — a The World Bank, for instance, sees a schemes for the "management of envi technical term that has strode into the gleam of hope for itself again, after its ronmental resources" threaten to collide realms of the metaphysical. For many reputation had been badly shaken by with locally based knowledge about con environmentalists, ecology seems to re criticism from environmentalists: "I an servation. veal the moral order of being by uncov ticipate", declared its Senior Vice- For example, the Indian Chipko ering simultaneously the verum, bonum President David Hopper in 1988, "that movement has made the courage and and pulchrum of reality: it suggests not over the course of the next year, the Bank wisdom of those women who protected only the truth, but also a moral imperative will be addressing the full range of the trees with their bodies against the and even aesthetic perfection. environmental needs of its partner na chainsaws of the loggers a symbol of On the other hand, however, ecosys tions, needs that will run from the technical local resistance acclaimed far beyond the tems theory, based on cybernetics as the to the institutional, from the micro-details borders of India. Yet their success had its science of engineering feedback mecha of project design to the macro-require price: forest managers moved in and nisms, represents anything but a break ments of formulating, implementing and claimed responsibility for the trees. Thus, with the ominous tradition of increasing enforcing environmental policies." The the nature of the conflict changed: the control over nature. How can a theory of voices of protest, after finally penetrating hard-nosed woodcutters gave way to soft- regulation be separated from an interest the air-conditioned offices in Washington, spoken experts. These brought along in manipulation? After all, systems theory only led to the Bank seeing a new area for surveys, showed around diagrams, pointed aims at control of the second order; it its activities: the demands to stop World out growth curves and argued over opti strives to control self-control. As is ob Bank activities provoked their expansion! mal felling rates. Planting schemes and vious, the metaphor underlying systems While environmentalists have put the wood-processing industries were prop thinking is the self-governing machine, a spotlight on the numerous vulnerabilities osed, and attempts made to lure the vil machine capable of adjusting its per of nature, governments discover a new lagers into becoming small timber pro formance to changing conditions accord conflict-ridden area in need of political ducers. Those who had defended the trees ing to pre-set rules. Whatever the object governance and regulation. This time, it to protect their means of subsistence and being observed, be it a factory, a family or is not peace between people which is at to bear witness to the interconnectedness a lake, attention focuses on the regulating stake, but the orderly relations between of life, saw themselves unexpectedly mechanisms by which the system in humanity and nature. To mediate in this bombarded with research findings and question responds to changes in its envi conflict, the state assumes the task of the abstract categories of resource eco ronment. Once identified, the way is open gathering evidence on the state of nature nomics. All along, the "national interest" to condition these mechanisms so as to and the effects of humanity, of enacting in "balanced resource development" was alter the responsiveness of the system. norms and laws to direct behaviour, and invoked. It mattered little in the face of Looking at nature in terms of self- enforcing compliance to the new rules. these priorities what significance the for regulating systems, therefore, implies ei On the one hand, nature's capacity to est had for the villagers, or what species ther the intention to measure how much provide services such as clean air and of tree would be most suitable for the 256 The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 people's sustenance. An ecology that which is rising to prominence has taken prospect which could have inspired aimed at the management of scarce natural on a fundamentally biased orientation: it Orwell to another novel. The real histori resources clashed with an ecology that calls for extended management, but dis cal challenge, therefore, must be add wished to preserve the local commons. In regards intelligent self-limitation. As the ressed in something other than ecocratic this way, national resource planning can dangers mount, new products, procedures terms: how is it possible to build ecological lead to, albeit with novel means, a con and programmes, are invented to stave societies with less government and less tinuation of the war against subsistence. off the threatening effects of industrialism professional dominance? Though the resource experts arrived in and to keep the system afloat. Capital, The ecocratic discourse which is set to the name of protecting nature, their im bureaucracy and science — the venerable unfold in the 1990s starts with the con age of nature profoundly contradicts the trinity of Western modernization — de ceptual marriage of "environment" and image of nature held by the villagers. clare themselves indispensable in the new "development", finds its cognitive base Nature, when she becomes an object of crisis and promise to prevent the worst in ecosystems theory, and aims at new politics and planning, turns into "envi through better engineering, integrated levels of administrative monitoring and ronment ". It is misleading to use the two planning and more sophisticated models. control. Unwilling to reconsider the logic concepts interchangeably for this impedes However, fuel-efficient machines, envi of competitive productivism which is at the recognition of "environment" as a ronmental risk assessments and the close the root of the planet's ecological plight, particular construction of "nature" spe monitoring of natural processes, well- it reduces ecology to a set of managerial cific to our time. Contrary to its present intended as they may be, have two as strategies aimed at resource efficiency aura, there has rarely been a concept that sumptions in common: first, that society and risk management. It treats as a tech represented nature as more abstract, will always be driven to test the limits of nical problem what in fact amounts to no passive and void of qualities than "envi nature, and second, that the exploitation less than a civilizational impasse — ronment". Squirrels on the ground are as of nature should neither be maximized namely, that the level of productive per much a part of the environment as water nor minimized, but ought to be optimized. formance already achieved turns out to be in aquifers, gases in the atmosphere, As the 1987 report of the World Resources not viable in the North, let alone for the marshes at the coast or even high-rise Institute states on its first page: "The rest of the globe. With the rise of ecocracy, buildings in inner cities. Sticking the la human race relies on the environment and however, the fundamental debate that is bel "environment" on the natural world therefore must manage it wisely." Clearly, needed on issues of public morality — makes any specific and local quality fade the "therefore" is the crux of the matter; it like how society should live, or what, away; even more, it makes nature appear is relevant only if the competitive dynamic how much and in what way it should passive and lifeless, waiting to be acted of the industrial system is taken for produce and consume — falls into obliv upon. This is a far cry from, for instance, granted. Otherwise, the environment ion. Instead, Western aspirations are im the Indian villager's conception of would not be in danger and could be left plicitly taken for granted, not only in Prakriti, the active and productive power without management. Calls for securing the West but worldwide, and societies which permeates every stone or tree, fruit the survival of the planet are often, upon which choose not to put all their energy or animal, and sustains them along with closer inspection, nothing else than calls into production and deliberately accept a the human world. Prakriti grants the for the survival of the industrial system. lower throughput of commodities become blessings of nature as a gift; she has Capital, bureaucracy and science-in unthinkable. What falls by the wayside consequently to be honoured and wooed. tensive solutions to environmental de are efforts to elucidate the much broader Cultures that see nature as a living cline, however, are not without social range of futures open to societies which being tend to carefully circumscribe the costs. The promethean task of keeping limit their levels of material output in range of human intervention, because a the global industrial machine running at order to cherish whatever ideals emerge hostile response is to be expected when a an ever increasing speed while at the from their heritages. The ecocratic per critical threshold has been passed. "En same time safeguarding the Biosphere, ception remains blind to diversity outside vironment" has nothing in common with will require a quantum leap in surveillance the economic society of the West. this view; through its modernist eyes, and regulation. How else should the limits appear as physical constraints to myriads of decisions, from the individual This article is an edited version of survival. To call traditional economies to the national and the global levels, be 'Environment', a chapter in The "ecological" often neglects that basic made? In this regard, it is of secondary Development Dictionary: A Guide to difference in belief. importance whether the streamlining of Knowledge as Power, edited by Wolfgang industrialism will be achieved, if at all, Sachs, to be published by Zed Books in through market incentives, strict legisla January 1992. The chapter contains a full Towards a Global Ecocracy? tion, remedial programmes, sophisticated bibliography. Contributors to the book spying or outright prohibitions. What include Claude Alvares, Barbara Duden, In the 1990s, concern about depleting matters is that all these strategies call for Gustavo Esteva, Ivan Illich, Ashis Nandy resources and worldwide pollution has more centralism, in particular for a and Vandana Shiva. It will be available reached the commanding heights of in stronger state. Since ecocrats rarely call from Zed Books, 57 Caledonian Road, ternational politics. Multilateral agencies into question the industrial model of liv London Nl 9BU, price £14.95/US$25 (pb) or £36.95/US$59.95 (hb). Orders in the distribute biomass converters and design ing in order to reduce the burden on USA to Humanities Press International, 165 forestry programmes. Economic summits nature, they are left with the necessity of First Avenue, Atlantic Highlands, New quarrel about carbon dioxide emissions, synchronizing the innumerable activities Jersey 07716. and scientists launch satellites to check of society with all the skill, foresight and on the planet's health. But the discourse technological tools they can muster — a The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 257 Illustration from Earth First! journal. For Earth Firstlers the wolf Is a potent symbol of wilderness and the interconnectedness of all forms of life. The Religion and Politics of Earth First! by Bron Taylor Many observers view Earth First! as differing from other environmental groups principally in « the militant tactics it espouses. In fact the differences go far deeper. Underpinning their ethics and actions are biocentric beliefs based on fundamentally religious sentiments. The recent schism in the movement has less to do with disagreements about these beliefs than with judge ments about strategy and tactics. Despite internal tensions Earth First! and similar radical groups are likely to play an increasingly important role in future ecological struggles. The bombing of the car of two activists from Earth First! and the Chosen to strike down this demon." The letter concludes with a FBI's infiltration and arrest of five others has catapulted the warning to other tree worshipers that they will suffer the same group into public view. These radical environmentalists are fate, for "I AM THE LORDS AVENGER." It is not known willing to break the law to save wilderness areas — committing whether or not the letter is genuine, although it does bear strong civil disobedience, spiking trees, removing survey stakes or internal evidence of authenticity — including an accurate de destroying bulldozers, a practice they call "ecotage" or scription of the bomb and a hard-to-fabricate narrative that "monkeywrenching". seems to merge Christian fundamentalism and mental illness. Both proponents and opponents of Earth First! recognize the But whether authentic or a ploy to cast suspicion away from the importance of religion in environmental conflicts. One extreme true bomber, this letter illustrates dramatically how competing example can be found in a letter purportedly from the person spiritual values can underlie environmental controversies. who bombed the car of California Earth First !er Judi Bari, who, Conservationist Alston Chase expresses similar concerns quoting Genesis 1:26 (the "dominion" creation story), wrote without the violent overtones. He criticizes the "mindless pan that "this possessed [pagan] demon Judy Bari . . . [told] the theism" and "clandestine heresies" of radical environmentalists multitude that trees were not God's gift to man but that trees and complains that militant environmentalists have uncritically were themselves gods and it was a sin to cut them. [So] I felt the accepted Lynn White's accusation that Judaism and Christian Power of the Lord stir within my heart and I knew I had been ity produced the West's anti-nature tendencies. Chase believes White's article gave the environmental movement "an epistle for spiritual reform" hostile to Western religion.1 Dr Bron Taylor is Assistant Professor of Religion and Social Ethics, Religious Studies Department, The University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, 800 Although Earth First! militants do tend to reject organized Algoma Boulevard, Oshkosh, WI54901, USA. religion, and many are uncomfortable with the explicitly reli- The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 gious rituals and songs now popular in the movement, most count, and an underlying belief that American Indian attitudes report a "spiritual" connection to nature. Earth Firstlers often toward nature are a means of revitalizing American culture."5 speak of the need to "resacralize" nature. Indeed, the heart and A better label for Earth First!'s beliefs would be primal soul of Earth First! resides in a radical "ecological conscious spirituality, since Earth First !ers believe we should emulate the ness" that intuitively, affectively and deeply experiences a indigenous ways of life of most primal peoples, not just those in sense of the sacredness and interconnection of all life. From this North America. Moreover, it is not merely the precolonial experience is derived the claim that all life, and even ecosystems, American landscape which is sacred but wilderness in general, are intrinsically valuable. wherever it can be found or restored. Earth First!ers generally call themselves tribalists, and many Deep Ecologists believe that primal tribes can provide a basis Earth First! Myths for religion, philosophy and nature conservation applicable to our society.6 Moreover, Earth First!ers increasingly discuss the All religious traditions involve myth, symbol and ritual: the myths usually delineate how the world came to be (cosmogony), what it is like (cosmology), what people are like and capable or incapable of achieving (moral anthropology) and what the future holds (eschatology). The theory of evolution provides a primary cosmogony that promotes the "biocentric ethics" or "Deep Ecology" espoused by Earth First!ers. If all species evolved through the same process, and none were specially created for any particular purpose, then, as Earth First! philos opher Christopher Manes notes, the metaphysical underpin nings of anthropocentrism are displaced, along with the idea that human beings are at the top of the "Great Chain of Being", ruling over all on Earth. "Taken seriously," Manes concludes, "evolution means that there is no basis for seeing humans as more advanced or developed than any other species. Homo sapiens is not the goal of evolution, for as near as we can tell evolution has no telos — it simply unfolds, life-form after life- form ..." The ethical significance of this cosmogony is that since evolution gives life in all its complexity, the evolutionary process itself is of highest value. The central moral priority of Earth First! is to protect and restore wilderness because undis turbed wilderness provides the necessary genetic stock for the very continuance of evolution.2 This still does not answer the question: Why should we care about evolution, or wild places, in the first place? Manes' argument displacing humans from the centre of moral concern does not adequately explain where value actually resides. This is why so much spirituality gets pulled into the Earth First! movement: some form of spirituality is needed to provide a basis for valuing the evolutionary process and the resulting life forms. Manes himself roots Deep Ecology and Earth First! in "the profound spiritual attachment people have to nature".3 Even those drawn to a biocentric ethic largely based on an evolutionary cosmogony eventually rely on metaphors of the sacred to explain their feelings. Some of the diverse tributaries to the Earth First! movement are explicitly religious, tracing their biocentric sentiments to Earth FirsV.er at a Rendezvous in Montanta in 1990. Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, witchcraft or pagan earth-wor The movement draws the inspiration for its myths and ritual from the religious beliefs and practices of native ship. There are even a few Christian nature mystics among them. North Americans. The most important spiritual home for Earth First! activists, however, resembles what historian of religion Amanda Porterfield calls "American Indian Spirituality". This exists as importance of ritual for any tribal "warrior society." At meet "a countercultural [and religious] movement whose proponents ings held in or near wilderness, they sometimes engage in ritual define themselves against the cultural system of American war dances, sometimes howling like wolves. Indeed, wolves, Society."4 The central tenets of this spirituality, she says, "in grizzly bears and other animals function as totems, symbolizing clude the condemnation of American exploitation of nature and a mystical kinship between the tribe and other creature-peoples. mistreatment of Indians, regard to precolonial America as a Native Americans often conceive of non-human species as sacred place where nature and humanity lived in plentiful kindred "peoples" and through "rituals of inclusion" extend the harmony, certainty that American Indian attitudes are opposite community of moral concern beyond human beings. Some to those of American culture and morally superior on every Earth First!ers have developed their own rituals of inclusion, The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 259 called 'Council of All Beings' workshops, which provide a become a symbol of life in the wild, incorporated into the ritual ritual means to connect people spiritually to other creatures and of the tradition. Soon after the group was founded, several Earth the entire planet.7 During these workshops, rituals are performed First! activists went on "green fire" road shows, essentially where people allow themselves to be imaginatively possessed biocentric revival meetings. "Dakota" Sid Clifford, a balladeer by the spirits of some non-human creature, or even of rocks and in these road shows, referred to them as "ecovangelism". Clifford rivers, and verbalize their hurt at having been so poorly treated said that often audience members would come forward afterward, by human beings. As personifications of these non-human tears streaming down their faces. The converts sought to learn forms, participants cry out for fair treatment and harmonious what was required to repent of their sins against nature. In these relations among all ecosystem citizens. Ecstatic ritual dance, shows, the personified wolf calls on humans to repent from their celebrating inter-species and even inter-planetary oneness, may destructive ways and to revere Earth and her creatures. Some of continue through the night. Such rituals enhance the sense that the shows ended with converts howling in symbolic identifica all is interconnected and sacred. tion with the wild and wolves. An ecowarrior dance held at Earth First! wilderness gather ings, described in the Earth First! journal, included "pounding Thinking Like Mountains drums, naked neanderthals and wild creatures. An industrial machine was [symbolically] stopped in its tracks by monkey- One of the central myths of the emerging Earth First! tradition wrench-waving children. Nearly everyone joined in the primal has been borrowed from Aldo Leopold's 1949 'Thinking like a celebration of wild nature." Commenting on the scattering of Mountain' essay. He begins by suggesting that perhaps moun the warriors after the gathering, the author of the report exclaimed, tains have knowledge superior to ours. Then he describes an "the green fire is still running wild and free [as] we are once experience he once had of approaching a wolf he had shot, just again scattered across the country."8Thus, primal spirituality is "in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I combined with the idea that an authentic human life is lived realized then, and have known ever since, that there was wildly and spontaneously in defence of Mother Earth. something new to me in those eyes — something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then ... I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no The Hunting of the Bulldozer wolves would mean hunters' paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the moun Ecotage, of course, is not merely acted out symbolically in ritual tain agreed with such a view." dance: ecotage and civil disobedience are themselves ritual Among Earth First!ers, this story has evolved into a mythic actions. Some Earth First!ers recognize this. Leading Earth moral fable in which the wolf communicates with human First !er Dave Foreman, although sometimes claiming to be an beings, stressing inter-species kinship. (Animal-human com atheist,9 speaks nevertheless of ecotage as ritual worship: munication is a common theme in primal religious myth, and monkeywrenching is "a form of worship toward the earth. It's animal-human and human-animal transmogrification and really a very spiritual thing to go out and do."10 Religious rituals communion are a part of shamanism. Many Earth First!ers function to transform ordinary time into sacred time, even to report shamanistic experiences.) The wolf's "green fire" has alter consciousness itself.11 Earth First! rituals are no different. One Earth First!er ecstatically explains, "There's a kind of magic that happens when you do an action. You can be up all night, then alert all day. There's a sense of magic, calmness, Earth First! journal's response to Earth Day. 12 clarity. It's a life experience you cherish." John Davis, an editor of the Earth First! journal, suggested that tribal rites of passage should be developed that require direct action: "Rites of passage EARTH NIGHT 1990 were essential for the health of primal cultures ... so why not reinstitute initiation rites and other rituals in the form of ecodefense actions? Adolescents could earn their adulthood by successful completion of ritual hunts, as in days of yore, but for a new kind of quarry — bulldozers and their ilk."13 Ecofeminism provides another tributary to Earth First!'s nature-revering spirituality.14 Its ideas have been incorporated into Earth First! liturgy: many song-hymns heard at Earth First! gatherings satirize macho-hubris and male domination of nature and women, decry male massacres of witches and praise various pagan Earth Goddesses. Ecofeminism and primal spirituality have a close affinity with yet another tributary — bioregionalism — which is a countercultural movement with increasing connections to Earth First!. Bioregionalism envisions communities of creatures liv ing harmoniously and simply within the boundaries of distinct Go out and do something for the EARTH... ecosystems. It criticizes growth-based industrial societies pre ferring locally self-sufficient and ecologically sustainable at night. economies and decentralized political self-rule. Bioregionalists share Earth First!'s ecological consciousness regarding the 260 The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 Bombs, Accusations and Infiltrators In May 1990, a pipe bomb exploded beneath the seat of stormed a group of activists attempting to cut through a leading Earth Firstier Judi Bari's station wagon as she was power pylon in the Arizona desert. Earth First! co-founder driving through Oakland, California with fellow Earth Dave Foreman was arrested at his house the next morn Firstier Daryl Cherney. Bari suffered extensive tissue ing, waking up to find himself staring at an FBI agent's damage and a broken pelvis while Cherney's left eye was revolver. The group had been infiltrated in 1988 by an FBI injured by flying debris. agent, Mike Fain, posing as a carpenter. The police and the FBI almost immediately blamed Bari The "Arizona Five" recently agreed to a plea bargain, and Cherney themselves for the bomb, claiming that it had admitting to assorted charges related to property destruc accidentally exploded while being carried to an unknown tion, while charges of a conspiracy to sabotage nuclear location. For weeks after the bombing the FBI and police facility power lines were dismissed. Mark Davis received a released information purporting to incriminate Bari and six-year jail sentence and a $20,000 fine for malicious Cherney in the bombing. destruction of property while Peg Millet, Mark Baker and However when the case came to court it collapsed and Use Asplund were convicted of lesser accessory crimes. Bari and Cherney were set free. Within days, Greenpeace Foreman was convicted of conspiracy to commit property had hired a private investigator to search for the real damage. In an unusual plea-bargain, probably designed to culprits — suspected by many in the environmental shut him up, his sentencing was postponed until the end of movement as being linked to the timber industry. a five-year probationary period, when the charge could be A year before the car bombing the extent of FBI interest reduced to a misdemeanor. in Earth First! became apparent when 50 FBI agents intrinsic value and sacred interconnection of all life.15 The earth- So while bioregionalism focuses on developing models for spirituality of bioregionalists parallels the primal spirituality the future, to many within Earth FirstJ's mainstream, prominent among Earth First !ers. bioregionalism will not flourish without the catalyst of a prior Earth First!ers have a natural affinity for bioregionalism. eco-collapse. Thus, while praising its promise, Foreman has Dave Foreman even suggested that bioregionalism was one criticized the practice of most bioregionalists for becoming term for what Earth First! was seeking: "the future primitive". "mired in its composting toilets, organic gardens, handcrafts, He added that Earth First! could be the bioregional militia: as recycling," and so on. Although, he agrees, "these . . . are bioregionalists inhabit a place and become that place, they should important . . . bioregionalism is more than technique, it is defend it with Earth First!'s militant tactics.16 resacralization [of Earth] and self-defense^}^ Anticipating Ecocollapse All Aboard the Woo Woo Choo Choo Before bioregionalism can flourish, however, many Earth Stopping here would leave a misleading portrait. Certainly First !ers believe that industrial society must first collapse under biocentric and evolutionary premises, primal spirituality, east its own ecologically unsustainable weight. The theory that ern religions and a panoply of other spiritual tributaries contribute society is creating an ecological catastrophe containing the to Earth FirstTs worldview. Certainly Earth First!ers often seeds of its own destruction introduces another key part of Earth distrust reason, deriving their fundamental premises from First !'s mythic structure: its apocalyptic eschatology. After great intuitions and feelings: their love for wild, sacred places, and suffering, if enough of the genetic stock of the planet survives, their corresponding rage at the destruction of such places. evolution will resume its natural course. If human beings also Certainly the tradition has evolved by appropriating and creat survive, they will have the opportunity to re-establish tribal ing a fascinating variety of myths, symbols, and rituals. But ways of living, such as bioregionalism, that are compatible with reason is not abandoned: ecological science and political analysis the evolutionary future. Edward Abbey, whose novel The is essential to Earth First! praxis. Many within the movement Monkeywrench Gang helped forge the movement, provides a worry about excessive preoccupation with spirituality, with typical example of Earth First! eschatology: what they Call "woo woo". John Davis, himself responsible for much discussion of spirituality and ritual, cautions: "Whether [industrial society is] called capitalism or com munism makes little difference . . . .[both] destroy nature "Spiritual approaches to the planet seem to be of growing and themselves... I predict that the military-industrial state concern ... The last issue of the Journal reflects this trend. will disappear from the surface of the Earth within 50 years. We ran many articles on sacred sites, rituals, and such, but That belief is the basis of my inherent optimism, the source very few articles pertaining to specific wild lands. (Almost of my hope for the coming restoration of higher civilization: we replaced 'No Compromise in Defense of Mother Earth' scattered human populations modest in number that live by on the masthead with 'All Aboard the Woo Woo Choo fishing, hunting, food-gathering, small-scale farming and Choo'.) . . . Sacred sites, ritual, and matters of personal ranching, that assemble once a year in the ruins of abandoned growth are important. . . However, Earth First! may lose cities for great festivals of moral, spiritual, artistic and effectiveness if it promotes these matters while neglecting intellectual renewal — a people for whom the wilderness is the time-worn practices of presenting wilderness proposals not a playground but their natural and native home."17 . . . and other such largely left-brain activity."19 The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 261 Earth First! co-founder, Mike Roselle (foreground) and other activists blockade a bulldozer in Siskiyou National Forest, Oregon. The "Holies" faction, which is mainly based in Oregon and California, favour civil disobedience over monkey- wrenching. The ecological sciences provide the first wave of Earth First!'s left-brain activity. "We're in a war," Foreman says bluntly, "the war of industrial civilization against the natural world. If you look at what the leading scientists are telling us, we could lose one- strategy was to provide some real extremists and thereby third of all species in the next 40 years . . . We're in one of the strengthen the hand of the mainstream environmental groups, greatest extinction episodes in three-and-a-half billion years of making them appear more moderate.24 Furthermore, they evolution."20 Such analyses, along with the affective/spiritual wanted to promote Deep Ecology — which they knew did not sense of the intrinsic worth of intact ecosystems, converge in a animate most mainstream environmentalists — and shift envi radical critique of both industrial society and human breeding. ronmental debates from protecting scenic places to preserving Not only do we need bioregional tribalism as a new social biodiversity.25 In their judgment, this requires the protection and organizing principle, but commitment to negative population restoration of vast areas to their natural state.26 Mainstream groups growth is a moral "litmus test" for inclusion within the tribe.21 rarely proposed restoration at all, and never on a large scale. The Journal is full of exhortations to breed less, and sometimes Beyond the effort to provide by their presence a trump card runs apparently serious letters advocating genocidal solutions to mainstream environmentalists, Earth First !ers began to ex to overpopulation. (At one gathering, a woman asked me, "How periment with civil disobedience and monkeywrenching in a can you possibly justify having two children?" Conversation is concerted strategy to protect biodiversity and raise awareness. a powerful means of enforcing procreative orthodoxy within the Civil disobedience, and especially the destruction of equipment movement.) The basic procreative ethics is well summarized by used to destroy habitat, dramatically posed the moral premise of Chim Blea: "The impact of each of our middle-class babies is the movement: biodiversity is more important than the super equivalent to that of 40 in the Third World — more old-growth fluous desires and property of greedy human beings. timber clearcut, increased grazing pressures on marginal grasslands, another irrigation project drowning a desert . . . Think before you have that baby. One more to cause suffering. Breaking the Law One more to suffer. Have your tubal ligation, your vasectomy now."22 Some have even humorously proposed vasectomy ta When people break the law for reasons of conscience, particu bles for Earth First! wilderness gatherings. larly in formally democratic societies, they feel compelled to Political analysis provides the second critical wave of Earth justify morally their actions. The major justifications advanced Firstl's left-brain activity. The founders of Earth First! were by Earth First!ers could be titled "it's really that bad": repre disgruntled conservationists, who were licking their wounds sentative democracy is a sham, controlled as it is by the true after losing an important legislative battle over the Federal criminals — corporate devils and government co-conspirators Government's 1980 Roadless Area Review and Evaluation — who rape the land with impunity.27 "Wilderness is our true process. The lobbyists concluded that the government had home" and extra-legal direct action is justified as self-defense.28 protected only "rocks and ice", rather than the areas most Meanwhile, environmental groups have failed to protect important to the preservation of biodiversity.23 What struck them biodiversity, largely because they share the anthropocentric and afterwards was that they had been reasonable and moderate, industrial premises of mainstream culture. Worse still, the backing up their proposals with ecological science, while the mainstream environmental movement has been overrun by opponents acted like lunatics, casting the debate in terms of well-paid bureaucrats and attorneys less concerned about Earth "sacred" values such as private property and the "American way than their careers. The mainstream has been co-opted. Wilderness of life". Moreover, despite their moderation, they were repeat has been sold-out.29 edly and absurdly accused of being "environmental extremists". Civil disobedience was originally justified as a stalling tac So, they concluded, as reasonableness often fails, perhaps Earth tic: "in the [long-term] hope that an enlightened citizenry will needed a group of wild-eyed, unreasonable fanatics. The overall one day appreciate more fully the need for the conservation of 262 The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 natural resources";30 in the short-term hope of providing time to Earth) Wilders believe that tying environmental protection to win legislative victories or to file lawsuits ("paper monkey- other issues — such as social justice, anti-imperialism or work wrenching"). Ecotage was also conceived of as a means to stall ers rights — alienates many potential wilderness sympathizers. or prevent the destruction of wild places — again, to try to save They also often consider themselves true patriots, trying to some biotic diversity short-term. "When the floundering beast," preserve the sacred landscape of America. Sometimes they fly Howie Wolke's metaphor for industrial society, "finally, mer the US flag, not out of nationalism (the system being morally cifully chokes in its own dung pile, there'll at least be some bankrupt), but because they believe the flag can also symbolize wilderness remaining as a seed bed for planet-wide recovery. the love of the land, which fits well with their overall moral Maybe even some Griz;... some wild humans;... some hope sentiments. Moreover, as Foreman once told me, they did not . . . maybe even some human wisdom."31 want to leave the power of that symbol purely in the hands of Just as important a rationale for ecotage is the idea that land-rapers like Ronald Reagan and James Watt (Reagan's monkeywrenching can actually prevent destructive activity notorious Secretary of the Interior). already underway — driving the worst Earth destroyers right Opposite the Wilders is the group I call the "Holies" — the out of business — erasing their profits by slowing their work and Bari, Cherney, Roselle faction — who insist that a "holistic" destroying their tools.32 Early successes with tree spiking — perspective is needed; one has to examine how threats to some activists put nails into trees and thereby prevented some biodiversity are related to other social issues. (The "Holies" timber sales — convinced many Earth First !ers that ecotage label is also appropriate, because the people in this faction tend could be effective.33 toward more overtly spiritual expression.) Holies argue that Others within the movement, however, doubt the effective activism based on the separation of ecological and social issues ness of ecotage. Disagreements about monkeywrenching led to will ultimately fail because industrial society destroys bio some early disaffections from the movement, and have been part diversity — not only commercial incursions into biologically of the tensions leading to the first major schism in the movement rich wilderness areas.36 According to Judi Bari, Deep Ecology since it was founded in 1980. stresses interrelationships, so you cannot separate wilderness from the society around it: the strategy of focusing on wilder ness set-asides "contradicts the very theory of biocentrism".37 The Earth First! Schism Bari continues that environmental and class exploitation have to be fought together: "Our society has been built on the exploita Some observers, such as Michael Parfit, see tensions in the tion of both the lower classes and the earth."3* The primary movement between "pragmatic" and "spiritual" factions.34 Al dispute, then, is over the relative priority Earth First! should though some are uncomfortable with the spirituality in the place on social issues which may not at first glance appear as movement, the overwhelming majority respect most forms of environmental issues.39 Earth spirituality. We have already noted Foreman's spiritual side, but Parfit would place him among the alleged pragmatists. Parfit may have been misled by Foreman's comment that "the GLOBAL woo woo stuff ... is beyond me." But he does not adequately ENVIRONMENT, 35 recognize that Foreman then added "but the diversity is good". RESEARCH Nevertheless, not all forms of Earth spirituality are orthodox. CENTRE "New Age" spirituality is often derided by Earth First!ers for its IMPERIAL COLLEGE anthropocentrism and overly optimistic view about the role of humans in creating, through technology, a new golden age. INSTITUTIONS AND SUSTAINABLE Dave Foreman and Christopher Manes, and quite a few DEVELOPMENT: important Earth First! activists, recently disassociated themselves MEETING THE CHALLENGE from the movement. In some of their hyperbole, they have inaccurately claimed that the competing faction — located John Gordon and Caroline Fraser mostly in California and Oregon — was abdicating biocentrism. This report explores the crucial but hitherto neglected institutional Meanwhile, the California/Oregon faction, led by Judi Bari, dimension of achieving sustainable development and comes up Darry 1 Cherney and Mike Roselle (a movement co-founder who with a number of radical proposals for changes in Whitehall, non recently became an employee of Greenpeace), in turn charged governmental organisations in the UK, the EC and the UN system. in exaggerated tones that the Foreman faction was misan Commissioned by the UNEP-UK National Committee as part of the thropic, racist and elitist, ignoring social justice issues intrinsi supplementary UK contribution to the UNCED process, the report cally related to biocentric concerns. It is possible, however, to follows a series of seminars promoted by GERC and the United characterize these disputes in a way that is more accurate and Nations Association-UK, involving representatives from a wide fair to all parties than the pictures painted by those in the heat of range of institutions. verbal battle. In my judgment, the schism is grounded more in Please send me copy/copies of the report disagreements about strategy and tactics than in fundamental Cost: EC £6.50 (inc p&p) Outside EC £8.00 (inc p&p) moral differences: both factions remain biocentric. (For example, Name up until now, the portrait I have been painting generally reflects Organisation both factions.) Address I call the Foreman/Manes faction the "Wilders", because they fought to keep Earth First! 's focus exclusively on wilder I enclose a cheque for £ Please make cheques payable ness, and thereby, in their minds, on biodiversity and biocentrism. to IMPERIAL COLLEGE and send together with this form to: GERC/ (The new journal they began publishing in 1991 is called Wild UNA, GERC, 56 Queens Gate, London, SW7 5JR. The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 263 Tactical Disagreements tions and less hostile to "New Age" beliefs than the Wilders). In short, they have not despaired completely of the potential for A related battle is over whether civil disobedience or ecotage is voluntary reform by the human species. the most effective tactic. This debate is related to another Wilders tend to be less optimistic than Holies about the dispute about the ultimate goal of direct action: to create a mass human species. Wilders deride what they claim is humanism movement, or simply to thwart commercial incursions into among Holies-types — a charge deeply resented by Holies such biologically sensitive areas. as Judy Bari — who points out that she and others have risked The Holies want the strategic priority to be the building of a their own lives and been injured in their efforts to save the mass movement to stop wilderness destruction, and ultimately, forest.45 Some Wilders are unapologetically misanthropic.46 to supplant industrial lifestyles altogether. They believe that Bari calls Foreman and others macho individualists and elitists, civil disobedience, with its focus on arousing the conscience of while others suggest that they are even fascistic.47 Wilders have the community, is the best mass movement strategy. While either despaired of reform, or believe any reform will be insuf many of the Holies have monkeywrenched, and most do not ficient.48 They tend to leave long-term hope to Mother Earth condemn it across the board, they do not think it should be herself. In their more apocalyptic view, ecocollapse is probably emphasized. Some think it usually does more harm than good. inevitable — but if they do their part in thwarting industrial Holies have completely rejected tree-spiking, fearing loggers destruction, this may be not be bad. Ecocollapse may be the could be hurt, irreparably harming their efforts to organize a means Mother Earth will use in her self-defence — a way she mass movement. Roselle complains that "Foreman doesn't realize we can accomplish more these days with civil disobedience than monkey wrenching."40 Judi Bari adds, "I don't think people sneaking around in the woods Forest &Conservation History pouring sand in gasoline tanks on bulldozers Alice E. Ingerson, Editor are going to bring about the level of pressure David O. Percy, Associate Editor needed . . . The only thing that brings about change is the fear of [the] loss of social control."41 To save the Earth, she believes, we Forest and Conservation History offers a long-term are going to have to expand beyond the white perspective on the conservation of natural resources middle and upper classes, because they are and the entire range of human interactions with the ones "who most benefit from the dest 42 forests. ruction of the Earth." Wilders, on the other hand, prefer monkeywrenching to civil disobedience, Articles hoping to thwart industrial society and pre Hotel Chains in the Wilderness: Arthur Carhart's serve as much biodiversity and wilderness as 1922 Proposal for the Quetico-Superior / David possible — at least until the ecological col Backes lapse arrives ushering in new, more humble ways of living. They generally agree that civil disobedience is an overrated tactic. Wilders Black Youth in the Program of the Civilian Conser assert that civil disobedience is often imprac vation Corps in California, 1933-1942: An Ambiva tical because Earth First!ers are usually poor lent Legacy / Olen Cole, Jr. and cannot afford to be arrested and fined. This argument was strengthened when several activists lost a lawsuit filed against them for Boards, Barrels, and Boxhooks: The Economics of blockading a logging operation — the logging Downeast Lumber in Cuba, 1855-60 / David company was awarded $58,000 in compen Demeritt satory and punitive damages.43 Successful monkeywrenching does not entail such risks and costs, Foreman argues, and can be "ex Quarterly tremely effective".44 Subscription prices: $35 institutions ($40 member ship includes newsletter). Individual subscriptions available only through membership in the Forest Eschatological Differences History Society, which begins at $25. Individual inquiries will be forwarded to the Society. I believe the fundamental root of the schism I have been describing can be traced to small but significant differences in beliefs about Duke University Press human nature and eschatology. Holies are Journals Division, 6697 College Station more optimistic than Wilders that human Durham, North Carolina 27708 beings can be converted to biocentrism and can change their lifestyles. (They tend to be more influenced by "human potential" no- 264 The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 can remove the human industrial cancer, and create the condi tions people need to develop appropriate ways of living.49 Finally, the schism is also related to disagreements about the proper level of commitment to non-violence. When asked at a gathering, "What are the ethics of monkey wrenching?", Earth Firstlers voiced two versions: First, "Don't hurt anybody. Don't get caught. If you get caught, don't fink." The second version reversed the priority: "Don't get caught. Don't hurt anybody. If you get caught, don't fink." These two slogans reflect some of the tensions in the movement: both factions see themselves as non-violent, but Holies tend to place a premium on this. Wilders fear that non-violence is based on a pacifist humanism at odds with nature itself and biocentrism. Human beings are animals, and there may be times when their survival requires an emo tional and adrenaline-fueled response. It may be, one corpo- rately-written article suggests, that under certain circumstances violence may be more deeply non-violent in the long-run — violence may be necessary to cut off "the gangrene now infest ing" Earth.50 Despite these tensions and the recent schism, there is far more that unites than divides these radical environmentalists. They are all animated by a deeply spiritual biocentrism, they share or respect the plural myths, symbols and rituals of the emerging Deep Ecology worldview as well as a cynicism about the system's willingness or ability to respond to the ecological catastrophe descending upon us, and they are committed to extra-legal direct action to save as much of the genetic stock of the planet as possible. Both Holies and Wilders tend to claim success for their preferred tactics, believing that all things considered, their tactics provide the most hope. On the other hand, we have seen that some believe that ecotage does more harm than good. To this, T.O. Hellenbach responds: The Prospects for Radical Environmentalism "The charge that monkeywrenching alienates public opin ion stems from an incomplete understanding of propaganda Some Earth Firstlers hope for a moral paradigm shift from and history. Scientific studies of propaganda and the press anthropocentrism to biocentrism, from a stewardship ethic to an show that the vast majority of the public remembers the ethic of reverence for the land. Some even hope this shift will news only in vaguest outline . . . Basic concepts like make the 1990s "make the '60s look like the '50s." Assessing 'opposition to logging' are all that are retained. History the actual impact of and prospects for such movements, how informs us that direct action engenders as much support as ever, is a difficult empirical task. Earth First! is certainly opposition... The majority of the public floats noncommit- making itself increasingly felt. One indication of this is the FBI tally between the conflicting forces."53 infiltration of the movement. Another comes from reports about My speculation is that radical environmentalism does promote damage done by "ecoteurs", which has led some commercial its objectives by extending the range of the debate, thereby interests to increase security and in some cases hire their own shifting the middle of public opinion closer to the positions of 51 infiltrators to keep tabs on radical environmentalists. environmentalists than they would otherwise be. If this is It would be premature to evaluate definitively the success of correct, the impact of Earth First! and its derivatives will these groups, and of course, an evaluation would depend on the increase as these groups grow in number and intensify their standard one applies. Dave Foreman says that saving one tree, resistance. There will be, of course, a negative reaction. But in one acre of grizzly bear or wolf habitat, is an accomplishment.52 general, concrete opposition to radical groups comes from Those hoping to create a mass movement have set a higher people already hostile to environmentalists' concerns. This standard of success, but they also can point to small victories would not produce a shift in public opinion against environmen that seem to have been won through direct action. There is tal concern. widespread agreement that Earth First!ers have brought public More importantly, the growth of biocentric ethics in general, exposure and debate to many previously ignored environmental and of this movement in particular, suggests that both will have issues. Moreover, many among the mainstream groups ac an increasing impact within North America. In ten years the knowledge that their hand is strengthened by the presence of the Earth First! journal gained about 15,000 regular readers. Nu unreasonable Earth First!. Mainstream environmentalists in merous smaller newsletters have sprung up. And Earth First!'s creasingly, but quietly, inform Earth First !ers of opportunities numbers are dwarfed by other less militant sister groups, includ for their unique form of activism. An American Indian tribal ing Greenpeace and those promoting animal liberation. Radical chairman once told me that, although he could not say this environmental groups are also emerging abroad — indeed — publicly, he was glad about an Earth First! campaign to disrupt the boldest acts of ecotage have occurred outside the United a commercial activity threatening his reservation. States.54 As the environmental costs of industrial growth inten- The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 265 sify, so will green rage — indeed, this rage has only begun to 18. Foreman, op. cit. 16, emphasis added. 19. Davis, J. 'Ramblings', Earth First! 10, 1, 1 Nov., 1989. emerge. Depending on one's perspective, the militancy of Earth 20. Gabriel, T. 'If a Tree Falls in the Forest, They Hear It', The New York Times First! provides either hope, or an ominous portent of things to Magazine, Section 6, 4 Nov., 1990. come. 21. Foreman, D. 'Whither Earth First!?', Earth First! 7, 1, 1 Nov., 1987. 22. Blea, C. 'The Question of Babies', Earth First! 6, 7, 1 Aug., 1986; cf. McCormick, B. 'Towards an Integrated Approach to Population and Justice', Earth First! 6, 7, 1 Aug., 1986. 23. Foreman, D. in Fayhee, J.M. 'Earth First! and Foremost: Environmental Preliminary versions of this paper were presented to the fifth annual Saviors or Ecological Terrorists?', Backpacker 16, 5, September, 1988. Casassa Conference on 'Ecological Prospects: Theory and Practice', 24. Manes, op. cit. 2, pp.187, 201. 25. Fayhee, op. cit. 23. at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, March 16, 1991, 26. E.g. Say en, J. 'Taking Steps Toward a Restoration Ethic', Earth First! 9, 5, 1 and to a faculty seminar at Princeton University's Center for Energy May, 1989; Say en, J. 'Thoughts on an Evolutionary Ethic', Earth First! 9, 6, and Environmental Studies, August 14, 1991. The helpful comments 21 June, 1989. on this paper from conference participants are gratefully 27. Typical of such sentiments is Edward Abbey's 'Foreward!' to Foreman, D. acknowledged, especially those of J. Baird Callicott, Warwick Fox, and Haywood, B. (eds.) Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching, 2nd. ed., Ned Ludd Books, Tucson, 1987. "Representative democracy in the United Michael P. Cohen, Daniel Deudney and Matthew Glass. States has broken down. Our legislators do not represent those who elected them but rather the minority who finance their political campaigns and who control the organs of communication — the Tee Vee, the newspapers, the billboards, the radio — that have made politics a game for the rich only. Notes and References Representative government in the USA represents money not people and therefore has forfeited our allegiance and moral support. We owe it nothing but the taxation it extorts from us under threats of seizure of property, or 1. Chase, A. Playing God in Yellowstone: The Destruction of America's First prison, or in some cases already, when resisted, a sudden and violent death by National Park, Atlantic Monthly Press, Boston; White, L., Jr. 'The Historical gunfire." George Wuerthner, on the other hand, redefines the criminal: "the Roots of our Ecologic Crisis', Science 155, 1967, pp. 1203-1207. real criminals [are] the logging criminals and their lackeys, the Forest 2. Manes, C. Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Service" ('Tree-Spiking and Moral Maturity', Earth First! 5, 7, 1 Aug., 1985.) Civilization, Little Brown and Co., Boston, London and Toronto, 1990. For an 28. Foreman and Haywood, ibid. excellent example of the role of the evolutionary cosmogony in Deep Ecology 29. Manes, op. cit. 2, pp.45-65. see Seed, J., Macy, J., Fleming, P. and Naess, A. (eds.) Thinking Like a 30. Wuerthner, op. cit. 27. Mountain: Towards a Council of All Beings, New Society Publishers, 31. Wolke, H. 'Thoughtful Radicalism', Earth First! 10, 2, 21 Dec, 1989. Philadelphia, 1988. 32. Hellenbach, T.O. 'The Future of Monkeywrenching' in Foreman and 3 Manes, op. cit. 2, p. 149. Haywood, op. cit. 27. 4. Porterfield, A. 'American Indian Spirituality as a Countercultural Movement', 33. Foreman and Haywood, op. cit. 27, p.26 see also pp.27, 32-33. in Christopher Vecsey (ed.) Religion in Native North America, University of 34. Parfit, op. cit 12. Idaho Press, 1990, p. 152. 35. Ibid. Elsewhere, Foreman says that central to Earth First! is "a refusal to 5. Ibid, p. 154. Many of the prominent leaders seem to have some connection to accept rationality as the only way of thinking. There is room for diversity American Indian peoples or myths. Dave Foreman spent two years at a Zuni within Earth First! on matters spiritual, and nowhere is tolerance for diversity Pueblo. After her bombing, Indians at Big Mountain held healing ceremonies more necessary" (Foreman, op. cit. 21). for Judi Bari, which she claims had miraculous effects, and some trace their 36. Geniella, M. 'Leadership Dispute Splits Earth First!', Santa Rosa Press militant vocations to religious visions guided by Indian shamans (Dick, R. Democrat, 12 Aug., 1990. 'The Monkeywrenchers', Amicus Journal 9, 4, 1987). 37. Keyser, C. 'Judi's World', Express (The East Bay's Free Weekly), 1 February, 6. Manes, C. 'On Becoming Homo Ludens\ Earth First! 9, 1, 1 Nov., 1988; 1991. Manes, op. cit. 2; Devall, B. and Sessions, G. Deep Ecology: Living as if 38. Ibid. Nature Mattered, Peregrine Smith, Salt Lake City, 1985, p.96; Foreman, D. 39. Recently, Dave Foreman responded to such criticisms, admitting that he has 'Becoming the Forest in Defense of Itself, in Christopher and Judith Plant not said enough about his concern for "victims of multinational imperialism (eds.) Turtle Talk: Voices for a Sustainable Future, New Society, Santa Cruz, around the world" and other typically left-wing issues. "One problem I've had CA, p.61. For qualifying views, see Wuerthner, G. 'An Ecological View of the in getting the fullness of my message out comes from my impatience at seeing Indian', Earth First! 7, 7, 1 Aug., 1987; Devall, B. 'Primal Peoples and Deep eco-catastrophe going on all around me while so many of those on the left Ecology', Earth First! 7, 7, 1 Aug., 1987; Abbey, E. The Monkeywrench who are always talking about social justice don't seem to even see the Gang, Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1975. problem or care about species." (Bookchin and Foreman, op. cit. 9). 7. Seed et al., op. cit. 2. 40. Talbot, S. 'Earth First! What Next?', Mother Jones, Nov./Dec, 1990. 8. Circles, Loose Hip 'Riotous Rendezvous Remembered', Earth First! 10, 7, 41. Mendocino Environmental Center, Forest Practices, the Timber Industry, and 1989. the North Coast (Redwood Summer informational Packet). 106 W. Standley, 9. Bookchin, M. and Foreman, D. 'Defending the Earth and Burying the Ukiah, CA 95482. Hatchet', Whole Earth Review, Winter, 1990. 42. Keyser, op. cit. 37. 10. Bando, D. 'Ecoterrorism: The Dangerous Fringe of the Environment 43. Manes, op. cit. 2, p.206; Scarce, op. cit. 24, pp.69-70. Movement', Heritage Foundation Backgrounder 764, Heritage Foundation, 44. Foreman and Haywood, op. cit. 27, p.26. Washington, 1990, p.4; see also Foote, J. 'Trying to Take Back the Planet: 45. Bari, J. 'The Earth First! Divorce', in Mendocino Environmental Center, op. Radical Environmentalists are Honing their Militant Tactics and Gaining cit. 41. Followers', Newsweek, 5 February, 1990. Foreman has been known to 46. Blea, op. cit. 22; Miss Ann Thropy (pseud for Christopher Manes) 'Population describe his religion as Zuni or "twisted" Zen Buddhism. and Aids', Earth First! 32, 1 May, 1987; Manes, C. 'Why I Am a Misan 11. Seed et al., op. cit. 2, pp. 10-12, 16, 91; Snyder, G. The Old Ways, City Lights, thrope', Earth First! 11, 2, 21 Dec, 1990. San Francisco, 1977. 47. Keyser, op. cit. 37; Alien Nation, '"Dangerous" Tendencies in Earth First!?', 12. Parfit, M. 'Earth Firstlers wield a mean monkey wrench', Smithsonian 21, 1, Earth First! 8, 1, 1 Nov., 1987. 1990. 48. Manes, op. cit. 2, p. 170. 13. Davis, J. 'A View of the Vortex', Earth First! 9, 1, 1 Nov., 1988. 49.1 am trying to characterize the two major types here — as sociologists often 14. Plant, J. (ed.) Healing the Wounds: The Promise of Ecofeminism, New do — in an attempt to clarify complex phenomena. Exceptions and overlaps Society, Santa Cruz, 1990; Diamond, I. and Orenstein, G.F. Reweaving the between these two types within Earth First! activists (present and former) World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism, Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, could no doubt be found. 1990; Scarce, R. Eco-Warriors: Understanding the Radical Environmental 50. Bats in the Rafters Affinity Group, 'Non-Violent Direct Action Training: Our Movement, Nobel, Chicago, 1990, p. 39. Tactic vs. their Inferiority of Pacifism', Earth First! 9, 7, 1 Aug. 1989. 15. Andruss, V., Plant, C, Plant, J. and Wright, E. Home: A Bioregional Reader, Foreman is ambivalent about civil disobedience because it comes largely out New Society, Santa Cruz, 1990; Plant and Plant, op. cit. 6; Haenke, D. of a Christian tradition often more concerned with personal transformation and 'Bioregionalism and Earth First!', Earth First! 7, 2, 21 Dec, 1986; Naess, A. purity than with results. He worries, however, that concern for results can lead 'Deep Ecology and Life Style', Earth First! 5,1, 1 Aug., 1985. to an "attitude where the ends justify the means" (op. cit. 6). 16. Foreman, D. 'Reinhabitation, Biocentrism and Self Defense', Earth First! 7, 51. Manes, op. cit. 2, p.9 see also pp.3-22. 7, 1 Aug., 1987. 52. Foreman, op. cit. 6, p.65. 17. Abbey, E. *A Response to Smookler on Anarchy', Earth First! 6, 7, 1 Aug., 53. Hellenbach, op. cit. 32, p.22. Hellenbach does not give his scientific studies. 1986; Manes, op. cit. 2, p.241. 54. Scarce, op. cit. 14, pp.139-162. 266 The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 waiting for Appropriate Technology to wipe out subsistence completely". Less technical is Ian Lee' s' Not Guilty', The IAEA's essential reading for anyone defending Chernobyl Report themselves in court; or Rosalind Brack- enbury's beautiful account of a Greenham Common demonstration. The selection ends with — what else? — Jean Giono's THE RADIOLOGICAL CONSE 'The Man Who Planted Trees', surely the QUENCES IN THE USSR OF THE most inspiring story of the 20th century. CHERNOBYL ACCIDENT: Assess And there is plenty more. True, some ment of Health and Environmental of it is waffle — sub-editors at Resurgence Effects and Evaluation of Protective have never been noted for their ruthless- Measures, International Atomic Books ness. But the whole represents a rich and Energy Agency, Vienna, 1991. coherent body of thought, that is becoming increasingly influential as it achieves maturity. The IAEA's report on the Chernobyl What's missing? Humour, for a start. disaster has caused a furore. It has been The Deep Green Not that they are po-faced at Resurgence; severely criticized for being scientifically how could they be, with the disarmingly flawed and politically motivated and has, Establishment witty Sue Limb contributing these days? together with the revelations over the But she is not represented. Only Anne Iraqi nuclear programme, seriously, per Herbert's streetwise retelling of Jonah haps terminally, damaged the already tar and the Ninevites tries to make us laugh; nished reputation of the IAEA. THE BEST OF RESURGENCE, and at times she tries a little too hard. According to the IAEA report, expo edited by John Button, Green Books, Anger too. Reflective and Gandhian in sure to radiation released by the explo Bideford, Devon, £11.95 (pb), 383pp. tone, Resurgence prefers not to raise its sion of the Chernobyl reactor has not ISBN 1- 870098-27-7 fists. The anthology contains no con produced any measurable physical health Resurgence: 25 years ago an obscure temporaneous denunciation of the Falk- effects on the local population. No sig magazine, with an intimidatingly dense lands War; only a touching account of a nificant thyroid abnormalities due to ra type-set; today, against all odds, a re conciliatory workshop held in Argentina diation from the accident were discov spectable almost glossy mouthpiece of three years later. ered; nor were significant haematological the deep green establishment. Most conspicuously absent of all, is a or other effects on the immune system; To celebrate its quarter-centenary, great swathe of English life and culture. nor were significant increases in cancers, Resurgence has published this anthology; There are articles aplenty on life in genetic effects, cataracts or any other of an ideal opportunity, one might think, to Ladakh, or the aspirations of Hopi Indi the illnesses generally attributed to expo discover what the original editors were ans. But what of single mums in Rochdale, sure to ionizing radiation. The study propagating back in the 1960s. Alas, no. or motorbike mechanics in Croydon? If concludes that the only health effects of Of the 60 articles printed, only two pre we are to establish a sane zero-growth the Chernobyl accident are psychologi date 1973, the year when Satish Kumar, economy in Britain, these people, the cal, such as stress — a startling conclusion, its present editor, took Resurgence over majority, will have to be convinced and fiercely challenged by, among others, the from its founder, John Papworth; the book satisfied. Yet as far as this anthology is Ukrainian health authorities. must surely be the poorer for this omission. concerned, they hardly exist. The maga Although large areas in Byelorussia, Still, there is plenty worth reading. zine's interest in the British social fabric Russia, and the Ukraine were contami Admittedly, some articles — Schu rarely extends beyond isolated villages at nated with radioactivity from Chernobyl, macher's 'Buddhist Economics', an early the extremities of the country; and holistic exposing many hundreds of thousands of Animal Lib manifesto from Peter Singer therapy conferences in rural mansions. people to significant doses of radiation, — expound ideas now so familiar that It is sad that after 25 years there is still the independent field studies carried out their interest is mainly historical. But no broad-spectrum British radical/envi by the International Chernobyl Project there is much that remains challenging. ronmental magazine selling in newsa were rushed through in two months — far Leopold Kohr, for example, writing in gents alongside The Economist and The too short a time for an adequate study. 1966, explains how increasing industrial Spectator. Not that Resurgence is aiming The areas covered by the study were consumption leads inexorably to lower to fill this slot — but for the time being it among those designated by the Soviet living standards. Twenty years later, Anil is the closest we have to such a paper. It government as contaminated by more than Agarwal explores a similar theme in the is not entirely my cup of tea; but I am a five curies per square kilometre of cae Third World, where "a concept like Gross subscriber, and I am more than grateful sium-137. A total area of about 25,000 Nature Product ... is many times more that it exists. Long may it continue. square kilometres was involved. However, important than the conventional Gross the government-designated areas are be National Product". Valentina Borremans Simon Fairlie lieved to considerably underestimate the makes fascinating observations about contaminated regions in the three repub gender-specific tools, and wonders Simon Fairlie is a freelance writer and lics. The study should have covered a whether "economic growth has been stonemason based in Salisbury, Wiltshire. much larger area. The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 267 The number of people in the area ex began nearly two days after the reactor worldwide as a result of Chernobyl. These amined by the Project was too small for exploded. In the meantime, life went on estimates suggest that cancer deaths adequate statistical analysis (the sample as if nothing had happened. Children within the Soviet Union due to exposure contained only 1,700 people from the played as usual in the open air. Neverthe to radiation from the Chernobyl accident contaminated and control areas); there less, the IAEA report chose not to com are likely to be between 100,000 and was no complete census of the health ment on the lack of protective measures 200,000. effects on people in contaminated and taken by the Soviet authorities. It is not surprising that excess cancers comparable uncontaminated areas; the According to figures given at a recent caused by Chernobyl have not yet been areas in which people in the control groups international scientific symposium on the discovered. It can take a long time, even lived may have been contaminated by the effects of Chernobyl held in Kiev, the decades, for these cancers to appear. The accident; and hot-spots, areas of excep thyroids of about 13,000 children and long-term health effects of radiation are tionally high contamination, were not 8,000 adults received dangerously high by far the most important. Those caused investigated. doses of radiation. Of the 70,000 children by the Chernobyl accident have yet to eventually evacuated, about 60 per cent appear in significant numbers. sustained damage to their immune sys Exposure to radiation can induce ge Reliance on Soviet Data tem, a condition which has been described netic effects which may damage the off as "Chernobyl AIDS". Baldness is re spring of exposed people for generations. Perhaps the most serious criticism of the ported to be increasingly frequent. One Crucial data on possible genetic effects International Chernobyl Project is that it clinic in Kiev reports that it treated 153 from Chernobyl radiation was ignored in relied almost entirely on data supplied by bald children in 1989, compared with 49 the IAEA report because it was described the Soviet government — hardly an ob in 1985. as "unreliable". This is a serious omis jective source. The data was supplied in About 135,000 people from the aban sion because genetic damage resulting the form of statistics in tabular form, doned towns of Pripyat, two kilometres from exposure to radiation of a large mainly as averages with no error bands from the power station, and Chernobyl population is the most worrying of all included. Very few raw data or detailed town, 20 kilometres away, will never radiation damage. The most recent stat contamination maps were submitted. return to their homes. Some 73,000 peo istics from the Ministry of Health in The report has also been heavily criti ple from Byelorussia and the Ukraine are Byelorussia report an 18 per cent increase cized for excluding the 600,000 "liquida currently being evacuated and a further in birth defects since 1986. tors" — the soldiers and miners drafted in 200,000 are slated for evacuation from to clean up the mess caused by the explo contaminated areas over the next two sion of the reactor — as well as people years. The IAEA report argues against International Collusion living within 30 kilometres of Chernobyl these evacuations because: "The adverse (the so-called exclusion zone), and peo health consequences of relocation should The Project was set up at the request of ple already evacuated or relocated. In be considered before any further reloca the Soviet government, an important other words, the people who received the tion takes place". But some independent Member-state of the IAEA. The Agency largest doses of radiation were left out of experts argue that the estimates of the may, therefore, have been unwilling to the study which was confined to about International Chernobyl Project and the diverge far from, or criticize, the official 825,000 people living beyond the exclu Soviet authorities of radiation doses re Soviet line about the effects of the sion zone. It should be noted that several ceived by people in the contaminated Chernobyl accident. A more cynical view million people live in areas near Cher areas seriously underestimate the expo is that the International Chernobyl Project nobyl where the level of radiation is above sures. is simply a cover-up for the nuclear in that recommended as the maximum per Some 72 per cent of the people in the dustry. Greenpeace, for example, com missible for populations. contaminated areas want to be evacuated. ments that: "The report clearly illustrates Ukrainian experts estimate that about This is so, according to the IAEA study, the collusion of the international commu 7,000 liquidators have died from radia because of stress and anxiety arising from nity with the cover-up of Chernobyl by tion exposure since the Chernobyl acci a lack of understanding of radiation. Soviet authorities". dent. According to official Soviet fig Be this as it may, the study does em ures, however, only two workers died in phasize that serious psychological prob the explosion and 29 fire-fighters died Cancer Deaths lems like stress are brought on by worry from radiation sickness within a few about the possible health effects of expo weeks. One hundred and thirty-seven Official estimates suggest that 40,000 sure to radiation. This evidence of wide liquidators were hospitalized and over people in the Soviet Union will eventu spread fear of radiation will bring little 300 suffered from radiation sickness. ally die from exposure to radiation as a comfort to the nuclear industry. Given the very high radiation exposures result of the Chernobyl nuclear accident The World Health Organization is involved, the Ukrainian figures are more and that a similar number will die outside planning a more rigorous study to deter believable than the official Soviet ones. the Soviet Union. Most will die prema mine the long-term health impacts of the turely from cancer. Chernobyl accident. Hopefully, it will be But independent estimates, taking into given enough resources to do a good job. Delayed Evacuation account the most recent studies of the We owe it to the victims of Chernobyl effects of exposure to low levels of rad that as much information as possible is The evacuation of people living even in iation, suggest that between 280,000 and discovered about the real effects of the areas of the most intense radiation only 500,000 people will die prematurely accident on human health and the envi- 268 The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 ronment. Then at least some good will bestos plant which also needed a dump book highly instructive for community come from the Chernobyl tragedy. for asbestos waste; chemical and phar campaigners and academic environmen maceutical factories associated with nox talists alike. Frank Barnaby ious fumes and water pollution; and the search — by both companies and the Stephen Yearley Frank Barnaby is former Director of the authorities — for a site for toxic waste Stockholm International Peace Research disposal. Stephen Yearley is a Reader in Sociology Institute. at Queen's University, Belfast. Although the authors' partiality some times infects their accounts and descrip tions (nearly all rivers "shimmer" and elderly residents appear almost uniformly wise and public spirited) their case stud Unwelcome Guests ies reveal the sociological and technical Putting Figures on complexity of many of the disputes. The stories reveal unexpected alliances and the Thought other political ironies. For example, some GUESTS OF THE NATION: People developments were intially opposed pri of Ireland Versus the Multinationals, marily by "blow-ins" — people from by Robert Allen and Tara Jones, THE GREEN BUDGET, edited by England or elsewhere in Ireland — who Earthscan, London, 1990, £7.95 (pb), David Kemball-Cook, Mallen Baker had moved to unspoiled areas precisely to 310pp. ISBN 1-5383-064-X. and Chris Mattingly, Green Print, escape modern industrial society. Only London, 1991, £5.99 (pb), 120pp. Late in the 1950s the Irish economy was later were these objectors joined by oth opened to foreign investment in the hope ers in the local community. On other Based on a UK Green Party-published of speeding economic growth. This occasions, the authors suggest that mem Budget booklet and endorsed by the Green strategy worked successfully in the fol ories of communal struggle two or more Party Council, The Green Budget makes lowing decade and it continued to bring generations ago were a potent factor in proposals on a wide range of economic dividends for periods in the 1970s and rallying community-wide resistance. issues. Topics addressed include not only 1980s. But Allen and Jones argue that it The authors are equally convincing obviously "green" ones such as environ has had a serious environmental cost. when they show that foreign investment mental taxation, energy, transport, and To some extent firms were attracted by often leads to a decline in other aspects of agriculture, but also such areas as hous the lower pollution control standards in the local economy: heavy metal pollution ing, education, local government and the Ireland and by the environmental inexpe from mine workings reduces local agri informal economy. The editors also give rience of local residents. They came pre cultural productivity; shore-side chemi space to the broader picture: Europe, world cisely to avoid the expensive clean-up cal factories can undermine fishing or trade and global security. The 1991 Green costs which they would have had to face fish farming; and factory developments Budget is described as "a self-financing at home (usually the USA). Other compa can drive tourists away. In each case they package of emergency measures that can nies, those which were not particularly survey, the company — and the govern be taken at once by a British government", seeking to evade pollution regulations, ment — tend to argue that the investment not an ultimate Green solution to the were nevertheless looking to turn a quick will bring greater profits than it displaces. problems described in the book. profit; accordingly, they were not too But this argument fails when we observe The book begins with an examination fastidious about their pollutants either. that profits from these developments leave of the conventional objectives of eco For its part the Industrial Development the country and find their way into the nomic policy and contrasts these with the Authority, together with other semi-state coffers of the multinational company and overall goals sought by the authors of this bodies, was set on sutaining economic when we find that factories only stay for Budget. Individual topics are addressed growth; it had no brief to safeguard the a few years. When factories depart the in detail in the following chapters, which environment. profits and jobs they generated tend to are grouped into sections labelled 'Eco Under these conditions, the only peo disappear too, while their legacy of pol nomic Instruments', 'The Supply Side', ple who were regularly in a position to lution may prevent former economic ac and 'Other Dimensions'. At the end of oppose environmentally-dirty develop tivities from restarting. Fishing, farm each chapter is a summary of the proposals ments were local, community-based ing and even tourism tend to be more just presented, with an evaluation of es groups. Allen and Jones' account is una long-lasting; and to benefit the local timated impact on revenue or spending. shamed about taking their side; they are economy just as effectively — even if Unfortunately the editors have neg the 'People of Ireland', combating dan their contribution to GNP does not look lected a couple of important points. First, gerous foreign schemes, schemes which as great. Finally in this context, the authors they omit any consideration of the concept were often supported by state agencies. do confront the fact that sometimes suc of the Laffler curve. This theory — that The book gives a series of detailed cessful community resistance leaves lo revenue has the potential to fall as taxa case studies of disputes over planned or cal people jobless; there is no guaranteed tion increases — is controversial, yet actual developments: these include an oil "green" way of stimulating the local failure to acknowledge that such a con terminal at which there were repeated economy. cept exists, and to attempt to meet such small spills and a catastrophic fire; min Guests of the Nation makes its argu criticism, weakens the editors' apparent ing developments which resulted in air ments powerfully and convincingly. And assumption that higher taxes will bring in and land contamination; plans for an as the details the authors provide make the greater revenue in most cases. The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 269 Second, the editors fail to address the apparent self-contradiction in a pro gramme which holds decentralization as BOOKS DIGEST a goal and yet, as the editors note, de • DICTIONARY OF ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT: People, pends heavily on international coopera Places, Ideas and Organizations, by Andy Crump, Earthscan, London, tion (with the usurpation of sovereignty 1991, £15.00 (pb), 272pp. ISBN 1-85383-078-X. at the national level which that entails) for its success in several important areas. An extremely useful reference book for writers and lobbyists because of its It would be helpful for the editors to inclusion of the myriad international organizations, plans, programmes and explain why these apparently contradic treaties whose acronyms often make specialist "environment and development" documents look like alphabet soup. Although the foreword tory goals should not lead to an impasse declares the book to be "unbiased" it includes criticism of some organizations in green policy-making. — such as the World Bank — while giving only potted histories of others — More important than these details, such as FAO. Strangely for a book of this title neither "environment" nor however, is the general question of "development" are defined. The inclusion of separate entries on "global whether the book succeeds in meeting the warming" and "greehouse effect" is also rather illogical. Crump says that goals of its editors. To answer this, one global warming may only be "half as intense as popularly predicted". He does must ask who this book was written for. If not elaborate on the concept of a "popular" climate change simulation it was written for the already-concerned computer programme. with a strong background in economics and a familiarity with the British Budget • THE GREEN BOOK: The Essential A-Z Guide to the Environment, by system, it will probably be quite adequate Stephen Pope, Mike Appleton and Elizabeth-Anne Wheal, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1991, £12.95 (pb), 337pp. ISBN 0-340-53298-X. as a brief explanation of how green eco nomic philosophy might serve to address A dictionary of environment and development which does attempt to define the imbalances currently plaguing the the terms. It may be more useful to the non-professional activist than the British economy while at the same time Earthscan book above, being less concerned with international institutions making it more compatible with ecologi and more with explaining the history, science and politics of campaign cal limits. If, however, this book was issues. written for members of the wider green • THE GREEN DICTIONARY: Key Words, Ideas and Relationships for the movement, more explanation of economic Future, compiled by Colin Johnson, Macdonald Optima, London, 1991, concepts should have been given. Many £9.99 (pb), 343pp. ISBN 0-356-19568-6. greens have little background in eco nomics, and even those of us who do are More interesting to dip into than the two dictionaries above, and much more not necessarily familiar with Budgetary thought-provoking, the entries in Johnson's book include "hierarchy", concepts and terminology. "information", "honesty" and "question". The Green Dictionary is unashamedly "deep green" and subjective: "illusion" is defined as "the belief On the other hand, if the editors wish in grey culture that things, or most things, can stay the same, while a green, to reach a broader readership, the book environmental, gloss is applied to business and life as usual." would benefit from greater length. While there are many works already in existence • COLLINS DICTIONARY OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE, by Gareth which set out the principles, goals and Jones, Alan Robertson, Jean Forbes and Graham Hollier, HarperCollins, rationale of green economic philosophy, 1990, £6.99 (pb), 473pp. ISBN 0-00-434348-4. The Green Budget may be one of the few A scientific dictionary with unexpected entries such as "greenpeace", "pick- expositions of green economic thought to your-own-farming" and "antinuclear". Useful for explanations of the more reach many economists. It would there obscure scientific terms but the entries are rather short and skim over some fore have been worthwhile to devote more important issues. space to an explanation of why green thinking needs to be incorporated into • THE NEW STATE OF WAR AND PEACE: An International Atlas, by any Budget. Michael Kidron and Dan Smith, Grafton Books, London, 1991, £9.99 (pb), In spite of these criticisms, this effort £17.99 (hb), 127pp. ISBN 0-246-13867-X (pb) 0-246-13868-8 (hb). to formulate concrete proposals in line The state of world military activity and spending, the arms trade, adherents with green philosophy and objectives, to international treaties, the progress of arms reduction and other related and to estimate their impact on revenue subjects dealt with in a series of maps and graphics. and spending, is an important achieve ment. It is to be hoped that its success will • P IS FOR POLLUTION: Your Guide to Pollution and How to Stop It, by inspire economists to recognize the vital Brian Price, Green Print, London, 1991, £6.99 (pb), 149pp. ISBN 1- nature of green thought. 85425-059-0. A very useful book for non-specialists involved in anti-pollution campaigns. Price gives an overview of the chemistry, physics and biology of pollution as Deborah Davenport well as an A-Z of pollution and pollutants and a section on pollution regulation agencies and campaigning groups. Deborah Davenport is a doctoral student in the field of Political Science, specializing Patrick McCully in International Political Economy. 270 The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 trol over their resources in the face of the Ideally we would wish to see every economically and politically overwhelming individual doing everything in his or her demands of the cities. Just as the power to address the problem. As a industrialized North pillages and so minimum we would expect that each na "underdevelops" the Third World, so the tion state would respond in proportion to urban centres in the South are placing its responsibility for creating the problem ever increasing pressure on the dispersed in the first place. and politically isolated rural communities. This should of course take into account Meanwhile the rural communities of the the fact that "Third World" nations now North have almost vanished. operating "dirty" technology and rushing It is within this framework that many of down destructive development paths will the concerns voiced by Irvine and Ponton have been greatly encouraged to do so by Letters make sense. The pollution and erosion industrialists and politicians based in the caused by mass tourism in the Mediter overdeveloped world. ranean or mass rambling on the North In the case of Global Warming, the York moors are expressions of urban de urgent need for maximum response at mands on unregulated commons. maximum speed also argues against a Power to the Polities The ancient "contradiction" between "blaming" approach. Humanity has iden city and country, which is as old as civili tified this problem so late in the process Dear Sirs, zation itself, is the most serious obstacle that there is very little time remaining in Sandy Irvine and Alec Ponton are right to we face to global security. Even were it which to recover, so everyone's contribu warn us against populist posturing in the technically feasible to find a way of red tion is needed absolutely as soon as name of the "people" (Letters, Vol. 21, No. ucing the material demands of the city on possible. 3, May/June 1991). Yet that is not what I the country to a "sustainable" level, the Giving half the world an excuse to sit on understood "Liberation Ecology" to stand pressure exerted by urban populations for its bum and point the finger at the other for (see Editorial by Nicholas Hildyard, an easy life will ensure that political de half is surely not the most practical way Vol. 21, No. 1). Far from promoting poli cisions favour their interests over those of forward. cies in the name of nebulous and rural communities, whose ways of life and But it certainly will go down well with unidentified masses, "Liberation Ecology" resources will thus continue to be under the Third World's Westernized ruling elites. identifies with the very real struggles of mined. History shows that this has been These people will be all in favour of an local communities for control of the natu as true under tyranny as within the so- approach that permits "business as usual" ral resources that their livelihoods de called democracies. to continue within their bridgeheads of pend on. The cry of "Liberation Ecolo Yours faithfully, overdevelopment. The alternative would gists" is not, as Irvine and Ponton sug Marcus Colchester be the Greening of their economies and gest, "Amazonia for the Brazilians" but World Rainforest Movement "Amazonia for the Amazonians". 8 Chapel Row Thus, unlike the Green Politics of the Chadlington 0X7 3NA North, which proposes policies but iden England a guerrilla handbook for tifies no polities to carry them forward, doing battle with multi Liberation Ecology bases itself on the national corporations" existing polities of rural communities — Culpability or Co be they "tribes", cooperatives, "user- groups" or peasant associations. Secur operation? ing these groups' rights to their lands and resources is the only way to mitigate the Dear Sirs, indiscriminate impact of the market and Your article 'Discord in the Greenhouse' promote a more locally sensitive and re (Patrick McCully, Vol. 21, No. 4, July/ Published jointly by People Against sponsive use of the environment. August 1991) fails to engage with some RTZ and its Subsidiaries (PARTiZANS) For Liberation Ecologists, the western key concepts in Green politics and phi and the Campaign Against Foreign dichotomy between ecology and society, losophy. Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA). which structures Irvine and Ponton's ar A Green approach to environmental 200 pages of facts, figures and gument, is an unreal one. The environment problems such as Global Warming should analysis about the activities of Rio Tinto is a social construct and any kind of use or take as one of its starting points the ca Zinc. RTZ and its subsidiaries, with conservation must depend on some po pacity of individuals and nations to respond operations in over 40 countries, have litical institutions to own, manage and to the problem, by doing whatever is re displaced native peoples, contaminated control it. Environmentalism which fails to quired to reduce and/or eliminate it. environments, violated sacred sites and identify the appropriate social institutions Greens seek as far as humanly possible ignored safety standards. that will regulate natural resources is to take personal responsibility for the Price £4.95 plus postage (UK £1.05; doomed to fail. consequences of their own actions, and Europe £1.40; Elsewhere £4.80). The real challenge for Liberation to encourage and assist others to do the Send cheque or postal order to WEC Ecology, as I see it, is to find a way of same. Approaches based on "culpability" Books, Worthyvale Manor, empowering such local groups with con cannot be Green, in my opinion. Camelford Cornwall PL32 9TT, UK. The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 271 social structures, and the consequent ter restrained by a matrix of law, public pres sion to a stronger individual best secures mination of their privileges. sure, a free press, a civil society and these objectives, then that is the efficient In terms of greenhouse gas emissions international opinion, could never have strategy. An incidental spin-off may be per unit of production, I assume that a launched the Kuwait adventure. An oriental beneficial to the group; but that has nothing high proportion of Third World industrial despotism like Saddam's however, slave to do with any "altruistic" thoughts, any plant is amongst the worst on the planet. to the darkest impulses of a single ego, more than does an individual's demand Logically such plant should be high on the committed unprecedented eco-crimes. for more space under adverse conditions. clean-up priority list. Environmentalists should shout for Again, the idea, that "traits that increase The other problem with the "per capita" Saddam to be tried for ecocide in the the viability of groups in their pursuit of analysis of national emission figures is United Nations. You should admit that immortality are bound in the long run to that it appears to point the finger totalitarians cause more havoc than even take priority over those that merely in indiscriminately at many individuals. capitalists, and human rights and democ crease the self-advantage of individuals" As someone living in an overdeveloped racy are the best path toward environ is a particularly fanciful one. Some human country who has not owned or much used mental protection. individuals may "pursue immortality", but a car over the last 15 years, who has only But I'll not hold my breath waiting for that is hardly evidence for group selection. one child and who eats very little meat, I you to agree. However, what matters most is the know that I am treading much more lightly Sincerely, interpretation of the observational and than many individuals in the Third World. Edward Mainland experimental evidence from the Red Any useful form of statistical analysis would 8752 Old Dominion Drive Grouse studies. The data indicate that be capable of reflecting that reality. McLean cockbirds occupy a territory consonant, in Gaia cannot tell an overdeveloped car Virginia 22102 any year, with prevailing nutritional con bon dioxide molecule from a less- USA ditions of the food supply (i.e. heather). It developed one — she only knows and is claimed that: "This shows that all cares that there are now too many of them cockbirds are programmed ... to procure for her comfort. We all emit carbon diox the same population density under the ide with every breath, so we all owe Gaia Self-Interest for the same nutritional conditions." I would an appropriate and balanced response. Good of All suggest, on the contrary, that what it shows Yours sincerely, is that they are programmed to take what Dave Bradney territory they individually require for their 10 Peploe Road Dear Sirs, individual needs — a classical Darwinian London NW6 6EB In 'Ecology Denies Neo-Darwinism' (Vol. interpretation. 21, No. 3, May/June 1991), V.C. Wynne- With a suitable programme and micro Edwards enunciates his case for "Group computer, one can examine the conse Selection". This is the proposition that quences of selection, mutation and in Totalitarian Ecocide selection occurs between whole groups breeding on genotype distribution when of reproductively compatible organisms the "selective value" of each genotype Dear Sirs, as well as between individual genotypes. depends on combinations of independ Your view of environmental damage in the It is suggested that the property on which ently segregating genes. One can then Gulf War (Frank Barnaby, The Environ such group selection depends is a species' show that a basically disadvantageous mental Impact of the Gulf War', Vol. 21, ability to "control its numbers when nec gene pair may yet reach fixation because No. 4, July/August 1991) omitted mention essary", because, "each individual is of advantage in a particular genotype. The of its root cause, the primitive, personalist normally programmed through its genetic disadvantage might be, for example, low nature of Saddam Hussein's unrestrained code to take part in maintaining the balance aggressiveness in a territorial dispute. despotism. of nature." I believe, on the contrary, that Breeding would be more or less possible It was Saddam, was it not, who person there is nothing to suggest that Darwinian for such "submissive" individuals accord ally gave the orders to torch Kuwait's selection at the individual level cannot ing to whether competition for territory hundreds of oil wells and spill millions of provide an adequate description of the was low or high. Any advantage to the gallons of oil into Gulf waters? observations adduced in favour of Wynne- group would be incidental to purely Dar It was Saddam, was it not, who wasted Edwards' hypothesis. winian selection at individual level. Over Iraq's oil revenues building atomic To begin with, one could argue that a 300 years ago, Thomas Hobbes wrote, "of weapons and ordered use of gas warfare number of statements in the article do not the voluntary acts of everyman, the object (fortunately, ineptitude and loss of nerve merit the confidence with which they are is some Good to himselfe"; and William of among commanders aborted his wishes)? asserted. For example, it is said to be Occam, "Entia non sint multiplicanda Was it not Saddam who triggered the "vital to keep the rates of consumption praeter necessitatem" — still good max ecodisaster by conquering and absorbing and production in balance". The implica ims today! a small, independent neighbour in the tion is that this is vital for the group. This Yours sincerely, style of Hitler, his lust for power and wealth ignores that what is vital for each organ Michael Begg unredeemed by the flimsiest ideological ism is, first, a genetic algorithm to ensure Greens, New Deer or moralist pretext? its own survival] and, second, a prog Turriff Is there not a connection between de ramme giving it the best chance of repro Aberdeenshire AB53 6XT mocracy and environmental protection? duction under the prevailing circum Scotland A democratically-based Iraqi government, stances. If temporary non-lethal submis 272 The Ecologist, Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 1991 Classified ENVIRONMENTAL WORK BRIGADES TO Lee Hoefs, 1207 Seminole Highway, Madison, MISCELLANEOUS NICARAGUA, JULY AND AUGUST 1992. 4 WI53711, USA (Tel: 608 262 9547). weeks or 6 weeks. Cost from £950 all inclusive. Participate in a communally run reforestation THE CENTRE FOR PROFESSIONAL WANTED: THE ECOLOGIST Vol 1 Nos 12 & project; sharing the lives of Nicaraguan people; ADVANCEMENT. Programme 1991: 25-27 14; Vol 2, No 1; Vol 10 Nos. 1, 2 & 3; Vol 11 joining in their struggle for sustainable develop November 91 - Introduction to Petroleum Nos 4,5 & 6; Vol 12 No 1; Vol 14 No 2; Vol 15 ment and self determination. Contact Nicaragua Refinery Processing; 25-27 November 91 - Nos 1, 2 & 3; Vol 17 No 1. If you have any of Solidarity Campaign, 129 Seven Sisters Road, Industrial Technology: 2-4 December 91 - the above issues (now sadly out of print) and London N7 7QG. Tel: 071 272 9619 Industrial Biological Wastewater Treatment are willing to sell them, please contact Dean System; 3-6 December 91 - Applied Combustion Technology; 4-6 December 91 - Introduction to Godson or Karen West on 0753 830 707. DIARY DATES Pulp and Paper Technology. Contact: Box H, East Brunswick, New Jersey 08816 0257. 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For details write to Comision Organizadora Recent titles are: SITUATIONS VACANT IV Festival Americano de Cine de los Pueblos No 96. Swords into Ploughshares: Converting Indigenas CLACPI. Av. Juan de Aliaga 204, Lima to a Peace Economy. 27, Peru, South America. No 97. The Global Politics of Abortion. ASSISTANT EDITOR No 98. Alternatives to the Automobile: The Ecologist is looking for an Assistant ENERGY POLICY: Market-Led or Government- Transport for Livable Cities. Editor with experience of editing and lay-out Driven? 6th International Energy Conference No 99. Green Revolutions: Environmental to work with a small team in North Dorset. convened by The Royal Institute of International Construction in the Eastern Bloc. The job will include liaising with printers and Affairs, The British Institute of Energy No 100. Beyond the Petroleum Age: Designing distributors and dealing with advertising. A Economics and The International Association for a Solar Economy. firm grasp of environmental issues and the Energy Economics. 2 and 3 December 1991, No 101. Discarding the Throwaway Society. politics of the international green movement is Chatham House, London. For details contact The No 102. Women's Reproductive Health: The essential as is experience of word processing. Energy Conference, The Conference Unit, The Silent Emergency. A knowledge of DTP is preferred. A desire to Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham No 103. Taking Stock: Animal Farming and get involved in writing and campaigning House, 10 St James's Square, London SW1Y 4LE. the Environment. would be an advantage. Salary £9000 Tel: 071 957 5700. Fax: 071 957 5710. No 104. Jobs in a Sustainable Economy. Interviews will be held in the first week of Send £3.00 per paper plus £1.00 UK or £2.00 December. Applications to Sally Snow, The FOURTH ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE overseas p&p. 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Illustrated with 250 stunning photographs, it is a plea on behalf of the planet, an explanation of what humanity is doing to the planet and a manifesto of what needs to be done to save the planet. Available from WEC Books, Worthyvale Manor Farm, Camelford, Cornwall PL32 9TT, UK. Price £17.95/$35.95. Please add £3.50 per copy UK and £6.00/$12.00 overseas surface p&p.