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Environmental significance of development theory
277
Ecological Economics, 2 (1990) 277-206 Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., Amsterdam
Commentary
Environmental
significance
of development
theory
F.E. Trainer School of Education,
University of New South Wales, Kensington, (Accepted
13 February
N.S. W. 2033, Australia
1990)
ABSTRACT Trainer, F.E., 277-286.
1990. Environmental
significance
of development
theory.
Ecol. Econ..’ 2:
After briefly summarising the reason for concluding that conventional development has been a failure and analysing the central mechanisms responsible, this paper outlines some of the main ways in which this approach has led to serious environmental impacts. It is argued that an approach to development based on market forces and growth maximisation is one of the most significant causes of global ecological destruction. Appropriate and ecologically sustainable development require a shift to principles of development which focus on local economic self-sufficiency, independence from global economic forces and the abandonment of rich world living standards as the goal of development.
There is now a considerable literature condemning the conventional approach to development as having been a failure. After outlining some of the main elements in this argument, and pointing to the basic mechanisms responsible for inappropriate development, some of the main ways in which conventional development theory and practice have led to environmental damage are outlined. Grounds for rejection
Despite marked improvement in indices for infant mortality, life expectancy, literacy and GNP over the past 40 years, most Third World people have experienced very little improvement in real material living standards.
* The arguments in this article are extended in my Deoeloped to Death: Re-Thinking World Department. Marshall Pickering, London, 1988.
Third
278
FE. TRAINER
The conventional approach generates often spectacular increases in national wealth, but most of these go to the already rich. The poorest 520 million people probably average an annual income in the region of USSS7. and see it rise to 73 cents p.a. In the period 19681976 world income increased considerably. But the gains the rich l/5 of the world’s people made were 67 times as great as those the poorest l/5 achieved. In 1987 the average rich-country increase in annual income was about US$270, to CS$11,700. The rate of growth in Third World GNP per capita achieved in the long boom 1950-1970, would have to continue for 15Uyear.r before Third World people rose to half our present living standards in rich countries. How likely is it that a development strategy that has led to the current levels of Third World debt will enable it to achieve ‘take-off’ to economic prosperity? The limits to growth: neglected perspective on development Both conventional and radical development theories (Marxist and Dependency) have totally failed to take into account the now voluminous ‘limits to growth’ literature, which invalidates their essential and taken-forgranted premise about the point of development. It is no longer possible to define the goal of development in terms of endless economic growth and the achievement of the living standards typical of the rich countries. Unless existing estimates of the world’s potentially recoverable mineral and energy resources are underestimated by several hundred percent there is no change whatsoever of ail people the world will carry by 2050 having the per-capita use rates people in the rich countries average now (Trainer, 1985, chapters 3 and 4). To sustain those rates for all, world output would have to be 10 to 14 times what it is now. All conventional fuels would be totally exhausted in 18 years. We are therefore the ‘overdeveloped’ countries and the rest are the ‘never-to-be-developed’ countries. We can only go on being as affluent as we are because we are consuming far more than our fair share of the world’s dwindling resources. Yet our supreme national goal is to strive as hard as possible for the most rapid increase in production, consumption, ‘living standards’ and GNP. The saying which sums up the situation precisely is, “The rich must live more simple so that the poor may simply live”. There is now increasing recognition that many apparently separate global problems are closely linked as consequences of the global “limits to growth” problem (Barney, 1980, Brundtland; 1980, Trainer, 1985). Resource depletion, the destruction of the environment, the deprivation of Third World people, conflicts over resources and markets, and a falling quality of life in the richest societies; all derive primarily from the mindless obsession with raising material living standards and the GNP as fast and as far as possible. As many authors and movements are now insisting, the essential solution
ENVIRONMENTAL
SIGNIFICANCE
OF DEVELOPSfEST
279
THEORY
must involve a transition on the part of the rich countries to a less affluent, more self-sufficient and cooperative conserver society (Trainer, 1985, chapter 12; Trainer, 1989, chapter 9). It is remarkable that the development literature has almost completely ignored the crucial conclusions evident in the last two decades of limits to growth literature; viz., the goal ofdeoelopment must cease to be defined in terms of rising to the ‘living standards’ or the patterns of settlement and industrialisation the rich countries have - because that is impossible.
In a recent review of summary comments on the development record I found over 100 authors concluding that development had done little or nothing for the poorest 40-60s in the Third World (Trainer, 1986). Perhaps only three could have been interpreted positively. Statements relating to the post-1980 period were more clearly negative, many emphasing that the conditions of the poor have deteriorated significantly. why? Unfortunately critical development theory is in a confused state offering us no clear and agreed frame for explaining the essential reasons for the disaster. The central concern in my Developed to Death (Trainer, 1989) has been to argue that we can make most sense of what is wrong about development if we focus on two concepts; market forces and inappropriateness. Following is a brief summary of the main themes that these concepts clarify. The rich countries have l/5 of the world’s people but they are consuming 4/5 of the world’s annual resource output. Appalling distributions like this come about because the global economy is a market system and market forces always deliver scarce and valuable things to the relatively rich and ignore the poor. The same market mechanism ensures that the wrong industries are set up
in the Third World, and it therefore draws much Third World productive capacity into totally inappropriate development. Most notorious is the possible 50 million ha of the best Third World land growing crops to export to rich countries, mostly luxuries such as tea and carnations. The essential point is that these are inevitable consequences of an economic system and an approach to development premised on market forces, the profit motive and the quest for economic growth. When scarce resources are allowed to go to those who can bid most for them and when capital is allowed to be invested in whatever will make the highest return, when the goal is indiscriminate growth in business turnover, the result is development of the wrong things; development that is patently needs of most Third World people.
inappropriate
in view of the
Our living standards in rich countries could not be as high as they are if the global economy were not so predominantly geared to our interests. What
280
F.E TRAINER
would our coffee costs if those who produce it in the Third World were paid decent wages? We would expect 20 times their wage for the work they do. Ultra-low wages paid to Third World people who produce goods consumed in the rich countries is a crucial mechanism whereby our living standards are raised at the expense of Third World people. What has growth got to do with development? The general conclusion from this analysis is that insofar as development is defined in terms of economic growth the resulting development will be largely inappropriate. Developments most likely to raise the GNP will inevitably be those which allocate existing development resources to producing for the relatively rich, especially for export to the rich countries. On the other hand, developments most likely to meet the most urgent needs of most people will yield relatively little return on investment or increase in GNP. Some of the most needed developments will reduce the GNP, most obviously the development of rich forests to provide free goods, networks for barter and gift exchange, and community workshops. Often a satisfactory or appropriate development strategy would prohibit many developments that would do wonders for the GNP. Since the early 1970s when the insufficiency of the sheer growth view was increasingly being understood, we have seen a move to ‘growth with equity’ and ‘basic needs’ strategies. However, these do not constitute a shift from the primacy of growth; they merely add another - minor - consideration and they still accept sheer growth as the engine that will create the wealth needed to solve the problems. They still, in other words, mistake the cause of the problem for the solution. Satisfactory, appropriate, development would contribute to better informal security networks, more independent and autonomous village ‘government’, and to the establishment of those rich and varied forests and edible landscapes. We should only ask whether the development in question will improve the quality of life, and it should be of little interest or consequence whether it raised or lowered the GNP. Economic development is only one aspect of what we should be concerned about, viz., the development of societies. Only a certain amount of economic development is desirable, and only development of some aspects of the economy are desirable. If there is too much economic development or if it takes place in the wrong domains, social development is easily damaged. Environment consequences Most of the damage occurring to the ecosystems of the planet must be understood as an inevitable consequence of the conventional ‘indiscriminate growth and trickle-down-someday’ approach to development:
ENVIRONMENTAL
SIGNIFICANCE
OF DEVELOPSIENT
THEORY
281
The conventional approach takes it for granted that development cannot occur without importing huge quantities of goods, capital, machinery and inputs from the rich countries. No conception of autonomous, economically independent or self-sufficient development is entertained. Hence there is from the very start a great need to sell something in order to pay for all the imports, and the most readily available export items are natural resource commodities. Typically the first things to go are the forests, arguably the country’s and the world’s most precious ecological resources. Many Third World countries have long ago lost most of their forests. As the forests are destroyed, disastrous environmental effects cascade and feedback. Less rainfall is held, so creeks dry up, rain washes soil away, floods are more severe, and so are droughts because less water soaks in. With fewer trees providing fuel peasants accelerate forest destruction and increase the burning of dung which should be returned to the soil. In addition to potential climatic effects there is the accelerating loss of plant and animal species. Having eliminated a mere 300 species in the last 300 years to 1970, between now and 2010 we will probably have exterminated 1 million! How many will be extinct by 2033 and 2056; the points in time when world levels of production and consumption will be 4 times and 8 times as great as they are now if we maintain a mere 3% p.a. rate of economic growth? In addition to logging, the destruction of the forests is directly due to ‘development’, in two main ways. Because appropriate development options are not made available to nomads, peasants and native peoples, they are obliged to exploit their forests as conventional development squeezes them out. More importantly, vast areas of forest are cleared in order to establish high rate of return ‘agriculture’, especially export beef production. The conventional approach favours big infrastructure development, the prime example being the construction of large dams. The environmental and social undesirability of dams has been well documented, notably the destruction of forest, displacement of native people, loss of silt, and destruction of food chains, such as fisheries. These high technology, expert-controlled, capital-intensive projects take up development resources that should have been devoted to enabling people to meet their own needs, and they thereby make these people more environmentally destructive (below) as well as adding to foreign debt and therefore to the need to export more logs. The beneficiaries of big, high-tech infrastructure development are predominantly the relatively rich, including the factory owners who will use most of the electricity and the urban elite who can afford to buy electrical appliances. Ironically, micro-hydro power systems (sometimes involving very small dams) provide an excellent example of an appropriate technology
282
F.E. TRAINER
matched to village needs. It follows from the argument above regarding the global resource endowment that there is no possibility of meeting the energy needs of the majority of Third World people from other conventional sources, such as coal or nuclear power. Another of the most notorious consequences of conventional development is the rapid expansion of export cropping. This takes over more of the best land and other agricultural resources, driving peasants and nomads on to more marginal land prone to overgrazing and erosion. The growth rate in areas under export crop production is about twice that for subsistance crops for local consumption. This has been a major factor in the rise of the proportion of people landless to around 30% or more in many regions over the last generation. Conventional development theory has encouraged export cropping in terms of ‘comparative advantage’. For every family sustained by wages from some plantations perhaps 100 people could be provided for if the land were converted to intensive subsistance gardens and woodlands. Directly related to the expansion of export cropping is the large scale migration of rural people to urban slums and the growth of already impossibly overcrowded cities. The resource and environment costs of sustaining a person in an urban situation are far higher than for rural living, e.g., through the costs involved in packaging and transporting food into cities, dealing with wastes and providing water. The ‘modemisation’ of agriculture has also involved rapid increase in the use of new seed varieties and the associated package of pesticides, fertilizers and irrigation, supplied by the few giant agribusiness firms. This is a delight to conventional economists who can only see the consequent leap in sales, exports, and GNP figures but it is fuelling one of the most serious environmental effects - the loss of genetic diversity. It is in the interests of the agribusiness corporations to market only the very few varieties of seeds most likely to maximise their global profits, hence the number of varieties of several food plants generally cultivated has fallen from hundreds or thousands to less than 10 in under a generation. The new varieties require heavy applications of fertilizer, irrigation and pesticides, which generate further environmental impacts via the energy and resource use involved in producing and transporting these inputs. Conventional development at best does little to increase the capacity of the majority of rural people to provide for themselves via stable and productive local ecosystems, and very often it reduces that capacity. It dispossesses many peasants from their land, it allows common resources such as forests and fisheries to become the private property of a few individuals and firms, and it takes land out of subsistence production and into export cropping. Because the owners of gas-guzzling sports cars and speedboats can outbid peasants for scarce petrol, they take most of it and
ENVIRONMENTAL
SIGNIFICANCE
OF DEVELOPMENT
THEORY
283
peasants are therefore obliged to strip their local forests and to burn dung for fuel. The basic mechanisms of conventional development inevitably turn large numbers of poor people into highly destructive environmental agents. It is important to note that the basic principles of the economic system underlying approach to development are diametrically opposed to the conservation of the environment. The system is about constant, ceaseless and ever-expanding increase in the amount of producing and consuming going on. There is no conception of sufficient GNP or adequate living standards. GNP must rise by at least 3% p.a. or there is trouble. But we have seen that a mere 3% p.a. rate of growth for 70 years means that the economy would then be churning out 8 times as much production p.a. as at the beginning. For a 5% growth rate, which all respectable politicians and economists would much prefer, the multiple is 32 times! How many forests and wild rivers are likely to be left then? The system does not even have a built-in incentive for firms to husband the resources they make their income from. The over-riding principle is to maxirnise the return on invested capital and this is best done by using up forests, whales, soils, etc., and then taking capital out to some other high-profit venture. It can therefore be claimed that conventional development theory has been the most important factor responsible for the accelerating damage to the global ecosystem. Alternative, appropriate development The foregoing discussion and the considerable literature on appropriate technology suggest the following as basic principles of appropriate ecologically sustainable Third World development: (1) Focus on the concept of appropriateness. Totally reject the identification of development with growth. Seek to develop those things most likely to raise the overall quality of life in view of local and global ecological, resource, justice etc. considerations. Deliberately try to prevent much of the development that would occur if market forces and the profit motive were allowed to determine development. (2) Totah) abandon Western affluence as a goal of development. Aim at the achievement of low but comfortable living standards for all on the lowest reasonable levels of non-renewable resource consumption. Abandon the idea of endlessly increasing material living standards; aim to achieve adequate, convenient and comfortable standards, which are as low as possible in material terms, and stable overtime. Maximise local economic self-sufficiency via the (3) Most important: development of integrated, small-scale regional economies, whereby a variety of small producers can provide most of the goods and services needed in the area, mostly using locally available inputs. Make the village and its sur-
284
FE. TRAINER
rounding region the basic unit for development thinking. Use locally available resources. Help the people to set up small banks, markets, distribution systems, manufacturing plants etc., to be controlled by and to serve small local regions. Seek to minimise transport and trade and dependence on external inputs, and especially on outside sources of capital. Aim at the maximum reasonable self-sufficiency and independence at all levels, village, regional, state and national. Minimise the need to export in order to import necessities. Thus maximise independence from the global economy. Other important elements in appropriate development include smallness of scale, grass roots participation and control, preventing market forces and the profit motive from becoming the primary determinants of development, using many cooperative arrangements and especially restoring local forests and soils to become abundant and self-maintaining sources of food, water, materials etc. The missing link; the sufficiency of alternative technologies Most development theorists reject any suggestion of striving to minimise involvement in national and international economic networks or of aiming for self-sufficiency. ‘Autarchy’ is usually dismissed as a naive mistake. Certainly it is, if conventional development goals are retained, such as the eventual achievement of heavy industrialisation, high levels of GNP and western affluent lifestyles. But conservers begin with a totally different view of the goals of development, one focussed on frugality, sufficiency and stability in the merely economic realm. Conservers understand two crucial points which contradict the basic assumptions of conventional economists. Firstly, given sensible reorganisation, cooperative systems, restored ecosystems and conserver values, only remarkably low levels of consumption of resources are necessary for the achievement of quite satisfactory material living standards and a high quality of life. Secondly, existing alternative and appropriate technologies provide in abundance the necessary resources, especially via renewable sources, such as plant materials. Of crucial significance here is the Permaculture concept of developing the regions surrounding villages into complex, integrated, ‘permanent’ ecosystems, (e.g., based on tree crops rather than annuals) which ensure that much of the ‘work’ required to maintain the system is carried out by the natural processes within the system (Mollison, 1988) (e.g., water stored and regulated by forests, pest control by animals and companion planting). Central to these approaches is the use of extensive ranges of plants occupying many available niches and providing abundant varieties of foods, chemicals, oils, medicines, fibres, fuel, timber and other materials. Tree crops and forests are of central importance in these approaches. Carob and honey locust trees can
ENVIRONMENTAL
SIGNIFICANCE
OF DEVELOP.MEST
THEORY
285
produce 10 times the protein yield typical of Third World grain farms per ha, and they thrive in dry, hilly and stoney regions. Many trees, such as walnuts, last hundreds of years, whereas grains have to be planted annually, with incomparable costs in erosion and non-renewable resource use. Integrated systems can take advantage of many overlaps and niches. For example animal and human wastes can be recycled through gas producing units to enrich ponds producing a range of fish, fowl and plants. Small animals can be largely fed by food falling from varieties of trees planted to fruit in sequence, while consuming pests, cultivating, weeding and fertilising, and themselves producing food. Acquaculture can achieve 30 times the food production per ha typical of land-based systems. Ponds can also purify town sewage output while converting the nutrients to useful purposes. These dense, integrated, permanent, largely self-maintaining ecosystems can provide the inputs for a wide range of small, intermediate and low technology ‘firms’ producing for local consumption. They are therefore the base on which highly self-sufficient regional economies can be built, since by nature they reduce the need for imported materials, capital, energy and goods. It is most important to recognise that the point of appropriate development strategies is not to assist villagers to survive in the existing national and international economic system. The point is to build alternative economic and social systems that will enable people to escape from the existing national and international systems. The test question must always be, will this project help to build a highly self-sufficient and integrated village economy, so that all the people here are more able to provide satisfactory living standards for themselves from the resources of this small region, independent of and secure from national and international economic systems, with a minimum amount of economic interaction with those systems. It should not need to be spelled out that appropriate development for the Third World is totally incompatible with the continuation of a capitalist world order. To devote village land, labour and capital to developments that will produce for local people is to deny them to their current users, the export plantations and factories, the transnational corporations and the consumers in the rich countries. The world capitalist system requires that much of the Third World’s resources and much of its productive capacity be geared to the consumption in the developed countries and that Third World people will purchase many of the goods produced in the developed countries. Appropriate Third World development would terminate most of these flows, and therefore devastate the opportunities for the investment of capital.
286
F.E. TRAINER
REFERENCES Barney, G.O. (Editor), 1980. The Global 2000 Report to the President. Pergamon, London. Brundtland, G.H., 1980. Our Common Future. Oxford University Press, London. Mollison, B., 1988. Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual. Tagari. Tyalgum, N.S.W. Trainer, F.E., 1985. Abandon Affluence! Zed Books, London. Trainer, F.E., 1986. Third World Development: Documents. University of New South Wales. Trainer, F.E., 1989. Developed to Death: Re-Thinking Third World Development. Merlin, London.
Ecological Economics, 2 (1990) 277-206 Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., Amsterdam
Commentary
Environmental
significance
of development
theory
F.E. Trainer School of Education,
University of New South Wales, Kensington, (Accepted
13 February
N.S. W. 2033, Australia
1990)
ABSTRACT Trainer, F.E., 277-286.
1990. Environmental
significance
of development
theory.
Ecol. Econ..’ 2:
After briefly summarising the reason for concluding that conventional development has been a failure and analysing the central mechanisms responsible, this paper outlines some of the main ways in which this approach has led to serious environmental impacts. It is argued that an approach to development based on market forces and growth maximisation is one of the most significant causes of global ecological destruction. Appropriate and ecologically sustainable development require a shift to principles of development which focus on local economic self-sufficiency, independence from global economic forces and the abandonment of rich world living standards as the goal of development.
There is now a considerable literature condemning the conventional approach to development as having been a failure. After outlining some of the main elements in this argument, and pointing to the basic mechanisms responsible for inappropriate development, some of the main ways in which conventional development theory and practice have led to environmental damage are outlined. Grounds for rejection
Despite marked improvement in indices for infant mortality, life expectancy, literacy and GNP over the past 40 years, most Third World people have experienced very little improvement in real material living standards.
* The arguments in this article are extended in my Deoeloped to Death: Re-Thinking World Department. Marshall Pickering, London, 1988.
Third
278
FE. TRAINER
The conventional approach generates often spectacular increases in national wealth, but most of these go to the already rich. The poorest 520 million people probably average an annual income in the region of USSS7. and see it rise to 73 cents p.a. In the period 19681976 world income increased considerably. But the gains the rich l/5 of the world’s people made were 67 times as great as those the poorest l/5 achieved. In 1987 the average rich-country increase in annual income was about US$270, to CS$11,700. The rate of growth in Third World GNP per capita achieved in the long boom 1950-1970, would have to continue for 15Uyear.r before Third World people rose to half our present living standards in rich countries. How likely is it that a development strategy that has led to the current levels of Third World debt will enable it to achieve ‘take-off’ to economic prosperity? The limits to growth: neglected perspective on development Both conventional and radical development theories (Marxist and Dependency) have totally failed to take into account the now voluminous ‘limits to growth’ literature, which invalidates their essential and taken-forgranted premise about the point of development. It is no longer possible to define the goal of development in terms of endless economic growth and the achievement of the living standards typical of the rich countries. Unless existing estimates of the world’s potentially recoverable mineral and energy resources are underestimated by several hundred percent there is no change whatsoever of ail people the world will carry by 2050 having the per-capita use rates people in the rich countries average now (Trainer, 1985, chapters 3 and 4). To sustain those rates for all, world output would have to be 10 to 14 times what it is now. All conventional fuels would be totally exhausted in 18 years. We are therefore the ‘overdeveloped’ countries and the rest are the ‘never-to-be-developed’ countries. We can only go on being as affluent as we are because we are consuming far more than our fair share of the world’s dwindling resources. Yet our supreme national goal is to strive as hard as possible for the most rapid increase in production, consumption, ‘living standards’ and GNP. The saying which sums up the situation precisely is, “The rich must live more simple so that the poor may simply live”. There is now increasing recognition that many apparently separate global problems are closely linked as consequences of the global “limits to growth” problem (Barney, 1980, Brundtland; 1980, Trainer, 1985). Resource depletion, the destruction of the environment, the deprivation of Third World people, conflicts over resources and markets, and a falling quality of life in the richest societies; all derive primarily from the mindless obsession with raising material living standards and the GNP as fast and as far as possible. As many authors and movements are now insisting, the essential solution
ENVIRONMENTAL
SIGNIFICANCE
OF DEVELOPSfEST
279
THEORY
must involve a transition on the part of the rich countries to a less affluent, more self-sufficient and cooperative conserver society (Trainer, 1985, chapter 12; Trainer, 1989, chapter 9). It is remarkable that the development literature has almost completely ignored the crucial conclusions evident in the last two decades of limits to growth literature; viz., the goal ofdeoelopment must cease to be defined in terms of rising to the ‘living standards’ or the patterns of settlement and industrialisation the rich countries have - because that is impossible.
In a recent review of summary comments on the development record I found over 100 authors concluding that development had done little or nothing for the poorest 40-60s in the Third World (Trainer, 1986). Perhaps only three could have been interpreted positively. Statements relating to the post-1980 period were more clearly negative, many emphasing that the conditions of the poor have deteriorated significantly. why? Unfortunately critical development theory is in a confused state offering us no clear and agreed frame for explaining the essential reasons for the disaster. The central concern in my Developed to Death (Trainer, 1989) has been to argue that we can make most sense of what is wrong about development if we focus on two concepts; market forces and inappropriateness. Following is a brief summary of the main themes that these concepts clarify. The rich countries have l/5 of the world’s people but they are consuming 4/5 of the world’s annual resource output. Appalling distributions like this come about because the global economy is a market system and market forces always deliver scarce and valuable things to the relatively rich and ignore the poor. The same market mechanism ensures that the wrong industries are set up
in the Third World, and it therefore draws much Third World productive capacity into totally inappropriate development. Most notorious is the possible 50 million ha of the best Third World land growing crops to export to rich countries, mostly luxuries such as tea and carnations. The essential point is that these are inevitable consequences of an economic system and an approach to development premised on market forces, the profit motive and the quest for economic growth. When scarce resources are allowed to go to those who can bid most for them and when capital is allowed to be invested in whatever will make the highest return, when the goal is indiscriminate growth in business turnover, the result is development of the wrong things; development that is patently needs of most Third World people.
inappropriate
in view of the
Our living standards in rich countries could not be as high as they are if the global economy were not so predominantly geared to our interests. What
280
F.E TRAINER
would our coffee costs if those who produce it in the Third World were paid decent wages? We would expect 20 times their wage for the work they do. Ultra-low wages paid to Third World people who produce goods consumed in the rich countries is a crucial mechanism whereby our living standards are raised at the expense of Third World people. What has growth got to do with development? The general conclusion from this analysis is that insofar as development is defined in terms of economic growth the resulting development will be largely inappropriate. Developments most likely to raise the GNP will inevitably be those which allocate existing development resources to producing for the relatively rich, especially for export to the rich countries. On the other hand, developments most likely to meet the most urgent needs of most people will yield relatively little return on investment or increase in GNP. Some of the most needed developments will reduce the GNP, most obviously the development of rich forests to provide free goods, networks for barter and gift exchange, and community workshops. Often a satisfactory or appropriate development strategy would prohibit many developments that would do wonders for the GNP. Since the early 1970s when the insufficiency of the sheer growth view was increasingly being understood, we have seen a move to ‘growth with equity’ and ‘basic needs’ strategies. However, these do not constitute a shift from the primacy of growth; they merely add another - minor - consideration and they still accept sheer growth as the engine that will create the wealth needed to solve the problems. They still, in other words, mistake the cause of the problem for the solution. Satisfactory, appropriate, development would contribute to better informal security networks, more independent and autonomous village ‘government’, and to the establishment of those rich and varied forests and edible landscapes. We should only ask whether the development in question will improve the quality of life, and it should be of little interest or consequence whether it raised or lowered the GNP. Economic development is only one aspect of what we should be concerned about, viz., the development of societies. Only a certain amount of economic development is desirable, and only development of some aspects of the economy are desirable. If there is too much economic development or if it takes place in the wrong domains, social development is easily damaged. Environment consequences Most of the damage occurring to the ecosystems of the planet must be understood as an inevitable consequence of the conventional ‘indiscriminate growth and trickle-down-someday’ approach to development:
ENVIRONMENTAL
SIGNIFICANCE
OF DEVELOPSIENT
THEORY
281
The conventional approach takes it for granted that development cannot occur without importing huge quantities of goods, capital, machinery and inputs from the rich countries. No conception of autonomous, economically independent or self-sufficient development is entertained. Hence there is from the very start a great need to sell something in order to pay for all the imports, and the most readily available export items are natural resource commodities. Typically the first things to go are the forests, arguably the country’s and the world’s most precious ecological resources. Many Third World countries have long ago lost most of their forests. As the forests are destroyed, disastrous environmental effects cascade and feedback. Less rainfall is held, so creeks dry up, rain washes soil away, floods are more severe, and so are droughts because less water soaks in. With fewer trees providing fuel peasants accelerate forest destruction and increase the burning of dung which should be returned to the soil. In addition to potential climatic effects there is the accelerating loss of plant and animal species. Having eliminated a mere 300 species in the last 300 years to 1970, between now and 2010 we will probably have exterminated 1 million! How many will be extinct by 2033 and 2056; the points in time when world levels of production and consumption will be 4 times and 8 times as great as they are now if we maintain a mere 3% p.a. rate of economic growth? In addition to logging, the destruction of the forests is directly due to ‘development’, in two main ways. Because appropriate development options are not made available to nomads, peasants and native peoples, they are obliged to exploit their forests as conventional development squeezes them out. More importantly, vast areas of forest are cleared in order to establish high rate of return ‘agriculture’, especially export beef production. The conventional approach favours big infrastructure development, the prime example being the construction of large dams. The environmental and social undesirability of dams has been well documented, notably the destruction of forest, displacement of native people, loss of silt, and destruction of food chains, such as fisheries. These high technology, expert-controlled, capital-intensive projects take up development resources that should have been devoted to enabling people to meet their own needs, and they thereby make these people more environmentally destructive (below) as well as adding to foreign debt and therefore to the need to export more logs. The beneficiaries of big, high-tech infrastructure development are predominantly the relatively rich, including the factory owners who will use most of the electricity and the urban elite who can afford to buy electrical appliances. Ironically, micro-hydro power systems (sometimes involving very small dams) provide an excellent example of an appropriate technology
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matched to village needs. It follows from the argument above regarding the global resource endowment that there is no possibility of meeting the energy needs of the majority of Third World people from other conventional sources, such as coal or nuclear power. Another of the most notorious consequences of conventional development is the rapid expansion of export cropping. This takes over more of the best land and other agricultural resources, driving peasants and nomads on to more marginal land prone to overgrazing and erosion. The growth rate in areas under export crop production is about twice that for subsistance crops for local consumption. This has been a major factor in the rise of the proportion of people landless to around 30% or more in many regions over the last generation. Conventional development theory has encouraged export cropping in terms of ‘comparative advantage’. For every family sustained by wages from some plantations perhaps 100 people could be provided for if the land were converted to intensive subsistance gardens and woodlands. Directly related to the expansion of export cropping is the large scale migration of rural people to urban slums and the growth of already impossibly overcrowded cities. The resource and environment costs of sustaining a person in an urban situation are far higher than for rural living, e.g., through the costs involved in packaging and transporting food into cities, dealing with wastes and providing water. The ‘modemisation’ of agriculture has also involved rapid increase in the use of new seed varieties and the associated package of pesticides, fertilizers and irrigation, supplied by the few giant agribusiness firms. This is a delight to conventional economists who can only see the consequent leap in sales, exports, and GNP figures but it is fuelling one of the most serious environmental effects - the loss of genetic diversity. It is in the interests of the agribusiness corporations to market only the very few varieties of seeds most likely to maximise their global profits, hence the number of varieties of several food plants generally cultivated has fallen from hundreds or thousands to less than 10 in under a generation. The new varieties require heavy applications of fertilizer, irrigation and pesticides, which generate further environmental impacts via the energy and resource use involved in producing and transporting these inputs. Conventional development at best does little to increase the capacity of the majority of rural people to provide for themselves via stable and productive local ecosystems, and very often it reduces that capacity. It dispossesses many peasants from their land, it allows common resources such as forests and fisheries to become the private property of a few individuals and firms, and it takes land out of subsistence production and into export cropping. Because the owners of gas-guzzling sports cars and speedboats can outbid peasants for scarce petrol, they take most of it and
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peasants are therefore obliged to strip their local forests and to burn dung for fuel. The basic mechanisms of conventional development inevitably turn large numbers of poor people into highly destructive environmental agents. It is important to note that the basic principles of the economic system underlying approach to development are diametrically opposed to the conservation of the environment. The system is about constant, ceaseless and ever-expanding increase in the amount of producing and consuming going on. There is no conception of sufficient GNP or adequate living standards. GNP must rise by at least 3% p.a. or there is trouble. But we have seen that a mere 3% p.a. rate of growth for 70 years means that the economy would then be churning out 8 times as much production p.a. as at the beginning. For a 5% growth rate, which all respectable politicians and economists would much prefer, the multiple is 32 times! How many forests and wild rivers are likely to be left then? The system does not even have a built-in incentive for firms to husband the resources they make their income from. The over-riding principle is to maxirnise the return on invested capital and this is best done by using up forests, whales, soils, etc., and then taking capital out to some other high-profit venture. It can therefore be claimed that conventional development theory has been the most important factor responsible for the accelerating damage to the global ecosystem. Alternative, appropriate development The foregoing discussion and the considerable literature on appropriate technology suggest the following as basic principles of appropriate ecologically sustainable Third World development: (1) Focus on the concept of appropriateness. Totally reject the identification of development with growth. Seek to develop those things most likely to raise the overall quality of life in view of local and global ecological, resource, justice etc. considerations. Deliberately try to prevent much of the development that would occur if market forces and the profit motive were allowed to determine development. (2) Totah) abandon Western affluence as a goal of development. Aim at the achievement of low but comfortable living standards for all on the lowest reasonable levels of non-renewable resource consumption. Abandon the idea of endlessly increasing material living standards; aim to achieve adequate, convenient and comfortable standards, which are as low as possible in material terms, and stable overtime. Maximise local economic self-sufficiency via the (3) Most important: development of integrated, small-scale regional economies, whereby a variety of small producers can provide most of the goods and services needed in the area, mostly using locally available inputs. Make the village and its sur-
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rounding region the basic unit for development thinking. Use locally available resources. Help the people to set up small banks, markets, distribution systems, manufacturing plants etc., to be controlled by and to serve small local regions. Seek to minimise transport and trade and dependence on external inputs, and especially on outside sources of capital. Aim at the maximum reasonable self-sufficiency and independence at all levels, village, regional, state and national. Minimise the need to export in order to import necessities. Thus maximise independence from the global economy. Other important elements in appropriate development include smallness of scale, grass roots participation and control, preventing market forces and the profit motive from becoming the primary determinants of development, using many cooperative arrangements and especially restoring local forests and soils to become abundant and self-maintaining sources of food, water, materials etc. The missing link; the sufficiency of alternative technologies Most development theorists reject any suggestion of striving to minimise involvement in national and international economic networks or of aiming for self-sufficiency. ‘Autarchy’ is usually dismissed as a naive mistake. Certainly it is, if conventional development goals are retained, such as the eventual achievement of heavy industrialisation, high levels of GNP and western affluent lifestyles. But conservers begin with a totally different view of the goals of development, one focussed on frugality, sufficiency and stability in the merely economic realm. Conservers understand two crucial points which contradict the basic assumptions of conventional economists. Firstly, given sensible reorganisation, cooperative systems, restored ecosystems and conserver values, only remarkably low levels of consumption of resources are necessary for the achievement of quite satisfactory material living standards and a high quality of life. Secondly, existing alternative and appropriate technologies provide in abundance the necessary resources, especially via renewable sources, such as plant materials. Of crucial significance here is the Permaculture concept of developing the regions surrounding villages into complex, integrated, ‘permanent’ ecosystems, (e.g., based on tree crops rather than annuals) which ensure that much of the ‘work’ required to maintain the system is carried out by the natural processes within the system (Mollison, 1988) (e.g., water stored and regulated by forests, pest control by animals and companion planting). Central to these approaches is the use of extensive ranges of plants occupying many available niches and providing abundant varieties of foods, chemicals, oils, medicines, fibres, fuel, timber and other materials. Tree crops and forests are of central importance in these approaches. Carob and honey locust trees can
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produce 10 times the protein yield typical of Third World grain farms per ha, and they thrive in dry, hilly and stoney regions. Many trees, such as walnuts, last hundreds of years, whereas grains have to be planted annually, with incomparable costs in erosion and non-renewable resource use. Integrated systems can take advantage of many overlaps and niches. For example animal and human wastes can be recycled through gas producing units to enrich ponds producing a range of fish, fowl and plants. Small animals can be largely fed by food falling from varieties of trees planted to fruit in sequence, while consuming pests, cultivating, weeding and fertilising, and themselves producing food. Acquaculture can achieve 30 times the food production per ha typical of land-based systems. Ponds can also purify town sewage output while converting the nutrients to useful purposes. These dense, integrated, permanent, largely self-maintaining ecosystems can provide the inputs for a wide range of small, intermediate and low technology ‘firms’ producing for local consumption. They are therefore the base on which highly self-sufficient regional economies can be built, since by nature they reduce the need for imported materials, capital, energy and goods. It is most important to recognise that the point of appropriate development strategies is not to assist villagers to survive in the existing national and international economic system. The point is to build alternative economic and social systems that will enable people to escape from the existing national and international systems. The test question must always be, will this project help to build a highly self-sufficient and integrated village economy, so that all the people here are more able to provide satisfactory living standards for themselves from the resources of this small region, independent of and secure from national and international economic systems, with a minimum amount of economic interaction with those systems. It should not need to be spelled out that appropriate development for the Third World is totally incompatible with the continuation of a capitalist world order. To devote village land, labour and capital to developments that will produce for local people is to deny them to their current users, the export plantations and factories, the transnational corporations and the consumers in the rich countries. The world capitalist system requires that much of the Third World’s resources and much of its productive capacity be geared to the consumption in the developed countries and that Third World people will purchase many of the goods produced in the developed countries. Appropriate Third World development would terminate most of these flows, and therefore devastate the opportunities for the investment of capital.
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REFERENCES Barney, G.O. (Editor), 1980. The Global 2000 Report to the President. Pergamon, London. Brundtland, G.H., 1980. Our Common Future. Oxford University Press, London. Mollison, B., 1988. Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual. Tagari. Tyalgum, N.S.W. Trainer, F.E., 1985. Abandon Affluence! Zed Books, London. Trainer, F.E., 1986. Third World Development: Documents. University of New South Wales. Trainer, F.E., 1989. Developed to Death: Re-Thinking Third World Development. Merlin, London.