Third World workers bitten by green bug

Next week CAFOD launches "Renewing the Earth", its latest campaign, which focusses on the connections between development and the environment. Ellen Teague examined the issues. IN the past, development agencies have paid scant attention to environmental issues. But perceptions are changing and there is a growing realisation that we must look at the rights and needs of the total earth community if the earth itself, and therefore the human species, is to survive. The disasters which afflict the poor today may herald a time when climatic changes, loss of soil fertility and lack of resources affect the quality of life of us all.

CAFOD has argued for some time that modern development often generates inequalities and that unjust structures underpin poverty. It is increasingly clear that many development projects encourage an acquisitive attitude towards the natural world.

Long-term economic productivity and the well-being of all the world's people depend on soil, water, sunlight and air. Yet many large-scale "development" projects whether the Polonoreste cattleranching project in Brazil, the Narmada Dam in India or the Channel Tunnel in Britain — are evaluated, primarily, for their costs which, very often, only become clear in the long-term.

A network of Asian development agencies recently produced a report suggesting that the time has come to redefine development to incorporate a sense of sustainability and justice within generations and between one generation and those that follow.

Poverty is not only a result, but also a cause of environmental degradation. Cutting down trees for fuel and intensive grazing of land are rational from the point of view of short-term survival.

Half of all rural families in Central America own either too little land to support a family or no land whatsoever. Large landowners monopolise the best land and this unequal distribution of wealth pushes peasants onto hillsides which are ill-suited to agriculture or lowland forests which are now two-thirds depleted. The land and the people are prey to soil erosion, a falling water table and flash floods.

In addition, landless peasants are swelling the urban centres where many remain unemployed or under-employed. Governments in the region do not or cannot provide such basic services as water and electricity, forcing people to depend on outlying regions for food and lirewood. Forested areas which once surrounded such cities as

Guatemala City, Managua, Panama City and San Salvador have now largely disappeared.

Large lending agencies such as the World Bank have tended to fuel the problems by directing loans to high technology, export-orientated agricultural projects.

Today the bank is apparently increasingly sensitive to environmental concerns and the establishment of environmental criteria for project evaluation, but non-governmental networks such as the World Rainforest Movement are still sceptical about their initiatives. There is encouragement for reforestation but often with eucalyptus which lowers watertables and damages the soil. Britain's own aid programme has placed little emphasis on researching traditional food systems and farming practices which tap into the wisdom of rural communities.

The world's natural resources are being depleted at an alarming rate. We have used up more metals and ores in the last 40 years than in the rest of human history. Twenty-seven million hectares of productive land turn to desert each year. The atmosphere is so polluted that acid rain has destroyed 50 per cent of the forests in East and West Germany and all life in 14,000 lakes in Canada.

Genetic diversity is being threatened by habitat destruction which is driving species to extinction at the rate of at least one per day. It is estimated that there are 50,000 species of tree in Brazil alone, compared to only 700 in the whole of North America.

Northern exploitation of the South is very clear in relation to seeds which affect the food industry. The International Coalition for Development Action (supported by CAFOD) has an on-going campaign to conserve seed resources. Royal Dutch Shell is the world's largest corporate owner of seed companies and owns 34 per cent of all varieties of spring barley and 55 per cent of winter barley. Legislation covering the

development of seeds favours large multinationals and disadvantages poor farmers and growers in both Northern and Southern countries.

The Green Revolution, which led to the widespread use of hybrid seeds has widened the gap between rich and poor as farmers must buy new supplies of seed each year and purchase the accompanying fertilisers and pesticides — normally produced by the same companies. This can lead not only to debts for small farmers but to nutritional problems and general vulnerability to poverty. Ownership of food resources must reflect common needs.

There are many dilemmas involved in dealing with these issues. So called debt-for-nature swops have been hailed as positive mechanisms for tackling the indebtedness of countries of the South whilst preserving natural resources. These swops entail buying the debt of a country at a reduced rate on the "secondary" market and the cancellation of the same debt in exchange for environmental protection initiatives in the debtor country.

The first such swop took place in 1987 when the US-based group, Conservation International, bought US$650,000 of Bolivian debt from Citibank for just US$100,0(0. In exchange for having its debt reduced, Bolivia promised to spend the equivalent of US$250,000 to protect 3.7 million awes of tropical forest. But such initiatives have their critics, who argue that they promote a harmful development model as a nation's productive assets such as land come into foreign ownership.

Another difficulty concerns the abundant "greenhouse" gas, carbon dioxide (CO2), and its rising level of CO 2 in the atmosphere. These arc mainly due to the burning of fossil fuels for energy. Each pound of coal, oil or gas produces more than double its weight in carbon dioxide when burned. It is clear that the more "developed" a nation becomes, the more energy is consumed and that the struggle of Third World nations to industrialise is contributing very significantly to the spur in the rise of CO2 emissions.

Three-quarters of the world's population live in countries of the South and as they adopt Northern strategies for development and opt for greater consumerism they are likely to regard as paternalistic any request from Northern countries to re-think the use of fossil fuels,