A. The Three Basic Classes of Global Capitalism – figures from 1998 UN report.
1. The Global Capitalist Class.
90% of shares in wealthy countries are owned by 5 to 10% of the population of those countries, meaning that 2% of the global population is the global capitalist class.
The world’s 225 richest men have a combined wealth of over US$1 trillion. This equates to the total income of the poorest half of the world’s population.
With only 4% of this wealth, the poorest 1 billion people could solve all basic problems of food, clean water and health care.
2. The Affluent Middle Class.
This includes the groups we think of as middle class in all countries as well as the working class of the rich countries, who are middle class in relation to the world as a whole.
This is approximately 20% of the global population or a billion people. Unfortunately figures always lump this group together with the very rich described above. While the rich undoubtedly command a vast share of the wealth of this group, the actual use of resources by this top 20% is probably more evenly distributed across the whole group.
The richest 20% of the world’s people consume an average of GNP 46 times higher than the average GNP consumed by the poorest half. They hold 85% of the world’s wealth. They consume 86% of the world’s production of natural resources such as steel, rubber and energy.
3. The Global Poor.
This is approximately 5 billion of the world’s population of which 1 billion are undernourished.
Figures tend to concentrate on the very poor in this population – those who are actually starving. This poorest 20% of the world’s population own 1.4% of the world’s wealth and consume 1.3% of all goods and services. It has been said that half of what is spent on golf every year would solve these people’s basic problems.
B. Environmental problems are not caused by any one these groups acting on their own but are a product of the way these groups interact within the market economy.
1. Competitive Private Ownership of Resources.
Within a context where capital is owned privately and competitively, companies and the shareholders that own them are always trying to extract the highest possible profit from their investments. They do this by expanding the number of the products that they sell and trying to reduce the costs of production.
This means that there is an increasing production of goods and services which is disproportionately marketed to the affluent middle class of the world. This in itself puts pressure on the environment and increasing pressure as production increases.
As well, there is a constant pressure to produce things in the cheapest way possible. In many cases, what this means is that ways of producing things which are cheaper but which entail environmental damage are preferred. The way this is often described is that the environmental costs of production are “externalized” – the company does not have to pay for them “internally”.
Politically, companies must resist attempts to make them pay for these environmental costs, since the effect will be to reduce profits. In a global free market, countries cannot effectively impose these costs on companies, since companies will relocate to another place with less strict environmental regulations.
It is not helpful to think of these environmental effects as the result of malicious decisions by uncaring or greedy entrepreneurs.
Cost cutting and environmental damage are structured into the economy. Companies that do not produce the most and at the cheapest cost lose sales, are therefore less profitable and lose investors, and are eventually displaced in the market by more profitable companies. The constant increase in production and the use of resources is itself a product of competition for markets between companies.
2. The Role of the Consumer.
The purchase of more and more consumer goods seems like the only adequate compensation for a life of forced labour. While it is the interests of companies to increase their markets by selling more, it becomes the interests of workers to buy more and compensate for the alienation of work.
Consumers shop by choosing the cheapest price for a desired commodity and cannot easily be effective in controlling the decisions at the point of production which may harm the environment. They do not know what is going on at the point of production and can’t easily control it.
They regard their level of consumption as sacred and resist attempts to increase taxes to pay for the externalized costs of environmental protection.
They support the owners of production in resisting environmental regulations that might lower wages or cause job losses.
These aspects of consumer behaviour are not the result of individual decisions based on greed and ignorance.
They are structured into an economy where having a job is necessary to live well.
They are structured into an economy where having a job also creates a need for an arena of compensation. Consumers exercise choice and express themselves through their consumption and leisure.
They are structured into an economic system where consumers as workers do not control the decisions that are made about production that may have an effect on environmental matters. Workers are also easily persuaded that their most important interest is always to hold on to their job.
How This Structure Causes Environmental Damage in Developing Countries.
These basic interactions of the capitalist economy are played out between affluent workers and consumers on the one hand and the rich who own the means of production on the other hand. The effects on the global poor and on the world’s environment are collateral damage from this central structuring opposition.
The following discussion is based on agricultural issues but the general points apply more widely.
Peasant and tribal subsistence economies give way to an emphasis on food production for the urban and the international market.
For example between the mid 70’s and the mid 80’s the area under cereal and root crops indeveloping countries increased by only 2%. In the same period the area used for export crops of coffee, sugar and soya beans increased by 50% (Bennett 1987, p. 35). This is an effect of the global market. Prices for goods exported to wealthy consumers are much higher than prices for goods sold to poor locals. For example in Mexico land turned over to growing tomatoes for export to the United States produced 12 times as much profit as land used to grow food for local consumption. In Central America land used to grow carnations for export produced 80 times the profit of land used to grow food for locals (Trainer 1994, p. 110).
Prior to the colonial period most land in developing countries was used for subsistenceproduction either by peasants or by tribal owners – horticulturalists or hunters and gatherers. This means that crops were not sold on the market. Food was consumed by the producer, given to kin and community groups, bartered with other producers, or sent as tribute to landlords. Now, most land is being used to produce food for the commodity economy – for sale for cash. Small scale owners of land have come to depend on this cash income for their livelihood. Unsustainable farming practices come about because they are in competition with larger companies and other small farmers to produce as cheaply as possible, and to produce whatever is most profitable, whether it is ultimately the best thing to grow to sustain their land.
Land is monopolized for cash crops and increasingly owned by elites.
A wealthy landlord or business class usually monopolizes land. On the land used to producecash crops for the international market, environmental problems are similar to the problems caused by commercial agriculture in developed countries – for example erosion caused by ploughing for monoculture crops, toxic pollution caused by fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides, soil destruction from overgrazing and so on. As in developed countries, these problems are caused by competition between businesses to produce the cheapest food products on the international market.
Developing countries may depend on only one or two cash crops for export income. They are very vulnerable to price fluctuations on the world market so the pressure to intensify production to maintain a constant income is great. Governments in developing countries tend to give support to the export sector to gain export income to repay large debts to foreign banks. Foreign debt is a crippling burden for most developing countries. Between 1983 and 1987 developing countries had to pay $106 billion in interest repayments to banks in wealthy countries. In 1985, when famine struck Africa $2,500 million was raised as aid for famine victims. Yet these same famine struck countries paid double that amount to banks in wealthy countries in the same period (Bennett 1987, p. 87; see also George 1988).
An effect of the changeover to cash crops is that former subsistence farmers are often driven off the best land. While India has twice as much land per person as the U.K., 47% of those living in the countryside own less than an acre of land, and 22% own no land at all (Bennett 1987, p. 25; Trainer 1995, p. 155). On the island of Java in Indonesia 1% of farmers own 35% of farming land, half of small holders own less than half a hectare of land and half of rural households have no land at all (George 1988, p. 159). Conditions like this are common in the developing world. Ted Trainer estimates that 80% of land in developingcountries is owned by 3% of the population (Trainer 1994; p. 17).
Effectively, much land is controlled by the global rich. They either own it outright or control the process of farming and the distribution and marketing of the produce. For example multinational companies own 85% of the world’s cocoa production, 90% of tobacco, 85% of tea, 90% of coffee and 60% of sugar (Bennett 1987, p.38; see also Lappe 1975; Trainer 1995). In earlier times, the world’s rich achieved control through colonization. Now this control continues through alliances between the global rich and governments in developingcountries.
Ecological problems come about because this land is farmed unsustainably or because this land has been converted from forests or woodlands to its present use. The transport and packaging of cash crops exported from developing countries is itself an ecological problem. For shareholders in the transnational companies that manage this farming, environmental controls interfere with profits. Shareholders respond to any loss of profitability by moving their shares to another company or by moving their company to another country.
Displaced subsistence farmers become subsistence farmers of marginal land
They may be unemployed and driven to eke out a subsistence by clearing less productive and previously forested land. For example in India, the Phillipines and Indonesia, use of fertile lowlands for commercial crops and industry has driven many peasants to clear forested upland areas. Their tilling of these areas for vegetables, cereals and root crops is causing massive erosion problems (George 1988; Pearce, Barbier, Markyanda 1990; Fargher & Cadaweng 1990; Boyce 1993; Trainer 1994).
If displaced peasants are employed their wages are often insufficient for family survival. Some subsistence food production or the gathering of fuel wood supplements wage work. Again, this agriculture is of necessity on areas that used to be used less intensively, since the best land has been taken by the cash crop sector.
Population growth is frequently seen as a cause of environmental problems in the developing world. However it can also be seen as a response to global inequality.
Hunger is a common experience for peasant farmers who are not part of the wealthy landlord elite. It is estimated that one billion of the world’s six billion population do not receive sufficient food (Trainer 1994, p. 34). One response to this insecurity is for families to have as many children as possible. They hope that at least some of them will survive to provide for their parents in old age (Bennett 1987, p. 22). While the rate of population increase has slowed the world’s population is still growing (Woodford 1997).
Increasing population is undoubtedly a danger to other species on the planet. More and more areas where humans have low impact are destroyed to make way for farming, timber extraction, roads, cities and mining.
Wrong to Blame Problems of Overpopulation on the Developing World
1. Overpopulation as a response to the economic domination of the rich countries.
Cash cropping for the rich world causes social disruption and food insecurity in the developing world. The response is increasing population in the developing countries.
2. An Overpopulation of Rich Consumers.
Much of the land which is being developed at the expense of wild nature is being used to grow luxury crops for wealthy consumers in rich countries.
One way of looking at this is to consider how much land is being made use of by wealthy consumers to support their lifestyle and how much of this land is outside their own country. For example “a Dutch person’s consumption of food, wood, natural fibres, and other products of the soil involves exploitation of five times as much land outside the country as inside” (Durning 1991, p. 156). Africa, which is a country in which famines and droughts often claim lives actually has more cultivated land per person than the United States but much of Africa’s land is used for export crops (Trainer 1995, p. 155). During the 1984 drought Zimbabwe and Kenya imported 65,000 tons of maize to feed their hungry populations. At the same time Zimbabwe produced a record crop of tobacco, soybeans and cotton for export while Kenya produced a huge harvest of asparagus and strawberries (Bennett 1987, p. 35).
Luxury Crops for Rich Countries Cause Environmental Problems in Developing Countries.
Crops such as rubber, sugar, tea, coffee and meat are all grown in developing countries – to the detriment of areas in which wild animals and plants were formerly dominant. 16 million hectares of coffee, tea and cocoa are grown for export in developing countries (Trainer 1995, p. 155). Annually, 200 million pounds of meat is exported to the United States from Central America – mostly grown on land that was recently tropical rainforest (Trainer 1995, p. 34) Tropical timbers are also logged unsustainably. These are all luxury crops , wealthy consumers could do without them. However, the only decision made by these consumers is to purchase an available product from a developing country. The destruction of the environment that has made that decision possible is not a choice made by those consumers.
A good example is the growing of tea in India. In Northern India areas that were recently tropical forests where elephants and tigers roamed are now taken over for tea plantations. At the same time poor farmers in these areas have been driven off their traditional lands to make way for commercial farming. These same farmers move into other areas where forests were once dominant and destroy those forests for their subsistence farms.
In Brazil, peasants from poor provinces have been forced off their land by cattle ranchers selling meat on the international market and sugar farmers growing for the rich world. The government encourages these displaced peasants to move into tropical forests in the Amazon basin and clear land to begin subsistence farming and to become part of the cattle industry. Big ranchers also move into these areas along roads established by the Brazilian government. More than 40% of the Brazilian tropical forest cleared in recent years has been cleared for cattle production, mainly for export to United States fast food outlets (Trainer 1994, p. 128).
None of this cattle ranching is sustainable. Tropical rains wash all the nutrients out of the exposed soils after a few decades, with the whole sequence destroying both the original forest and the pasture following it. From the Brazilian government’s perspective this strategy has a number of aims. It is a temporary solution to the discontent of the displacedpeasantry. The production of beef for export is an important earner of foreign exchange for a country hugely in debt to foreign banks. This occupation of the Amazon is designed to ensure military control of territory that may be disputed by other neighbouring states whose environmental record is equally dismal (Barnaby 1988; Pearce, Barbier, Maryanda 1990; Revkin 1990).
Deforestation and the Greenhouse Effect
The destruction of tropical forests for timber or to make way for farming land is contributing to the Greenhouse effect. As these forests are bulldozed they are burned. Deforestationcontributes about one third of the the carbon dioxide which is causing the Greenhouse effect(Flavin 1990, p. 18).
Deforestation for Fuel in Poor Countries
Another environmental problem of poor countries is the destruction of woodlands for fuel used in cooking. The solutions to this problem are: the return of land used for export crops to localsubsistence; re-afforestation; more efficient use of wood as a fuel; solar cooking; the fencing of tree regrowth from grazing animals; population stability. All these solutions require time, effort and money. In a world where wealth is very unevenly distributed there is little left to deal with these problems in the developing countries (Trainer 1985; 1991; 1994; 1995).