Researchers: lack of farming opportunities, Western subsidies key causes of conflict in third world
Researchers from the University of Ghent and the from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and the International Peace Research Institute (PRIO), have come to some highly counter-intuitive findings about environmentalism, agriculture and the key drivers of conflict and social instability in the third world. The researchers from Ghent found that a lack of farming and trading opportunities for developing country farmers, partly the result of agricultural subsidies in wealthy countries, is a major cause of conflict and war. Their Norwegian collegues found that environmentalism as defined here in the West does not necessarily contribute to peace; what is more, the opposite is true, the less green a country, the more stable and less prone to conflict it is, they found. 'Green peace', they found, is often a contradictio in terminis.
In a time in which 'sustainable development' is an aim we are all striving for, these findings come as a stark warning that simplistic solutions to achieving it, might result in the opposite effects. It is certainly too soon to put the findings within the context of bioenergy and the opportunities it could bring in developing countries, but it looks like much of the ideological fabric on which some organisations from the West are based, is highly questionable. It is time to question ourselves, as well as environmentalists and conservationists, in light of the scientists' analyses.
Researchers Dr Thomas Demuynck and Dr Arne Schollaert of Ghent University's Center for the Study of Social Economics, analysed the complex relationship between trade barriers, lack of modern farming opportunities in Africa, and the potential for social conflict that arises from this underdeveloped rural sector.
The vast majority of Africa's people are employed in agriculture. In some countries, farmers' share of the total population runs up to more than 80 percent. It is however naive to believe these peasants are not connected to the global economy. On the contrary, globalisation and the effects of international commodity prices have a direct effect on these communities, a large number of which are involved in growing crops for the world market. Many third world economies are highly dependent on exporting commodities, often the leading source of their growth.
Low prices and subsidies
Dr Schollaert, who studies agricultural economics as they play out in Tanzania, and Dr Demuynck found that there is a strong correlation between low prices for tropical commodities (such as sugar, cacao, rubber), Western commodities (sugar, grains, meat) and the economic stability of developing countries. Low agricultural prices result in economic conditions which show spikes in the potential for social conflict, tend to block efforts towards democratisation, and are often followed by explicit violence.
Decades of agricultural subsidies in the West - originally developed right after the Second World War to ensure food security amongst Europeans but no longer needed since at least the 1970s - have led to a boost in supplies of farm commodities on the world market. The situation today is that in a large number of African countries, imported agricultural products - including costs for their transcontinental transport - are now cheaper than locally produced products.
This has led to a 'catastrophic dependence' that has destroyed local agriculture and has thrown millions of farmers back into a status of subsistence cropping. Economies of the South were consequently forced to limit themselves to producing a small number of tropical commodities - coffee, cocoa - with oversupplies as a result. World demand for these products did not grow fast enough to ensure stable prices. What is more, processed products face excessive import duties (socalled 'tariff escalation') compared with raw materials which offer only small profit margins for the farmers and secondary industries. This way, processing and manufacturing industries have had not the slightest chance to emerge.
The effects of this lack of opportunities can be seen in many developing countries today: a very small labor market, and undiversified economy based on a small number of globally traded tropical commodities, and virtually no alternatives.
Explosive cycle
The researchers then mapped this situation to the potential for social conflict. They found that a lack of economic alternatives and diversification leads to ever lower prices for tropical commodities (because of oversupplies), increasing poverty, unemployment and a growing pool of dissatisfied laborers with no opportunities to make a living.
Part of this economically inactive workforce will migrate to the expanding mega-cities and slums, where employment opportunities are not much brighter. The remaining ruralites in the country-side form a mass of disgruntled people often willing to engage in any form of 'economic' activity. This is what makes the situation highly explosive and often leads directly to conflict. Any 'cause' that offers a way out of misery will be welcomed, be it the exploitation of low-value minerals, waging resource wars, or following dubious charismatic figures: lack of real economic opportunity allows these 'causes' to recruit this vast 'sleeping' group of laborers:
energy :: biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: agriculture :: developing countries :: rural development :: subsidies :: trade :: ecological footprint :: environmentalism :: sustainable development :: conflict :: war ::
When they take up such a cause, out of necessity, the remaining rural productivity further declines, and the ever growing cities become every more dependent on imported agricultural products with no local counter-balance. Schollaert and Demuynck warn that this perverse cycle has become completely untenable and could lead to further conflicts in the future.
Environmental footprints and conflict
Helga Malmin Binningsbø, Indra de Soysa and Nils Petter Gleditsch - from NTNU’s Department of Sociology and Political Science, from the Centre for the Study of Civil War (CSCW), and from the International Peace Research Institute (PRIO) - for their part found that 'sustainable development' and working for the environment is no guarantee for peace. On the contrary.
They are some of the first researchers to empirically investigate whether the often heard claim that conservation and attempts to limit the exploitation of natural resources leads to 'green peace'. They found the contrary to be true.
The NTNU scientists looked at the environmental pressures in 150 countries in the period from 1961 to 1999. By using an internationally recognized technique for measuring a country’s environmental sustainability – 'The Ecological Footprint' – the researchers were able to compare these numbers with statistics on armed conflict during the same period.
Their conclusion may seem paradoxical: lands where resources are heavily exploited show a clear connection to a lack of armed conflict. Or alternatively, nations troubled by war during the research period had lower exploitation rates of their natural resources. The findings give researchers solid empirical support for stating that environmental scarcity is not the reason behind violent conflict:
The findings are highly important for the fields of development economics, for policies dealing with natural resource exploitation and for the debate about the socio-economic effects of climate change and its mitigation.
Conclusion
The researchers from Ghent repeat what many others have found: unfair trade rules and the lack of the development of a modern farming sector are eroding the entire fabric of developing countries' economies, with the result that both rural groups and urbanites are suffering. Eradicating subsidies, opening markets and encouraging the development of a modern agricultural sector in these countries should be a priority for development organisations. Some, like the World Bank, have come again to this insight and have, for the first time in decades, put rural development back at the top of their agenda.
The bioenergy sector obviously offers a new global market - with virtually unlimited demand - that would allow third world farmers to diversify away from tropical commodities like coffee and cocoa, on which they have become dependent and for which markets do not expand enough. But they should be allowed to go further than merely producing the raw materials for biofuels, or else, the same old dynamic could reemerge (overproduction, low prices, rural collapse).
However, the Ghent researchers analysed the situation over a long term, including the period in which farm prices reached historic lows. They do not analyse the effects of recent upsurges in these prices. However, other institutes have said rising farm product prices could actually be a good thing for poor third world countries that are dependent on the agriculture (e.g. the WorldWatch Institute counter-intuitively stated that biofuels and increasing agricultural prices could be a major boost to the world's poor, who are farmers).
We would caution, however, for the optimism on the potential of biofuels to contribute directly and immediately to rural development. It is beyond a doubt that increased prices for products such as palm oil are benefiting smallholders in the developing countries. But it is too early to tell whether this is true for basic staples like maize and other grains. Many subsistence farmers produce merely for themselves and don't have any surpluses to sell on local markets, let alone world markets. High maize prices therefor could have dramatic effects on urban markets in these poor countries, - with cities being largely dependent on imports because local infrastructures and low productivity do not allow these countries' own farmers to supply them.
On the other hand, investments in productivity and infrastructures could unlock the vast 'sleeping potential' for agriculture in the South, especially in Africa. There, with the most basic of modern inputs, a very large increase in productivity is waiting to be realised. If this potential were to be tapped, it could supply regional markets and offer a counter-weight to subsidised products from the West. But then, this presupposes a simultaneous phasing out of precisely these subsidies and trade barriers, else the funds needed to invest in this much needed type of rural development will not be available. A catch-22.
The Norwegian research for its part is most controversial because it implies that natural resource exploitation and 'dirty development' (a high carbon footprint), seem to offer more chances for peaceful development than what we commonly call 'sustainable' development. Importantly, peace and the absence of war are the most basic preconditions for development as such.
At Biopact, we have often said that Modernity could well be the conditio sine qua non for countries to develop in a cleaner way: they have to go through this long dirty phase, after which they can become as environmentally conscious as the West (note that only now, two centuries after Europe and the US deforested 95% of their forests, forest cover is finally increasing again in these countries; it is the enormous wealth obtained from 'dirty development' that allows them to appreciate the real value of natural resources and to invest in it).
The idea that poor countries can short-circuit this long modernisation phase and 'leapfrog' into a green future, is noble, but highly problematic. It is a thoroughly Western idea, projected onto poor countries. Nobody knows whether it will work, but the Norwegian scientists show that it might not. On the other hand, their research only looks at the way in which things evolved in the past and over a large sample of countries. This should not obfuscate the fact that there are indeed small number of poor countries in which 'sustainable development', conservation and the transition towards a post-industrial, truly green economy, works. Examples could be the Dominican Republic, or Cuba.
Moreover, new instruments are being developed that tie hard market fundamentals and economics to natural resource conservation. These concepts and tools - such as ways to compensate poor countries to conserve their tropical rainforests, through carbon markets - could offer a viable strategy to side-step the apparently unbreakable relationship between environmental desctruction and modern development. It is too early to tell whether these instruments will work. But this also implies it would be unwise to simply discredit them on the basis of the Norwegian research.
Picture: 'primitive' subsistence farming in developing countries - lack of market opportunities prevents the development of a modern agricultural sector and could lead to conflicts.
Hat tip to Dirk.
References:
Helga Malmin Binningsbø, Indra de Soysa, Nils Petter Gleditsch, "Green giant or straw man? Environmental pressure and civil conflict, 1961–99", Population and Environment, Volume 28, Number 6 / July, 2007, DOI: 10.1007/s11111-007-0053-6
AlphaGalileo: Does working for a better environment really lead to peace? - December 12, 2007.
Thomas Demuynck and Arne Schollaert, "Westerse handelsbelemmeringen zijn belangrijke oorzaak van conflicten in derde wereld", University of Ghent, Center for the Study of Social Economics, November 2007.
Thomas Demuynck and Arne Schollaert, "Agricultural commodity prices and civil conflict", January 18, 2008, [in press as a Ghent University Working Paper].
Biopact: Worldwatch Institute chief: biofuels could end global malnourishment -
August 23, 2007
In a time in which 'sustainable development' is an aim we are all striving for, these findings come as a stark warning that simplistic solutions to achieving it, might result in the opposite effects. It is certainly too soon to put the findings within the context of bioenergy and the opportunities it could bring in developing countries, but it looks like much of the ideological fabric on which some organisations from the West are based, is highly questionable. It is time to question ourselves, as well as environmentalists and conservationists, in light of the scientists' analyses.
Researchers Dr Thomas Demuynck and Dr Arne Schollaert of Ghent University's Center for the Study of Social Economics, analysed the complex relationship between trade barriers, lack of modern farming opportunities in Africa, and the potential for social conflict that arises from this underdeveloped rural sector.
The vast majority of Africa's people are employed in agriculture. In some countries, farmers' share of the total population runs up to more than 80 percent. It is however naive to believe these peasants are not connected to the global economy. On the contrary, globalisation and the effects of international commodity prices have a direct effect on these communities, a large number of which are involved in growing crops for the world market. Many third world economies are highly dependent on exporting commodities, often the leading source of their growth.
Low prices and subsidies
Dr Schollaert, who studies agricultural economics as they play out in Tanzania, and Dr Demuynck found that there is a strong correlation between low prices for tropical commodities (such as sugar, cacao, rubber), Western commodities (sugar, grains, meat) and the economic stability of developing countries. Low agricultural prices result in economic conditions which show spikes in the potential for social conflict, tend to block efforts towards democratisation, and are often followed by explicit violence.
Decades of agricultural subsidies in the West - originally developed right after the Second World War to ensure food security amongst Europeans but no longer needed since at least the 1970s - have led to a boost in supplies of farm commodities on the world market. The situation today is that in a large number of African countries, imported agricultural products - including costs for their transcontinental transport - are now cheaper than locally produced products.
This has led to a 'catastrophic dependence' that has destroyed local agriculture and has thrown millions of farmers back into a status of subsistence cropping. Economies of the South were consequently forced to limit themselves to producing a small number of tropical commodities - coffee, cocoa - with oversupplies as a result. World demand for these products did not grow fast enough to ensure stable prices. What is more, processed products face excessive import duties (socalled 'tariff escalation') compared with raw materials which offer only small profit margins for the farmers and secondary industries. This way, processing and manufacturing industries have had not the slightest chance to emerge.
The effects of this lack of opportunities can be seen in many developing countries today: a very small labor market, and undiversified economy based on a small number of globally traded tropical commodities, and virtually no alternatives.
Explosive cycle
The researchers then mapped this situation to the potential for social conflict. They found that a lack of economic alternatives and diversification leads to ever lower prices for tropical commodities (because of oversupplies), increasing poverty, unemployment and a growing pool of dissatisfied laborers with no opportunities to make a living.
Part of this economically inactive workforce will migrate to the expanding mega-cities and slums, where employment opportunities are not much brighter. The remaining ruralites in the country-side form a mass of disgruntled people often willing to engage in any form of 'economic' activity. This is what makes the situation highly explosive and often leads directly to conflict. Any 'cause' that offers a way out of misery will be welcomed, be it the exploitation of low-value minerals, waging resource wars, or following dubious charismatic figures: lack of real economic opportunity allows these 'causes' to recruit this vast 'sleeping' group of laborers:
energy :: biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: agriculture :: developing countries :: rural development :: subsidies :: trade :: ecological footprint :: environmentalism :: sustainable development :: conflict :: war ::
When they take up such a cause, out of necessity, the remaining rural productivity further declines, and the ever growing cities become every more dependent on imported agricultural products with no local counter-balance. Schollaert and Demuynck warn that this perverse cycle has become completely untenable and could lead to further conflicts in the future.
Environmental footprints and conflict
Helga Malmin Binningsbø, Indra de Soysa and Nils Petter Gleditsch - from NTNU’s Department of Sociology and Political Science, from the Centre for the Study of Civil War (CSCW), and from the International Peace Research Institute (PRIO) - for their part found that 'sustainable development' and working for the environment is no guarantee for peace. On the contrary.
They are some of the first researchers to empirically investigate whether the often heard claim that conservation and attempts to limit the exploitation of natural resources leads to 'green peace'. They found the contrary to be true.
The NTNU scientists looked at the environmental pressures in 150 countries in the period from 1961 to 1999. By using an internationally recognized technique for measuring a country’s environmental sustainability – 'The Ecological Footprint' – the researchers were able to compare these numbers with statistics on armed conflict during the same period.
Their conclusion may seem paradoxical: lands where resources are heavily exploited show a clear connection to a lack of armed conflict. Or alternatively, nations troubled by war during the research period had lower exploitation rates of their natural resources. The findings give researchers solid empirical support for stating that environmental scarcity is not the reason behind violent conflict:
- A higher Ecological Footprint is negatively correlated with conflict onset, controlling for income effects and other factors, they found.
- There is now a strong scientific case against the Neomalthusian model, which says that resource scarcity leads to conflict.
The findings are highly important for the fields of development economics, for policies dealing with natural resource exploitation and for the debate about the socio-economic effects of climate change and its mitigation.
Conclusion
The researchers from Ghent repeat what many others have found: unfair trade rules and the lack of the development of a modern farming sector are eroding the entire fabric of developing countries' economies, with the result that both rural groups and urbanites are suffering. Eradicating subsidies, opening markets and encouraging the development of a modern agricultural sector in these countries should be a priority for development organisations. Some, like the World Bank, have come again to this insight and have, for the first time in decades, put rural development back at the top of their agenda.
The bioenergy sector obviously offers a new global market - with virtually unlimited demand - that would allow third world farmers to diversify away from tropical commodities like coffee and cocoa, on which they have become dependent and for which markets do not expand enough. But they should be allowed to go further than merely producing the raw materials for biofuels, or else, the same old dynamic could reemerge (overproduction, low prices, rural collapse).
However, the Ghent researchers analysed the situation over a long term, including the period in which farm prices reached historic lows. They do not analyse the effects of recent upsurges in these prices. However, other institutes have said rising farm product prices could actually be a good thing for poor third world countries that are dependent on the agriculture (e.g. the WorldWatch Institute counter-intuitively stated that biofuels and increasing agricultural prices could be a major boost to the world's poor, who are farmers).
We would caution, however, for the optimism on the potential of biofuels to contribute directly and immediately to rural development. It is beyond a doubt that increased prices for products such as palm oil are benefiting smallholders in the developing countries. But it is too early to tell whether this is true for basic staples like maize and other grains. Many subsistence farmers produce merely for themselves and don't have any surpluses to sell on local markets, let alone world markets. High maize prices therefor could have dramatic effects on urban markets in these poor countries, - with cities being largely dependent on imports because local infrastructures and low productivity do not allow these countries' own farmers to supply them.
On the other hand, investments in productivity and infrastructures could unlock the vast 'sleeping potential' for agriculture in the South, especially in Africa. There, with the most basic of modern inputs, a very large increase in productivity is waiting to be realised. If this potential were to be tapped, it could supply regional markets and offer a counter-weight to subsidised products from the West. But then, this presupposes a simultaneous phasing out of precisely these subsidies and trade barriers, else the funds needed to invest in this much needed type of rural development will not be available. A catch-22.
The Norwegian research for its part is most controversial because it implies that natural resource exploitation and 'dirty development' (a high carbon footprint), seem to offer more chances for peaceful development than what we commonly call 'sustainable' development. Importantly, peace and the absence of war are the most basic preconditions for development as such.
At Biopact, we have often said that Modernity could well be the conditio sine qua non for countries to develop in a cleaner way: they have to go through this long dirty phase, after which they can become as environmentally conscious as the West (note that only now, two centuries after Europe and the US deforested 95% of their forests, forest cover is finally increasing again in these countries; it is the enormous wealth obtained from 'dirty development' that allows them to appreciate the real value of natural resources and to invest in it).
The idea that poor countries can short-circuit this long modernisation phase and 'leapfrog' into a green future, is noble, but highly problematic. It is a thoroughly Western idea, projected onto poor countries. Nobody knows whether it will work, but the Norwegian scientists show that it might not. On the other hand, their research only looks at the way in which things evolved in the past and over a large sample of countries. This should not obfuscate the fact that there are indeed small number of poor countries in which 'sustainable development', conservation and the transition towards a post-industrial, truly green economy, works. Examples could be the Dominican Republic, or Cuba.
Moreover, new instruments are being developed that tie hard market fundamentals and economics to natural resource conservation. These concepts and tools - such as ways to compensate poor countries to conserve their tropical rainforests, through carbon markets - could offer a viable strategy to side-step the apparently unbreakable relationship between environmental desctruction and modern development. It is too early to tell whether these instruments will work. But this also implies it would be unwise to simply discredit them on the basis of the Norwegian research.
Picture: 'primitive' subsistence farming in developing countries - lack of market opportunities prevents the development of a modern agricultural sector and could lead to conflicts.
Hat tip to Dirk.
References:
Helga Malmin Binningsbø, Indra de Soysa, Nils Petter Gleditsch, "Green giant or straw man? Environmental pressure and civil conflict, 1961–99", Population and Environment, Volume 28, Number 6 / July, 2007, DOI: 10.1007/s11111-007-0053-6
AlphaGalileo: Does working for a better environment really lead to peace? - December 12, 2007.
Thomas Demuynck and Arne Schollaert, "Westerse handelsbelemmeringen zijn belangrijke oorzaak van conflicten in derde wereld", University of Ghent, Center for the Study of Social Economics, November 2007.
Thomas Demuynck and Arne Schollaert, "Agricultural commodity prices and civil conflict", January 18, 2008, [in press as a Ghent University Working Paper].
Biopact: Worldwatch Institute chief: biofuels could end global malnourishment -
August 23, 2007
1 Comments:
Well stated. Informative.
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