Globalisation and Sustainable

Globalization and Sustainable Development:
Issues and Applications

Edited by
Rebecca Lee Harris

Dr. Kiran C. Patel Center for Global Solutions
University of South Florida

Published in 2006 by:

Dr. Kiran C. Patel Center for Global Solutions
University of South Florida
4202 East Fowler Avenue, SOC102
Tampa, Florida 33620-6912
Phone: (813) 974-2954
Fax: (813) 974-2522
Email: GlobalResearch@cas.usf.edu
Website: http://www.cas.usf.edu/globalresearch

Cover design by Rebecca Hagen, in focus design, Tampa, FL
Cover photograph, Small-scale fishers using gillnets in the
Gulf of San Miguel, Panama, by Daniel Suman, Rosenstiel
School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, University of Miami
Printing by Pro-Copy, Tampa, FL

The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the
authors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher.

Obtainable from the Dr. Kiran C. Patel Center for Global
Solutions at the University of South Florida.

ISBN: 0-9742736-9-4

Globalization and Sustainable Development:
Issues and Applications

Contents

Figures vii

Maps viii

Tables ix
Foreword 1

Rebecca Lee Harris
Part I: Broad Perspectives

1
The Evolution of Sustainable Development 13

Renu Khator and Lisa Fairchild
2
Sustainable Development: The World Is Still Oceans Apart! 23

O.P. Dwivedi
3
Third Systems, Human Security, and Sustainable Development 43

Jorge Nef

vi

Part II: Economic and Political Considerations

4
Shaping Globalization for Sustainable Development 61

Kwabena Gyimah-Brempong
5
Trade and Sustainable Development at the World Trade
Organization: Toward a Decision on Genetically Modified
Organisms
84

Michael Miller
Part III: Grassroots Movements

6
Sustainable Community for Sustainable Development: Mujeres
Reunidas and the Hhu of Hidalgo, Mexico

109

Ella Schmidt
7
Feminism, Poverty, and Grassroots Movements in India 133

Gurleen Grewal
8
To Save a City: Grassroots Movement toward Reforestation in
Ica, Peru
147

Richard Weisskoff
Part IV: Natural Resource Use and Policy
9
Environmental Degradation in a Conservation Model: Major
Forest Loss in Costa Ricas Amistad-Caribe Conservation Area
165

Michael Miller
10
The Case of the Shrimp Industry in Eastern Panama (Darin
Province): Unsustainable Harvest of a Valuable Export Product
and Its Limited Impact on Local Community Development
192

Daniel Suman

About the Authors 221

Figures

4.1
Average Annual Rural Population Growth Rate

69
4.2
Percentage Annual Change in Environmental Index

70
8.1
Direction of the mudslides, Ica, J anuary 29, 19

150
8.2
Looking toward Ica and the Ocean from atop a Mud Slide,
Cansas Canyon

151
8.3
Panorama of the Cansas Canyon, Ica, Peru

157
8.4
The Future Vision of the Cansas Canyon

158

Maps

9.1
Location of the ACLAC within Costa Ricas National System
of Conservation Areas

166
9.2
Map of Costa Rica with Political Boundaries and Topography

167
10.1
Map of Eastern Panama and the Darien Region

194
10.2
Important Fishing Zones in Panama

197
10.3
Coastal Communities in Darien Province

199
10.4
Important Shrimp Harvesting Areas for the Artisanal Fishing
Fleet in the Gulf of San Miguel

203

Tables

1.1
Comparing Development and Sustainable Development

18
1.2
Sustainable Development in the Global Context

19
3.1
Human Security/Insecurity: Analytical Matrix

57
4.1
Environmental Indicators, 2000

68
10.1
Shrimp Permits per Community Granted by the DGRMC,
1996, 2003

201
10.2
Finfish Permits per Community Granted by the DGRMC,
1996, 2003

201
10.3
Numbers and Percentages of Fishers in Coastal Communities,
2000

202

Foreword

Rebecca Lee Harris

INTRODUCTION
This book examines the relationship between two of the most
used and abused catchphrases of our timesglobalization and
sustainable development. While in some circles, being in favor of
one implies the demise of the other, the chapters in this book suggest
that both are forces with which we must simultaneously contend.
Indeed, it is only by embracing and yet harnessing globalizations
impacts that our worlds societies and economies can develop in a
sustainable manner.
The modern era of globalization may be rooted in the economic
consequences of the dismantling of barriers to international trade and
finance. However, in a broader sense, globalization includes the
increased connectivity of people around the world not just because
of an increased exchange of goods, services and capital.
Improvements in transportation and changing economic
opportunities have led to an increase in movements of peoples, both
through migration as well as tourism. Improved communications
technology has also increased connections among people and
peoples worldwide. Many would argue that globalization is not a
new phenomenon, but rather one that has been occurring to some
extent since the beginning of human history. However, there is a
general consensus that the rate of globalization has increased in
recent years and certainly our awareness of it (and accompanying
debate over it) has as well.
2 Rebecca Lee Harris

As several authors in this book note, the concept of sustainable
development first came into our common vernacular with the
publication of Our Common Future, the report issued by the U.N.
Commission on Environment and Development (often called the
Brundtland Commission, after Gro Brundtland, the head of the
commission). The report refers to sustainable development as that
which meets the needs of the present without compromising the
ability of future generations to meet their own needs. (p. 8)
Sustainable development requires a holistic view toward growth and
environmental stewardship, taking into account poverty and
inequality, human health and human capital, differences in cultures,
political conditions (including government budget pressures), and
global markets among other factors.
Given the complexity of the impacts of globalization and the
causes of sustainable or unsustainable development, it is no surprise
that the nexus of the two is not straightforward either. The
relationship differs across and within countries, as well as among
different aspects of environmental issues. For example, the increased
trade associated with globalization causes a shift in national
production as countries expand production in goods for which they
have an international market and contract production of other goods
for which it is economically more efficient to import. In the United
States, this has manifested itself in a shift from heavy manufacturing
to cleaner types of production, such as service industries.
However, many of the industries in the new economy of the U.S.
have their own environmental problems; witness the growing
problem of hazardous waste caused by dumping high-tech products.
In some poorer countries, pressures to export high-value agricultural
products, for example, often lead to unsustainable agricultural
practices, such as mono-cropping or intensive use of pesticides and
other chemicals.
Globalization may have positive or negative impacts on
individual or country-level incomes. The effects of these income
changes on sustainable development are also not clear cut. On a
micro level, as peoples incomes rise, they are likely to have better
education and more access to information which may help them
make more environmentally positive choices. In addition, individuals
can afford more environmentally-friendly goods, whether it be
cleaner fuels, fuel efficient cars, or products with recycled
Foreword 3

components. For a number of reasons, increased incomes slow
population growth, which is imperative to slowing down the use of
our natural resources. At the national level, wealthier countries are
more likely to have and enforce environmental regulations.
On the other hand, increased incomes have some detrimental
impacts on sustainability. As peoples incomes rise, they are also
more likely to consume more, including driving more, driving bigger
cars, demanding goods with more packaging (leading to more solid
waste), and demanding more energy and water.
However, not all segments of the population receive the
economic benefits of globalization. J obs may be lost due to
international competition, or social safety nets (such as food
subsidies) may be erased due to pressures from the international
lending community. For those whose incomes fall, the above-
mentioned effects on sustainability are reversed. In particular, food
insecurity in developing countries forces poor families to employ
environmentally unsustainable farming practices such as farming on
fragile lands or clearing forests to grow produce. In general, lower
incomes shorten ones time horizon such that poor families must pay
more attention to meeting current needs than worrying about future
needs. This, unfortunately, runs counter to the definition of
sustainable development as defined above.
In addition to economic manifestations, globalization is seen in
the increased movements of peoples, both within and among
countries. Improvements in transportation have eased the way for
migrants and travelers. Increased economic, educational and social
opportunities make urban areas, in particular, more attractive for
migrants. Rapid urbanization and the growth of mega-cities put
stresses on water and sanitation systems, increase traffic congestion
and pollution, and result in a loss of habitat as urban areas expand
outward. Tourism is another outcome of globalization forces. While
often promoted as a clean tool for economic development, often
the opposite is true. Large hotels, inefficiently expending water and
other natural resources, and influxes of tourists in environmentally
fragile areas, are just two ways that tourism often harms the very
resources that attracted visitors in the first place.
Whether or not increased connectivity among peoples
encourages or discourages sustainable development is also up for
debate. The proliferation of non-governmental organizations (NGOs)

has given a national and international voice to many concerns
previously unheard or ignored, while simultaneously linking activists
from around the world. The increased presence of civil society
groups both physically, at international forums, and virtually,
through improved communications technologies, has broadened
international awareness of a range of factors impacting sustainable
development. Increased contact with other peoples also impacts
cultural norms around the world about protecting the environment,
strengthening some and weakening others.
ABOUT THE BOOK
This book is the result of two symposia held at the University of
South Florida, in Tampa, Florida, in 2005, sponsored by the Patel
Center. The first symposium, held in April 2005, was designed to
give an overview of the issues involved in globalization and
sustainable development. The second symposium, held in J une 2005,
looked specifically at how poverty is related to sustainability, using
country case studies from around the world. The book loosely
follows the format of the symposia, starting with the initial
contextual presentations given by Renu Khator and Lisa Fairchild,
O.P. Dwivedi, and J orge Nef. These are followed by broad
perspectives on the political and economic dimensions of
globalization and the environment, with papers by Michael Miller
and Kwabena Brempong. Ella Schmidts presentation from the first
symposium joins those of Gurleen Grewal and Richard Weisskoff
from the J une symposium. These three papers present case studies of
grassroots movements to reduce poverty and improve the
environment. The final part of the book examines specific natural
resource use and policy, with research by Michael Miller and Daniel
Suman.
The three chapters in Part I of this book provide an overview of
the issues related to globalization and sustainable development.
Khator and Fairchild trace the history of the term sustainable
development since the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human
Environment. International environment summits have since
increased in importance and political influence, while the number of
attendees, both at the state and grassroots level, has grown. The
authors describe a holistic approach to sustainable development
Foreword 5

which includes equality, quality of life issues, sustaining resources,
both human and natural, and meeting international obligations.
Complementing this is the positive correlation between global
economic integration and the ability to protect the environment and
develop in a sustainable way. While the term sustainable
development has now become part of our lexicon, the authors
caution that it can be abused by those hoping to continue behaving in
a business as usual modus operandi.
In the next chapter, Dwivedi looks at sustainable development
from the perspective of North-South relations. He suggests that it is
time to re-think the North-South relationship. Since global
environmental problems are not constrained by national boundaries
nor by national incomes, the North and South must face these
problems as equals who are dependent on one another. Dwivedi
posits that poverty is the greatest cause of environmental
degradation, particularly via the high rates of population growth that
accompany poverty. For Dwivedi, then, poverty and
underdevelopment must be addressed in order to ensure sustainable
development. In Chapter 3, Nef takes a similar approach, looking at
how global inequalities impact the broader concept of human
security, which includes environmental security. Nef traces the
connection between inequality and unsustainable development, and
suggests that the resultant insecurity causes global vulnerability. As
in the previous chapter, Nef suggests that globalization has made all
countries interdependent, regardless of level of development. Thus,
as long as the South is insecure, the North will be as well. He
proposes that the environment agenda provides an opportunity to
reformulate the global agenda for human security, with a citizens-
based perspective.
Part II of this book analyzes the relationship between
globalization and sustainable development through two broad social
dimensions: economic and political. Brempong (Chapter 4) analyzes
the impact of economic globalization, which he considers inevitable
and, on net, beneficial. Because globalization enables producers to
substitute environmentally harmful production methods for more
benign ones, opening up markets can, in fact, have environmental
benefits. In addition, according to international trade theory,
economic openness and increased influence from international
research and development lead to increased growth. The resulting

raised incomes has a positive effect on the environment. Given the
high correlation between poverty and environmental degradation,
Brempong suggests that it is not globalization, per se, that is harming
the environment, but rather, globalization-induced poverty that is the
culprit. In order for globalization to help less developed countries
(LDCs) grow sustainably, they must learn to harness its forces to
their advantage. This occurs in two ways: internally, countries must
enact proper safeguards and correct institutional problems (e.g.,
develop land tenure systems, reform political institutions, and get
prices right). Globalization only exacerbates domestic problems
that already exist. Externally, LDCs must make sure they are part of
the international debate on environmental and trade treaties, partners
in crafting policy and in taking responsibility.
In Chapter 5, Miller looks more closely at the politics of these
international agreements, using the GMO (genetically modified
organisms) debate between the U.S. and the European Union as a
laboratory. Regardless of the state of development of the
participating countries, there is an inherent conflict between
international environmental agreements and other international laws.
Trade expansion will always raise problems of protecting the
environment and human health. Two main suggestions from the
author echo themes raised in earlier chapters: globalization can be
taken advantage of to standardize safety information worldwide,
which would benefit not only the disputing parties, but countries
around the world; and, the author calls for increased participation
from civil society groups and NGOs, who can ensure greater global
representation in these debates.
In Part III, three country-case studies examine poverty and
sustainable development from the grassroots level. Schmidt
highlights the importance of including culture in any efforts to offer
sustainable development programs in Chapter 6. An indigenous
community from Hidalgo, Mexico, the Hhu, are an example of
how globalizations impact on culture strengthens environmental
sustainability efforts. While the Hhu population in Mexico has
dramatically decreased due to migration to the U.S., cultural norms
dictate that its citizens continue to participate in the home
community, regardless of where the migrants live. Within that
obligation is a strong commitment to environmental stewardship. In
the community of El Alberto, a womens cooperative has sprung up
Foreword 7

in response to the economic pressures faced particularly by the
women who have been left behind by their migrating families.
Developed using a bottom up approach, the cooperative has used
indigenous knowledge to create products from the native maguey
(century plant). In a perfect example of sustainable development, the
women now have an incentive to re-forest their land with maguey,
and as a result, they are gaining income as well as business know-
how. The women benefit from a second globalization factor in force:
they sell their products on global markets, with the assistance of
NGOs whose very purpose is to serve as a broker for these activities.
In Chapter 7, Grewal examines three grassroots movements of
underserved Indian groups, representing poor women, oppressed
castes and indigenous tribes, to protect the environment and fight
against poverty. Implicit in Grewals analysis is a built-in tension
between the North and South, between the elite and the poor. She
further points out that there is a strong relationship between poverty
and gender inequity; reducing both of these problems is a necessary
component of sustainable development. Grewal introduces the
concept of ecofeminism the idea that women and nature are both
objects of mastery for the western rational male subject.
Ecofeminism, as more broadly interpreted in India, is a driving force
behind the holistic grassroots movements to improve womens
livelihoods, the environment, and rights of the poor, among others.
This perspective also suggests, as mentioned in earlier chapters of
this book, that if women are given more economic choices and
security, it will lead to reduced population growth. Similarly,
infrastructural changes, such as conferring property rights to women
and empowering local communities, will help them be more
effective stewards of the environment.
The final case study of environmental activism coming from the
ground up is Weisskoffs report on the city of Ica, Peru. For decades,
Ica has been caught in a pattern of city development followed by
destruction from mudslides. A group led by three citizens is working
to overcome these natural disasters that have been compounded by
human activity. Their solution lies in building natural dams with an
indigenous tree, the huarango, which would not only provide
environmental services (such as stemming soil loss and improving
soil with the decomposition of its leaves), but could also provide an
income source through its by-products (such as its fruit and its leaves

which provide forage for animals). The reforestation effort has the
added benefit of providing jobs, another cog in the sustainable
development cycle.
Finally, Part IV of this book looks at the unsustainable use of
natural resources and policy efforts to protect those resources.
Millers case study of forest use in one area of Costa Rica (Chapter
8) shows that even in a country with a reputation for sound natural
resource management policies, deforestation is still a problem. In
spite of a law protecting forests, which the author evaluates as
following sustainability principles, legal and judicial weaknesses,
poverty and insecure property rights add up to major problems in the
study region. Peasants are forced by poverty to cut down trees for
short-term income and space for farming. In addition, squatters clear
land in an attempt to secure land tenure. Intermediaries further
pressure peasants to cut trees in an unsustainable manner. Corrupt
regulators and weak enforcement further compound the problem.
Miller offers policy solutions to attempt to correct the structural
barriers to improved forest stewardship, including market-based
incentives which reward forest owners who protect their land.
While Sumans chapter (Chapter 9) examines the shrimp
industry in eastern Panama, many of the principles from the previous
chapter still hold. Suman studies a poor, isolated region where
shrimp exports are a major source of income. However, overfishing
by small and large-scale fishers (with the social tensions implied by
the relationship between these two groups) and weak government
enforcement are putting future catch in jeopardy. While the majority
of shrimp is destined for international markets, the number of
intermediate steps involved (processing, packaging, etc.) between
the point of capture and the market suggests that the locals do not
reap much of the profits in the final sale of the shrimp, thereby
necessitating even more exploitation of the resource. Local
investment to keep related value-added activities within the region,
as well as to offer economic alternatives to shrimping, and increased
government regulations and legislation will be necessary to improve
the sustainability of the industry.
Foreword 9

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
Many of this books authors conclude that, ultimately, the
factors associated with globalization impact the environment most
through the ways in which they affect poverty. Poverty, in turn, is
shown to be at the root of many sources of environmental
degradation. To some extent, however, loss of natural resources can
itself contribute to poverty. Either way, the marginalized members of
society often bear the brunt of this loss, whether it be in terms of
longer searches for clean water or more difficulty in providing food
for themselves and their families.
Related to this is the extent to which inequalities prevent more
environmentally healthy behaviors and policies. At a global level,
many authors point out, the uneven relationship between countries of
the North and South has led to environmental policies that exclude
the poorer countries. Similarly, within countries, national and
regional policies must address income and gender inequalities to
ensure that all segments of the population are included. Since
environmental problems are not constrained by national boundaries,
gender differences or socio-economic distinctions, environmental
solutions must be comprehensive and inclusive in scope.
Many of the authors underscore the importance of grassroots
movements and paying attention to local cultural practices.
Indigenous knowledge and products can and do contribute to
sustainable development behaviors. At the same time, governments
must set aside resources in order to create workable regulations, with
accompanying monitoring and enforcement. Governments must also
address underlying institutional issues, particularly land tenure
systems, effective judicial and legal systems and transparent
regulatory systems, which contribute to sustainable development.
In short, developing sustainably in todays globalized world
requires a holistic and integrated approach. The authors of this book,
while coming from a variety of academic backgrounds and
perspectives, all acknowledge that no one discipline will suffice in
tackling the problem. Given the inevitability of globalization and the
necessity to develop sustainably, this book provides some roadmaps
to comprehensive and practical solutions for policymakers and
communities.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The Center gratefully acknowledges the participation of all of
the authors for their presentations and written work. We also
appreciated the oral presentations by Steve Lerner from
Commonweal, and Ambe Njoh from the University of South Florida,
St. Petersburg, at the J une symposium. The papers were all reviewed
by members of the Patel Center Editorial Board and edited by Lavina
Fielding Anderson. Carylanna Bahamondes provided invaluable
administrative support as well as the design and layout of the
manuscript. Finally, we are grateful to O.P. Dwivedi who initiated
and championed this project and inspired all of us with his
enthusiasm.
REFERENCE
World Commission on Environment and Development. (1987). Our common
future. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
9

Part I:
Broad Perspectives

1
1

The Evolution of Sustainable
Development

Renu Khator and Lisa Fairchild

INTRODUCTION
Though the term sustainable development was not popularized
until the 1980s, the concept dates back to the 18th century when the
term sustainable was used to indicate concern about logging
practices (Dwivedi et al., 2001, p. 220). Over the years, the concept
has evolved and become a buzz-word for both environmentalists and
industrialists, with little agreement on the definition. This paper
traces the evolution of sustainable development from its inception
in the international realm at the 1972 Stockholm Conference through
the 2002 J ohannesburg Summit and beyond.
So, why has sustainable development become popularized?
Sustainable development offers an alternative to the traditional
concept of development, which focused on growth as the ultimate
end and regarded the means to achieve this end as irrelevant. Soon,
the antithesis to this dominant thesis emerged in the form of
radicalism in which development was interpreted as evil. It was
undesirable both as a means and as an end. Later years witnessed the
emergence of a synthesis in the form of sustainable development,
which implied that development may be desirable if approached
within a holistic framework. The emergence and evolution of the
14 Renu Khator and Lisa Fairchild

concept of sustainable development reflects an increased awareness
and interest in the long term view of development and the necessity
to preserve environmental integrity in a time of increasing
development.
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: DEFINED
The root of the word sustainable comes from sus-tenere,
meaning to uphold. Additionally, Websters Dictionary (1999, p.
1111) defines sustainable as to keep in existence; to give support
or relief to; to supply with sustenance. These definitions indicate
that an important aspect of sustainable development is its pro-active
nature (Khator, 1998). Other definitions of sustainable also support
its active nature and supply additional principles to the concept.
Odum (1971, p. 223) applies the concept of sustainability to the
biological sciences and writes that sustainable behavior is prudent
behavior by a predator that avoids over exploiting its prey to ensure
an optimum sustainable yield. This definition indicates that in
addition to being active, sustainability is also self-regulating.
Sustainable behavior also implies maintenance of equilibrium, as
evidenced by Hicks definition. Hicks (1946, p. 172) defines sustainability
as being able to maximize the value one can consume during a week
and still expect to be as well off at the end of the week as...at the
beginning (Khator, 1998). Sustainable development is equated with
motion and continuous growth for Ophuls and Boyan (1977) who
explain that sustainability provides a dynamic equilibrium affording
ample scope for continued artistic, intellectual, moral, scientific and
spiritual growth.
Sustainable development also includes an intergenerational
component, a pattern of social and structural economic transformations
(i.e., development) which optimizes the economic and other social
benefits available in the present without jeopardizing the likely potential
for similar benefits in the future (Goodman and Redclift, 1991, p. 36).
Sustainability also implies equality, in a qualitative sense, as
explained by Korton (1990, p. 67), as ...a process by which the
members of a society increase their personal and institutional
capacities to mobilize and manage resources to produce sustainable
and justly distributed improvements in quality of life consistent with
their own aspirations. Finally, Barbier (1987, p. 103) integrates the

holistic nature of sustainable development in his definition which is
to maximize simultaneously the biological system goals (genetic
diversity, resilience, biological productivity), economic system goals
(satisfaction of basic needs, enhancement of equity, increasing useful
goods and services), and social system goals (cultural diversity,
institutional sustainability, social justice, participation).
Though there are many definitions of sustainable development,
the most popular is that of the World Commission on Environment
and Development, or the Brundtland Commission. In 1987, the
Bruntland Commission defined sustainable development as
development that meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own
needs (1987, p. 89). While there is no consensus on the precise
definition of sustainable development, the general concept has
succeeded in permeating international discussions on the
environment beginning with the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the
Human Environment.
EVOLUTION OF THE AGENDA
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, a number of
publications inspired interest in the environmental movement. Of
specific interest were Rachel Carsons Silent Spring (1962) and
Garret Hardins The Tragedy of the Commons (1968). Following
Carsons lead, many people in the 1960s predicted a doomsday in
the 1960s and called for an immediate moratorium on growth, for
they believed growth to be the root cause of environmental
destruction (Meadows, 1972). Such concerns were voiced at the
1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment. Originally,
developing nations, particularly the South, planned on boycotting the
conference; however, they chose to participate once the scope of
development was broadened to include issues of poverty and other
ills of underdevelopment. Ultimately, representatives from 111
countries attended the Conference, although only two heads of state
(India and Sweden) were in attendance. Though the conference is
perceived as having limited success, it elevated environmental
concerns to an international level.
Numerous short-comings were identified as contributing to the
limited success of the Stockholm Conference: first, development was

presented as black and white; second, pollution was defined as a
purely environmental problem with no regards given to the social
aspects; and third, the conference ignored the agenda of the
developing countries. Despite these shortcomings, important
developments were made and the conference led to the development
of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the
Stockholm Declaration on Human Environment, several multilateral
environmental agreements, and environmental policies in many
countries.
There would be two critical developments between this and the
1992 Earth Summit in Rio De J aneiro. In 1982, the World
Commission on Environment and Development was formed.
Consequently, the report Our Common Future was published in
1987, and introduced the term sustainable development, as defined
in the previous section. Additionally, in 1986, new trade talks, which
would lead to the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1994,
reinforced the idea that the world had shrunk and a global dialog on
new development had become necessary. Following these
developments, the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio advanced the agenda of
the 1972 Stockholm Conference.
The 1992 Earth Summit expanded in scope, as well as in
attendance, from its 1972 predecessor. In attendance were
representatives from 167 nations as well as 116 heads of state. In
addition to the increased government participation, 7,892
representatives from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and
8,000 journalists were also present for the summit (J ohnson, 1993).
This marked increase in attendance over the 1972 Stockholm
Conference indicates an increased inclusivity with public, private
and non-profit sectors. Despite the appearance of increased
inclusivity, the attention paid to the developing nations of the South
was not satisfactory, and the ability to positively affect the
environment still remained in the hands of the North. Additionally,
trade patterns still remained skewed to the North. Finally,
international agencies were failing to create real opportunities for the
South. In order to address these concerns, Agenda 21 was created at
the Earth Summit as a plan of action, and the Commission of
Sustainable Development was established in order to monitor
progress. Again, there would be significant developments between
the 1992 Earth Summit and the 2002 J ohannesburg Summit.

One of the major outcomes of the Uruguay Roundtable, held
J anuary 1, 1995, was the establishment of the World Trade
Organization (WTO), which would shape the global economy by
providing free trade of goods across national borders. The
development of the WTO also had significant implications for
the environment. According to Muller-Kraenner (2002, p. 19) its
establishment demonstrated a move from the classic treatment of
environmental and development issues to more confrontational
discussions over economic globalizations. This shift in focus has
generated severe criticism. The most severe critique of free trade is
that it encourages countries to ignore their commitments to
environmental obligations and human rights (Esty, 1994; Barrett,
1994; Rauscher, 1994). Critics argue that in pursuit of global business,
poor countries create free zones with relaxed environmental laws,
unregulated labor, and undesirable subsidies. These concerns would be
voiced at the Johannesburg Summit in 2002.
The growing concern over global environmental issues was
reflected by the participation at the 2002 J ohannesburg Summit. It
was attended by over 22,000 people including 100 heads of state,
10,000 delegates, 8,000 group representatives and 4,000 members of
the media (United Nations, 2003). There were five major issues
addressed at this meeting: water/sanitation, energy, health,
agricultural productivity and biodiversity protection/ecosystem
management (United Nations, 2003). This summit, like the ones
before, was perceived as a missed opportunity which depended on
the cooperation of rich nations for success, and failed to address
North/South disparities.
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT REVISITED
The objectives of sustainable development have been
summarized by the Government of Canada (2002) as a virtuous
cycle with five components: (1) promoting equality, (2) improving
the quality of life and well-being, (3) sustaining natural resources
along with sustainable jobs, communities and industries, (4) protecting
human and ecosystem health, and (5) meeting international obligations.
Though this circle was designed to illustrate Canadas objectives of
sustainable development for its citizens, the objectives can be
generalized to apply to all nations.

Additionally, to better understand the objectives of sustainable
development, it is helpful to examine the characteristics that distinguish
development from sustainable development, shown in the
following table (Khator, 1998, 1788-1789). Sustainable development is
distinct from development in its emphasis, scope, political sphere,
cultural context, decision-making system and accountability. It is
holistic, comprehensive, active, engaging, participatory and responsible.

Table 1.1 Comparing Development and Sustainable Development
Characteristic Development
Sustainable
Development
Emphasis Economic_ Comprehensive
Scope Developing Countries All Countries
Political Sphere Neutral Active and Engaging
Cultural Context Neutral Differences
preclude replicability
Operational Mode Unilateral transfer
of knowledge
Bilateral transfer
of lessons
Decision-Making
System
Centralized
Administration
Decentralized
Administration
Non-Governmental
Involvement
No role of non-
governmental actors
Dependent on non-
governmental actors
Role of Foreign
Aid
Aid is a privilege Aid is a responsibility
Accountability No accountability Accountability to people
and to the international
community
Source: Khator, 1998

Though much progress has been made since the initial summit in
Stockholm, the concept of sustainable development still has a long
way to go. Despite the universal validity of the concept, it has yet to
gain paradigmatic coherence. Additionally, the term is used widely
by environmentalists and industrialists, by users as well as abusers.
As critics of sustainable development point out, the term may
mean little more than business as usual. Lele (1991, p. 619) sums it

up by stating that sustainable development is an attempt to have
ones cake and eat it too. An additional obstacle to the success of
sustainable development is weak global governance which makes it a
common good agenda item. Finally, the global context of trade
poses significant challenges in terms of human securityincluding
human rights, poverty and scarcity.
The integration of a country into the global economy may impact
that countrys ability to achieve the conditions necessary for
sustainable development. Depending on its level of integration (core,
peripheral, sub-peripheral) the impact of free trade will be different on
a countrys economic, political, and social agenda and consequently,
the country will find that its capacity to adhere to its environmental
and human rights obligations varies. Free trade is neither good nor bad
for sustainable development, nor is its impact the same for all
countries. We hypothesize that a countrys position in the global
economy plays an important intervening role in defining the
sustainable agenda of the country. The following table provides a
conceptual model of the impact of free trade on the economies of
trading countries and on their environmental obligations, which are
critical to sustainable development in a global context.

Table 1.2 Sustainable Development in the Global Context
Trading
Position in
the Global
Market
Economic
Growth
Level of
Environmental
Protection
Capacity for
Sustainable
Development
Core
Countries
Stable growth High due to public
pressure and
increased awareness
High because
choices are
available globally
Advanced
Peripheral
Countries
Rapid growth
due to economic
agility and
adaptability
Low due to
conscious trade-offs
Possible if
conditions are set
Sub-
peripheral
Countries
Low due to
struggle for
survival
Low due to
lack of choices

High due to low
global pressures

Core trading societies, as shown above, will fair better than
either advanced peripheral or sub-peripheral countries in fulfilling

their commitment to environmental protection and to developing in a
sustainable manner. The high level of environmental protection in
these countries is due to increased public awareness and pressure
coupled with economic capacity. Advanced peripheral countries or
the countries that are rapidly integrating into the global economy, on
the other hand, will be economically capable of observing
environmental obligations; however, they will not possess the
political will to do so. Their capacity to grow in a sustainable manner
exists; however, conscious decisions will have to be made by the
political leadership. Finally, sub-peripheral countries (or countries
whose economy may be tied to the world economy but only through
another core or advanced peripheral country) will experience the
least benefit from free trade, as their primary struggle is with
survival and not expansion. In these countries, the interests of the
corporate class dominate and the environment is likely to suffer as a
result of this.
CONCLUSIONS
The term sustainable development is a dynamic one and has
evolved from an 18
th
century concept to a buzz word used by many,
with little regard to the definition. Over the years the definition has
evolved to express various characteristics of the concept including
(but not limited to): its active nature, continuous growth,
intergenerational concerns, and holistic nature. In 1987, the most
popular definition of this concept was created by the Bruntland
Commission and presented in Our Common Future. Even before
popularization of the term, the concept had succeeded in infiltrating
international discussions on the environment. Spawned by publications
implying the dangers of development, the environmental movement
grew out of the 1972 Conference on the Human Environment in
Stockholm, where the concept of sustainable development gained
international recognition. In the three decades after Stockholm, there
would be two more major international conferences on the
environment: The Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 and the
J ohannesburg Summit in 2002. Each summit exhibited an expansion
in both attendance and scope; however, they were all perceived as
missed opportunities. One major criticism is that the conferences
failed to address North-South disparities. Addressing these disparities

is integral to the success of sustainable development as the ability of a
country to achieve conditions for sustainable development is related
to the integration of that country into the global economy. Though
much progress has been made since the initial summit in Stockholm,
the concept of sustainable development still has many challenges to
face before it becomes an accepted paradigm for a healthy way of life.
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World Commission on Environment and Development. (1987). Our
common future. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

2

2

Sustainable Development:
The World Is Still Oceans Apart!

O.P. Dwivedi

INTRODUCTION
Humanitys role in manipulating its surroundings is enormous
and ranges from the obvioussuch as damming great riversto the
subtlethe effects of DDT on the reproduction of wildlife. The
modern concern over environmental impact started in the late 1960s.
Soon thereafter, some environmentalists began to propose a right
to environmental quality. Their proposals included mostly decision-
making tools, such as environmental impact assessment, duties and
regulations imposed on private industries and corporations, and
powers acquired by the state to monitor potentially polluting
activities both in the public and private sectors. However, the
assessment of environmental impact does not stop at measuring
pesticide residues and the amount of mercury in fish. It involves the
quality of life on earth and, indeed, the ability of human beings to
interact with nature and survive in the long run. It also means that
pollution, destruction of species and natural areas, and depletion of
resources cannot be placed second to peoples materialism and their
desire for technological progress.
The continuing deterioration of our planets ecology poses a
major threat to the viability of our world. Nowhere is the evidence of
24 O.P. Dwivedi

global ecological deterioration better argued than in Our Common
Future, a report by the World Commission on Environment and
Development (also known as the Brundtland Commission). But the
real significance of this report lies first in its thorough explanation of
why we, the people inhabiting this planet, are collectively destroying
natural resources; second, in its thesis that we cannot save the
environment without development, but at the same time, we cannot
keep on developing unless we save the environment; and third, in its
main recommendationthat unless we restructure the existing
institutional arrangements and legal mechanisms, fragmentation,
overlapping jurisdictions, narrow mandates, and closed decision-
making processes will continue. As the report states, The real world
of interlocked economy and ecological systems will not change; the
policies and institutions concerned must (World Commission, 1987,
p. 310). The commission also warned: The time has come to break
out of past patterns. Attempts to maintain social and ecological
stability through old approaches to development and environmental
protection will increase instability. Security must be sought through
change. . . . Without reorientation of attitudes and emphasis, little
can be achieved (World Commission, 1987, p. 309).
But for developing nations, this warning concerning the
protection of the environment must be balanced against such
pressing human security problems as the population explosion,
chronic poverty, and providing minimum health care and necessary
sanitation, shelter, and other basic needs for their people. In addition,
these nations are impelled to harmonize economic development with
such environmental values as biodiversity protection and
conservation, sustainable resource use, and environmental quality in
general, as necessary ingredients to augment the well-being of all.
NORTH-SOUTH ENVIRONMENTAL RELATIONS
The end of the Cold War has given humanity an opportunity for
a fundamental rethinking of the nature of relations among nations.
That rethinking ought to be directed toward the solution of the
planetary-proportion threat being caused by ecological disaster and
continuing poverty. In our world, poverty prevents one-fourth of
humanity from receiving even basic needs (adequate food, safe and
sufficient water, primary health care, education, and shelter). As long
Sustainable Development: The World is Still Oceans Apart! 25

as this economic disparity remains, stress on the environment will
also continue. For the poor, the struggle for survival overrides any
concern for the environment. At the same time, although for
different reasons, both North and South continue to exhaust the
Earths resources. That is why environmental concerns ought to be
acknowledged as the fundamental point of agreement in their
relationship.
A global policy requires consideration of all and for all. Until
now, we have had a sharp discrepancy between rich and poor,
between developing and affluent, between North and South, and
between First and Third Worlds. This distance is not closing, despite
rhetoric to the contrary. The distinction has been based on the
economic progress and material well-being of people living in two
separate worlds, isolated from each other not only because of
geographical boundaries, trade barriers, and economic prosperity,
but because of political dominance. However, various environmental
crisessuch as ozone depletion, the greenhouse effect, disappearing
biodiversity, and the need to protect world commonsdo not respect
such barriers and borders. We know that ecological disasters have
ways of affecting even those who may not live in close proximity, as
happened during the tsunami disaster in late December 2004. Thus,
the old distinctions which marginalized the poor of the
underdeveloped world while keeping the wealthy secure and
privileged are outmoded because both groups have to share the same
planet and its dwindling resources (Dwivedi, 1994). Although this
realization is perhaps much more apparent in the poorer sections of
our global society than in the richer parts; nevertheless, a similar
sensitivity is arising among the people of the North that no group can
live in isolation from the other.
For the South, poverty alleviation is the most crucial task of
these times; while for the North, ozone depletion, deforestation, or
population growth in the South are more important global issues.
This difference in perspective was first highlighted by Mrs. Indira
Gandhi at the 1972 United Nations Conference on Human
Environment in Stockholm: On the one hand the rich look askance
at our continuing povertyon the other, they warn us against their
own methods. We do not wish to impoverish the environment any
further and yet we cannot for a moment forget the grim poverty of
26 O.P. Dwivedi

large numbers of people. Are not poverty and needs the greatest
polluters? (1972, p. 2).
It is obvious from various reports of the World Bank that people
in developing nations are still struggling with poverty, hunger,
squalor, and poor health care. To such people, environmental
problems are actually afflictions of overdevelopment in the
industrialized North, although they are now convinced that
environmental protection is also a threat. This perspective gives
them a different view about population growth and the continuation
of poverty. These two aspectspopulation growth and povertyand
their impact on the environment, are discussed below.
POPULATION GROWTH AND
ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION
Demographytaken as the size of the population and its rate of
growthis considered a principal factor in environmental
degradation, since the faster the population increases, the more
natural resources are depleted, causing environmental degradation.
But reduction in population increase, if that is the answer, is difficult
to achieve, even if some authoritarian measures are employed. For
example, when Mrs. Gandhi ordered vasectomy operations to reduce
Indias population during her emergency rule in 1975-1977, the
general election of 1977 repudiated her policy. No political leader
has since dared to raise this issue in India. Demographers have
estimated that, even in the unlikely event that we managed to
immediately reduce world fertility to a level of simple replacement
(two children per couple) and to maintain this level in the future
the world population, due to the effects of its present age distribution
and to the expected increase in life-expectancy, would continue to
grow for approximately a century before leveling off at almost
double the present figure (Cabre, 1993, p. 2). In the case of India, it
was argued during the 1970s and 1980s that its population has
outstripped its carrying capacity (Commission, 1992, p. 33). However,
such predictions have not proven accurate even when the countrys
population grew beyond 1 billion in 2001. Through better land use,
soil management, increased levels of agricultural inputs, and
improvements in seed quality, the country could feed not only many

more million people compared to its 1970s level, but also export or
provide food aid to needy neighbors.
Two dimensions of demographic trends should also be taken into
consideration: aging populations and youth bulges. As death rates
are declining, populations are growing older. It is generally known
that aging populations have less demand on the environment but
more for health-care services. Similarly, the youth bulge has reached
crisis proportions in several developing nations where youth account
for more than 40 percent of all adults. According to the United
Nations (2003), more than 100 countries have youth bulges
compared to North America and Europe where youth accounts for
about 20-25% of all adults. Even in the case of those bulges,
environmental security is not the issue. On the contrary, a large
proportion of young workers can prove to be a demographic bonus
to economic prosperity (Mastny & Cincotta, 2005, p. 24). Thus,
population increase is not always the culprit when environmental
damage occurs.
Perhaps it is easier for the North to recommend population
control because, in the past, the heavily populated countries of
Europe were able to unload their growing population on the new
colonies of the Americas and Australia-New Zealand. However,
developing nations have no new frontier to which they can export
their surplus population. Of course, their population growth has to be
controlled, but we know from past experience that a high population
density does not always cause the same proportion of environmental
degradation as less densely populated nations. For example, if one
compares the population density of the United States or Australia
with India or China during this century, it is clear that there has been
more environmental destruction per capita in the first two countries
than in the last two over the same period. This is what Mrs. Gandhi
meant when she stated, It is an over-simplification to blame all the
worlds problems on increasing population. Countries with but a
small fraction of the world population consume the bulk of the
worlds production of minerals, fossil fuels and so on (1972, p. 2).
Anna Cabre (1993) gives one glaring example from the American
past. In a single decade, between 1870 and 1880, the skeletons of
750,000 bisons (buffalos) were loaded at one particular railway
station for shipment to fertilizer factories (1993, p. 2). Instead of
28 O.P. Dwivedi

emphasizing population as a factor in environmental degradation, we
should look for another culprit; and that culprit is poverty.
POVERTY AND POLLUTION
At the Rio Summit, leaders of the South hoped to link the issue
of poverty with global environmental problems; however, they later
found that, due to the 1990s economic crisis, the issue was sidelined
by nearly all industrialized nations. By the time the World Summit
was held in 2002, poverty and the needs of developing nations were
yet to be addressed appropriately despite four decades of
developmental efforts. When the international aid program started in
mid-1950s, it was presumed that, in relatively few years, basic
human needs (food, living conditions, health care, and education)
and social justice would be achieved. But this did not happen. For
hundreds of millions of people, life remains a constant struggle for
survival. Sustainable environment for them can become credible
only when poverty is eradicated and living conditions become
tolerable. As Shridath Ramphal, former Secretary General of the
Commonwealth of Nations and a member of the Brundtland
Commission noted: If poverty is not tackled, it will be extremely
difficult to achieve agreement on solutions to major environmental
problems. Mass poverty, in itself unacceptable and unnecessary, both
adds to and is made worse by environmental stress. . . . That is why
the global policy dialogue must integrate environment and
development (1992, p. 17).
Mass poverty has remained a worldwide concern. In 2000, the
United Nations Millennium General Assembly adopted eight
Millennium Development Goals (MDG):
1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.
2. Achieve universal primary education.
3. Promote gender equality and empower women.
4. Reduce child mortality.
5. Improve maternal health.
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases.
7. Ensure environmental sustainability.
8. Create global partnerships for development.
(United Nations, 2000)

Among these eight goals, both poverty alleviation and ensuring
environmental sustainability are supposed to be met by 2015.
Can the seventh goal, environmental sustainability, succeed?
Past experience with similar U.N. developmental decades and other
exhortations indicate that the results are going to be mixed. But one
thing is clear: sustainable development as a paradigm has changed
our old concept of economic development. The concept emphasizes
the need, among other things, (a) to conserve biological diversity in
genes, species, and eco-systems; (b) to recognize the dynamic,
constantly evolving, and often unpredictable properties of nature; (c)
to be conscious of our responsibility, in the form of environmental
stewardship, to protect the global environment; and (d) to respect the
intrinsic value of global commons as well as the need for
intergenerational equity. Furthermore, the concept provides for an
operational definition which establishes equity among the nations of
North and South. For example, how do we address the issue of
incomplete development faced by most of the poor nations? This
issue includes such aspects as population growth without an
adequate fall in birth rates, while the mortality rate has fallen and life
expectancy has risen. Or what do we do with the exodus from rural
areas and resultant urban growth? And when it is replaced by another
paradigm (discussed later in this essay), again a similar optimism
might ensue. But there is no assurance that our world will not remain
oceans apart!
THE WORLD IS STILL OCEANS APART!
What are the specific challenges that keep the North and South
oceans apart? I offer the following twelve proposals and
observations:
1. Mainstream the Environment
Thus far, there has been a natural tendency to think of
environmental issues primarily in terms of how to avoid doing harm
and what policies to safeguard the environment should be in place
when a new development project or an international aid-dependent
project begins. Once the project receives its environmental impact
assessment (EIA) clearance, attention to environmental concerns is
sidelined especially by financial institutions (such as a ministry of
30 O.P. Dwivedi

finance), infrastructure specialists, and on-site project management
teams. And if later, some environmental problems crop up, clean-
up work starts. Moreover, after a project has received EIA
clearance, constituencies for the poor (who tend to bear the brunt of
environmental harm) and the environment continue to be
underrepresented in the decision-making processes. Frances
Seymour (2004) from the World Bank has suggested that, instead of
addressing the environmental safeguards on a project-by-project
basis, sustainability and environmental safety concerns should be
integrated or mainstreamed into country-wide plans (e.g., five-year
plans) and into sectoral and cross-sector strategies, instead of placing
such issues in separate policy compartments (p. 17).
2. Strategizing Sustainable Development
The sustainable development approach offers nations an
opportunity to integrate economic strategies, environmental
integrity, and social equality. There is an urgent need to develop
integrative, forward-looking, cross-sectoral processes for linking and
balancing environmental, social, and economic policy objectives.
But such integration depends on reconciling the three pillars of
sustainability: (a) living within [our] global biophysical carrying
capacity; (b) providing a decent living standard for all people; [and]
(c) ensuring a reasonable measure of distributional fairness in access
to resources and their economic benefits (Sadler, 1996, p. 26).
These pillars capture some of the practical solutions and idealistic
goals of sustainability. However, they do not tackle the fundamental
causes of unsustainable development and offer few avenues for
policy direction. Thus, what is needed is a deeper understanding of
who in a country (or, for that matter, in the world taken as a unit)
lacks access to and control of resources and why.
In addition, it is equally crucial that state governments allocate
additional commitments to ensure multisectoral perspectives and
approaches by incorporating them into each nations policy-planning
and decision-making processes. However, as long as unsustainable
development policies are primacy in economic policy, we will
continue to live unsustainably. If we as a species want to do better,
then we need to identify how these changes can take place and how

an appropriate sustainable development policy can be more
expediently translated into practice (Dwivedi et al., 2001, p. 236).
3. Assure Planetary Survival with Ecological Diversity
Diversity is directly linked with adaptability and with the
survivability of species. For example, people migrating from one
geographic system have been able to adapt to another totally
different kind of environment since the beginning of human history.
That new environment in which those migrant people sought
stability and prosperity was born out of diversity. It is the diversity
which impels us to adapt and seek benefit from new surroundings. In
contrast, uniformity creates dependency, inflexibility, and a lack of
adaptability to new and challenging situations. Human ingenuity is
based on such challenges. In the absence of such challenges,
creativity, genius, and immunity fade slowly. The strongest societies
are those that are the most diverse, as is the case with ecosystems
(Dwivedi & Khator, 2005).
4. Control Worldwide Bio-piracy
It is an understatement to note that biodiversity is declining at an
unprecedented rate. For example, in China alone, 10,000 varieties of
wheat were under cultivation in 1949; by the 1970s, only 1,000 were
still in production. In Mexico, only about 20% of the maize varieties
in production in 1930 are still being grown. In the Philippines,
thousands of rice varieties were once cultivated. Nowadays two
varieties account for more than 98% of the rice acreage (Nierenberg
& Halweil, 2005, p. 64). As mentioned during the World Summit in
2002, half of the tropical rainforests and mangroves are gone, 75%
of marine fisheries stock is gone; mono-culture and bio-seeds are
further affecting biodiversity; and many nations report the
continuing decline of their biodiversity genetic pool (Dwivedi &
Khator, 2005).
Scientists in industrialized nations are busy patenting inventions
made in publicly funded research institutions and universities,
permitting scientific journals to fall under corporate ownership, and
stealing genetic resources from indigenous communities, including
the cell-lines and genes of indigenous people. Is this not plagiarism
at an international level? For example, the Brazilian government
32 O.P. Dwivedi

estimates that 97% of the 4,000 patents taken out on natural products
in their country between 1995 and 2000 were made by foreigners.
So, bio-piracy is rampant. In February 2002, 12 countries (India,
China, Brazil, Indonesia, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Kenya,
Peru, Venezuela, Mexico, and South Africa) formed an alliance to
press for the protection of indigenous genetic resources because they
collectively possess 70% of the worlds biodiversity in food crops
(INES, 2003, p. 6).
5. Affirm the Earth Charter
By the time we entered the third millennium, it became
increasingly clear that many of our values were totally inadequate
for long-term survival and for the development of a sustainable
future in which all species (not only human beings) are taken care of.
This conclusion was evident from the emergence of a wide spectrum
of challenges to the traditional materialistic view. Guided by
Western culture, people have had blind faith in the prowess of
science and technology to produce material progress.
Only recently have we understood that so-called material
prosperity should not be an end in itself. Slowly, a realization is also
emerging that spirituality and the control of ones desires can bring a
more lasting happiness than acquisitive materialism. However, such
a realization has yet to enter the domain of governmental policy or
the corporate world, where spiritual perspectives are generally
ignored. Economic criteria which place no value on the commons
(the air, water, oceans, outer space, etc.) and which use concepts
such as cost-benefit analysis, law of supply and demand, rate of
return, land as commodity, etc., have been based on the delusion that
they operate independently of the cultural and spiritual domain. Until
now, we have taken a great deal from our Mother Earth. We have
given little thought to limiting our plundering and ravaging instincts.
Without a change in our current value system, there is little hope of
correcting the environmental problems we face today. Slowly, a
heightened consciousness is emerging for the formation of a new
international environmental rights regime, including instilling
respect for Mother Earth and care for all species in creation. The
Earth Charter is a proper instrument for helping to empower that
consciousness. It is also clear that, without a universally accepted

regime of environmental protection, world resources will continue to
be depleted and the quality of life for the majority of people on earth
will remain questionable.
For this reason, we urgently need a holistic vision of basic
ethical principles supported by broadly accepted tenets and practical
guidelines that should govern the behavior of people and states in
their relations between each other and the Earth (Dwivedi & Khator,
2006). This is not a new demand; it has been persistently called for
by various environmental NGOs, international organizations, and
reports such as Our Common Future by the World Commission on
Environment and Development (1987), and Caring for the Earth, a
report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and
Natural Resources (1991).
6. Poverty is the Greatest Challenge
Environmental stress is caused less by poor nations than by
voracious consumption in the North. The pressure on natural
resources increases with consumption. Consumption pressure is a
factor of the number of people making demands, but it is also a
factor of consumption patterns. It has been estimated that every birth
in the North puts as much pressure on resources as tens of births in
the South. Thus, in addition to the eradication of poverty in the
South, lifestyles in the North must be modified. For example, the
World Commission on Environment and Development has estimated
that the cost of implementing Agenda 21 could be about $US125
billion a year until the end of this century. And as most of the
expenditures are related to managing commons and assisting poor
nations, it is helpful to recognize that in 1990 developing nations
transferred $140 billion in debt service payments, capital and
interest, to creditor nations (Ramphal, 1992, pp. 253-254). If the
North can divert a part of this sum toward global environmental
protection and sustainable development, our world will be a better
and safer place to live.
Some may argue that the establishment of the Global
Environmental Facility (GEF) has addressed this concern; however,
there have been criticisms about the facilitys governing structure, its
strategies, and its operative procedures. Although in March 1994, a
new instrument of governance for GEF was agreed upon between
34 O.P. Dwivedi

North and South, it has adopted, as some critics contend, many of
the failings of its administrative parents, and particularly those of the
[World] Bank (J ordan, 1994, p. 266).
7. Globalization of our World
Thomas Friedman argued in The Lexus and the Olive Tree that
countries which tried to avoid globalization became poorer. He
pointed out that between 1975 and 1997, the 8% of countries with
open markets (accounting for $23 billion of direct foreign
investment) had expanded to 28% (with $644 billion of foreign
investment). Hence, nations which hesitate or avoid globalization are
doomed to poverty (Friedman, 1999, pp. 8-9). The World Bank
(2000) also asserts that, since 1980, globalizers have growth rates
three times those of non-globalizers. It also reported that, with
globalization, countries were impelled to improve public services,
provide better social security nets, and even increase environmental
protection.
Nevertheless, ground realities are different. The World Banks
statistics show that the average income in the 20 richest countries
was 37 times the average in the poorest 20, a gap that has doubled
during the past 20 years (World Bank, 2000, p. 3). Another
impediment to poverty alleviation is the trade barriers imposed by
the rich nations. The New York Times reported that in 2002
industrialized nations provided $320 billion in farm subsidies
compared to $50 billion in international aid (Editorial: Harvesting
Poverty, 2003, p. 10). For example, the United States gives a $3
billion subsidy to its 25,000 cotton farmers thereby wrecking world
cotton prices (Werlin, 2004, p. 1034). If these subsidies were
reduced, about 114 million people in poor countries could be pulled
out of poverty.
One thing appears certain: There is no way to avoid
globalization. For example, in 2000, Mexico, after joining NAFTA
(North American Free Trade Agreement), had a $20 billion trade
surplus with the United States. But then we should ask why 42% of
the Mexican population was reportedly living below the poverty
level, an increase of nearly 75% since 1989? (Werlin, 2004, p.
1035). Would it not be correct to say that poverty and globalization
are inversely related to each other?

8. Build Bridges of Collaboration between the North and the
South
In 2004, the United States allocated $36 billion for homeland
security and about $360 billion for the military. In contrast, it
allocates $11.3 billion for international aid each year (Brusasco-
Mackenzie, 2004, p. 12). Billions more have been spent by the
coalition of willing partners on the Iraq war. In contrast, only $54-
$64 billion would be needed annually to cut world poverty in half by
2015 (Devarajan et al., 2002). Clearly, there is a need to change the
definition of security from the current militaristic concept to that of
the well-being of all.
The world population is about 6.4 billion and it might rise to
about 8.9 billion by 2050 (Worldwatch, 2004). If in 2003, 831
million people across the world remain hungry and malnourished,
what will happen later when there will be further cropland losses due
to expected degradation, soil erosion, and climatic changes during
the first half of the 21st century? The world also faces a water crisis:
1.1 billion people currently lack access to safe drinking water, and
2.4 billion do not have adequate sanitation, mostly in Asia and
Africa. The well-being of these people ought to be paramount rather
than militaristic ventures that consume billions. Clearly, we need a
new model of development, one that could ensure human security
and planetary well-being.
It is also clear that, while the North has been able to achieve
environmental security at home, it has missed the opportunity to
promote sustainability and equity since the Rio Summit of 1992.
Whether the J ohannesburg Summit of 2002 will result in substantive
change is not certain. There is an urgent need to build bridges of
collaboration between North and South by assisting in the
achievement of the U.N. Millennium Development Goals.
9. Recognize that Politics Controls Everything
It is not an overstatement to say that solutions to all of these
major problems lie ultimately in the realm of politics. Despite the
fact that some of these problems may be largely scientific, others
economic, and still others philosophic or moral, in the end, political
decisions will recognize them, deal with them, and specify the type
and timing of the solutions attempted. The environmental issue is
36 O.P. Dwivedi

one example. It struggled to compete with other issues of public
concern including security and took a long time to reach the national
policy agenda. Until it did, it did not receive the public funding it
deserved. These issues require governmental intervention; and if an
action is not based on principles of good governance, it may result in
increasing levels of insecurity, poverty, marginalization of the poor,
and the deterioration of the environment.
10. Sustain Development through Good Governance
Pluralistic, liberal, democratic governance ensures that no single
group, such as business/commercial interests, can collude with
politicians to continue indefinitely dominating the policymaking or
regulatory regime while degrading the environment. This is true, not
only in the North, but also in developing nations like India and Sri
Lanka where a free press and an independent judiciary have forced
governments to take appropriate regulatory actions to control
pollution. Of course, it is important to strengthen the system of
monitoring and enforcement of environmental laws, but there is a
need to shift the present focus on criminal prosecution to greater
reliance on civil penalties and liabilities. This approach will require
transparency, accountability at all levels, and minimal transaction
costs (Ghosh, 2004, p. 11). These effects are attainable when good
governance exists. Although politics determines all, nevertheless,
it is the operationalization of politics in the form of good governance
that is the key to improving the quality of life, assuring human and
environmental security, attaining sustainable growth, and thereby
reducing poverty. The objective of good governance is to create
conditions that ensure healthy food, clean water, adequate sanitation,
education, health care, security, and justice so that people may lead
dignified and meaningful lives.
Key in attaining good governance is the development of a
trusted, trustworthy, and caring professional public service guided by
honest political leaders (Dwivedi & Mishra, 2006). Corruption in
government destroys confidence in public institutions, undermines
peoples faith, diverts public resources to questionable deals, mocks
the application of laws and judicial processes, and casts deep
shadows over the credibility of government policies and programs
(Caiden & Dwivedi, 2001, p. 245). Clearly, the prudent way toward

sustainable development and the well-being of all has to be based
on the existence of good governance in a country.
11. Envision Worldwide Progress for All
Progress in human development has been extraordinary during
the past 50 years. On average, people living in developing nations
are healthier, wealthier, better fed, and more literate. This has all
happened during my lifetime. Life expectancy has risen, great
advances have been made in primary education, and food sufficiency
has been achieved in several countries.
Nevertheless, wide disparities are also evident. For example, the
amount spent by Europeans on mineral water in one year is enough
to provide primary education in developing countries for the next 10
years because there are still 1 billion people who cannot read and
writetwo thirds of them women. The income gap between the top
20% of nations and the bottom 20% has increased from 30:1 in 1960
to 78:1 in 1994 (Dwivedi & Khator, 2005). Thus, human
development has not kept an even pace.
Amartya Sen (1999) has defined human development as the
fundamental freedom that enhances peoples choices, thus raising
their level of well-being. From this perspective, substantive freedom
includes the capacity to avoid such deprivations as starvation,
malnourishment, or premature mortality. It also includes acquiring
the basic education and skills to be gainfully employed and freedom
to participate in political, economic, and social systems. It means
building peoples decision-making capacities.
At the same time, it must be noted that human development and
economic growth are mutually reinforcing. For development to be
sustainable, both should accelerate in tandem. Such an achievement
requires that citizens: (a) receive basic services (such as education,
primary health care, adequate food, clean water, and sanitation); (b)
participate in designing and implementing developmental programs
created in their name and for them, if the resources are to benefit the
neediest, especially women and other marginalized persons; (c)
recognize the need for greater cooperation among all sectors of
human development including spiritual well-being; (d) be proactive
in the global economy because globalization disproportionately
38 O.P. Dwivedi

favors those who have expertise, power, and the capacity to compete
in the global market (Kagia, 2002).
12. Operationalize a New Paradigm for the New Millennium
J orge Nef (2006) has argued that the fundamental premise of the
dominant international paradigm since World War II (and especially
since the collapse of the Soviet Union) is the notion that the North is
secure and the South is insecure. Instead, in an increasingly
interdependent world, the weakness of the South increases the
vulnerability of the North. There is a need to change the mental
mode within the North which denies the need for any change to its
traditional perception that developing nations are the problem. We
need to create a new global paradigm which supports the security
and well-being of all. And, although the U.N. Conference on the
Human Environment in Sweden (1972) brought into discussion the
concept/term of sustainable development, it was not until the
publication of the World Commission on Environment and
Developments report, Our Common Future (1987), that this term
received worldwide acceptance. This paradigm has dominated the
world scene for about two decades but appears to have declined in its
prestige since the World Summit in J ohannesburg in 2002
(UNESCO, 2002).
A new paradigm is needed and is bound to emerge. I foresee that
it will be envisioning the well-being of all, or in the language of the
Hindu Vedas, Sarve Bhavantu Sukhinah. (I explore this topic in
another essay.) Of course, in an ideal world, environmental and
human security problems would already have been solved; global
population would fall to the recommended level of 2 billion; energy
and natural resources would be evenly shared; technology would be
harnessed to reduce pollution and resource depletion to the carrying
capacity of our planet; and no one nation or group of nations would
be dominant and privileged.
But the fundamental question is: How to we achieve such an
ideal? We should realize that these environmental crises have given
us a profound opportunity to restore and strengthen international
cooperation for worldwide sustainable development. It is an
opportunity for world leaders (both from the North and South), as
well as for people and their organizations to develop planet-level

strategies of survival and sustainability. But such a strategy requires
control on consumption levels in the North and the redressing of
inequitable and unsustainable growth in the South. While priorities
concerning sustainable development and environmental protection
differ between the North and South, the planet that we inhabit is the
only one; and thus, no one portion of this globe should be enjoying
first-class quality of life while the rest continues to suffer poverty
and underdevelopment. Such a pattern is neither sustainable nor
development. Instead, what is needed is a fundamental shift in
priorities which may lead to creating a more stable world designed to
stop environmental decline, break the stranglehold of poverty and
reverse the trend toward growing inequity and social insecurity that
breeds despair and extremism (Renner, 2005, pp. 4-5). In the final
analysis, our world will be still oceans apart, unless there is universal
security and well-being for all.
People living in all parts of the world can be united in the
enterprise of protecting our common heritage by using the values
and ideals that various cultures, societies, and communities subscribe
to. By combining their concerns, talents, energies, and resources,
people can build a common future on earth in which they can share
their fortunes (whether meager or abundant) to equalize
opportunities among all their neighbors and among all regions, and
to sustain the right of all to fulfill the ends of life. Globalization is
criticized for many things; but in the case of environmental
protection, it is a positive step because, in order to develop a
common strategy for implementing sustainable development, much
depends on how people living oceans apart can still (a) perceive a
common future for the world and (b) act together to foster the
convergence of one shared fundamental value: one world shared by
many.
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3 3

3

Third Systems, Human Security, and
Sustainable Development
1

J orge Nef

INTRODUCTION
Professors Khator (2006) and Dwivedi (2006) have highlighted
both the concept of sustainability/sustainable development and the
extent to which the historical record of the last four development
decades has chalked up such a dismal record of achievement by any
standard of measurement. This paper complements their insights by
discussing the interrelationships among development, sustainability,
and equityor, more to the point, their reciprocal values:
underdevelopment, unsustainability, and inequity. A recent article in
the New Scientist restates a familiar observation regarding the
theoretical and practical problem of inequitable development:
The rich are getting richer while the poor remain poor. If you doubt it,
ponder these numbers from the US, a country widely considered
meritocratic, where talent and hard work are thought to be enough to
propel anyone through the ranks of the rich. In 1979, the top 1% of the
US population earned, on average, 33.1 times as much as the lowest
20%. In 2000, this multiplier had grown to 88.5. If inequality is
growing in the US, what does this mean for other countries? (Hogan,
2005)
44 J orge Nef

The main analytical question here is not to rephrase the New
Scientists empirical observation but try to explain why it happens.
This pattern of accumulation is fundamentally unsustainable in
economic, social, ecological, and ethical terms, especially from a
global perspective. Sustainability here entails what the United
Nations Commission on Sustainable Development defined as
satisfying present needs without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs (World Commission on
Environment and Development, 1987). Agenda 21 further elaborated
this concept, highlighting the perverse relationship between inequity
and sustainability:
Humanity stands at a defining moment in history. We are confronted
with a perpetuation of disparities between and within nations, a
worsening of poverty, hunger, ill health and illiteracy, and the
continuing deterioration of the ecosystems on which we depend for our
well-being. However, integration of environment and development
concerns and greater attention to them will lead to the fulfillment of
basic needs, improved living standards for all, better protected and
managed ecosystems and a safer, more prosperous future. No nation
can achieve this on its own; but together we canin a global
partnership for sustainable development. (U.N., 1992b, pp. 1.1-1.6)
These dysfunctional trends constitute a most severe threat to the
security and well-being of all humankind. At one end, it
compromises the planets carrying capacity; at the other, it raises the
specter of acute social and political strife. This widening condition of
collective insecurity in an ever more interdependent world is at the
core of mutual and global vulnerability (Head, 1989, 1991). If
development is understood at a minimum as a qualitative and
quantitative improvement of the human condition (Seers, 1977), a
pattern of growth based upon inequity and exclusion of the many for
the benefit of a fewand greater insecurityis anti-developmental.
In recent months, I have been working on a book about
democracy and de-democratization. This arduous and rather
unconventional exploration is beginning to shed light on the close
association between socioeconomic inequitythe powerlessness and
exclusion of people, on the one handand the merciless exploitation
of the human habitat on the other. Power, not arcane laws of nature,
explains distributional skewedness. And it is in politics, and in the
materialization and management of such inequities in the form of

regimes, that inequalities become embedded and reproduced in
enforceable systemic rules. This is clearly agency, not inevitable
fate or mechanical phenomena. Put simply, if poverty and
pauperization pose a severe stress to the ecosystem through resource
depletion, extreme wealth constitutes an even greater threat.
Given the complex but intelligible nature of these global threats,
I will attempt to approach this problem from the multivariate
analytical framework of human security and mutual vulnerability
(Nef, 1999) by positing that ecosystems, economies, societies,
polities, and cultures are managed by regimes. The latter could be
defined as relatively institutionalized sets of values, norms,
structures, practices, and expectations that manage any cluster of
contentious issues. Regimes have a number of attributes: (a) They
possess a leading cultural software, or ideology. (b) They operate
in a historical and structural context in which social forces and
alliances represent (and underrepresent) specific interests. (c) These
forces fight and compete with each other. They also coalesce in
alliances to attain official (hegemonic or legitimated) decision-
making positions in the system. (d) Once in control of these
authoritative positions, they articulate their ideologies in policy
decisions and nondecisions to advance their interests. (4) Finally, the
application and implementation, or non-implementation, of these
policies have effects in terms of who bears their costs and benefits
that is, in personal and systemic security and insecurity (Stallings,
1978). In other words, regimes and their change are at the core of the
above-mentioned relationships among development, equity, and
sustainability.
IDEOLOGIES OF SECURITY AND DEVELOPMENT
Conventional treatments of security and development have
tended to reflect, in general, two elitist systems of thought and
regimes. The first involves a persisting and evolving version of
realism and national security. Nerfin (1986) identifies it with the
point of view of the Prince. This characterization evokes not only
the Machiavellian ruler, for whom force is just if it is necessary, but
also the heroic figure of a soldier, king, or lion in Paretos (1968)
typology of elites. The other protagonist perspective is that of the
Merchant. It involves a more collective undertaking by the
46 J orge Nef

corporate business and financial elitesbarons, or foxes in
Paretos characterization. Their ideological project corresponds to a
vision of complex interdependence (Keohane & Nye, 1977) and
globalization (Fukuyama, 1989). Both vantage points emphasize
either military capabilities or capital accumulation at the expense of
the common security of those outside the exclusive realm of the self-
appointed heroes of the world tragedy. What is excluded in either
perspective is the security that most directly relates in a Benthamian
way to the lives of concrete, ordinary people: the chorus, those who
in a democracy are supposed to be citizens with rights. This citizen-
based mode constitutes Nerfins Third System, so far a rare
occurrence in either security or development.
Neither realism nor complex interdependence (or regime
theory) shows a central preoccupation with human development per
se, let alone with any version of it concerned with equity or
sustainability. For realism and national security, with their
geopolitical assumptions, national development is a byproduct of the
pursuit of national power. Eventually, this search for hegemony
leads to expansion, growth, prosperity, and national unity at home. It
is what Cecil Rhodes called bread-and-butter imperialism (1885).
Security and prosperity may reduce social antagonisms at the
imperial center but at the cost of a semi-perpetual state of war
(Bosch, 1967). The expansion of civilization (and modernization)
from this perspective is a zero-sum game intrinsically tied to war.
What both dominant paradigms of development and security in
all their versions and transmutations have ignored is common people
and their transformative potentialthose who make history, but in
whose name history is never written. This article formulates a
conceptual framework of development, security, and sustainability
from the point of view of the actual and potential citizensor Third
Systemin a global context in which princes and merchants are still
the dominant and converging forces (Nerfin, 1986). It suggests that
globalization need not be the exclusive domain of transnational and
national oligarchies and that an inclusive democratic system of
global citizens is not only a possibility but also a promising win-
win strategy for development and survival.

THE INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT
International development, especially outside the dominant core,
is seen by realists as a result of the relentless pursuit of the
national interests by warring, imperial statesmen. One direct mode
by which this development occurs is diffusion: spreading civilization
(Kiplings white mans burden) to the lesser breeds without the
law. An example is the implementation of manifest destiny on the
part of U.S. elites throughout the 19th century.
Another, less direct, modality is induced international
development implemented through foreign aid. Here, development
and modernizationare seen as a counterinsurgency strategy. This
was ostensibly the case in the post World War II era and during the
Cold War (e.g., the Marshall Plan, Point Four, the Colombo Plan, the
Alliance for Progress, etc.). The prime directive in this global New
Deal was to prop up friendly local regimes whose survival was
contingent on economic growth. Whether they were authoritarian
was less important than the requirement that they be anti-Communist
(Rostow, 1960). Shoring up these regimes took precedence over the
sustainability of development and distributional issues. Often this
approach required significant military or clandestine intervention, at
times involving destabilization as in Greece, Korea, Iran, Vietnam,
and Latin America.
For all its anti-Communist orientation, this approach favored a
Keynesian strategy of government intervention and relied upon a
strong administrative state, with a central role in investment,
planning, and capital formation. In the late 1950s, the socialist camp
unleashed an aggressive foreign aid program of its own to compete
for the hearts and minds of the newly emerging elites of the non-
aligned movement, later known as the Third World. Planning, capital
and technology transfer, nationalization, and industrialization were
perceived as shortcuts to development. Both the East and the West
shared these central tenets. The USSR poured massive resources into
India, Africa, the Middle East, and Cuba to neutralize or replace
Western influences. However, with the sudden collapse of the
USSR, the socialist variant to this approach became suddenly
obsolete.
In turn, without the other side to justify its existence, Keynesian
policies, born in the social turmoil of the Depression and invigorated
48 J orge Nef

through the Cold War, had outlived their usefulness. They became
exhausted and less effective as a protective strategy for elite and
regime sustainability at home and abroad. Also, critics of military
diplomacy gained the upper hand at the end of the Vietnam War.
They viewed national security as an exceedingly costly strategy,
demanding heavy taxation and public indebtedness at a time when
transnational business elites were becoming increasingly unwilling
to foot the billthe so-called tax revolt. Realism and its national
security corollary lost intellectual glamour and were virtually tossed
out. In their place, with a realignment of political forces around a
trilateralist project (Sklar, 1980), a neo-functionalist vision emerged:
complex interdependence (Keohane & Nye, 1977). Global regimes
would replace empire as managers of the world order. Rather than
protecting capitalism within one country, trilateralism offered a
vision of international and perpetual capitalism.
Regime theory, as it was also known, centered upon trade and
business transactions in a Hayek-like self-sustained global order in
which economics substituted for politics (Hayek, 1976). Trade
liberalization and self-regulating elite transactions would lead to
global prosperity. This technological and historically driven
tendency to expand transactions had, by the time of the USSR
collapse, evolved into a perception of a Hegelian idea-force
(globalization) leading to an end of history (Fukuyama, 1989).
Sustained growth and the belief in systemic self-correction displaced
notions of equity, regulation, and sustainability. The discourse of
development (Escobar, 1986) was increasingly replaced by that of
globalization.
HUMAN SECURITY AND INSECURITY
The human security perspective attempts to account for five
fundamental and interrelated concerns: environmental, economic,
social, political, and cultural. At issue here are questions of whose
development, whose security, and whose sustainability (and
livelihood) are at stake. From its onset, the concept of human
security was meant to provide a historical and systemic perspective
to connect issues such as peace, sustainability, equity, human rights,
and sustainable development. It also stood in axiological opposition

to both the realist national security and the interdependence/
globalization paradigms (Nef, 1999).
As mentioned earlier, since the end of World War II, security
and development became the parameters of what was then seen as a
rigidly bipolar world system. Security was seen in quite narrow
military terms (MAD [mutual assured destruction]), while the latter
focused almost exclusively on economic growth. With the end of the
Cold War, there has been a tendency to celebrate unipolarity and the
end of history as the inevitable result of globalization, while
retaining the same simplistic notions of security and development.
However, since September 11, 2001, these terms cannot be viewed
from a naive, narrow, and suicidal zero-sum viewpoint. The
possibility of a negative-score game, a contingency where we can all
be losers, has to be incorporated into a much broader and more
nuanced security equation.
It is increasingly obvious that unilateralism and the revamped
vision of national security now in vogue (both post 9/11 and since
1992) are not guarantees of real security for most people on the
planet. A new critical and reflective framework is required to
produce rational appraisals and well-considered ethical responses to
real and significant challenges. Even at the cost of learning to live
with cognitive dissonance, questions and problems need to precede
prescriptions and solutions. Human security and mutual vulnerability
are central concepts in sketching a multivariate and complex but
intelligible perspective to accomplish this task.
Human security is understood here as the probability of risk
reduction: the abatement of insecurity and uncertainty. Risk-
reduction in any system, from domestic to global, other things
remaining constant, is a function of the achievement of security at
the lower and more exposed levels. Any system is only as strong as
its weakest links, which make all its components mutually
vulnerable. Security implies, at a minimum, a number of interwoven
dimensions (subsystems or regimes) pertaining to the ecosystem, the
economy, the society, the polity, and the culture, with culture being
the software of a system or regime.
All these individual and collective dimensions of security are
equally important. However, it is the political/governance dimensions
that hold the key to safeguarding physical-environmental, economic,
social, and cultural rights. Rule-making, regulation, enforcement,
50 J orge Nef

and adjudication are fundamental in building the way power and
meta-power are created, distributed, and exercised in any sphere
environmental, economic, social, political, and cultural. Peace is at
the root of political security. But peace is not simply the absence of
violence. Issues of equity and accessibility are, by their very nature,
fundamental and pressing security concerns. Thus, the
interdependent nature of peace, human rights, equity, and sustainable
development are tenets for the deep understanding of human security
and insecurity. For analytical purposes our framework could be
conceived in terms of five subsystems and their regimes:
environmental security, economic security, social security, political
security, and cultural security.
Insecurity threats emerge as a direct consequence of
dysfunctional regimes in their multiple and overlapping systemic
dimensions. For instance, the reproduction and expansion of
environmental insecurity, defined as unsustainability both at the
micro and macro levels, are manifested through closely
interconnected thrusts in circumstances, ideas, structures, actions,
and effects. Actions and behaviors are influenced by values, they
occur in a context, they are instrumentalized in structures (and
regimes), and above all, they have consequences. Social systems are
not inherently self-correcting. Learning and the acquisition of
wisdom, combined with management regimes (environmental,
economic, social, political, and cultural) are central to the attainment
of security, both as a structured attribute and as a cultural practice.
Who manages these regimes, when, and how, have fundamental
consequences on their outcomes and sustainability.
The existence and maintenance of a viable order for peace and
security are contingent upon a culture and pedagogy of peace, while
the latter is, in turn, constrained and conditioned by the former. In
this sense, ethics, agency, and consequences are intrinsically tied
together in systems of knowledge/action. These systemic relationships
can be summarized and simplified as a matrix (Table 3.1).
MUTUAL VULNERABILITY:
POLITICS, POLICIES, AND OUTCOMES
This mode of analysis brings into question the fundamental
premise of the dominant international paradigms that have emerged

since World War II and since the collapse of the Soviet Union,
specifically, the notion that the North is intrinsically secure and the
South insecure. Instead, in an increasingly interdependent world, the
weaknesses in the global South increase the vulnerability of the
North in ways that are not accounted for in standard international
relations and development theoryleading to what I call mutual
vulnerability.
A central derivation of my approach is that the worlds
interdependence creates mutual vulnerability for all nations and
individuals and that such vulnerability increases with
interdependence. This situation poses a question of consequential
ethics (Nef, 2001). Without venturing into the arcane realm of
prediction, this analytical perspective made it possible to foresee in
the late 1980s and early 1990s that the mounting problems of the
periphery had transformed themselves into problems for the center
and had begun to flow upstream. In the specific realm of conflict and
violence, the human security paradigm offered a conceptual
prefiguration, not only of environmental, economic, and health
crises, but also of the kind of violence that happened on September
11. My remarks on terrorism and antiterrorism in 1995 underscored
the predictability of decision makers, given the prevailing paradigms
in international affairs: In the recent past, many policies designed to
fight subversion had the unintended effect of multiplying insecurity
in both the periphery and the centre. . . . [P]olicies proclaimed in the
name of antiterrorism have enhanced both antidemocratic
predispositions and government by deceit (Nef, 1995, chap. 5).
The combination of a structural trendpost Cold War
unipolaritywith the conjunctural occurrence of the terrorist attacks
on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon facilitated the
resurgence of a national security discourse with messianic overtones.
In a moment of crisis of the trilateral doctrine, the new national
security posture has partially displaced and partly recombined with,
the neo-materialist market ideology. This revamped version of
national security, superintended by a civil-military bureaucracy,
constitutes a sort of ideological default for global investors and
speculators.
However, the revamping of the old realist national security
paradigm is not a simple happenstance. The construction of this
Project for the New Century, formally announced in 1997 has bee

52 J orge Nef

T
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54 J orge Nef

carefully crafted by its proponents since at least 1992. Yet its
intellectual roots go much deeper. They were first announced on
February 24, 1948, by Cold War architect George Kennan, then head
of planning at the U.S. State Department:
[W]e have about 50% of the worlds wealth, but only 6.3% of its
population. . . . In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy
and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a
pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position
of disparity. . . . To do so, we will have to dispense with all
sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be
concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. . . . We
should cease to talk about vague and . . . unreal objectives such as
human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization.
The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight
power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans,
the better. (Kennan, 1948)
As a multi-sided global crisis escalates, ruling elites, their
consent-manufacturing propaganda, and their publics seem to have a
built-in affinity for denial and resistance to change, and for clinging
to outmoded mental models and dysfunctional solutions. This
affinity explains why the porous discourses of modernity, economic
determinism, and conventionalas well as newnational security
plans, and now globalization (and more specifically what Steger
[2002] has called globalism), have exhibited a remarkable ability
to incorporate or trivialize intellectual challenges to their hegemony,
generally discounting them as ineffective, simplistic, radical, or
pessimistic.
TOWARD A CITIZEN-BASED THIRD SYSTEM
From the above presentation, one may surmise that the people-
centered perspective of long-term social, economic, and
environmental sustainability offered by human security is a most
promising opportunity for reframing and challenging the ruling
orthodoxy. It also offers an agenda for peace and a different
management regime. The 1992 Rio Summit (United Nations, 1992a),
the 2001 World Summit on Sustainable Development in
J ohannesburg, and the World Social Forums (beginning in 2001 in
Porto Alegre, Brazil) have provided a prime opportunity for

advancing citizen-based global agendas of peace, development,
sustainability, and democracy.
This Third System of emerging citizens is gaining a foothold in
many places around the worldin peoples summits and popular
movements from South Africa to India to Brazil. Even though
official media and power elites ignore them and are not above
labeling them as naive, terrorists, or anarchists, their very
vitality, versatility, and dynamism are increasingly shifting the
center stage away from the G7, OECD, and regional summit
meetings. The very fact that the official global princes and merchants
have gone to extremes to exclude most of the world from their
forums has meant a very isolated existence for these oligarchs,
requiring them to live under protective armor and surrounded by
global hostility. Meanwhile the new movements challenging the
status quo are becoming ever more interconnected. Such
collaborations open the possibilities of an internationalized Tiers
tat, with which rulers and officials sooner or later will have to come
to terms.
There is an urgent need for bringing new voices and old silenced
voices to the table and for taking a fresh look at the world to break
the present cycle of self-reinforcing dysfunctions. Unsustainable,
undemocratic, and inequitable development is a threat to the
collective security of everybodynot only down there but also
up here. We must redefine the global paradigm entirely to realize
human security: the indivisible security and well-being of all
humankind. That security is inclusive and seeks the reduction of
threats and deprivations by emphasizing the prevention of the causes
of insecurity, rather than just the means to contain, or disguise, its
symptoms.
Finally, our approach is a call for truly global learning and
understanding. What UNESCO (1998) has called a culture of
peace is the necessity to reconceptualize the world order, its sources
of stress, and possible interventions, rather than offering more of the
same morally bankrupt and counterproductive pragmatic solutions.
This idea of world order stands in clear opposition to the acceptance
and often imposition of stratified disorder (Camara, 1971). A
deepening crisis may present a window of opportunity to bring other
than the usual voices and perspectives into the debate to examine the
global predicament in a concerted and integrated way. Only if we are
56 J orge Nef

able to reject prevailing prejudices and stereotypes and look at the
world as a global community will we be able to move forward
effectively in addressing the most pressing and urgent threats to our
well being. This new and different security perspective could also be
the key to the collective preservation of the speciesand of life
itself on this planet.
NOTE
1. First presented at the April 2005 Symposium I: Sustainable
Development and Globalization, this paper also draws on some
ideas from a companion lecture in the Lunch with a Scholar
program, University Club of Tampa, College of Arts and Sciences,
University of South Florida, J anuary 12, 2005.
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Dwivedi, O. P. (2006). Sustainable development: The world is still oceans
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9 9

Part II:
Economic and Political Considerations

4 4

4

Shaping Globalization for Sustainable
Development

Kwabena Gyimah-Brempong

INTRODUCTION
A vigorous debate continues about the effects of globalization on
less developed countries (LDCs), especially its impact on poverty
eradication and sustainable development. On the one hand,
proponents of globalization, particularly economists, see
globalization as an incomparable force for poverty eradication,
increased income, and possibilities for endless improvement in the
well-being of all nations. While they recognize distributional
consequences of global economic interaction, proponents of
globalization argue that the benefits obtained by winners far exceed
what is needed to compensate losers.
In contrast, opponents of globalization see it as a negative force
in LDCsa zero-sum game in which the gains of the developed
world translate to the losses of LDCs. In particular, they argue that,
because of unequal bargaining powers, any benefits from
globalization mainly accrue to the developed world, lead to further
impoverishment of the poor in LDCs, and even more importantly,
contribute to environmental degradation and resource depletion,
hence making development unsustainable at best and, at worse,
impossible.
62 Kwabena Gyimah-Brempong

Both sides can and do cite available statistics to bolster their
positions. On the side of globalization as a positive force are
numerous studies that show a strong and positive relationship
between openness on the one hand and income growth, equitable
distribution, improved health, and other indices of development
(Sachs & Warner, 1995; Temple, 1999). Anecdotal evidence also
seems to indicate that developing countries engaged most intensively
in globalizing are also growing most rapidly and reducing poverty
the most. China and India are frequently cited as examples. The
economic miracle that is occurring in both countries did not begin
until they opened up to the global economy. Even in the economic
basket case of sub-Saharan Africa, two countriesBotswana and
Mauritiushave done exceptionally well by world standards in the
last two decades as a result of their openness to the world economy.
The health status of people in LDCs has also improved greatly since
the 1950s when globalization began its current acceleration.
However, one can also point to a number of negative factors
associated with globalization. For example, the Food and
Agricultural Organization (FAO) reports that deforestation in the
tropics has been occurring at the rate of 0.71% a year since the 1970s
while the comparable rate for the developed world is 0.19%. World
Bank statistics also suggest that, while the incidence of poverty has
been decreasing worldwide, it has been on the increase in the poorest
countries. At the same time, environmental pollution and
deforestation intensified in LDCs. These trends have occurred at the
same time as accelerated globalization, leading the opponents of
globalization to ascribe a causal relationship to these correlations. Of
course, the cause of globalization is not helped much by the global
reach of some multinational corporationsMcDonalds, Wal-Mart,
Levis, Mercedes, Toyota, and Starbuckssuggesting a domination
of southern culture by northern culture. Neither side of this
debate is 100% correct; the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Can globalization be a force for positive change in LDCs in
terms of reducing poverty and improving the living standards of the
majority in LDCs in a sustainable way, as its defenders claim, or is it
the monster that critics describe? Can LDCs escape the clutches of
the developed world by living apart from the globalization process?
If globalization has not been a force for positive change in LDCs,
how can these countries harness the forces of globalization to benefit

them and to ensure that development is sustainable? These are some
of the issues that I will explore in this paper.
My main argument is that globalization has both positive and
negative aspects, that the benefits outweigh the costs, and that it is
possible to use the globalization process to achieve sustainable
development. I further argue that globalization is a force that LDCs
cannot escape or live apart from. Therefore LDCs should position
themselves to take advantage of the benefits provided by
globalization to achieve sustainable development while minimizing
the potential costs. They can do this, I propose, by participating in
shaping the architecture of globalization and pursuing internal
policies to take advantage of the globalization architecture that is
developed.
I do not provide any theoretical model in this paper but rather a
general discussion of the relationship between globalization and
sustainable development. Specifically, I discuss how LDCs can
organize to take advantage of the benefits of globalization to reduce
poverty while ensuring sustainability of development. The paper is
not empirical in its approach; it is rather a synthesis of existing ideas
to illustrate the argument that globalization can be used as an
instrument for sustainable development in LDCs. While the paper is
written at a general level, I will occasionally refer to examples from
the continent I know bestAfricaas well as from elsewhere in the
developing world. I will also occasionally refer to economic
concepts to illustrate my points. The concept and mechanisms of
sustainability are a more complex phenomenon than can be treated in
one short paper. In this paper, therefore, I will use examples from
deforestation and environmental degradation to illustrate the
relationship between globalization and sustainable development.
In the next section, I provide working definitions of
globalization and sustainable development. I then discuss the
possible mechanisms through which globalization can affect
sustainable development and why some LDCs may not have
benefitted from the current wave of accelerated globalization. I next
describe policies that LDCs can pursue to take advantage of
globalization.

GLOBALIZATION AND SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT: DEFINITIONS
The Dr. Kiran C. Patel Center for Global Solutions at the
University of South Florida has defined globalization on its website as
the worldwide compression of space and time and the intensification of
consciousness about the human and natural world as a whole. The key
features of globalization in this context are:
Increasing networks that extend across larger amounts of space
and operate with reduced time constraints. Growing awareness of
connections, commonalities, and differences.
Dissolution of the autonomy of actors and institutions at all levels
(e.g., local, national, regional, and international).
Adoption of identity tied to the emerging global whole.
Growing pressures on ecosystems worldwide.
(Globalization, 2005)
For economists, this definition is a fancy way of saying that the
space and time for economic interactions have shrunk, that the cost
of economic and social interactions across borders has decreased,
and that prices are being equalized across space and through time.
Globalization is not a new phenomenon; it has been going on
from biblical times through the 15th century when Columbus and
Portuguese explorers traveled all over the globe looking for spices.
In its current manifestation, the world has become a global village.
In times past as now, globalization was driven by the purpose of
improving peoples living standards. The difference between earlier
episodes of globalization and the current wave is the sheer speed,
intensity, scope, and ease with which people can interact over space
and time. The speed, scope, and intensity of the current wave of
globalization are fueled by rapid increases in technology, especially
in transportation and information technology, and the ability to cram
a lot of value into small volumes that are easier and cheaper to
transport. J et travel, the telephone, and the Internet have made it very
easy to not only communicate and trade across long distances, but
also to live, work, and play in different places at the same time.
Improvements in manufacturing technology that allow more value to
be packed into a smaller volume have made it much easier to
separate the sources of production from the consumer.

This process has not only increased the scope and breadth of
human interaction but has also increased the speed of this
interaction. One of the benefits of such rapid and widespread human
interaction is the quick diffusion of knowledge and technology,
especially in health, education, and agriculture. Of course, this rapid
and widespread human interaction has its negative side. Because
people have become global neighbors, externalities associated with
individual or group behavior, both positive and negative, have
increased. Among those associated with consumption are
environmental pollution and deforestation. The current wave of
globalization is irreversible and unstoppable. The best strategy for
LDCs is to take advantage of the benefits that globalization provides
while minimizing its possible costs.
Development, from the economists point of view, implies an
improvement in the living conditions of the majority of a nations
citizensnot only in their physical well being but also
improvements in such aspects as their spiritual life, general
happiness, right to be free, and the right and ability to enjoy the
beauties of nature. By this definition, development is not limited to
income or growth. Indeed, if leaving an inheritance to ones
successors makes one better off (happier), then such an ability is an
aspect of development. In essence, the sustainability of development
itself becomes part and parcel of the development process. To be
specific, this definition of development implies that conservation,
reforestation, and depollution of the environment all constitute
development, if that is what society values. Adding to physical
goods does not have to be part of development. Thus, even to the
economist, development need not be equated with unbridled
materialism or consumerism to the exclusion of other factors that
improve human life. Although economists sometimes use income or
consumption levels to measure development, they are clear in
indicating that income is only a rough proxy for development, which
is obviously a multidimensional concept. True, most of the indicators
of development, such as nutrition, health, and education, are
generally correlated with income. So are other, less quantifiable
indices such as freedom to choose.
Like development, sustainable development is not an easy
term to define since sustainability has several meanings and
interpretations. One can identify four possible perspectives of

sustainable developmentthe neoclassical economic perspective,
the resource balance perspective, the ecological perspective, and the
intergenerational equity perspective. In this paper, I will adopt the
definition of sustainable development propounded by the World
Commission on Environment and Development, the famous
Brundtland Commission Report, which defined sustainable
development as development that meets the needs of the present
without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their
own needs (World Commission on Environment and Development,
1987, p. 43).
According to this definition, development is sustainable if it
allows future generations to have no less than what the current
generation receives. There is no requirement in this definition that
the elements of the vector of goods and services that make up the
current generations ability to function should be the same elements
that enter future generations functioning. After all, the kinds of
goods and services that the current generation enjoys are different
from the kinds of goods and services enjoyed by people two
generations ago. What matters in our definition of sustainable
development is that the happiness of the current generation does not
compromise the happiness of future generations. This definition of
sustainable development is consistent with an intergenerational
equity perspective on sustainable development. Aristotle was
describing something like this concept when he stated that justice of
exchange has to be oriented toward equality: one may not give less
than one has received.
An important concept that is relevant for sustainable
development is substitutabilitythe idea that some outputs (inputs)
can be used in place of another set of outputs (inputs). Imported
output (input) can be used in place of domestically produced output
(input), human-made resources can be used in place of natural
resources in the production process, and the composition of a utility
bundle can change among individuals as well as through time. In the
same way, technology can partially substitute for natural resources,
thus decreasing natural resource requirements for the production of a
given output.
For example, recent advances in technology have made it
possible to produce the same output with fewer inputs of natural
resources than used to be the case two decades or so ago. Such

advances enable the conservation of natural resources, hence making
development more sustainable. The degree to which humans are able
to substitute one output (input) for another to create satisfaction
(input) depends on humans taste (technology) as they find new uses
for things that were hitherto not useful and learn to appreciate
things more. Another example is the technical progress that enables
human beings to create resources out of previously useless things.
Technical progress implies that resources are not necessarily finite.
Nations are able to add to their portfolios of resources and other
resources (both human-produced and natural) that can then be
substituted for known natural resources. The existence of
substitutability implies that development is not limited by the
amount of known natural resources.
Unfortunately, past development practices have not always
ensured that the current generations behavior will not compromise
future generations abilities to satisfy their needs if the needs of
future generations include a clean environment and the enjoyment of
nature. Current development practice has led to deforestation,
environmental degradation, and air pollution among other ills; and
these ills have grown with globalization. However, I contend that
these ills are not caused by development per se but by the methods
with which society chooses to engage in development. Societies can
choose to develop in a sustainable way without compromising the
living standards or slowing the pace of development for the present
generation. Fortunately, the practitioners of development policy have
now recognized that past practices have not always encouraged
sustainability and have thus set in motion policies that will
encourage sustainable development. Indeed the World Bank (2003)
devoted an entire World Development Report to the discussion and
recommendation of policies to achieve sustainable development.
The central point that I want to make here is that development is
not necessarily incompatible with sustainability and that the current
generation will not have to slow the pace of progress to ensure that
future generations are able to meet their needs. What determines
sustainability of development is the character of development or the
methods employed by the current generation in following its
development path. A greener and cleaner development path can
ensure sustainability while a slash and burn development path will
guarantee unsustainable development. After all, cleaning the

environment and restoring natural resources are part and parcel of
the development process, just as providing health services, fostering
education, and producing automobiles are.
THE COSTS AND BENEFITS OF GLOBALIZATION
How does globalization affect sustainable development? Table
4.1 presents some data on environmental indicators by level of
human development. These data suggest that poverty and low
environmental quality are highly correlated. In addition to the data
provided in Table 4.1, the 2003 World Development Report
indicates that the areas facing shortages of both surface and ground
water are mostly the poor tropical areas of the developing world; not
a single rich industrialized nation faces a water shortage. Figure 4.1
shows the correlation between the rate of income growth rate and
that of environmental deteriorationnamely, that there is no
significant correlation between economic growth and environment
degradation. If one assumes that water availability, undegraded land,
and a clean environment are necessary for sustainable development,
then one can conclude from the data that sustainable development in
poor countries may be compromised but that economic growth does
not necessarily have any impact on deforestation.

Table 4.1 Environmental Indicators, 2000
Dev. Lev. Sanit. Parti. CO
2
Defor.

(%) (mg/m3) (per $ GDP) (Ann. %)
Low 48.0 69.0 0.25 0.90
Medium 83.0 49.0 0.42 0.10
High 100.0 33.0 0.44 -0.20
Sources: World Bank (2003); The Little Green Book, 2003


Figure 4.1 Average Annual Rural Population Growth Rate
Source: World Development Report (World Bank, 2003, p. 26)

What can explain the negative correlation between the level of
development and environmental degradation we observe in the data?
Is the environment in poor countries bad because of exploitation by
rich countries? Is deforestation in the developing world due to
globalization and the resultant increased trade with rich countries?
Do developing countries have to exhaust their natural resources to
develop? Trade statistics indicate that about 75% of increased world
trade (by value and volume) in the last three decades has been intra-
firm trade among developed countries. Yet one does not see the
negative effects of trade and globalization on developed countries.
From the trade and growth data, it is difficult to assign globalization
as the source of this environmental degradation in LDCs.
Far from exploitation by the developed world, the source of the
environmental degradation in LDCshence, what seems to be its
current pattern of unsustainable developmentlies in poverty itself,
poor institutions, and bad policy choices. For example, although the
harvesting of timber for export to markets in developed countries
contributes to deforestation in the tropics, by far the most important

source of deforestation in the tropics is use of forest timber for fuel,
due to the lack of other sources of energy. Thus, the greater the
density of population on rural land, the greater the probability of
deforestation.
Figure 4.2 shows the correlation between the annual growth of
rural population and the proportion of the population living on
fragile lands. It shows that the faster the population growth, the
higher the proportion of the rural population living on fragile
landsan indicator of land degradation. In the same way, the loss of
top soil in LDCs has been due to poor agricultural practices in the
production of subsistence crops rather than the production of export
crops.

Figure 4.2 Percentage Annual Change in Environmental Index
Source: World Development Report (World Bank, 2003, p. 61)

On-going research in southern Africa by a group of researchers
at North Carolina State Universitys Atmospheric Science
Department suggests that about 70-80 percent of atmospheric
pollution in the region can be attributed to wildfires (Swap, 2005).

Of course, in this part of the world, wildfires are caused mainly by
farmers clearing bush to prepare their land for cultivation. Therefore,
while globalization may contribute to environmental degradation, the
major cause of environmental degradation in LDCs may be due to
poverty.
The negative environmental impacts of these forces have grown
exponentially in recent decades as population growth in LDCs has
accelerated. Any force that reduces poverty, such as globalization, is
likely to reduce (even reverse) these negative environmental impacts
to ensure sustainable development. To the extent that globalization
can be used to reduce poverty and improve the living standards of
the poor without necessarily exhausting resources, it can be an
engine for sustainable development. However, economic growth is
only a necessary but not sufficient condition for sustainable
development.
BENEFITS OF GLOBALIZATION
There are several possible benefits of globalization that should,
in theory, enhance the prospects of sustainable development in
LDCs. Neoclassical trade theory suggests several mechanisms
through which international interaction can positively affect
sustainable development. In this tradition, international trade leads to
specialization and efficient allocation of resources; hence,
globalization allows nations to consume outside their production
possibility frontiers. Such consumption allows for more rapid
development than would be possible were the nation not to trade
with the rest of the world. Another source of efficiency emanating
from international economic exchange is that it increases the size of
markets for LDCs, thus making it possible for them to take
advantage of economies of scale. In this process, LDCs could reduce
poverty and improve the living standards of the majority of their
citizens.
While neoclassical trade theory indicates that the gains from
global economic interaction come mainly from the efficient
allocation of existing resources in a country, another line of
argument for the positive effects of globalization is that the process
enriches and broadens the resource base of countries. International

interaction makes it possible for nations to acquire resources that
would not otherwise be available to that country.
Besides critical inputs that complement a nations resources,
technology and other forms of knowledge that can be obtained
through global interaction are very important for the development
process. The advances made in agriculture, health, information, and
education in LDCs in the last half century could not have been
possible without international economic interaction. The economic
development literature suggests that probably the most important
sources of economic progress are education and research and
development. Empirical evidence suggests that more than 90% of
research and development is conducted in the developed world.
Without global interaction, LDCs would not have access to this new
knowledge and might be further left behind.
Furthermore, development involves freedom from oppression in
any form as well as the freedom to choose. Apart from providing the
opportunity to increase a nations sustenance levels, globalization
can greatly contribute to increased social, political, and personal
liberties. Two of the major sources of freedom and liberties for
citizens of a country are openness and the flow of information. Very
often, the exposure of atrocities and oppression in a country, as well
as the resulting pressure by the international community, leads to
improvements in civil, political, human, and economic liberties. The
on-going civil revolutions in Eastern Europe could not have
succeeded without the involvement of the international press. In the
same way, international pressure is partly responsible for ending the
apartheid regime in South Africa. International pressure has also
reduced the level of state violence in Zimbabwe. Such pressure can
include direct interventions, in which the international community
comes to the aid of a countrys citizens.
Rapid economic development fostered by globalization, if
harnessed properly, could ensure the sustainability of development in
LDCs. For example, people living in countries with fragile lands and
environments need not produce their own food in a globalized world
but could import it in exchange for something they can export. An
example is Costa Ricas development strategy of eco-tourism. Such
an approach allows a country to preserve its lands, forests, and
environmental quality, thus ensuring the sustainability of
development.

Rapid economic growth also allows nations to conserve their
natural resources by allowing for the substitution of some human-
produced resources for these natural resources (for example,
electricity can be substituted for wood as fuel) and by replenishing
some natural resources (for example, through reforestation). While
increased development could provide the ability to preserve natural
resources and environmental quality, development also provides the
will and desire to improve and preserve the environment for
sustainable development.
Environmental quality and natural resource preservation are
luxury goods, the enjoyment of which increases faster than income.
Therefore, as development proceeds, citizens will demand more
environmental quality and greener nature. Thus, development
could lead to increased preservation and improved environmental
quality since the ability to preserve and improve the environment is
increasing simultaneously with the desire to do so. It is not
surprising that environmental standards are much higher in
developed countries than in low-income countries.
These positive effects of globalization can be possible only if
countries pursue the right policies. For example, there is no
guarantee that a majority of the people will enjoy the benefits from
economic growth fostered by globalization if the nation does not
pursue policies to ensure poverty reduction. Policies that distort the
domestic economy could result in globalization worsening the living
standards of the poor in the developing world, in addition to leading
to deforestation, environmental decay, and unsustainable
development (Borhesi & Vercelli, 2003; Speth, 2003). Inefficient
institutions, inefficient pricing, and poor governance are some of the
factors that could lead to unsustainable development in the face of
globalization (Asafu-Adjaye, 2004; Bohn & Deacon, 2000; Ferreira,
2004; Lopez, 1997, etc.).
Inefficient institutions, such as uncertain property rights, allow
for the overexploitation of natural resources, while not pricing goods
and resources according to their relative scarcity values leads to their
overuse. Globalization is likely to exacerbate these poor outcomes.
For example, in the absence of strong and effective property rights,
globalization is likely to result in the excessive harvesting of tropical
forests and the loss of top soil to accommodate the demand from
world markets (Lopez, 1997). This case likely prevails for

underpriced resources. For example, subsidizing chemical fertilizers
or gasoline will lead to their overuse, resulting in water pollution and
the overuse of energy resources.
Most economists agree that globalization can be and has been a
positive force in economic development. Empirical work has shown
that globalization has been a positive force for sustainable
development (Barro, 1991; Mankiw, Romer, & Weil, 1992; Sachs &
Warner, 1995). Indeed, a recent study concludes that, had African
countries fully opened up to the global economy, per capita income
in Africa would have grown by about 0.8% per year more than in
fact it has during the last 20 years (Atardi & Sala-i-Martin, 2003.)
Of course, there is no guarantee that rapid economic growth will
lead to development, let alone sustainable development. But there
can be no doubt that fast-growing Asian countries, including China,
India, South Korea, and Taiwan, have used the open economy to
achieve rapid and sustainable development. Even in sub-Saharan
Africa, a region that has generally witnessed economic stagnation,
Botswana and Mauritius are not only the two best performers but are
also the only two countries that have opened up to the global
economy and pursued strategies to take advantage of globalization.
Not all countries have been able to take advantage of the current
wave of globalization to achieve sustainable development. For most
of sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and South Asia, globalization
has not been an unqualified success, as its proponents argue. For
some developing countries, globalization has been correlated with
increased income inequality, increased and unsustainable
consumerism, deforestation, loss of plant cover, and water pollution
as a few people use the opportunity provided by the opening up of
global markets to overexploit their nations resources. This outcome
occurs because of the need to generate foreign exchange to import
goods from the developed world to service external debt. Some
researchers argue that globalization allows developed countries to
export their dirty industries to the developing world instead of
expending resources to clean them and keep them at home.
Simultaneously, the need to generate foreign exchange to import
goods and to service external debts forces indebted poor countries to
accept polluting industries that they otherwise would reject (Frey,
1995; Hilz, 1992; Marshall, 1999). The second line of argument is

that globalization leads to the over-harvesting of logs for export
purposes (Shimamoto, Ubukata & Seki, 2004).
Margolis, Shogren, and Fischer (2005) argue that trade is the
major source of invasive species being introduced into local
environments. Although not arguing for a reduction in or slowing of
globalization, they urge nations to consider these negative
externalities of globalization. In addition, globalization has provided
opportunities for skilled people in LDCs to emigrate to developed
countries, thus resulting in the loss of human capital (brain drain)
as well as the cultural domination of LDCs by developed countries.
Such results may be due in part to LDCs allowing developed
countries to set the globalization agenda, distorted internal
economies, uncertain property rights, unwillingness or inability to
deal with market failure, rent seeking, corruption, and poor and
nonparticipatory governance.
TAKING ADVANTAGE OF
GLOBALIZATIONS BENEFITS
How can LDCs take advantage of the opportunities provided by
globalization to achieve sustainable development? The globalization
process can either be an engine for sustainable development or it can
result in unsustainable growth and consumption levels by developing
countries. Whichever path LDCs travel on their development journey
depends on the choices they make, both individually and
collectively. While the interests and needs of LDCs differand
hence what development paths they choose to pursue may differ
among themselvesthere are some common actions that they all
need to take to benefit from the opportunities provided by
globalization.
These policies fall into two general categories: (a) policies that
shape the architecture of globalization, and (b) policies that take
advantage of globalization. The first set of policies are, by definition,
international in scope and therefore require cooperation among
LDCs and between LDCs and developed countries. The second set
of policies are internal to each LDC or a group of countries in a
region in developing countries.

SHAPING THE GLOBALIZATION ARCHITECTURE
The rules governing international relations and interactions (or
what I refer to as the architecture of globalization) have in the past
generally been developed and enforced by the developed world. For
example, whereas the developing world contains 80% of the worlds
population, with the exception of China all the permanent veto-
carrying members of the United Nations Security Council are from
the developed world. Similarly, the rules governing international
trade, international finance, intellectual property rights, and the
provision of global public goods have been negotiated generally
among countries of the developed world and enforced by them. It is
unlikely that the interest of LDCs will be paramount in the minds of
developed nations during these negotiations.
Whether deliberate or not, these rules work to the disadvantage
of poor countries. For example, international trade rules require all
countries, including LDCs, to reduce all forms of protection.
However, developed countries continue to protect their agricultural
sectorssectors in which LDCs may be competitivewhile pushing
LDCs to remove all protection from their goods. The usual argument
for the inability of LDCs to participate in negotiating the architecture
of globalization is that they lack the resources, both financial and
human, to participate in these processes.
It is clear that, regardless of how efficiently LDCs run their
economies internally, they are not likely to benefit from
globalization if the deck is stacked against them. For example,
worsening terms of trade (perhaps as a result of collusion among
developed countries) could lead to impoverishing a developing
country even though it increases its total output as a result of
international economic interaction (immiserization of growth)
(Singer, 1989). It is therefore necessary that LDCs actively and
vigorously pursue their interest in crafting the globalization
architecture. In particular, LDCs must be actively engaged in
developing the rules governing world trade, world finance, world
governance, and the provision of global public goods, among other
issues.
One of the major determinants of how effectively LDCs can take
advantage of international economic interaction is the rules that
govern such interactions. For a long time, the rules governing

international exchange were established in the World Trade
Organization (WTO), its predecessor, the General Agreement of
Trade and Tariffs (GATT) and the United Nations Commission on
Trade and Development (UNCTAD). These rules have long been
created and implemented by developed countries. LDCs should get
involved in the negotiations and put their interests on the table.
Knowledge in its various forms is likely to be the key
determinant of sustainable development in the future. Without access
to new knowledge and technologies, LDCS are likely to further fall
behind in development. Increased population pressure on natural and
other resources will lead to unsustainable development. Therefore,
LDCs should be actively involved in developing rules governing
such issues as trade-related intellectual property rights and
technology transfer in WTO negotiations. LDCs should also be
actively involved in designing the rules that govern international
finance, since such agreements determine the flow of resources
across countries.
In addition to the global architecture dealing with purely
economic issues, LDCs cannot afford to leave rules of world
governance in the hands of the developed world as economic policy
cannot be implemented without political support. Furthermore, the
economic rules established within the WTO and other fora may be
meaningless unless these rules and policies can be enforced. As
indicated above, although the developing world has about 80% of the
worlds population, it has only 20% (China) of the permanent
membership of the U.N. Security Council. Such an imbalance of
power in world decision-making bodies is not likely to serve the
development interest of LDCs, especially in cases where such
interests may clash with those of the developed world. It is this area
in which participation in the development of and inclusion in the
governance architecture is important for the sustainable development
of LDCs. (Incidentally, while J apan has applied for permanent
membership of the U.N. Security Council, African countries are
squabbling over which country among them should join the Security
Council.) Equally important is the need for LDCs to participate in
the development and provision of global public goods, such as
efforts to reduce global warming and to reduce air pollution.
It is not only necessary that LDCs participate in crafting the
architecture for the provision of global public goods but for them to

bear their fair share of the cost of implementing these efforts. The
practice of requesting and receiving exemptions from efforts to
reduce air pollution, for instance, only increases their pollution and
decreases their ability to achieve sustainable development. China has
become one of the leading polluters in the world in recent years,
partly as a result of its exemption from some of the most stringent
standards of the Kyoto protocol. In the same way, most African
countries which lag far behind in economic development have
become polluters because old automobiles that can no longer meet
stringent environmental standards in Europe have been exported to
Africa. Developing countries need not experience environmental
Kuznets curves. Avoiding them is a choice. In addition, asking for
exemptions removes whatever moral authority LDCs may have in
asking the developed world to set and observe higher standards in
the provision of global public goods.
The arguments LDCs have put forward for not participating in
the development of the globalization architecture are that they do not
have the resourcesmaterial or humanor the political influence to
effectively participate in these long-drawn-out and complex
negotiations. While it may be true that some individual LDCs may
not have the resources to participate, it is possible for LDCs to
improve their bargaining power and negotiating skills by pooling
their resources and forming alliances. The recent collective stand
taken by LDCs on agricultural pricing supports in developed
countries in Mexico suggests that LDCs can collectively pursue their
interests and influence the course of negotiations.
One should, however, recognize the heterogeneity of interests
among LDCs in crafting the needed alliances. In some cases, the
alliance may be regional in nature; in other cases, the alliance must
be based on mutual interests rather than geography. The key point is
to allow for flexibility to accommodate the heterogeneity of interests
in LDCs in these negotiations.
INTERNAL REFORMS TO
TAKE ADVANTAGE OF GLOBALIZATION
Participating in the creation of the globalization architecture will
not help LDCs if they do not develop and implement policies that
take advantage of the architecture developed. However, LDCs

cannot take advantage of any globalization architecture unless they
reform their economies internally. As Lopez (1997) shows for Ghana
and as other researchers have shown elsewhere, opening up to the
world economy with a domestically distorted economy could lead to
deforestation, environmental decay, possible increases in poverty in
rural areas, and increased inequality. Several policies could be
discussed here; but for the sake of brevity, I mention only three.
Institutional Reforms
Probably the most necessary factor to ensure sustainable and
equitable development with poverty alleviation in a globalized world
is the development of appropriate institutions. For sustainable
development, the most important institution may be the assignment
and enforcement of property rights, especially for land and other
natural resources. Without properly assigned and enforced property
rights, natural resource endowmentsbe they forests, land, water, or
the environmentare subject to the tragedy of the commons. The
benefits of exploitation by an individual, although low, exceeds the
private cost of exploitation. The private benefit is, however, far less
than the social costs of exploitation. Assigning and enforcing
property rights will ensure that the marginal cost of exploitation will
be in line with the marginal benefit of exploitation.
Without properly assigned and vigorously enforced property
rights, these natural resources are overexploited, with the
consequence that whatever development takes place is
unsustainable. Several empirical studies and the classic work of
Dasgupta and Heal (1979) support this contention. Deacon (1994)
and Lopez (1997) show that deforestation in an open economy is
related to property rights and population pressure on land. Property
rights do not necessarily mean private ownership. Ownership may be
held by the village or the clan. But however resources are held,
ownership rights and use patterns should be clearly delineated and
enforced.
Poverty Reduction
It is important that LDCs pursue policies to reduce poverty in
both urban and rural areas. As I have already argued, poverty is
probably the most single significant cause of environmental decay in

LDCs. Reducing poverty could therefore preserve natural resources
in addition to improving the quality of the environment and ensuring
that development is sustainable. Poverty reduction per se may not
ensure sustainable development; the nature of the development
policies pursued will determine the sustainable development. A
development policy that is based on the rapid overexploitation of a
nations natural resources without regard to future needs is not
sustainable, while one that is based on the judicious use and renewal
of natural resources is likely to be sustainable. Sustainable
development is therefore a function of the efficient utilization of
resources in the intergenerational sense. But such an approach is
possible only if resources are priced according to their value.
Pricing Resources Appropriately
More often, most resources, especially natural resources are sold
at prices far below their scarcity value. This practice leads to their
overutilization. For example, there is much traffic congestion on the
streets of almost every African city while street buses run virtually
empty, mainly because gasoline or diesel fuel is subsidized. In the
same way, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and water are overused in
most LDCs because the prices of these resources are below their
opportunity cost. There is overharvesting of tropical timber, not
because of globalization, but because policymakers in LDCs set the
price of these precious resources far below their replacement value.
This is especially the case where those who harvest timber are not
even required to replant the harvested area. Wood is overused for
fuel in poor countries because it is far cheaper than its opportunity
cost. As these examples show, the prices assigned to resources
should reflect their scarcity.
As far as possible, the market should be allowed to price scarce
resources since governments do not have all the information to
efficiently price resources at their scarcity value. Besides,
government allocation is likely to lead to corruption and rent-seeking
activities so that resources may not be allocated to their most
efficient uses. However, in cases where the market fails,
governments must develop policies to ensure the efficient allocation
and conservation of resources. In general, governments in LDCs

should develop targeted policies to change behavior toward
conservation and to foster the adoption of alternative technologies.
EFFECTIVE AND INCLUSIVE GOVERNANCE
Perhaps more important for sustainable development than
anything else is the need for open, honest, and accountable
government, especially in regard to the stewardship of natural
resources. Without open, honest, and accountable governance,
property rights will not be enforced; and pricing and other
government policies designed to correct market failure are likely to
be subverted because of bureaucratic corruption and rent-seeking
activities.
One of the best ways to achieve openness and honesty in the
management of natural resources to ensure sustainability is
participatory decision making. Such decision making should involve
the people whose livelihoods depend on these natural resources and
who therefore have the most interest in ensuring their preservation
and regeneration. As Fredriksson et al. (2005) and Conroy and Berte
(2004) argue, participatory governance and political competition
improve the chances that environmental issues will stay on the front
burner of public discussions.
Each developing country is unique with different resource
endowments and unique paths to development. This heterogeneity
among LDCs implies that the relative importance of some of these
factors differs across countries and regions of the developing world.
Thus, the importance a particular country attaches to any one of
these factors depends on the particular situation of the country or
region. However, regardless of the resource endowments of any
LDC, sustainable development requires that the nation utilize its
resources efficiently with intergenerational equity in mind.
CONCLUSION
This paper has examined how less developed countries (LDCs)
can use globalization to achieve sustainable development. I
acknowledge that the current wave of globalization is an unstoppable
force that LDCs will have to live with. Consequently, it can be either
a possible source of sustainable development or a source of problems
for developing countries. Developing countries should therefore

pursue policies to take advantage of the forces of globalization to
achieve sustainable growth.
I have described two sets of policies. The first requires
developing countries to participate in shaping the architecture of
globalization to their mutual advantage, cooperating with other
nations and forming alliances to pursue common goals. The second
set is internal to each developing country and must be individually
designed to improve the internal workings of economies to achieve
efficiency, take advantage of the opportunities offered by globalization,
and achieve sustainable development.
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4 5

5

Trade and Sustainable Development at
the World Trade Organization:
Toward a Decision on Genetically
Modified Organisms

Michael Miller

INTRODUCTION
The World Trade Organization (WTO) was created in 1994
through the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations that were taking
place under its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade (GATT), which refers to both an organization and a set of
international trade laws. The WTO received an unprecedented
mandate and powers. While the focus under GATT was reducing
tariffs and eliminating nontariff barriers (e.g., quotas) affecting
manufactured goods, the WTO also has a mandate to liberalize trade
in services and promote the protection of intellectual property rights.
Providing a forum for the negotiation of international trade law,
possessing the ability to decide trade disputes, and having the power
to enforce those decisions with sanctions, the WTO is arguably the
most powerful international organization in existence, challenging
the concept of state sovereignty.
Exercise of these powers has, of course, sparked controversy.
One of the most controversial issues facing the WTO is disputes
Environmental Degradation in a Conservation Model 85

pitting that organizations primary aim of trade expansion against the
goals of environmental and human health protection. These disputes
have often set more-developed countries against less-developed
ones. More industrialized countries have been under growing
pressure to respond to domestic claims that trade is linked to
deterioration in environmental quality, abuses of labor rights, and
skewed income distribution. In contrast, there is a growing fear in
developing nations that the concerns of environmental groups and
organized labor will emerge as a new protectionism, lowering the
ability of these countries to achieve real economic growth through
trade. The clashing of such developmental, environmental, and social
concerns contributed to the failure of the WTO Ministerial
Conference to launch its proposed Millennium Round negotiation in
Seattle in December 1999 (Rosenberg & Miller, 2000, p. 1).
1

Divisions between the global North and South continue to be the
primary obstacles during trade negotiations. The principal
disagreement is between the United States and the European Union
on the one hand, and developing nations on the other. The former
generally agree on the need for a more flexible interpretation of
Article XX in the GATT, which lists when restrictions on trade are
permissible.
2
Developing countries oppose a more flexible
interpretation of this article for fear it might then be used for
protectionist purposes. Additionally, poorer countries do not face the
same level of pressure from domestic nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) to better integrate environmental concerns
into trade law (Vogel, 2004, p. 233).
But trade and environment controversies of a different nature
threaten to become more serious in the near future. There has not yet
been a major dispute at the WTO regarding trade-restricting
provisions within a multilateral environmental agreement (MEA).
Furthermore, a transatlantic dispute is now making its way through
the WTOs dispute settlement process which, although it is not an
unprecedented type of conflict, could potentially have major
economic and political fallout. This paper outlines the trade and
environment debate up to this current dispute being heard within the
WTO, which includes a challenge by the United States to an alleged
E.U. moratorium on the acceptance of new genetically modified
(GM) crops. At stake are massive revenues from the sale of these
biotechnology products, the alleged threats of genetically modified
86 Michael Miller

organisms (GMOs) to both the environment and human health, and a
transatlantic relationship already weakened by disagreement over
how to address terrorism.
As with trade and environment conflicts generally, I argue that
the U.S.-E.U. row over GMOs could be dealt with most fairly and
productively through the pursuit of sustainable development.
Sustainable development has come to be understood as the joint
pursuit of several goals, each of which has individual importance as
well possibly contributing to such other goals as economic
prosperity, protecting the environment, protecting public health,
making economic growth more equitable, and increasing the
involvement of civil society in government policymaking
(International Institute, 2005; World Business, 2005; World
Resources, 2005).
3
Since the trade liberalization goals of the United
States and the environmental and public health concerns of the
European Union are both legitimate, pursuing sustainable
development and the compromises that it entails is the best solution.
After all, the WTOs mandate includes the broad-ranging aims of
sustainable development, calling for raising standards of living,
ensuring full employment and a large and steady growing volume of
real income and effective demand . . . while allowing for the optimal
use of the worlds resources in accordance with the objective of
sustainable development (Campbell, 2004, p. 54). This paper
concludes with some initial proposals for how the transatlantic
dispute over GMOs might be resolved in pursuit of sustainable
development.
FOCAL POINTS IN THE TRADE AND
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT DEBATE
The relationship between MEAs and the precautionary
principle on the one hand and international trade law on the other
have long been topics on which there has been limited agreement
among WTO member states.
4
I will describe these particular disputes
generally, then discuss how the current U.S.-E.U. conflict over the
import of GM crops has brought these tensions to the surface once
again. However, I first introduce the forums available at the WTO
for such disputes.

The Committee on Trade and Environment and the WTO Dispute
Settlement Body
The primary sites in the WTO where member states have battled
over the relevance to trade law of MEAs and the precautionary
principle have been the Committee on Trade and Environment
(CTE) and the WTO Dispute Settlement Body. The CTE was also
created at the Uruguay Round, giving trade and environment a
formal place on the WTOs agenda. Within the CTE, representatives
of member states discuss and have the power to suggest changes in
trade law. However, due to sharp differences among member states,
this committee has been unable to agree on policy recommendations.
A major barrier to progress has been the disagreement
mentioned earlier between the United States and the European Union
on the one hand and developing countries on the other over the
extent to which Article XX allows trade restrictions for
environmental purposes. More positively, the CTE has been
important in strengthening ties between the WTO and the secretariats
of MEAs (Vogel, 2004, p. 233). Furthermore, through their
persistent critiques of the WTO, environmental groups from the
United States and European Union have been able to provoke greater
transparency in CTE decision making. For instance, the WTO
Secretariat assigned to the CTE was the first to create a section of the
WTO website providing relatively timely and detailed reporting of
the commissions deliberations. But as increased transparency also
enables other interest groups to better monitor trade matters,
including competing business interests, the prospects appear small
that this opening of CTE processes will result in any policy
recommendations entailing significant changes in trade rules
(Shaffer, 2002).
WTO member states have recently called on the CTE to provide
a negotiating forum for certain trade and environment issues. It
remains to be seen if progress will be made. The Doha Ministerial
Declaration of 2001 specifically requested that the CTE conduct
negotiations in three areas: the relationship between GATT law and
trade-restricting measures called for in MEAs; procedures for
information exchange between MEAs and relevant WTO
committees; and the reduction of tariff and nontariff barriers to
environmental goods and services (WTO Secretariat, 2004, pp. 9-
88 Michael Miller

10). However, the Doha Declaration does not call upon the CTE to
negotiate regarding the relationship between trade law and the
precautionary principle (Mann & Porter, 2003, p. 36), one of the
more controversial issues, which also plays a key role in the
transatlantic dispute over GMOs.
Many such controversies pitting environmental and public health
goals against trade liberalization, unresolved within the CTE, have
entered the dispute settlement process at the WTO. This process is
dictated by the Dispute Settlement Understanding, which also forms
a part of the Uruguay Round Agreements. Once a member country
has submitted a complaint to the Dispute Settlement Body against
another for violating international trade law, the parties to the dispute
are first obliged to attempt to resolve the dispute by consultations
over the course of 60 days. If consultations fail, then the Dispute
Settlement Body establishes a three-member panel that decides the
case through a quasi-judicial process. Either side in the dispute may
appeal the panels decision, a step that was not possible under
GATT. The Appellate Body (AB) may uphold, modify, or reverse
the panel decision. If the Appellate Body finds a party in violation of
international trade law, it gives that member 8 to 12 months to
comply with the law. If the violating party does not comply, the
disputing parties then attempt to negotiate compensation. If those
negotiations fail, the party that prevailed at the appellate level may
ask the Dispute Settlement Body to determine the trade sanctions it
may impose on the losing party (UNEP & IISD, 2000, pp. 32-33).
As this process is a lengthy and time-consuming one, most trade
disputes have been resolved through negotiation. As a result, of the
315 disputes brought to the WTOs attention, only seven have
reached the stage where the WTO authorized retaliatory penalties
(Alden & Minder, 2004).
Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs)
It is not apparent how the Dispute Settlement Body will handle
alleged conflicts between trade-restricting measures in MEAs and
trade law. Indeed, the dispute settlement system has indirectly
addressed and even used MEAs. In the first case that the new system
handled after its creation, the Dispute Settlement Body determined
that the new Dispute Settlement Understanding reflects a measure

of recognition that the General Agreement is not to be interpreted in
clinical isolation from public international law. Later in the
shrimp/turtle case, in which the United States had blocked shrimp
imports because they were harvested in a way that harmed
endangered sea turtles, the scope for considering nontrade
international law in matters of trade law was expanded. Specifically,
the AB turned to five MEAs in determining the meaning of
exhaustible natural resources, a phrase in trade law that was key
in determining if the U.S. policy was permissible (Mann & Porter,
2003, pp. 22-23). Yet no case has yet been brought before the WTO
Dispute Settlement Body openly setting international trade law
against language in an MEA. But because trade liberalization
proceeds, MEAs continue to proliferate. Several international
environmental agreements already allow for major restrictions on
trade. In fact, of the approximately 200 MEAs in 2004, 20 contained
trade provisions (Vogel, 2004, p. 239). Thus, such a dispute could
emerge at any time.
Trade-restricting provisions in MEAs vary in whether they are
relevant only to the parties to the agreement in question or whether
they are also applicable to products and/or to the process by which a
product was developed. In the latter case, they are referred to as
process and production measures. For instance, the Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species (1975) bans international
trade in an agreed list of endangered species. The Montreal Protocol
(1987) bans all trade between both parties and nonparties to the
protocol in a list of ozone-depleting substances, and it also
contemplates allowing import bans on products fabricated through
the use of ozone-depleting substances. Under the Basel Convention
on the Control of Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes
and their Disposal (1989), parties may export hazardous waste to
another only if the latter consents in writing to receive it. Parties may
not import hazardous waste from or export it to a nonparty. Also
potentially a source of conflict, the Rotterdam Convention on the
Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals
and Pesticides in International Trade (2004) allows parties to ban
imports of chemicals and pesticides from the conventions agreed
list. When importation of listed substances is allowed, they must be
labeled (UNEP & IISD, 2000, pp. 16-17).
90 Michael Miller

However, the MEA with the greatest relevance to the
transatlantic dispute regarding GMOs is the Cartagena Protocol on
Biosafety (2000). Article 2 of this protocol declares: The Parties
shall ensure that the development, handling, transport, use, transfer
and release of any living modified organisms are undertaken in a
manner that prevents or reduces the risks to biological diversity,
taking also into account risks to human health (Convention, 2005).
Living modified organism, a type of GMO, is defined in Article 3
as any living organism that possesses a novel combination of
genetic material obtained through the use of modern biotechnology
(Convention, 2005). The GM crops at issue in the controversy
between the United States and Europe are this form of GMO. In
pursuit of the goals outlined above, Articles 10 and 15 explain that
parties to the agreement may restrict and even ban imports of living
modified organisms, based on the findings of a legitimate risk
assessment procedure (Convention, 2005). Might these provisions
justify a moratorium by the European Union? As I discuss below, it
is unclear how the WTO Dispute Settlement Body might address
these issues in the transatlantic dispute over trade in GMOs, due to
ambiguity in how the Cartagena Protocol deals with scientific
evidence, as well as questions about the fact that the United States is
not a party to this protocol.
The Precautionary Principle
Broadly speaking, the precautionary principle calls for taking
cautionary measures when scientific data regarding risks are limited
but when grave dangers are possible. While exercising this principle
during trade might avert an ecological or public health catastrophe, it
could also be abused for protectionist purposes. Further complicating
matters, in Europe the precautionary principle is understood to
require less scientific evidence than is the case in the United States.
It is not clear whether the European or U.S. conception of the
precautionary principle is more acceptable under the Cartagena
Protocol. Article 10 of this accord declares that lack of scientific
certainty due to insufficient relevant scientific information and
knowledge regarding the extent of the potential adverse effects of a
living modified organism will not prevent a party to the protocol
from restricting imports of the GMO in question, including

prohibiting imports (Convention, 2005). Most observers agree that
this language at least reduces the scientific evidence needed to
justify blocking imports of live GMOs (Vogel, 2004, p. 241).
The relationship of the precautionary principle to another
relevant component of international law is less murky. The WTO
case European Community (EC)Measures Concerning Meat and
Meat Products (Hormones) helped to clarify this relationship. After
scandals in Europe involving the use of illegal growth hormones, the
European Union in 1988 completely banned the use of such
hormones, blocking imports of beef produced through their use. In
response, in 1996 the United States and Canada each challenged the
policy at the WTO, claiming violation of the Sanitary and
Phytosanitary (SPS) Agreement, which forms part of the
international trade regime (WHO & WTO, 2002, p. 66).
The SPS Agreement describes the circumstances under which
members of the WTO may restrict trade through measures aimed at
protecting human, animal, or plant life or health. Article 2(2)
explains that such measures may be applied only to the extent
necessary to protect life or health, must be based on scientific
principles, and cannot be maintained without sufficient scientific
evidence. Also relevant to Hormones, Article 3(1) calls on member
states to base their restrictive measures on relevant international
recommendations, guidelines, and standards. Annex 3, 3(a)
elaborates that, in the case of food safety, such standards, guidelines,
and recommendations are those established by the Codex
Alimentarius Commission (WTO, 2005a). The codex is a joint
commission of the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World
Health Organization, with recognized scientific expertise in the area
of food safety.
In spite of these provisions, the European Union argued that it
had a right to ban certain beef imports based on the precautionary
principle, which is a principle of international law (WHO & WTO,
2002, p. 68). Rather than presenting scientific evidence to justify its
ban, the European Union contended that consumption of hormones
might lead to serious public health problems and that, until research
could better determine the degree of risk, beef produced through the
use of growth hormones should be banned.
In spite of this argument, in 1998 the Appellate Body, based on
language in the SPS Agreement, found the European Union in
92 Michael Miller

violation. The Codex Alimentarius had developed standards for five
of the six hormones at issue in the case, specifying maximum levels
of hormone residues that were safe. The European Union had no
scientific evidence indicating that these standards were insufficient
and therefore that its ban was necessary. When the European Union
refused to lift its ban despite this decision, the WTO authorized the
United States to retaliate by raising tariffs to a maximum amount of
US$116.8 million per year and authorizing Canada to raise tariffs to
a maximum of CDN$11.3 million per year (WHO & WTO, 2002, p.
67). The European Union has maintained its ban and, in fact,
reinforced it with new legislation after producing fresh research
linking hormones to cancer (Alden & Minder, 2004).
What is the relevance of Hormones and the Cartagena Protocol
to the U.S.-E.U. dispute over GMOs? Hormones and the current
GMO dispute are similar in that they both involve product-based
restrictions aimed at protecting human health. Both also involve
European invocation of the precautionary principle. But while the
European Union banned beef produced with hormones, it claims to
have taken only temporary measures against the import of GMOs.
Furthermore, the Cartegena Protocol on Biosafety adds another
dimension that was not present during Hormones.

THE TRANSATLANTIC DISPUTE OVER
GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISMS
The Disputed Policy and the Stakes
In 1998, the European Commission stopped approving new GM
seeds for planting in Europe. However, it allowed the continued use
of 18 GM products already in circulation. GM crops were not
approved again until September 2004, when the commission allowed
the use of 17 seed strains engineered by Monsanto (Organic
Farming, 2005). In April 2004, the European Union also passed
new regulations mandating the labeling of GM food and food
products. The U.S. government contended that the European Union
had placed a moratorium on the approval of new GM crop imports,
which was a violation of the SPS Agreement. As a result, in May
2003 the Bush administration, Argentina, and Canada initiated a
challenge in the WTO to the alleged moratorium (Mayer & Grove-

White, 2005; Purvis, 2004, pp. 67, 71).
5
The complaint has been
maintained despite the fact that, in September 2004, the European
Union began approving GM crop imports again.
Much is potentially at stake in EC-Measures Affecting the
Approval and Marketing of Biotech Products (Biotech Products)--
economically, politically, and environmentally, and in terms of
public health. In sum, GM crops hold much potential, but they may
also pose environmental and public health risks. Corn and soybeans
have been bioengineered to be more resistant to disease, drought,
and pests. Such innovations may raise farm yields, lower food prices,
reduce pesticide use, and improve nutrition (Purvis, 2004, p. 68).
Furthermore, Golden Rice has been modified to produce beta-
carotene, which the human body converts into vitamin A. Vitamin A
deficiency is a major cause of blindness in developing countries
(WHO & WTO, 2002, p. 69). Thus, used effectively, GM crops may
simultaneously support various goals of sustainable development.
At the same time, the scientific evidence is unclear regarding
potential environmental consequences of cultivating GM crops, and
even less is known about how consuming GMOs might affect human
health. Regarding biosafety concerns, it is feared that GM crops
might crowd out other plants and cross-breed in an area, disrupting
local ecosystems (Purvis, 2004, p. 68). Concerning public health, the
WHO is worried about the potential for gene transfer from GM
plants to microbial or mammalian cells, as well as allergenic effects
on people (WHO & WTO, 2002, p. 70).
The Domestic and Regional Political Context
Helping to lead to this dispute over GM crop imports is the fact
that the United States and Europe use and manage GMOs quite
differently. The more lenient regulation of GMOs in the United
States, together with the political power of biotechnology
companies, helps to explain why the U.S. government would go to
the trouble of bringing a claim at the WTO against the European
Union for allegedly placing a moratorium on the approval of new
GM crop imports. The United States remains the biggest user of GM
technology; it planted 47.6 million hectares of GM crops in 2004
(Harvey, 2005).
94 Michael Miller

Facilitating this large-scale use, the laws and agencies regulating
the production and consumption of GMOs form a lenient and
fragmented system. Regulatory responsibility is dispersed among the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA), and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
(FDA). For instance, the EPA registers crops that have been
genetically engineered to produce toxins that kill pests, and it also
registers GM pesticides (e.g., a fungus to be sprayed that has been
genetically engineered to kill pests). However, the USDA has
responsibility for crops that have been genetically modified to be
resistant to herbicides. Further fragmenting control, the EPA is
responsible for determining the amount of pesticide residues allowed
on foods, but the FDA is required to enforce these tolerances.
Significantly, the EPA has established tolerance exemptions for
registered GM microbial pesticides and plants modified to produce
toxins, contending that its scientific research has determined that
these products are safe for human health (EPA, 2003).
Contributing to the existence of a disorganized and lenient
system in the United States is low public concern about GMOs. In
fact, in general U.S. citizens are less skeptical of technological
change than their European counterparts (Esty, 2003, p. 373).
Furthermore, biotechnology companies, preferring a less
burdensome regulatory system, exercise considerable political power
in the United States. U.S. biotechnology firms account for
approximately 70% of global revenues in this industry (Purvis, 2004,
p. 71), no doubt making their policy preferences a priority for U.S.
government leaders.
Furthermore, the regulation of GMOs forms a part of a larger
trend in the United States. Since the early 1990s, the rate at which
the United States has strengthened or expanded the scope of its
environmental standards has significantly declined. For instance, the
United States used to be more aggressive in pushing for progress in
integrating environmental concerns into trade law. Going far beyond
the WTO, the North American Free Trade Agreement, approved by
Congress in 1993, included environmental provisions as well as a
Supplementary Agreement on the Environment. However, the
administration of George W. Bush, while acknowledging that trade
policies should improve environmental quality, initially opposed any
formal linkages between the two. U.S. Trade Representative Robert

Zoellick went so far as to explicitly characterize the trade and
environment agenda as protectionist (Kelemen, 2004; Vogel, 2004,
pp. 235-36, 249).
In contrast, the European Union is characterized by a trend
toward greater environmental and public health regulation on
domestic, regional, and international levels (Kelemen, 2004).
6
The
European Union stopped approving GM crop imports in the context
of intensifying concern about the uncertainty of these products
possible harmful effects. These worries ultimately spurred major
action when, at a meeting of the E.U. Council of Environmental
Ministers in J une 1999, France, Denmark, Greece, Italy, and
Luxembourg stated that they would block new GM crop approvals
until a new deliberate release directive was developed and new
legislation was passed enacting labeling and traceability
requirements for GMOs. The result was the alleged moratorium on
GM crop approvals. The new E.U. Deliberate Release Directive
went into effect in October 2002, for the first time requiring
consideration of the indirect effects of GMOs, post-market
monitoring, and a 10-year limit on approvals. The new E.U.
regulations on traceability and labeling for GMOs and GMO-derived
products went into effect in April 2004 (Winickoff et al., 2005, p.
88). As explained earlier, five months later, in September 2004, the
European Union once again began to approve GM imports. Various
factors, but primarily public opinion, prompted European leaders to
take a highly precautionary approach and not approve new GM crops
for several years.
In Europe, a majority of citizens oppose all uses of agricultural
biotechnology (Purvis, 2004, p. 71). In some cases, public opinion is
intense. In the United Kingdom, for example, the Food Standards
Agency established in 2000 in the wake of the bovine spongiform
encephalopathy crisis has been sharply criticized by
environmentalists for what appears to be a science-based position on
GM food. The chairman of the agency explained, We have said we
are neither pro nor anti-GM. . . . We will look impartially at the
evidence in relation to food safety and assess each case using the
best available science, and we will support clear labeling of GM
food so that people can choose. . . . That to me is a neutral stance
(Maitland, 2005).
96 Michael Miller

Highly active environmental nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs) and widely publicized GMO scandals have spurred large-
scale and intense public opposition to biotechnology in agriculture
and food. Greenpeace in particular has been active in organizing
protests across Europe and beyond to draw public attention to
alleged health and environmental dangers.
7
Fueling the fire was the
so-called Frankenstein Foods scare of 1999. A television program
interviewed a scientist, under contract to Monsanto to conduct
research on rats fed with GM potatoes. He claimed that the rats
organs were stunted and their immune systems compromised, adding
that he personally would never eat GM food. When a journalist
noted that several brands of baby foods contained GM ingredients, a
major product recall followed. By the time Britains Royal Society
harshly discredited the scientist-informants research, public opinion
had already been damaged beyond immediate repair (Organic
Farming, 2005).
Party politics have also facilitated stricter regulation of GMOs in
Europe. Green parties have not only been powerful at the domestic
level, especially in France and Germany, but have asserted
themselves during major E.U. decision-making.
8
And as in the case
of the United States, European handling of GM products is part of a
larger regulatory pattern. The European Union has recently adopted
a number of standards that are stricter or broader than their American
counterparts. Accordingly, the European Union is insisting that
WTO rules be modified so that its standards can be defended more
easily against trade challenges. Among E.U. policies not found in the
United States are bans on beef and dairy hormones, prohibitions on
the use of antibiotics in animal feed, bans on the use of leghold traps
in hunting, recycling requirements for cars, computers, and phones,
ecolabeling requirements, and of course restrictions on GM seeds
and food.
Also in contrast to the United States, the European Union wants
WTO law modified to make it clearer that MEAs must be respected.
The European Union has been concerned about the possibility that,
under current trade law, a country that belonged to the WTO but had
not signed a MEA could legally challenge trade restrictions
permitted by the MEA. Additionally, the European Union advocates
modifying international trade law to clarify the acceptance of the
precautionary principle (Vogel, 2004, pp. 239, 241, 242, 250).

Dispute Settlement at the WTO
These very different political, social, and economic contexts
have led the United States and the European Union to clash over the
regulation of trade in GMOs, and it is difficult to predict how this
dispute will be decided at the WTO. The only food safety dispute to
have gone through the entire WTO dispute settlement process is
Hormones (WHO & WTO, 2002, p. 66). Based only on reference to
that case, it appears that an E.U. moratorium would be found in
violation of the SPS Agreement since this case indicated that trade
restrictions are not allowed without a firm scientific basis and that
such trade barriers are allowed only to the extent necessary to protect
plant, animal, and human health. Hormones also determined that a
minority scientific opinion could provide the grounding for trade
restrictions under the SPS Agreement (Mann & Porter, 2003, p. 30).
However, in Biotech Products the European Union has not
demonstrated scientific evidence of public health risks (Purvis, 2004,
p. 69). Thus, the European Union might not possess sufficient
scientific data to argue that a minority scientific opinion supports a
moratorium on accepting GM crops. Furthermore, it would probably
be difficult for the European Union to demonstrate that a moratorium
is the least trade-restrictive method for managing any human health
and biosafety threats.
Helping to distinguish the Biotech Products case from
Hormones, however, is the fact that, in the former, the European
Union argues that it has taken a provisional measure rather than
enacted a definitive ban on GM crops. Specifically, the European
Union is now relying upon the safe harbor provision in the SPS
agreement, which allows for trade restrictions of a provisional and
precautionary nature when scientific evidence is insufficient. The
United States counters that the European Union has enacted a
moratorium that restricts trade in an unacceptable manner, because it
entails unreasonable or undue delay, considering the scientific
evidence pointing toward a lack of danger from GM seeds
(Winickoff et al., 2005, p. 83). It appears that, while a precautionary
approach based on inconclusive scientific evidence is not allowed in
the case of a ban on imports, such an approach is more acceptable in
the case of a temporary measure that restricts trade. Thus, if it is
determined that the E.U. decision making that has led to a stoppage
98 Michael Miller

in GM crop approvals indeed entails a provisional policy, the WTO
might find this measure permissible.
It is also uncertain how the WTO will handle rights under the
Cartagena Protocol, which grants parties the ability to restrict
imports of GM seeds for the purpose of protecting plant, animal, and
human health, seemingly with limited scientific justification. Will it
be determined that this protocol incorporates the precautionary
principle (as it is understood by the European Union) into the body
of international law, thus justifying an E.U. moratorium on the
import of new GM crops? The European Union could indeed invoke
this MEA as evidence of a strong international consensus in favor of
its restrictive policy, based on the large number of countries that
have ratified it (Vogel, 2004, p. 240). As of 2004, 107 countries were
party to the Cartagena Protocol, and the United States was the sole
major party not participating (Purvis, 2004, p. 69). However, no one
knows if the European Union could justify restrictions on U.S.
products by citing this protocol when the United States is not a
party.
9

Making it even more difficult to predict how Biotech Products
will be viewed at the WTO is a lack of clarity on the exact nature of
the European Unions current arguments. While it is clear that
Europe has in the past argued that its lack of approval of new GM
crops was justified as a provisional and precautionary measure under
the SPS Agreement, some observers claim that the European Union
has now put forward a new argument. According to researchers at
Gene Watch in the United Kingdom, the European Union has
apparently shifted its defense to suggest a direct link with its
reinitiation of GM approvals in 2004. The European Commission
has been unwilling to publish its recent submissions to the WTO
dispute panel; but it is clear from the U.S. response, which has been
made public, that the commission now wants the dispute to be ruled
moot because it has resumed approvals of GM crop imports
(Mayer & Grove-White, 2005).
PURSUING A SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT SOLUTION
If the European Union does continue to defend a moratorium as
a temporary and precautionary measure, whether it wins or loses at

the WTO, the same outcome appears likely. As following the defeat
in Hormones, the European Union might refuse to change its policy,
choosing instead to face sanctions. Because of strong public opinion
against agricultural biotechnology and based on the E.U. leaders
desire to avoid a larger anti-globalization backlash and increase
public support for E.U. institutions, the European Union might hold
firm.
10

But a black and white solution of either maintaining or
eliminating a moratorium is inadequate in the pursuit of sustainable
development. Finding a fairer and more productive solution will be
difficult, not least because no international organization, such as an
MEA secretariat or United Nations program or agency has stepped
forward to help resolve the U.S.-E.U. disputes over beef-hormones
or GMOs (Esty, 2003, p. 376). Nevertheless, one possibility that
serves both the United States and Europe as well as goals ranging
from economic growth to protection of the environment and public
health is for the United States and the European Union to agree to
label all GM products. While U.S. biotechnology companies and
European environmental activists would surely oppose, there might
be enough convergence of public opinion between the United States
and the European Union to make such a scheme a political
possibility. According to polls, more than 90% of people in both the
United States and the European Union would prefer to know when
they are eating GM foods. Furthermore, two-thirds of the U.S. public
support the right of the European Union to require labeling (Purvis,
2004, p. 71). In line with the aims of sustainable development,
labeling would allow for freer trade in GM products while also
providing more information to consumers that they could use in
protecting their health and seeking environmental stewardship.
In the hopes of a sustainable development solution, the United
States and the European Union might also use food safety standards
developed by the Codex Alimentarius as the basis for domestic
GMO regulation. This measure should assure more harmonious and
more scientifically appropriate policies. As the codex draws from the
FAO and WHO, both of which are well respected scientifically, this
option might be feasible. It should further increase credibility that
the codex has been working on standards for foods derived from
biotechnology since 1999 (WHO & WTO, 2002, p. 70).
100 Michael Miller

Another option for developing effective and agreed-upon science
and standards would be to improve linkages between domestic
institutions in the United States and the European Union, such as
national academies of sciences or the FDA in the United States and
the new Food Safety Agency in the European Union (Purvis, 2004,
pp. 72-73).
An additional benefit of an agreement between the United States
and the European Union on common GMO standards is that such an
accord would present a model for other countries on how to regulate
food safety more effectively during trade. Global harmonization of
food safety standards would lower transaction costs of firms
associated with navigating various countries safety standards. That,
in turn, might most benefit developing countries reliant on
agriculture. In support, World Bank research found that adopting an
international standard based on Codex Alimentarius guidelines for a
toxin sometimes found on cereal and nuts would increase exports
from 31 countries (21 of them developing) by 51% from 1998 levels.
This study further found that harmonization at a level more stringent
than codex standards would severely hurt exports from developing
countries (Wilson & Otsuki, 2001).
It is also necessary to increase discussion of GMOs within the
World Trade Organization. In 2002, the WHO complained that
GMO health and safety aspects had received little WTO attention.
The most detailed attention to the subject had appeared in the
Technical Barriers to Trade Committee, where the GMO labeling
requirements of some member countries were under scrutiny (WHO
& WTO, 2002, p. 131). Such increased discussion should be
accompanied by increased participation by civil society, particularly
by NGOs. Granting NGOs greater access would let them help the
small WTO staff in Geneva in working through technical
information. It would also allow voices to be heard in this
international forum that might be suppressed or lost in the noise at
the national or regional level (Esty, 2002, pp. 121-3).
11

NOTES

1. Later, in November 2001, the Ministerial Conference in Doha,
Qatar, made greater progress on trade and environment issues. For
instance, the ministers agreed to launch negotiations to clarify the
relationship between international trade law and international
environmental regimes (WTO, 2005b).
2. In fact, U.S. efforts to unilaterally employ trade restrictions to
impose its domestic environmental policies on other countries have
been the most important source of trade conflict between that
country and its trading partners (Vogel, 2004, p. 243). For instance,
the United States blocked tuna and shrimp imports because they
were harvested in a manner that violated U.S. environmental law.
3. For instance, economic growth supports environmental protection
and public health by allowing governments to better afford
implementation of environmental and health policies. And even
policies that are aimed at economic growth may also have positive
environmental implications. An example is how eliminating
subsidies not only allows economic markets to operate more
efficiently but also benefits the environment. A GATT Secretariat
report concluded that eliminating the distortion caused by
agricultural subsidies would shift agricultural production from
higher-cost, pesticide-intensive European agriculture to lower-cost,
manure-using agriculture in poor countries (Cited in Bhagwati, 2004,
pp. 138, 144).
4. In general, the precautionary principle calls for taking
cautionary measures when scientific data on risks are limited but
when grave dangers are possible.
5. Additionally, it was complained that E.U. member states
maintained national marketing and import bans on biotech products
that had previously been approved by the European Union for import
and marketing (Winickoff et al., 2005, p. 89).
6. To be sure, the domestic use and regulation of GMOs varies in
Europe. For instance, Spain is the only E.U. country which has
planted a sizable amount of GM crops, planting 100,000 hectares of
GM maize in 2004 (Harvey, 2005).

102 Michael Miller

7. For instance, police recently removed Greenpeace activists
from the entrance of the Polish prime ministers office. They were
protesting Polands allowing imports of GM maize (AP
Worldstream, 2005a). And when Greenpeace recently failed to
achieve a temporary ban on growing GM maize in the Czech
Republic, it warned that, because that country lacks a monitoring
plan to assess the environmental impact of GM crops, there is no
guarantee that their cultivation will not endanger the environment
(BBC Monitoring Service, 2005). Outside Europe, Greenpeace
seems to have been just as active. When the Indian government
approved six varieties of BT cotton seeds developed by Monsanto in
March 2005, Greenpeace criticized the move, claiming that BT
cotton crops have failed, plunging farmers into financial problems
(AP Worldstream, 2005c). When Brazils lower legislative chamber
voted by a large majority to lift a ban on GM seeds, Greenpeace
warned that GM crops would harm the environment (AP
Worldstream, 2005b).
8. In fact, the powerful roles played by Green Party leaders
during the negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol appear to have
contributed to the lack of an agreement between the United States
and the European Union. Dominque Voynet, Frances Environment
Minister and a Green Party member, and Germanys Green
Environment Minister, J rgen Trittin, led E.U. negotiations. These
two individuals took a harder line than would probably have been the
case if they had better coordinated the European position with other
ministries and with the E.U. Directorates General (Esty, 2003, p.
374).
9. The Doha Ministerial Declaration called upon the Committee
on Trade and Environment to negotiate on the relationship between
international trade rules and trade obligations within MEAs but also
required that the negotiations be limited in scope to the applicability
of trade law when it comes to parties to MEAs (WTO Secretariat,
2004, p. 10). Thus, the CTE has not negotiated how to handle a case
like this one.
10. Then again, the European Commission might decide to avoid
the behavior that the United States has identified as a moratorium,
considering what appears to be the inevitable spread of GM crops.
Last year, developing countries increased the cultivated area devoted


to GM crops by 7.2 million hectares, which exceeded the 6.1 million
hectare increase in more developed countries (Harvey, 2005).
Furthermore, Monsanto recently bought California-based Seminis,
the worlds largest developer of fruit and vegetable seeds.
Considering Monsantos statement that developing GM vegetables
from the Seminis portfolio could be a longer term option, it also
appears that an increased amount of the crops available worldwide
will be GM, making them difficult to avoid (Grant, 2005).
11. The United States has already taken a leadership role in
attempting to promote increased transparency and openness at the
WTO. As a result of such efforts, the WTO has invited NGOs to
participate in conferences and seminars, and the dispute settlement
process has become more public, largely through the use of the
Internet (Vogel, 2004, pp. 237-238).
REFERENCES
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rules of world trade. Financial Times, p. 4.
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protesters from prime ministers office. AP Worldstream. Retrieved on
March 7, 2005, from http://www.ft.com.
AP Worldstream. (2005b, March 4). Brazilian farmers to benefit from legal
genetically modified crops, minister says. AP Worldstream. Retrieved
on March 7, 2005, from http://www.ft.com.
AP Worldstream. (2005c, March 4). India allows GM cotton in fertile north.
AP Worldstream. Retrieved on March 7, 2005, from http://www.ft.com.
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2005, from http://www.ft.com.
Bhagwati, J . (2004). In defense of globalization. New York: Oxford
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Campbell, L. B. (2004). The effectiveness of the WTO and WIPO: Lessons
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2005, from http://www.biodiv.org/biosafety/protocol.asp.

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EPA. Environmental Protection Agency. (2003). EPAs regulation of bio-
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Financial Times. Retrieved March 15, 2005, from http://www.ft.com.
Harvey, F. (2005, J anuary 13). Emerging nations embrace bio-crops.
Financial Times. Retrieved March 15, 2005, from http://www.ft.com.
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& M. Shapiro (eds.), Transatlantic policymaking in an age of austerity:
Diversity and drift (pp. 203-223). Washington, DC: Georgetown
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Maitland, A. (2005, February 10). Watchdog need not be a poodle. Financial
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Mayer, S., & Grove-White, R. (2005, February 22). A bitter harvest. The
Guardian. Retrieved on March 15, 2005, from http://www.guardian.com.
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Purvis, N. (2004, Fall). Building a transatlantic biotech partnership. Issues
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Shaffer, G. C. (2002). If only we were elephants: The political economy
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9 9

10

Part III:
Grassroots Movements

6 6

6

Sustainable Community for
Sustainable Development:
Mujeres Reunidas and the Hhu
of Hidalgo, Mexico
1

Ella Schmidt

We should not be seduced into believing that globalization has a
uniform impact everywhere. To do so would be to fall into the same
trap as previous attempts at theoretization, namely that of formulating a
general (or universal) theory that seeks to identify certain driving
forces (e.g., the laws of capitalist development or the imperatives of
modern bureaucratic organization), prime movers (e.g., technological
or economic factors) or cultural facilitators (e.g., religious asceticism
or entrepreneurial rationalities) of change. (Long, 1996, p. 3)

A quick visit through the Andean region of Peru reveals a
history of an inordinate number of development projects that did not
work. These modern archeological remains are prime examples of
development efforts by well-intentioned bureaucrats who had
differing notions about why poor nationsusually ex-colonies
lacked the sophistication of the first world. Indeed, many lacked
markets, industrial production, and political stability, elements that
were supposed to allow these poor nations to share in the benefits of
maximizing efficiency, rationality, and individualistic values.
Most development efforts have been unidirectional, with developing
110 Ella Schmidt

agencies and banks representing the first world and fostering
projects that replicated the same unidirectional movementfrom the
more powerful to the lessthat for centuries has been the norm
(Hobart, 1993; Sillitoe, 2002).
For more than half a century the efforts of unidirectional
institutions and programs to impose progress and modernization,
based on assumptions of cultural limitations, isolation and/or
marginalization, have had competition. Traditional communities in
third-world countries have been articulating their own definitions of
well-being and progress that include sustainability. Helped by
remittances from community members abroad and based on
centuries-old concepts of community, civic responsibility, and
participatory sustainability, traditional indigenous communities in
Mexico are defining concepts of inclusive development that benefit
active members of the community.
The local, global, and transnational nature of these communal
efforts are quite remarkable and have finally drawn attention by state
entities. Recently the Mexican Government reported that $17 billion
were being injected back into the Mexican economy every year by
Mexican migrants living abroad (Cardoso & Becerril, 2004). A great
proportion of these dollars go directly to family consumption, but
many of these migra-dlares are utilized in community projects
that range from the building of roads and wells to schools and
communal enterprises like greenhouses (IME, 2005). Moreover,
many projects are positively altering the odds of cultural and
material survival for those who choose to stay in their communities
rather than emigrate. They are also fundamentally challenging old
interpretations of development.
This paper examines a womens cooperative, Mujeres Reunidas
(Women Reunited), in the indigenous Mexican community of El
Alberto in the Mezquital Valley, Hidalgo, and analyzes the role that
communal structures play in facilitating womens ability to cope with
the economic uncertainty brought about by emigration. Mara
Crummett, my co-researcher, and I conducted interviews with women
participants in the summer of 2002 as part of a project to investigate
transnational connections between the Hhu communities in the
Valle del Mezquital and the city of Clearwater, Florida, in the United
States.
Sustainable Community for Sustainable Development 111

This paper gives a brief historical account of the Hhu, one of
more than 56 officially recognized indigenous groups in Mexico.
The Hhu definition of citizenship is based on communal rights
and responsibilities that traditionally have included the importance
of the environment. This bottom-up understanding of citizenship
allows community members to respond to ecological, social,
cultural, and historical challenges.
Scholars in the past have emphasized the public role of men, but
notions of gender complementarity and reciprocity have been at the
heart of communal divisions of labor, decision-making processes,
and millennial cosmologies in indigenous communities throughout
much of Latin America. Scholars have begun to better understand
many of these more complex conceptualizations of gender and
community during the last couple of decades. Present long before the
colonial conquest and its systematic attempt to destroy their cultural,
social, and economic fabric to remake them in the image of
Europeans (Hobart, 1993), indigenous communities have shown an
extraordinary resilience and flexibility in confronting these
challenges. In the modern period, this resilience and flexibility can
be observed by focusing on the variety of responses indigenous
communities in the Mezquital Valley have developed to deal with
problems such as the effects of massive male emigration, mainly to
the United States. The paper concludes by stressing the existence of
alternative, more inclusive approaches to well-being that not only
encompass both people and their environment, but that also
challenge the linear, top-down approaches offered by traditional
development efforts, such as sustainable development, that all too
frequently continue to ignore the cultural and social capital of so-
called traditional societies (Sillitoe et al., 2002). This ignoring
includes their ability to articulate and negotiate their locality in the
midst of global pressures that assume their cultural extinction when
confronted with modernizing forces that frequently are presented
with the label of progress (Long, 1996). After all, as many Latin
American elites would have it, an educated Indian is not an Indian
anymore (Gould, 1998).
Without trying to ignore the impact of global consumerist forces
that the media and, in many instances, the migrants relatives
have on indigenous communities, this paper focuses on the
resiliency and plasticity of traditionalsometimes perceived as
112 Ella Schmidt

staticcommunal world visions. This paper, then, seeks to illustrate
an instance where, through selective appropriation of otherwise
modern elements (i.e., technology, international marketing,
banking), the members of the Mujeres Reunidas cooperative respond
to global forces in local ways that allow them to preserve and
strengthen communal ties.
THE HHU IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
The Hhu built the ancient city of Tula while under Toltec
domination and have thus been present in the Mezquital Valley since
around 250 B.C. To resist conquest by the Aztecs and Spaniards,
among others, the Hhu developed a strategy of retreating to the
valleys most arid and desolate areas, hoping to be left alone to a
greater degree than if they had struggled to retain possession of
better lands. This strategy imposed serious limitations on their
participation in the region, however, and promoted their exploitation
as cheap and submissive labor by caciques who settled in the area
with the aim of concentrating available irrigated land into large
landholdings despite the area's relative poverty. The Hhu, like
many other ethnic minorities, lived in relative isolation from the
nation-state, ignored by the great majority of Mexicans for much of
the time Mexico has been independent (Schmidt & Crummett, 2004).
In an effort to bring indigenous communities into the twentieth
century and integrate them into the Mexican nation-state (Aguirre
Beltrn, 1955), the Mexican government created the National
Indigenous Institute (INI) in the midst of an indigenista movement
that could not decide whether the indigenous problem was one of
culture or biology. In 1951, the Indigenous Patrimony of the
Mezquital Valley (PIVM) was created by presidential decree at the
strong recommendation of social scientists and consultants to the
presidency like Manuel Gamio, who combined efforts to draw
attention to the problems of desolation and abject poverty to which
the Hhu population had been endemically subjected (Schmidt &
Crummett, 2004). These efforts were not free of the contradictions
created by clientelist relationships between the Mexican government
and the different regional and local factions that could not agree
whether indigenous organizations should be autonomous or subject
to the interests of central government or local elites (Fox, 1994).

Created to promote the development and economic integration of
the valleys indigenous population, the PIVM fell into the hands of
local caciques who owned extensive property holdings in the
Mezquitals highly productive irrigated sections, especially
Ixmiquilpan. This situation began to change with the naming of
Maurilio Muoz, a Hhu anthropologist, as director of the PIVM
in 1970 (Schmidt & Crummett, 2004). His selection apparently
resulted from the social malaise expressed by large segments of the
Mexican people who were pressing for more local and regional
autonomy in decision making and from the Mexican states
incapacity to control the social mobilization of the 1970s and 1980s
(Fox, 1994). Be that as it may, Muoz's appointment proved critical
to the regions indigenous communities.
In an effort to restore dignity and a sense of agency to the
Hhu, Muoz changed their interactions with the PIVM from the
paternalist and clientelist transactions that the PIVM representatives
had typically imposed to more egalitarian ones that recognized rural
communities as active partners in the development process (Schmidt
& Crummett, 2004). In addition to supporting the bilingual teacher
program that the INI promoted at the national level, Muoz
developed leadership training programs for communal leaders
and recognized them as the legitimate representatives of their
communities of origin in an effort to support traditional
understandings of governance that included the right to negotiate as
equals with government representatives and other political agents.
These community leaders were, in many instances, rural teachers
trained in bilingual rural schools founded by President Lzaro
Crdenas during the 1930s and whose mission it was to promote
local indigenous culture and language in their own communities
(Baumann, 1975; Kugel, 1996). The social prestige that teachers
gained by virtue of their position and their regular transactions with
the institutional world helped them to be seen as an indigenous elite
who could negotiate between two worlds (Kugel, 1996). These
factors might well explain the different results that INIs impact had
on other indigenous populations such as the Mixteca in Oaxaca
(Nagengast & Kearney, 1990).
114 Ella Schmidt

MIGRATION, ETHNICITY, AND POVERTY
Saskia Sassen (1996), among others, recognizes a connection
between the historical presence of colonial powers and the strategic
economic interests of nation-states and the communities of
destination in which migrants choose to settle. On the one hand,
Sassen among others (Davis, 2000; Massey, 1995; Marcuse 2000)
also recognizes the tragic irony between the formal flexibility of
international borders vis--vis international investment capital and
the formal inflexibility of the same borders vis--vis the movements
of labor. Indeed, the global financial market does not recognize, nor
does it normally have, borders, a fact that allows the global financial
market to be highly mobile and to maximize gains. This assumed
flexibility of financial flows has some researchers scratching their
heads and wondering whether the nation-states are not capable of
controlling these flows or whether, in fact, nation-states have
voluntarily relinquished their power to do so (Marcuse, 2000).
In contrast, the barriers that are formally constructedat the
global levelto prevent the flow of cheap labor remind us of who
actually control the centers of power and thus enjoy the status of
citizens of the world (Ong, 1996) and who are left outside, forced
to struggle against the obstacles that nation-states impose on them
both in their communities of origin and in their destinations. This
double oppression certainly becomes another hurdle that workers of
the world are forced to negotiate.
Being able to cross borders successfully is just a small part of
their story. In the great majority of cases, as Sassen stated, migrants
have historically been part of the metropolis of destination either
through colonial or imperial ties. Castles and Davidson wonder
whether these migrants, who constitute a colonized other, will
have a chance to integrate themselves or whether they will be forced
to remain an irreducible other who are seldom given the
opportunity of attaining the socio-economic benefits that will allow
them to participate in the political and civic lives of their
communities of destination (2000, p. 9). Without the possibility of
attaining acceptable socio-economic standards, Castles and Davidson
doubt that migrants will ever be able to obtain citizenship
understood as the right to a good job or quality education that should
translate into better, more acceptable living conditions.

The reality is that many migrants to the United States live in
marginal places where democratic institutions that North Americans
take for granted like schools, courts, and a good job not only are not
present but, if they are, often function in a way that prevents the new
arrivals from learning and understanding how to take advantage of
them. Thus, migrants are quite frequently informally prevented from
understanding and learning what their civic rights and obligations
are. The interactions that the great majority of poor migrants have
with U.S. institutions are sporadic if not truncated, the marginal
spaces they occupy providing few possibilities for engaging in a
cultural and social dialogue with mainstream U.S. values, except for
brief interactions based on consumption (Schmidt, 2000).
These realities, however, are not new for the great majority of
migrants who frequently are forced to leave their communities of
origin, fleeing poverty, violence, the lack of hope, and sometimes
even political persecution, among many other reasons. To ask
whether migrants will acculturate or socially integrate into the
communities of destination, though an important question, ignores
whether these migrants were actually taken into account by the state
and dominant culture in their countries of origin. Their marginality
in the United States is on the same continuum of marginality that
they occupied in their countries of origin.
The majority of migrants who settle in the United States,
especially rural laborers, belong to poor, indigenous, and rural
populations in Latin America. As such, they were also ignored and
excluded from the national conversation, if it even existed, in their
homelands. Due to issues of race, ethnicity, class, and location, they
were commonly, some might say systematically, ignored and their
political access to the centralized Latin American states was
frequently denied. The absence of these important elements
prevented them from accessing better living conditions. Thus, at the
level of the nation-state, of cultural and political belonging, the fact
that the U.S. government largely ignores them (even though the risk
for undocumented workers is obvious) simply adds to the experience
and understanding of the nation-state that they have had as marginal
populations in their countries of origin. To be poor and indigenous in
many Latin American countries is to have been deprived of civil
rights and access to the means and resources to become a full citizen.
In many instances, their identities have been either emptied or
116 Ella Schmidt

essentialized to be better used in the perpetuation of a rhetoric that
denies them the right to participate in the national arena, making
them invisible because they do not fit definitions of citizenship
imposed both by local and national elites and by many who are
certainly better off but equally certainly not elites.
For the great majority of indigenous populations in Latin
America, land and identity are mutually defined (e.g., Allen, 1988;
Bastien, 1978; Isbell, 1978; Orlove, 1993); and for centuries, they
have fought efforts to privatize it. Modernization efforts in much of
Latin America, through privatization of land, have finally attained
what centuries of colonial rule were not able to accomplish: the
forced transformation of indigenous peoplesusually at the outskirts
of central powersinto citizens of nations as peasants or cheap labor
(Frye, 1996; Gould, 1998). Mexico and the alteration of Article 27 of
its constitution to comply with NAFTA is a prime example.
However, many of the indigenous peoples in Chiapas for instance
have rejected top-down modernization even more vigorously when
confronted with state-sponsored and internationally driven efforts.
Interestingly, this transformation has sometimes been coupled
with a national discourse developed by urban elites eager to be seen
as modern, as in the case described and analyzed by J effrey Gould
(1998) based on an urban ideal that maintains that education will
transform the Indian into a civilized mestizo. In both instances,
indigenous populations have seen their identities changed through a
classist or racist discourse imposed from the top, and this regardless
of how well they were able to manipulate the legal system and
political alliances in the distant and recent past (Frye, 1996; Stavig,
1999).
The Hhu, however, offer us a dramatic illustration of the
development of a notion of citizenship that has been defined outside
the legal and territorial definitions of nation-states that oppress and
control their subjects. This different definition allows us to
understand citizenship as the ability to act, defy, and overcome
natural, political, economic, and cultural challenges imposed on a
people, be it by birth or circumstance (Bobbio, quoted by Castles and
Davidson, 2000, p. 26). This different understanding of citizenship
allows individuals to be understood as agentsnot just victimsof
their circumstances, actors who respond to the challenges imposed
by their historical, social and natural contexts. This definition allows

them to understand citizenship as empowerment and dominance
over a threatening context [that] rests on a primacy accorded to
human reasoning capacity (Castles & Davidson, 2000, p. 27).
Castles and Davidson (2000) recognize that there are at least two
basic citizenship traditions: an elitist one that is legalistic and which
denies recognition of popular wisdom, and another one that is based
on communal civic belonging and popular wisdom. This citizenship
from below is probably the only model that can effectively create
situations that include the largest number of people willing to
participate in the resolution of a variety of challenges (natural,
social, or cultural) and who understand the obligations and rights that
their participation bestows on them. The Hhu are a prime
example of a citizenship constructed from below: a citizenship that
has guaranteed for centuries the relative well-being of community
members as long as they comply with their communal/civic
obligations.
HHU CITIZENSHIP
Dismissed by some scholars and members of the Mexican elite
as having been invented by the federal governments National
Indigenous Institute, the Hhu illustrate a powerful instance of
reappropriation of cultural symbols (Dening, 1986) and social and
cultural space. Unlike the Mixteca of Oaxaca, the indigenous identity
of the Hhu was created in situ and is not necessarily the product
of migration and discrimination found in their host communities
(Nagengast & Kearney, 1989). Their historyrich with struggles for
cultural, social, and economic advancement dating back to pre-
colonial timesserves as the context for the ways in which migrants
from Ixmiquilpan, one of the primary cities of origin of Hhu
migration, negotiate their social and economic environment in the
United States and Mexico (Schmidt & Crummett, 2004).
The Hhu Supreme Council, a civic and political organization
supported by the Hhu in Mexico with its counterpart in the
United States, the Consejo Mexicano de la Baha de Tampa
(Mexican Council of the Tampa Bay Area), is one of the few
supreme councils that continues to be active. Based on interviews
that Mara Crummett and I conducted in 2002, we learned that the
councils leadership role among Hhu migrants fostered the
118 Ella Schmidt

creation of the Office in Support of the Hidalgo Community in Their
Home State and Abroad (Coordinacin General de Apoyo al
Hidalguense en el Estado y el Extranjero), an office that supports
many of the political and cultural events happening in Clearwater.
Even though with an obvious political interest in maintaining their
presence among the migrant communities in the United States, the
Office in Support of the Hidalgo Community in Their Home State
and Abroad has also been crucial in sponsoring dancers, traditional
crafts, and Mexican teachers for cultural festivals and summer
educational programs in Clearwater (Schmidt & Crummett, 2004).
At the same time, the Hhu culture, centered around the
family and collective responsibility, has been at the forefront of
channeling migrant remittances into community development (Bada,
2003; Goldring, 1998). Based on data we collected in Clearwater, the
Hhu send back between $2 and $4 million a month to families in
the Valle del Mezquital. Indeed, the Hhu code of ethics, based on
defining the individual as a citizen of his or her community, is
strongly associated with the active participation of each community
member in community projects and community issues. Citizenship is
contingent on participation in and fulfillment of community
responsibilities and is defined by its social, not individual, character.
While Crummett and I conducted fieldwork in the Valle del
Mezquital, community members unanimously expressed the
importance of complying with the requirements that being a
ciudadano (citizen) entails. Interestingly, this information contrasts
sharply with information gathered by Galinier (1997) in the
highlands of the Sierra Madre Oriental northeast of Tulancingo,
indicating the disappearance of traditional communal structures and
practices in that area.
In the communities we visited, every male becomes a citizen
at age eighteen. This status, however, is not automatic and can be
revoked if the citizen does not comply with the obligations
required to maintain and develop the community infrastructure (i.e.,
schools, roads, sewer system, drinking water), to become a
community officer, or to participate in assembly meetings or
committees created to solve specific problems that the community
might be experiencing. (For another case, this time on Oaxaca, see
Mutersbaugh, 2002). Very often, members serving on community
committees must travel to discuss particular issues with regional

authorities. It is expected, moreover, that each member will assume
the financial burdens that such activities entail (i.e., transportation,
accommodations). These members are, however, accumulating
political and social capital that they will be able to spend on an
individual basis whenever they deem necessary. It is also clear that
these members are sacrificing significant personal resources, as well
as investing their time and effort, to benefit the whole community. It
is also true that social and sometimes material sanctions await those
who refuse to participate and contribute to these community
requirements, especially if they have emigrated but continue to have
relatives living in the community who might need the support and
attention of other community members.
The faenas, or civic responsibilities, require each community
members commitment whether in labor or in kind. At this time,
migration does not seem to have undercut community service
traditions at the level Mutersbaugh (2002) reports for the village of
Santa Cruz in Oaxaca. However, distanceboth at the social and
geographical levelmight eventually erode the commitment shown
so far by first-generation migrants. Those who have emigrated are
required to find a replacement for their assigned community tasks
usually a relativeor to send the necessary funds to hire a laborer
for the particular faena (i.e., work on the municipal building, digging
irrigation canals, paving roads).
In our visits in the Mezquital Valley with community members
in Orizabita, for example, they informed us that the Community
Board tracked the participation of all the members very closely.
They also shared the case of one of their community members who,
having emigrated to the United States several years ago, owed the
community the equivalent of a couple thousand dollars in past
contributions. This particular member had to negotiate his debt
before he was again considered an active member of the community.
Moreover, members who are elected to serve as community
officials (i.e., community president, secretary, or treasurer) are
expected to go back and fulfill their positions regardless of whether
they are working outside of the community (the United States
included). This is an extraordinary communal commitment from
those who have left their communities in search for jobs, as they
must return home and officially work for the community without any
expectation of being compensated for their work or time. During the
120 Ella Schmidt

time we were conducting interviews in El Alberto, the community
president had returned from the United States to fulfill his obligation.
Many times, however, such returning is not possible. In the
community of Gundh, for instance, the person serving as president
was filling in for his brother who could not come back from the
United States as expected.
The Hhu definition of citizenship thus includes a very strong
communal commitment defined by, among other elements, the active
participation in community projectsfaenasand community
administrative positions. Such a communal definition is a common
feature in many indigenous communities throughout Latin America
that reinforces a sense of communal belonging and that has very
little to do with legal normative definitions of citizenship based on
rights defined within the territories of nation-states (Benhabib, 1999;
Castles, 2000; Castles & Davidson, 2000; Painter & Philo, 1995;
Purcell, 2003; Yuval-Davis, 1999). If we take into consideration
what Castles and Davidson (2000) indicate in relation to a definition
of citizenship that gives power to the masses so that they can take
action to resolve social, natural, or cultural challenges on their own,
the fact that the Hhuand other indigenous communities in
Latin Americahave developed this type of understanding of
citizenship should not surprise us. Marginalized, if not oppressed, by
regional and national elites in power, indigenous communities in
Latin America have promoted and reinforced traditional communal
structures built in response to ecological challenges long before
challenges brought by conquest and colonialism. (For an insightful
illustration of a case in point see Murra, 1975.) This history has not
only encouraged a sense of communal responsibility and
commitment but has also allowed citizens to share their local
knowledge. This heritage of practical everyday life (Sillitoe, 2002)
includes their ancestral knowledge of their environmentboth social
and materialand their negotiations with the members of their
communities and the broader regional, national, and, of late, global
contexts.
Once under the yoke of conquest or neocolonialism, indigenous
communities in Latin America have reinforced their traditional
communal structures in an effort to counteract attacks on their ways
of life, ideology, and culture by external powers. (For a thorough
account of how indigenous populations incorporated colonial

requirements into their traditional community offices and cargos, see
Stavig, 1999). I emphasize that these strategies are communal in
character. It would have been practically impossible to survive on an
individual basis, even a precarious one. Continuing to reinforce and
promote the citizenship status of community members who fulfill
their communal obligations allows them not only to perpetuate their
communal structures, but also to present themselves to regional or
national political authorities as a solid front.
It especially allows them to survive as a group and maintain their
indigenous identity. Without the communal commitment, the
Hhu would have become yet another marginalized group of
people with few realistic possibilities of alleviating their plight or
improving their material conditions. This solidarity has also forced
others to see them as a political force. The Hhus interpretation
of citizenship has made clear to them the benefits that their political
activism can bring. Several Hhu from the Valle del Mezquital
area have been elected to city, state and federal political positions.
2

This strategic positioning has allowed them to advance legislative
agendas at both the state and federal level. Consequently, though a
small group, the Hhu have become a presence to reckon with.
Their own views of citizenship have created an entry point by which
they can become citizens of their nation of origin as well. Ironically,
many Hhu had to leave their country of birth to achieve a degree
of recognition by it, either for themselves or for their community.
This solidarity and communality, however, continuously gets
contested and renegotiated as one would expect. Government
programs, development agencies, norteos (those community
members who live and work in the United States), local caciques,
and evangelical churches, among others, pressure and influence
those who stay. With the help of technology, however, these same
entities are putting pressures on those who live in El Norte, as recent
mass e-mailings from the ex-governor of Hidalgo who is one of the
PRI politicians running for president would attest. In this context,
Hhu communities engage in negotiations and mutual
transformations while they negotiate and appropriate what they
perceive as beneficial for them and their communities. From these
transactions a sort of syncretic knowledge (Sillitoe, 2002) that is
owned by those engaged in the process is created.
122 Ella Schmidt

MUJ ERES REUNIDAS OF EL ALBERTO
The community of El Alberto, a twenty-minute ride in a
microbus from Ixmiquilpan, consists of approximately 650 families
and shows the great impact emigration has had on the way the
community looks. Indeed, from a trickle in the late 1980s to waves
in the early 1990s, 70% of malesthe great majority of them
between ages 16 and 30are in the United States, mainly in Las
Vegas working in construction. Their very modest landholdings,
often less than one hectare (2.2 acres), are not enough to feed their
families. This situation, combined with the high demand for cheap
labor in the United States, is at the basis of this extraordinary
Mexican migrant exodus. Immigration restrictions and the tightening
of the U.S.-Mexico border have profoundly transformed the mobility
of these migrants, who now tend to spend longer periods of time in
the United States to avoid being spotted by minutemen and
detained and repatriated by immigration officials. Moreover, many
women are joining their husbands or partners in an effort to
counteract the difficulties of crossing the border in the highly
volatile immigration context of the United States since 9/11.
Working wives mean that the couple can increase their earnings and
shorten their stay.
These decisions, however, need to be understood within the
context of the household (or extended kinship unit) where labor,
income, and resourceswhether the product of migration or not
are pooled for the benefit of the unit and not the individual members.
Theirs is not an individualistic project, but one that has strong
communal and kinship expectations and transactions.
In only two decades, El Alberto has undergone an impressive
transformation in its material culture. Even though it still has some
unpaved streets, two-story houses that combine U.S. and Mexican
architecture are being built with the remittances that community
members have been sending back home. These built-by-
installment houses (Frye, 1996) stand imposingly at different stages
of construction and are a testament to migrants dreams of returning.
They also attest to the transformations of their consumption patterns,
styles, and taste. For instance, in El Alberto, there are some one
thousand cars and pick-ups, many brand new, carefully covered in

their carports, awaiting the return of the families for Christmas or
well-deserved summer vacations.
At the time of our visit, the main community project was the
communitys Town Hall, designed by a migrant who had been
working in Las Vegas for a big construction company since 1989.
With its arches and columns, it reminded us of faraway casinos in
Nevada with Roman inspiration, such as Caesars Palace. But it also
stood for something much more profound: the clear and unwavering
support and commitment of all members of the community,
regardless of whether they were working in the United States or on
their small plots in El Alberto. Indeed, this building whose
construction started three years before our visit, was being built
through faenas by those who remained in the community.
Remittances, from the norteo migrants living and working in the
United States and who could not comply with the labor investment
that the faenas require, were used to buy the needed construction
materials locally.
But the transformations have not only occurred in their material
culture. The great majority of those who have stayed behind are
women and their children. Even though the great majority of
husbands, parents, sons, and partners regularly send money back,
upon which the women and children survive, it is also possible that,
due to illness, lay-offs, death, or a new family, many men are not
able to send their remittances regularly. We can only imagine the
hardships women face in those circumstances. To a significant
degree, these women have taken over the communal responsibilities
of their parents, husbands, or partners.
This area of Mexico, with very little water and great extensions
of arid land, used to have big plantations of maguey (century plant)
which were used in the production of pulque, a fermented beverage
with an alcohol content similar to beer. By the eighteenth century,
this beverage was one of the leading sources of taxes for the colonial
state. Attitudes embraced by the Mexican elites and middle classes in
their modernizing efforts considered pulque as one of the sources for
drunkenness and backwardness among indigenous populations. This
stigma and the replacement of traditional weavingsayatesmade
of the maguey fiber by plastic and synthetic fibers in the late 1970s
led to the abandonment of maguey plantations and the disappearance
of small but important income sources for women.
124 Ella Schmidt

At present, facing more than a double burden under conditions
of economic uncertainty, women in El Alberto have turned once
again to more readily available traditional resources, although in a
limited way, and have again begun spinning and weaving the
maguey fiber. Indeed, for the last 12 years and with the support of
NGOs that promote cottage industries for women, the women in El
Alberto have been weaving a variety of bath productsmainly
spongesthat are very successfully sold internationally through
Body Shop, Inc. These NGOs, using a participatory approach, act as
cultural facilitators and knowledge brokers (Sillitoe, 2002) and
avoid top-down approaches that impose outside understandings and
practices. In consequence, women of Mujeres Reunidas are seen as
the actors they see themselves to be and act accordingly.
Conflict, however, is also present. At the time of our visit, 117
women were active members of their cooperativeMujeres
Reunidasand two hundred more were eagerly awaiting their
inclusion. Issues of demand and the need to open new markets were
limiting membership in the cooperative. Members of the Executive
Board expressed their frustration with the situation. Having benefited
tremendously from this enterprise, they understood the eagerness of
other community women to participate in it. Though requiring
extremely intense laborwomen members of the cooperative would
cut, roast, carve, wash, dry, comb, and spin the materials
themselvesthey were able to weave or crochet between 10 to 12
sponges per week and earn around 50 pesos a day when working.
This income compared positively with the 32-peso daily wage
typical in the area.
The administrative structure of the cooperative mirrors the
communal structures of leadership based on a rotational system that
requires every member of the community to serve in administrative,
leadership, and representational positions. The cooperative thus very
closely follows traditional communal structures that have existed
since precolonial times and that ensure citizenship rights and
obligations. Women have held these positions of authority and
influence, though not through direct participation in public
assemblies (Nash, 1988), by accepting the responsibilities of
mayordomas in the female sphere of patron saint celebrations
(Hamilton, 1998) and decision-making processes. Such participation

has ensured that women play an important role in productive and,
indirectly, political decisions.
The benefits did not end there. Indeed, besides a renewed
interest in reforesting the area with maguey plants which also
positively impacts the local environment, women were learning how
to keep account books, write checks, and plan for the materials and
work needed to fill the orders for their products. They were also
taking care of their maguey plantations, very much in the centuries-
old tradition of maguey production and consumption. The women
elected to fulfill the different positions in the cooperative
administration were learning to deal with formal institutions,
governmental agencies, and financial institutions. They were also
transformingin fact, bringing back equity totheir gendered
transactions and negotiations within their household and their
community. Thus, a centuries-old tradition of complementarity and
reciprocity among genders was being positively revived by
development efforts that have, for the last 50 years at least,
privileged gender divisions of labor and decision-making based on
an assumed public male hierarchy.
CONQUEST, COLONIALISM, AND CAPITALISM:
A UNILINEAR SENSE OF DESTRUCTION?
After centuries of impositions including forced segregation,
taxation, forced labor, and coerced participation in the market,
traditional indigenous communities in Latin America continue to
exist, demonstrating their extraordinary resilience. Whether working
to counteract ecological challenges (Murra, 1975) or legal and
imperial impositions on their well being and humanity (Stavig, 1999;
Silverblatt, 1987), indigenous communities have survived by calling
on centuries-old communal definitions of citizenship, community
participation, and civic responsibility. Targeted for their supposed
economic inefficiency and lack of rationality, they were forced many
times to give up traditional ways of being to make way for
progressive ideas. Those progressive efforts, however, many
times ignored the fact that, to be sustainable, every productive
activity in rural areas needs to take care of both the environment and
the population involved in the effort. In fact, many indigenous
communities suffered a regression. Women were ignored and set
126 Ella Schmidt

aside and all were denied their indigenous identity (Cooper &
Packard, 1997) as it did not fit within a developmentalist discourse
supported by urban and westernized elites that insisted that the
Indian was an obstacle to progress and modernization.
We are only now coming full circle in our understanding of a
deeper sense of citizenship that is older than the nation-state and
which is based on empowerment to act and resolve the social,
natural, or cultural challenges into which one is born (Castles &
Davidson, 2000) in ways that not only make cultural and historical
sense, but that are inclusive. As communities like those of the
Hhu show us, citizenship should allow all members of the
community to benefit from the social, cultural, and environmental
capital available to them, provided they comply with their communal
obligations through services and labor (faenas).
The response of the women of Mujeres Reunidas, though
supported by outsiders (NGOs), also illustrates one response,
among many possibilities, that showcases the plasticity of local
knowledge when negotiating sustainability in the face of highly
destabilizing circumstances brought by global forcesin this case
the economically forced emigration of male labor. Though restricted
in their movement by their familial and communal responsibilities,
these women opted to create ways to benefit from their traditional
domestic tasks. Knitting and tending their gardens and small plots
(now their maguey plantations) allows them to continue to take care
of their children and the elderly.
By the same token, these activities have stopped being
domestic and have been transformed into global (albeit local)
responses to local changes brought by global forces. The womens
encounter with global forces has pressed them to negotiate and
accommodate. However, they are the ones picking and choosing
what makes sense to them and what they perceive as beneficial, not
because some outside forcein this case the NGOshas imposed it
on them, but because it makes cultural and economic sense to them
(Long, 1996). Indeed, they are applying their indigenous knowledge
of maguey production and their centuries-old tradition of maguey
fiber processing into ayates and other woven products to the
production of highly valued items in first-world markets. These
sophisticated markets are discovering the benefits of indigenous
knowledge that focuses on readily available and renewable natural

resources that ensure the sustainability of workers and their
environment. It is true that they are now conducting transactions
with banks and multinational corporations, and they have
fundamentally changed in their own perceptions of themselves. But
those global forces are also being changed by these womens
resilience and strong belief in their families, communities, and
understandings of citizenship. In fact, one could say that the global
is helping them to remain local, although transformed.
Ironically, the global forces that created the third world as a
category and which are behind the forced migratory exodus, are
now, more than ever, engaged with the local. In fact, they are the
economic foundation of an effort by indigenous communities like El
Alberto to help rescue and promote traditional social structures and
processes that aim at securing the material well-being of their
citizens, as long as they are willing to respect and comply with the
civic obligations that their citizenship entails. At the same time,
many in the modern world are embracing their ecological and
environmental tactics of appropriate and sustainable agriculture
indicating that they, not those who argued for top-down progress,
may well have been the progressive ones. All researchers, ourselves
included, should be encouraged to look more closely at the
articulations and interactions of the local, many times viewed as
traditional and indigenous, and the global, usually viewed as
cosmopolitan and modern (Ferguson, 1997). We need to be
reminded that the traditional is not an isolated, static, or fixed piece
that can be stuck in a museum and that the global is not
homogeneously hegemonic. There is plenty of space in which to
negotiate, contest, and transformto better respond to that which is
imposed or sometimes seen as inevitable.
The impact that global forces are having on the Hhu both in
their communities in the Valle del Mezquital and in the United States
cannot be ignored. The mass emigration of mainly men at the height
of their productive lives is having an impact on those who stay in
their communities of origin, mainly women, children and the elderly.
Though the economic impact of their absence is considerable,
women are responding to these challenges by creating female
cooperatives that are revitalizing a traditional cottage industry of
maguey processing that could not face the competition of cheap
synthetic products from the 1970s onward, but which have found a
128 Ella Schmidt

market again. This production has also fostered a renewed effort to
reforest the abandoned maguey fields, thus helping to reverse the
degradation of their surrounding environment. This renewed
emphasis on the key role of women in the productive process has
also started to highlight the traditional status of women as equal
partners in the household. Global pressures have not been the only
factor forcing men to emigrate. Demographic pressures from within
the community, combined with lack of access to land, have forced,
and continue to force millions of rural people to seek alternative
sources of sustainability. Men normally do not just decide to leave
their families without discussing the pros and cons with the members
of their household. The Hhus is indeed a household strategy that
aims at maximizing the survival and well-being of all the members
of the extended family.
Should we assume that what the women of El Alberto are doing
is becoming more traditional in the face of the challenges imposed
by the absence of their fathers, husbands, or partners and the
economic impact that their absence entails? (De la Cadena, 1995).
Should we infer that their revival of traditional maguey fiber
processing, is, in fact, an act of resistance to outside homogenizing
global forces? Or should we assume that these women are becoming
modern and, in a sense, global due to their ties to international
markets and their use of modern technologies? Are they just
adjusting to the new pressures brought by the opening of their
closed communities to the benefits of consumerism and
industrialization? Are they and their communities losing their
cultural identity and way of life? Does the answer need to be an
either/or elaboration?
The responses of the women of El Alberto need to be analyzed
within a framework that takes into consideration the active processes
of selective appropriation and transformation of both local and
global forces and realities by actors who need to make sense of their
world in their own cultural terms (Mintz, 1998). Actors, in this case
the women in Mujeres Reunidas, selectively appropriate and
transform the global factors that, combined with their local
understandings and skills, make cultural sense to them. It is these
transactions that become the interface of impersonal global forces
and very specific cultural realities. It is in these contexts that global
and local forces get redefined and recreatedwhere the global is

made local through the attribution of meaning (Low, 2000, p. 244).
Luckily, redefinitions, recreations, indeed the construction of
meaning, force us to see peoples as social actors, and not pawns,
who think and choose, albeit within the limitations that their realities
impose on them.
NOTES
1. This research was made possible by a grant from the
University of South Florida Globalization Research Center.
2. In our visit in the summer of 2003, one of their own, a
Hhu bilingual rural teacher from Ixmiquilpan, a Hhu area,
was elected to the Senate. Another young Hhu had been elected
to the state legislature in early 2000 and heads the Assemblys
International Migration Committee.
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76

7

Feminism, Poverty, and Grassroots
Movements in India

Gurleen Grewal

INTRODUCTION
The postcolonial Indian state was envisioned to have
responsibilities to its marginalized citizens in the areas of health
services, education, food security, and subsidized agriculture.
Despite the discourse of poverty alleviation, the Indian state proved
an ineffectual ally of the poor and more complicit with the economic
elites. The failure of development strategies to transform the
conditions they sought to redress has been widely acknowledged in
Indian feminist scholarship (Kapadia, 2002; Sen & Grown, 1987).
Now, more than ever before, the onus of addressing poverty falls on
social movements.
Fifty years after Nehruvian development, Arundhati Roy (2001)
offers this vivid picture of the gap between two Indian worlds: In
the lane behind my house, every night I walk past road gangs of
emaciated laborers digging a trench to lay fiber-optic cables to speed
up our digital revolution. In the bitter winter cold, they work by the
light of a few candles. Claiming India as a microcosm of the
world, she depicts its people as being rounded up and loaded onto
two convoys of trucks (a huge big one and a tiny little one) that have
set off resolutely in opposite directions, the tiny one to a glittering
destination while the other just melts into the darkness and
disappears (pp. 2-3).
134 Gurleen Grewal

In India those who melt into the darkness are those whose
resources are now being annexed in the name of national economic
growth: poor women, dalits (oppressed castes), and adivasis
(indigenous tribals). This paper examines some of the peoples
resistance movements in the context of the nations trajectory from
independence to the present.
INDIAS ECONOMY SINCE 1947
Central to any understanding of the postcolonial world is the
enormous gap between the class- and gender-differentiated colonial
subject and all those persons and groups [who] were cut off from
the cultural lines that produced the colonial subject (Spivak, 2000,
p. 325). In the case of India, the splitting of the Indian economy
along lines of gender and caste created fissures that continue to
deepen with economic liberalization. In the last century, Mahatma K.
Gandhi pondered the gap as did J awaharlal Nehru, the first Prime
Minister of India; however, their solutions to those gaps were
diametrically opposed.
According to Gandhi, Civilization in the real sense of the term,
consists not in the multiplication, but in the deliberate and voluntary
reduction of wants. This alone promotes real happiness and
contentment, and increases the capacity for service (Gandhi, 1930/
1999). The foundation of Gandhian thought was a form of non-
exploitative moral economics in which everyone works for the
common good without seeking to accumulate any more than they
need. Mistrustful of technological industrialism, Gandhi advocated
village self-sufficiency on the basis of the principles of swadeshi
(interiority or endogenousness) and sarvodaya (improving everyones
living conditions). The latter vision never had a chance, since it was
part of a standpoint that lay outside the thematic of post-
Enlightenment thought, and hence of nationalist thought as well
(Chatterjee, 1993, p. 100). Nevertheless, the Gandhian principle of
nonviolence as an effective vehicle for social transformation continues
to spur grassroots movements by and in behalf of the underprivileged.
Nehru, with his passion for dams and technology and his belief
in progress, is emblematic of the discourse of developmentthe
mindset that carried the day. Investment in industrial development
and expertise from the advanced industrialized North would promote

economic growth and reduce poverty. After colonial rule, under
which Indias economy was dismantled and reorganized to provide
raw material for Britains manufacturing industry, the postcolonial
nation faced the challenge of redressing hunger and poverty.
The stage was set for the deux ex machina of Northern
development bureaucrats and technocrats meeting their Southern
counterparts for planning, designing, and executing models of
economic growth for the undeveloped poor. Development served
both the aspirations of the colonized nations and the metropolitan
developers, for whom international developments staging and
managing of world poverty through the World Bank systematically
enabled the commercial interests of first world corporations. Not
incidentally, it also enabled the containment of decolonization and
socialism. The international critics of development saw it variously:
as a means of creating third world dependency (Amin, 1978; Frank,
1981), as a discursive production of the third world (Escobar, 1994),
as patriarchal, and as environmentally destructive (Mies & Shiva,
1993). Escobars (1994) anthropology of modernity shows how
the development strategy became a powerful instrument for
normalizing the world (p. 26).
Pressured by increasing levels of debt, India caught up with the
rest of the developing world by officially acquiescing to neoliberal
reforms in 1991, when the Indian government signed on to World
Bank and International Monetary Fund loans.
The coupling of the World Bank and the World Trade
Organization (WTO) has meant the death of development as the
liberal paradigm of the democratic state seeking to redress poverty
and inequality in the economic and social lives of its people. In
India, the adoption of the neoliberal paradigm meant forsaking all
those who were cut off from the lines of privilege that produced the
class-caste and gender-differentiated colonial subject. As Spivak
(1999) observes:
It is now more than ever impossible for the new developing statesthe
newly decolonized or the old decolonized nationsto escape the orthodox
constraints of a neo-liberal world economic system that, in the name of
Development, and now sustainable development, removes all barriers
between itself and fragile national economies, so that any possibility of
social redistribution is severely damaged. (p. 357)
136 Gurleen Grewal

According to economist Amartya Sen (1999), the
one solution that is not available is that of stopping [the] globalization
of trade and economies, since the forces of economic exchange and division
of labor are hard to resist in a competitive world fueled by massive
technological evolution that gives modern technology an economically
competitive edge. (p. 240)
Acknowledging that the market economy should not have
priority or dominance over other institutions, Sen (2004) recognizes
that the themes that the anti-globalization protesters bring to the
discussion are of extraordinary importance (p. 67).
It is in this context that Gandhis vision continues to exert a
powerful force on social movements in India today. I will examine
three contemporary grassroots movements that owe their inspiration
to Gandhis ideas of equity and satyagraha, the nonviolent force of
truth mobilized for social change. These movements are the Chipko
Resistance Movement, Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) (Save the
Narmada Movement), and the SEWA (Self-Employed Womens
Association). Because the Chipko focused on cutting forests and the
NBA on damming the Narmada River, they are referred to as
environmental movements. However, in comparing them with
SEWA, a grassroots organization for improving the economic lives
of poor, self-employed women, I want to show how each is centered
on the economic needs of the poorneeds that the development
policies and processes have ignored.
POVERTY AND SOCIAL J USTICE
Each of these movements confronts the issues of poverty as
inequality. In each, middle-class activists collaborate with the poor,
among whom women emerge as significant players. Poor rural
women have a lot at stake in the processes of environmental
degradation and the appropriation of natural resources by the state or
private corporations. Not surprisingly, they have participated in
grassroots resistance movements.
However, it is important to note that issues of inequality and the
question of access to natural resources in India have often been cast
in the metropolitan discourse of environmental protection, rather
than primarily as issues of poverty and of gender inequity. This

positioning explains the iconic status of the Chipko Andolan of the
1970s and the Narmada Bachao Andolan of the 1980s and 1990s.
As Vandana Shiva (1998) clarifies, these are communities
defending their eco-systems and resources. As such, they constitute
the anti-poverty movements because in the South the forces that
make people poor are the same forces that destroy their resources. In
fact, its because their resources are either destroyed or taken away
[that] people are left poor. This correlation is seldom acknowledged
since securing community rights to natural resources collides with
the consumption and profit-expansion of middle classes and
corporations. As the consumer class corners resources through the
global reach of corporations, they contribute to the marginalization
of that third of the world population which derives their livelihood
directly from free access to land, water, and forests (Sachs, 2002,
pp. 15-16).
In India, as elsewhere in the world, there are two worldviews or
relationships to nature. The dominant one is that of industrial
civilization in which the relationship of human beings to nature is
dictated by the forces of production, consumption, and the
generation of profits. The subordinated worldview is that held by the
indigenous peoples of the world, in which nature is an intelligence
that gives life and makes human survival possible. In the modern
world, the two worldviews coexist, although the second is
marginalized as the backward culture of subsistence economies and
the other is valorized as the advanced technological engine of
productive economies.
At present, these subsistence economies are being endangered
worldwide. Simultaneously, the productive economies with the
pragmatic, scientific view of nature have come under censure by an
ethical and pragmatic imperative from within, that of sustainability.
Since the Stockholm Conference in 1972, the pollution of the
environment entered the international discourse of development and
growth. In this context, Maurice Strongs comment is pertinent: The
environment isnt just an issue, something to be fixed while
everything else remains the same. Ecological destruction is a sign of
the imbalance in the way our industrial civilization sets its priorities
and governs itself (qtd. in Cavanagh & Mander, 2004, p. 86).
In response, the Brundtland Commission report, Our Common
Future, drafted the notion of sustainable development (World
138 Gurleen Grewal

Commission, 1987). The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio was followed a
decade later by the J ohannesburg Summit in 2002. As Sachs (2002)
notes, At the time of Rio, sustainable development was mainly
about protecting nature, but now, in the wake of J ohannesburg, it is
first and foremost about protecting people (p. 15). The challenge of
being pro-environment and pro-poor is that it goes against the
grain of the dominant order of development, driven by the North and
accepted by the elites of the South, both of whom have [a] vested
interest in short-term gains (p. 14). Nevertheless, how to protect
peoples livelihoods, empower the poor, and eliminate the gendered
nature of inequalitythese are the challenges for all those who wish
to address the central issues of poverty and sustainability in India
and elsewhere.
THE GENDERED NATURE OF INEQUALITY
The gendered nature of inequality has been addressed in the
environmental movement of the North as ecofeminism. Philosophically
at variance with the Enlightenment rhetoric of scientific objectivity,
ecofeminist critiques have shown how women and nature have both
been subordinate to the androcentric rationality that founded science
and capitalism and how the human/nature duality and the
man/woman duality make both women and nature objects of mastery
for the western rational male subject (Plumwood, 1994).
Ecofeminism has mostly been an important grassroots political
movement involved in issues ranging from peace activism, womens
health issues, animal rights, and biotechnology. Some of the
theoretical implications of ecofeminism have been subject to critique
and debate among feminists, chief among them being the essential
proximity of women to nature, and the idea of womens nature
itself. The most visible exponent of ecofeminism in India is
Vandana Shiva, who defines patriarchal capitalist development as
maldevelopment (1989, p. 5).
Shivas (1989, 2002) ecofeminism represents an ideological and
philosophical difference that lines up Indias ancient philosophy and
nature-based religions with holistic and ecological values, and
against western mans scientific rationality of dualism, hierarchy,
and ecological unsustainability. Yet this formulation tends to ignore
the ancient hierarchies of Indian society and has no answers for

the oppressed lives of poor rural womens day-to-day efforts at
subsistence that may follow the feminine principle but which leaves
them without access to property and bearing the brunt of domestic
and field work. One could say that the struggle needs to be waged on
different fronts and on different levels.
THE CHIPKO RESISTANCE MOVEMENT
The Chipko Resistance Movement, originating in the Garhwal
hills of northwest India, where women in villages clung to trees to
save them from state-authorized loggers, became emblematic of an
international ecofeminist movement eager to showcase the
subordination of women and nature and womens environmental
consciousness. Chipko is a movement in which poor women united
to safeguard their own livelihood, which depended on the forests.
This instance of poor womens agency was but one in an ongoing
saga of hill peoples marginalization, first under colonial rule, and
then by the Indian state. Peasant rights to food, fuel, livestock
pastures, and fodder were encroached upon first by the colonial state
under the Indian Forest Act (1865), in which the scientific
management of forests allowed separating them from people and
converting them into commodities for private ownership (Cavanagh
& Mander, 2004, p. 131).
Vandana Shiva (1989) portrays the poor rural women of Chipko
as the redeemers of the environment who, as leaders and activists,
had put the life of the forests above their own and, with their actions,
had stated that nature is indispensable to survival (p. 218). They
become instances of an idealized feminine principle in action.
Others, including feminists, have questioned what they consider to
be a romanticization of womens survival instincts. Chipko means to
stick, but it has been translated as to hug or to embrace the trees,
diction that transforms an act of survival to an act of environmental
consciousness. The women were arguably protecting their forest-
dependent livelihoods, not altruistically putting the life of the
forests above their own.
As Sturgeon (1997) astutely notes, Positioning women as
environmental activists was one moment in a dialectical process of
negotiation between dominant interests in development policies and
feminist efforts to insert womens concerns into an international
140 Gurleen Grewal

arena (p. 145) Shiva is not the only one to take such a step. At the
Stockholm Conference in 1972, during a parallel NGO meeting,
Sunderlal Bahuguna, a charismatic male Indian activist, presented
Chipko women as exemplars of community-based, sustainable
environmental practices (Sturgeon, 1997, p. 144). He was
responding to the Limits to Growth thesis circulating at the time; it
implied that third world women were responsible for environmental
degradation through overpopulation and consumption of resources.
This thesis, interestingly, has never been completely overturned. It
returns to haunt any discussion of the environment and poverty.
The Expert Group on Population Policy set up by the Indian
state appalled womens organizations when it concluded that
population growth was a cause of both increased poverty and
environmental degradation. As Mary J ohn (2005) notes, the resulting
population policy leav[es] precisely all the major issues of macro-
economic policy unaddressed (p. 119). It ignores findings that
population levels tend to decline only when women are educated and
economically empowered. As Sen (1999) argues, womens
reproductive choices are intrinsically linked to the economy; the
absence of economic choices and social security is related to high
fertility rates, even though the latter is not in the interests of
womens own well-being. Policies imposing birth control do not
remove social and material inequities. The development of a nation
is about enhancing, not curtailing, the freedoms of its citizens; only
by enhancing womens status and by increasing womens agency can
we hope to find long-term solutions.
Interestingly, feminist environmentalists in India do not call
themselves ecofeminists, even though they critique the state and the
globalized model of economic growth that disempowers poor
womens lives in the name of development. Within the nation, the
debate is closely organized around gender inequity, labor relations,
caste inequalities and the role of the state as it advances along neo-
liberal lines while sacrificing the majority poor. The Indian feminist
environmentalist analysis differs from that of ecofeminism in the
following ways: (a) women are not alone in having a special stake in
environmental regeneration; (b) whats good for the environment
may not be good for the women in question and vice versa; (c) the
Indian feminist environmentalists do not advocate a retreat to
indigenous social and knowledge systems since that would not alter

national or international power structures (Mitter, 1995); and (d) the
ideological linkages between women and nature in the North (i.e.,
both have been ideologically related and oppressed by patriarchal
economy) do not prevail in the South, where the emphasis is on the
material basis for this link (Agarwal, 1992). From this perspective,
Shiva, in valorizing the superior wisdom of the feminine principle,
does not concern herself with the inequities of traditional gender
norms or the means by which to overcome them. Similarly in
valorizing subsistence agriculture, Shivas critics argue, she over-
looks disabling class and caste divisions (Agarwal, 1998; Nanda,
2002; Roy & Borowiak, 2003).
Feminist analyses have shown that womens gendered
relationship to the environment affects them negatively (Agarwal,
1998, 2001). In a poor farming household, gendered roles and the
division of labor makes women responsible for the domestic front:
child-rearing, raising and cooking food, collecting the households
firewood and water, tending cattle and acquiring their fodder, and
toiling in the fields. It is a heavy burden. Traditional gender-based
norms are made worse by material inequality. The depletion of water
increases womens drudgery. The degradation of forests reduces
their source of fuel and fodder. When food is scarce, they are the
ones who remain undernourished.
THE SAVE THE NARMADA MOVEMENT
The Narmada Bachao Andolan or Save the Narmada
Movement reflects the predicament shared by indigenous, tribal,
and peasant communities across the global South. Shiva (2000) aptly
calls them the new global environmental refugees (p. 112). In the
last 50 years, big dams in India have displaced an estimated 30 to 50
million people. Even the fact that there is no telling how many
people have been displaced is itself appalling; these are the
noncitizens, the ones who do not count, who have neither been
recompensed nor rehabilitated (Roy, 2001). The diversion of water
to rich farmers commodity crops and to urban factories (chemical
factories and pharmaceuticals) relegates to secondary status the
subsistence need of indigenous people for water and land.
In 1985, the World Bank authorized and sanctioned a $450
million loan for Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada River, a dam
142 Gurleen Grewal

that would alter the ecology of an entire river basin, affect the lives
of 25 million people who live in the valley, displace 160 villages,
[and] submerge 4000 sq km of old-growth deciduous forest (Roy,
2001, p. 39). In 1993 after a spirited struggle by the Narmada
Bachao Andolan (NBA) led by Medha Patkar, the Bank was forced
to withdraw. In 1994, the NBA succeeded in getting a legal
injunction against further construction on the dam. In 2000,
however, the Supreme Court of India lifted the injunction. As a
result the Sardar Sarovar dam is being built against the protests of
the people.
When the lives of 700 million people depend on access to
natural resources, privatization of these resources amounts to what
Roy (2001) rightly calls dispossession on a scale that has no parallel
in history (p. 43). As Amita Baviskar (2005) notes, The Indian
state has often mobilized the claim of national interest to justify
policies and projects that adversely affect the poor (p. 171). It is
important that we see how the imperatives of a market economy
generate poverty. Cash crops take land and water resources away
from sustenance needs and exclude populations, largely women,
from their entitlement to food. The results include increases in
hunger, homelessness, migrant labor, sex trade, and beggary in urban
centers.
While the NBA has called for an alternative development
paradigm that combines the politics of green and red, of
environmental protection and social justice, it has been reluctant to
confront the issues of gender inequity pertaining to tribal women
whose specific needs, being in conflict with those of their men, are
deemed divisive of the movement (Basu & Silliman, 2000). Further,
since [i]ssues of resettlement and compensation for the displaced
have been at the core of the Narmada struggle, it is disturbing that
the national resettlement policy is guided by a patriarchal bias: land
right [is given] to the head of household presumed to be male,
which both ignores female-headed households and the fact that not
all women can depend on men for financial support (Basu &
Silliman, 2000, pp. 429, 430). Feminist scholars have made it clear
that unless the material basis of womens inequality is addressed in
issues of land and property rights, there will be little improvement in
womens status (Agarwal, 1994).

THE SELF-EMPLOYED WOMENS ASSOCIATION
This understanding leads us to the important grassroots action of
SEWA, the Self-Employed Womens Association, an umbrella
organization comprised of 16 member groups that represent 220,000
members. Founder Ela Bhatt, a lawyer who represented the Textile
Labor Association in Ahmedabad, Gujarat (which Gandhi helped
found in 1917), saw the need to organize poor womens activities so
that they had rights, wages, better working conditions, and minimal
security. Eighty percent of Indias women are poor, and SEWA is an
excellent example of positive intervention in the lives of the poor
who work for meager wages in fields, forests, roads, and homes that
constitute the informal sector of the economy (Crowell, 2003).
Examples of workers in the informal sector are vegetable vendors,
construction laborers, cart pullers, and bidi-rollers.
The largest womens labor union, SEWA, which operates mostly
in urban and rural Gujarat, facilitates womens income generation
and protection. The goal is not to impose governance but to facilitate
womens participation in their own empowerment. For women
working in urban areas, the daily issues and problems include
unpolluted water, housing, running a business, and confronting city
officials, health departments, and police or power cliques. To solve
the problem of extortion by moneylenders, in 1974 SEWA expanded
its labor union work to create a cooperative bank that lent money to
the shareholding women.
Having organized urban women workers, SEWA next focused
on rural development. In the villages of Banaskantha and Kutch in
Gujarat, they tackled such rights as literacy, nutrition, and the control
of assets denied to impoverished women by the force of traditions
that privileged males. What is most needed in rural areas is adequate
employment so that migration to the cities is no longer a necessity.
Migration is undesirable as it disrupts family and community life and
destroys support systems; furthermore, urban options are harsh,
especially for women workers who are paid less than their male
counterparts (Crowell, 2003, p. 69).
The SEWA movement provides linkages in areas of training,
technology, marketing, capital, and social services. It shows that,
with a little bit of help, poor and illiterate women can organize on
behalf of their own intereststhat concepts such as capacity-
144 Gurleen Grewal

building, asset-building and empowerment are crucial to the removal
of poverty and thus to sustainable development (Crowell, 2003).
CONCLUSION
The work of SEWA also shows how transformative changes can
be made in the lives of the poor by engaging their own agency. Any
advocacy of sustainable development, if it is not to replicate the
cynical rhetoric of oil companies spouting sustainability, must
acknowledge the rights of local communities to be in charge of their
resources. Economic growth is often assumed to be synonymous
with progress, but progress also has social, moral, and spiritual
implications that have yet to be taken seriously in matters of
international policy. Today, the economic elite and the media that
serve them deny the increasing levels of poverty, choosing instead to
showcase India as the shining global hub of information
technologies. Is another way possible? This is not a new question,
although each time it is asked it carries all the urgency and
poignancy of the context that poses it. Even though faced with the
numbing and overwhelming statistics of waste and greed, social
movements must act as if another world is possible.
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Agarwal, B. (1994). A field of ones own: Gender and land rights in South
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Agarwal, B. (1998). Environmental action, equity, and ecofeminism:
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Agarwal, B. (2001, Fall). A challenge for ecofeminism: Gender, greening,
and community forestry in India. Women and Environments
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Amin, S. (1978). Accumulation on a world scale. New York: Monthly
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Basu, P., & Silliman, J . (2000). Green and red, not saffron: Gender and the
politics of resistance in the Narmada Valley. In C. Chapple, A. Sharma,
& M. Tucker (Eds.), Hinduism and ecology: The intersection of earth,
sky, and water (pp. 423-447). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
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Baviskar, A. (2005). Red in tooth and claw? Looking for class in struggles
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Cavanagh, J ., & Mander, J . (Eds.). (2004). Alternatives to economic
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Crowell, D. W. (2003). The SEWA movement and rural development. New
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J ohn, M. E. (2005). Feminism, poverty, and the emergent social order. In R.
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Kapadia, K. (Ed.). (2002). The violence of development: The politics of
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Nanda, M. (2002). Do the marginalized valorize the margins? Exploring the
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Sen, G., & Grown, C. (1987). Development, crises, and alternative visions:
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8 88

8

To Save a City: Grassroots Movement
toward Reforestation in Ica, Peru

Richard Weisskoff
1

This is a story of one Peruvian citys race against nature and the
periodic floods and landslides that have devastated Ica three times in
the past 35 years. It is the story of a race against time, bureaucratic
inertia, corruption, and disbelief that the so-called natural cycle of
flooding can indeed be broken by a simple and ingenious grassroots
strategy of reforestation and job creation.
It is also a story of three men determined to work with and for
the rest of their Peruvian society. They have, with modest foreign
funding, gathered the scientific data, built dams in the arid canyon,
surveyed the archaeological resources, and started the process of
planting tree nurseries, educating the public, and pressuring the
politicians.
Our story officially begins on the frightful and unforgettable
afternoon of J anuary 29, 1998. By four oclock in the afternoon, the
torrential rains associated with El Nio began to fall on the city of
Ica and in the northeastern mountain canyons running down from the
highlands of the coastal Andean mountains (Vine Perez, 1999). The
range ascends from 400 meters to 3,200 meters (10,000 feet) above
sea level in 25 to 30 kilometers, and the loess soils in the canyons
and coastal mountains, denuded of any vegetation, have only a
precarious hold on the mountain surfaces. The torrential rains come
suddenly, pouring down the ravines, taking the topsoil, and turning
148 Richard Weisskoff

the waters into rivers of mud. The gigantic, lava-like mudslides
move through the canyons into the fertile valleys below. Above, in
the high Andes, there remain, quite unaware of the natural disaster
below, the poor agrarian regions of Huancavelica and Ayacucho,
that, in the colonial period, had produced the mercury needed to
extract silver from the mines and thus gave Peru its fabled wealth.
Below, on the coastal lowlands now flourishes the new wealth-
generator for Peru: the expanding agribusiness-based region of Ica,
today responsible for 20 to 30% of Perus agricultural export
earnings. Ica alone accounts for 50% of the harvested acreage and
40% of the harvest of asparagus production, and, together with the
more northern province of La Libertad, they have made Peru the
number two producer of asparagus in the world, after China and
ahead of the U.S. and Mexico. In addition, Ica also is a welcoming
destination for migrants descending from the poor Andean
highlands, fleeing the terror and poverty of the Andes to seek work
in the irrigated coastal farms.
2

The 1998 mudslide devastated the homes and work places of
some 120,000 people, affected two-thirds of the agricultural land,
and destroyed 97% of the irrigation investments in the Ica Valley. Of
the three canyons to the east of the city, the Cansas Canyon
(pronounced like the state of Kansas) funneled the rain waters into
a narrow channel which then broadened to provide the path for the
mud-flows which would break through a narrow corridor into the Ica
River and flood the city with boulders and slimy mud.
Only at this point did the emergency relief agencies actthe Pan
American Health Organization (PAHO), the Organization of American
States (OAS), and the Agency for International Development
(USAID)bringing humanitarian assistance to curtail the outbreaks of
cholera due to the contamination of the water supply and the massive
displacement of people. Ica had been taken by surprise (PAHO,
2000).
Although the intense rains associated with the El Nio cycle had
been anticipated, Ica had been declared outside the danger zone. No
preparations had been made. Fifteen years earlier (on March 16,
1983) and 20 years before that (on March 8, 1963), the Ica River had
overflowed its banks, bringing destruction and chaos to the city, but
never on this scale. In the 90 years from 1908 and 1998, the city had
been flooded five times. Between 1921 and 1998, the Ica River had
To Save a City 149

overflowed 18 times, devastating the river defenses 15 times. Thirty-
two mudslides are documented in the Cansas Canyon between 1921
and 2002 (Huarango Group, 2002). Yet, despite the regularity of the
devastation and aside from the construction of modest flood walls
around parts of the channel itself, little effort has been given to
preventing the next disaster.
Nor are the floods the exclusive domain of El Nio. Flooding in
seven years (1946, 1955, 1961, 1963, 1967, 1994, and 1999)
occurred without El Nio; one moderate El Nio year (1931-1932)
greatly affected Ica, and four El Nio years (1965, 1983, 1987, and
1992) brought drought in Ica. Clearly, other hydro-meteorological
factors must be operating. To compound the natural causes, the
recent growth of both the settled and agricultural areas at the mouth
of the Cansas Canyon, especially in the zones of Parcona and
Tinguina, themselves under perpetual threat of direct flows, have
compressed the area of diffusion of the traditional alluvial cone and
thereby constricted the mudslide to break through to the Ica River
and devastate the city (Huarangoica, 2005).
ENTER THE HUARANGO GROUP
The Huarango Group took its name from the original Quecha
language for a native tree (Prosopis pallida), a long-lived hardwood
known to send tap-roots down as far as 40 meters in search of water,
a natural anchor against torrential rains and landslides. The tree itself
merits further elaboration, for, after all, it, too, is the hero of our
story.
The huarango, known to the rest of Peru and South America as
algarrobos, is the perfect multipurpose tree. Called King of the
Desert for its viability and versatility in arid climates, whole forests
of algarrobos in northern Peru help control desertification, fight soil
erosion, improve fertility by fixing nitrogen from the atmosphere,
and add organic material to the soil through the loss of their leaves.
The leaves also provide nutritious forage for cattle, goats, sheep, and
pigs and can be harvested as feed. Herds of goats browse on the
lower branches

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To Save a City 151

The tree is resistant to drought and yields a durable and compact
wood which is used for furniture, fencing, and charcoal. The fruit of
the huarango, a pod, is produced in droughts when other natural
forage is scarce. Bees that pollinate the flowers create a colorless,
high-quality honey, as well as a distinctive nectar and resin. A sweet
extract made from the fruit, called algarrobina, is used to flavor soy-
drinks and yogurt and to keep milk fresh. The fermented sugary
extract is made into liquors, drinks, perfume, pharmaceuticals, and
solvents (Food & Agriculture Organization, 2005).
The Huarango Group has proposed that the canyons be
reforested with this remarkable tree to hold the soil and anchor the
proposed barrier-dams that must be built on the canyon floor to
interrupt and hopefully restrain the mudslides.
The government has its own long-term solution: a series of
concrete barriers built to withhold the full force of the waters and
mudslides. However, this world-class engineering solution has an
estimated cost of hundreds of millions, with no financing in sight.
Figure 8.2 Looking toward Ica and the Ocean from atop a Mud Slide,
Cansas Canyon
Source: Huarango Group, Ica

The Huarango Group consists of Alejandro Pavez Wellman, a
Chilean geographer and expert on desert ecosystems; Felix
Quinteros Ferreyra, an ecologist, born in Ica, and a promoter and
conserver of native vegetation; and David Bayer, rural sociologist,
former Peace Corps volunteer, and long-term Ica resident.
IMPLEMENTING THE VISION
In the winter of 2002, the Huarango Group began to put their
vision into operation. It would require growing native trees by the
thousands in nurseries and providing water to support the canyon-
forests in the dry seasons.
3
Where could these waters be found:
beneath the canyon floors, in known wells, or in abandoned mines?
Second, detailed weather information would be needed about the
canyon climate: the winds, temperature, and humidity. Could a forest
survive in the canyons, even if water were provided?
Third, could earthen or boulder dams be constructed from
materials already found in the canyon? Would such dams survive the
floods and hold back the waters? And after the seasonal rains, would
the temporary lakes formed behind the dams support life before
they dried up? In short, could the ecology of the canyons be altered
by the creation of effective, low-cost impediments to the mudslides
consisting of dams and forestsall before the next big rainand
thus save the city?
History, tradition, politics, financing, and the existing bureaucratic
setting were all operating against the Huarango Group. Despite the
regular flooding during the past century and the most recent
devastation in 1998, Ica had no preventative and preemptive
mechanisms in place and no funds to create or execute any plans.
Quite the contrary, natural disasters bring relief, foreign funding,
and reconstruction. The international organizations respond only once
disaster has struck.
With the help of a shoestring budget from the University of
Miamis Program in Environment and Development (PRENDE) and
support from Limas International Potato Center, the Huarango
Group installed three remote weather stations in the Cansas Canyon
and, in 2002, began collecting meteorological data.
4
(One of the
stations was vandalized in J uly 2005.)
To Save a City 153

A local contractor contributed a bulldozer, backhoe, and heavy
truck to begin the construction of dams across the canyon floor. The
Huarango Group founded a nursery to grow thousands of seedlings
from four different native trees that will be transplanted onto and
around the dams and on the canyon slopes.
The pilot dams were experimental. Fortunately, no major grand-
slam slide came to test these boulder barriers, but the seasonal
flooding to date has proven their efficacy.
5
The transitory lakes
created by the seasonal waters caught behind the dams have given
rise to a flourishing plant life and a return of animal life to the
otherwise Death Valley-like wasteland.
6

Some growers remember well their losses from the 1998 floods,
and local agribusiness enterprises are now taking an interest in the
project as well. They understand the need for preventative action, but
so far, the Ministry of Agriculture has declined to utilize its authority
to tax all growers to fund this project.
The local government, rather than support the Huarango Group
in its quest to declare the canyon a national forest preserve,
7
had
instead given the Group the mandate to educate the urban public and
to plant trees extensively within the city. This first step was helpful
in generating widespread and ongoing public support, as well as
protecting the urban ecology.
THE FIRST PHASE, 2004-2006
In 2004, the Huarango Group and its Ica Reforestation and Flood
Protection Project became integrated with the Human Rights
Commission of Ica (Comisin de Derechos Humanos de Ica
[CODEHICA]), one of the regions most respected and influential
nongovernment organizations (NGO). CODEHICA today provides
the organizational and administrative support necessary for the
Huarango Group to carry on the long-term project. At the same time,
it clearly puts ecological securitysafety from floods and
mudslideson the human rights agenda.
National politics and short-sightedness have prevented the
project from receiving regional funding. The Ica region has remained
staunchly Aprista, at odds with the current president. Rather than
support the Huarango Groups initiative, in a series of public
meetings in August and September 2004, the regional government

withheld an unqualified endorsement for constructing the canyon
dams, reforesting, and establishing a nature preserve, deferring
instead its authority to the federal level.
Other and new obstacles are arising. Irresponsible promoters are
selling housing plots in the Cansas Canyon to land-hungry settlers
who are willing to take the chance that another mudslide will not
occur in their lifetime. The promoters and speculators, in any case,
will have made their fortune by the next flood. Worse yet, the dry
recesses of the canyon are becoming the urban trash depositories for
the regions toxic and metallic wastes, guaranteeing that the next
mudslide will push this waste back into the city and across the valley
floor, contaminating both the urban environment and the agricultural
fields.
8

If no action is taken to the contrary, the stage is set for a repeated
ecological super-disaster. Or will support be forthcoming? Will the
dams be built, the water supply developed, the trees planted, and a
national forest preserve establisheda model for the entire Andean
coast? Will a grassroots movement, by preventing a disaster, rescue
a city and contribute positively to its growth?
9

A NEW ERA BEGINS, 2006
Dramatic events started occurring towards the end of 2005 and
the beginning of 2006. In October of 2005, the Huarango Group
discovered an unlimited source of fresh water inside a nearby
abandoned copper mine at the rear of the Cansas Canyon. They
began immediately to irrigate the trees by siphoning the mines
water through rubber pipes downhill to the nursery below. (No
pumps or fuel necessary!)
As a result of writing and researching the first draft of this paper,
it became clear to this author that the environmental situation in the
Ica Valley was indeed in great jeopardy and that a more radical
strategy was needed to break the impasse that seemed to have stalled
further progress on the Cansas Project. With the encouragement of
Dr. Dani Schydlowsky, President of Perus Financial Development
Corporation (COFIDE), we at PRENDE at the University of Miami,
decided to sponsor a day-long conference to be held in a famous
resort hotel in Ica. We would invite important government officials
from Lima and transport them to Ica, a four-hour drive south of the
To Save a City 155

capital, to meet with the Regional President and with local Ica
officials, politicians, growers, and environmentalists. The meeting
itself was to be facilitated by CODEHICA which was to run the
workshop and invite the local participants. The Conference, it was
hoped, would put Icas precarious environmental situation on the
national agenda and highlight the need for immediate action.
The evening meetings began quietlya banquet, introductions,
and a concert of traditional music. But the following mornings
plenary meeting opened dramatically with the Regional President,
Sr. Vicente Tello Cespedes, announcing that he would issue a decree
declaring a Reforestation Zone in the entire Cansas Canyon. He
handed the Huarango Group a draft decree and invited their
comments before final publication.
The rest of the day was devoted to Working Groups which designed
financial plans, a new legal structure, social sector participation,
tourism, and educational outreach. The final result of the Conference
was a set of recommendations, creative programs, and commitments
made by the 80 participants.
10

The Proclamation of the Reforestation Zone in the Cansas
Canyon was formally published by the Regional Government on
J anuary 30, 2006. The Proclamation, if enforced and upheld by the
courts, could arrest further population intrusion onto the flood-plain
and the historic path of the mudslides.
On February 2, 2006, the Regional Government also legally
authorized the Huarango Group to use the water that had been
discovered in the abandoned copper mine for irrigation. This
legitimized the siphon-pipe technology that had already been
operating successfully for several months. The trees are now
growing by a centimeter per day, an extraordinary rate, due to
constant flow of water from the mine and the brightness of the sun in
the valley.
Nature, however, had its own schedule in response to these
administrative plans and to the exhilarating success of the
Conference. On February 6
th
and 8
th
, 2006, torrential rains fell in the
upper reaches of the Cansas Canyon, pouring hundreds of millions of
cubic meters of water down the parched slopes of the Canyon with
sufficient force to propel the dry soils, together with the loose
boulders in the canyon, into a massive, lava-like mudslide
downstream into the Ica Valley.

The three boulder dams that had been constructed in December
2002 and J anuary 2003 at the prodding of the Huarango Group broke
the force of the rushing water and formed three huge lagoons or
catchment lakes.
11
That was the first miracle.
But a larger danger still remained: further rain, even a smaller
downpour anywhere in the higher mountains, could result in
overfilling the lagoons, bursting the existing dams. The entire
canyon would then flood and a devastating mudslide would be set in
motion. More dams would have to be built in the Canyon quickly.
The obvious success shown by the dike-and-tree technology
should provide proof enough for the Regional Government to
hurriedly build more dams similar to the three that had just saved
the city! But truly shocking were the public statements made by
officials, declaring that the solution lay in the older plans of
encasing the downstream Ica River by building is walls higher
with reinforced concrete rather than focus on flood prevention close
to the source, that is, in the Cansas Canyon outside Ica.
12
Clearly the
current emergency and the near-catastrophe were being used to push
for a gigantic and ineffective public works project downstream,
rather than focus on prevention of flooding upstream. Fortunately,
the initial lagoons were able to dissipate their waters before future
rains could come. This was the second miracle.
By early March, the Regional Government announced that it
does have money in the 2006 budget for flood prevention, but that no
construction should be done until the seasonal rains cease! Rather
than play Russian roulette with Icas population, the Environmental
Program (PRENDE) at the University of Miami again decided to act
unilaterally and fund emergency dike construction immediately.
Three main questions remain. First, will the Government, which
is providing its machinery to build these new dams, allow the
construction to begin promptly following the specifications of the
earlier damsthat have been shown to be so economical and
effective? Second, will further rains come before the old dams can
be repaired and the new ones built? Third, will the Peruvian
Development Finance Corporation (COFIDE), together with some of
the local banking institutions, supplement the University of Miamis
contribution and support the construction of even more dikes in the
Canyon on an emergency basis?
To Save a City 157

It is indeed ironicor perhaps notthat the environmental
welfare of a city, indeed, its very survival, depends on prayer,
miracles, and the initiative of a small grassroots group to promoting
the construction of simple boulder barriers and their tree-anchors in a
single canyon outside the city.

Figure 8.3 Panorama of the Cansas Canyon, Ica, Peru
Source: Huarango Group, Ica

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NOTES

1. For the Huarango Team: Alejandro Pavez Wellmann, Felix
Quinteros Ferreyra, and David Bayer.
2. On Icas agrarian history, see Ore (2005). On the importance of
asparagus and other vegetable exports, see Ministry of Agriculture
(2004) and Peruvian Institute for Asparagus (2004) & (2005). On
Perus role in world trade, see U.S. Department of Agriculture (2005).
For journalistic accounts of the agro-export boom, see Blooming
desert (2005) in the Economist and T. Bridge(2003) in the Miami
Herald. For an extensive and privileged virtual tour of vegetable farm
operations, see The Eichler Corp Groups (2004) photo gallery.
3. See Para proteger el valle de aluviones (2002, J une 7) and
Rosales Vargas (2002, November 17).
4. See Equipo Huarango instala estacin meteorolgica en
Cansas (2002, December 2).
5. See El Nio causa alarma (2003, J anuary 21) and Para
crear defensas naturales (2003, March 4).
6. See Morales (2003, April 6) on the oasis created by the
rudimentary dams. See Hay que cuidar y aprovechar las aguas
(2003, May 7) on water shortages in Ica. For the overall program of
preventing mudslides, see Paez Wellmann & Quinteros Ferreya
(2003a, December), Bayer, Pavez & Quinteras (2003, December),
and Paez & Quinteros (2004, December). For an English-language
Power Point illustrated exposition, see Paez & Quinteros (2003b,
December). For an archaeological survey of the Cansas Canyon, see
J ohnson (2003, November). For the role of the University of Miami,
see Danton (2004).
7. See Las quebradas de Ica deben ser una zona natural
protegida (2004, October 10).
8. Denuncia consejero regional (2004, April 23).
9. On the growing urgency to expand the water supply, see
Pavez Wellmann (2005, February).
10. See Alertan peligro en Cansas (2206, J anuary 10) and
Piden que Quebrada Cansas sea declarada zona intangible (2006,
J anuary 10).


11. See Ica en peligro de inundacin (2006, February 9) and
Huayco crea sensacin de peligro en Cansas (2006, February 9).
12. See Baja nivel de embalses (2006, February 10) and Falta
dinero para construir nuevos diques en Cansas (2006, February 10).
REFERENCES
Alertan peligro en Cansas [Danger Alert in Cansas]. (2006, J anuary 10). La
Voz de Ica (Ica, Peru), p. 1.
Baja nivel de embalses [Lake levels fall]. (2006, February 10). La Voz de
Ica (Ica, Peru), p. 1.
Bayer, D., Pavez, A., & Quinteros, F. (2003, December). Control de
aluviones para prevencin de inundaciones mediante enrocados,
forestacin y manejo ambiental en una cuenca rida: La Quebrada de
Cansas en Ica, Per [Water control for flood prevention through dams,
forestation, and environmental management in a dry region: Cansas
Canyon in Ica, Peru.] Dilogo Andino, No. 22, 37-49. Electronic
version, University of Tarapac, Arica, Chile. Retrieved October 14,
2005, from www.uta.cl/revista/andino.
Blooming desert (2005, July 7) [Electronic version]. The Economist (U.K.),
p. 45. Retrieved October 14, 2005, from www.economist.com.
Bridges, T. (2003, November 24). King of asparagus. Miami Herald,
business section, pp. 20-23.
Danton, M. (2004, Spring). Green teams. Miami Magazine, 17-21.
Available at http://www.miami.edu/miami-magazine/featurestory2.html.
Denuncia consejero regional: Quebrada Cansas se ha convertido en enorme
botadero de basura [Cansas Canyon has been converted into an enormous
garbage dump]. (2004, April 23). La Voz de Ica (Ica, Peru), p.3.
Eichler Corp Group (2004). Photo gallery of asparagus. Retrieved October
14, 2005, from http://www.eichlercorp.com.pe/tema01-i.htm.
Equipo Huarango instala estacin meteorolgica en Cansas [Huarango team
installs weather station in Cansas]. (2002, December 2). La Voz de Ica
(Ica, Peru), p.3.
Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO). (2005). El gnero prosopis
algarrobos en America Latina y el Caribe: Distribucin, bioecologa,
usos y manejo. Retrieved October 9, 2005, from http://www.fao.org/
DOCREP/006/AD314S/AD314S08.htm.
Falta dinero para construir nuevos diques en Cansas [Money lacking to
construct new dikes in Cansas]. (2006, February 10). La Voz de Ica
(Ica, Peru), p. 3.

To Save a City 161

Hay que cuidar y aprovechar las aguas subterraneas [We must preserve and
utilize underground water]. (2003, May 7). La Voz de Ica (Ica, Peru), p. 3.
Huarango Group. (2002). Grupo Huarango: Registro histrico de
inundaciones y aluviones en el Valle de Ica, October 22, 2002.
Unpublished manuscript.
Huarangoica (2005). Full inventory of the Ica Project in Spanish. Available
at http://huarangoica.iespana.es/huarangoica/.
Ica en peligro de inundacin [Ica in danger of flooding]. (2006, February 9).
La Voz de Ica (Ica, Peru), p. 1.
Huayco crea sensacin de peligro en Cansas [Mudslide creates sensation of
danger in Cansas]. (2006, February 9). La Voz de Ica (Ica, Peru), p. 3.
J ohnson, D. (2003, November). Survey of the Ica Valley: Field Report.
Unpublished manuscript.
Ministry of Agriculture (Peru). (2004). Informacin agrcola mensual:
campanas 2001/2002 y 2002/2003: Esparrago. Retrieved October 14,
2005, from http://www.portalagrario.gob.pe/info_agri/infoagricola02.shtml.
Morales, J . (2003, April 6). Un oasis en medio del desierto [An oasis in the
midst of the desert]. El Comercio (Lima, Peru).
El Nio causa alarma en Los Molinos y La Tinguina: Dos huaycos caen en Ica
[El Nio causes alarm in Los Molinos and La Tinguina: Two mudslides
form in Ica]. (2003, January 21). La Voz de Ica (Ica, Peru), p. 1.
Ore, M.T. (2005). Agua: Bien comn y usos privados. Riego, Estado y
conflictos en la Achirana del Inca [Water: Collective good and private
uses. Irrigation, state and conflict in the [Canal of] Achirana of the
Inca]. Lima, Peru: Pontificia Universidad Catlica del Per.
PAHO. Pan American Health Organization. (2000). Peru, Chapter 11, in
Crnicas de desastres: Fenmeno El Nio 1997-1998. Washington,
D.C., pp. 233-289. Retrieved October 14, 2005, from http://paho.org/
sapanish/ped/ElNino-cap11-Peru.pdf.
Para crear defensas naturales contra huaycos: Comienza siembra de
huarangos en Cansas [To create natural defenses against mudslides:
Huarango planting begins in Cansas]. (2003, March 4). La Voz de Ica
(Ica, Peru), p. 3.
Para proteger el valle de aluviones: Instituciones insisten que Ica sea
declarada en emergencia [To protect the valley from mudslides:
Institutions insist that Ica be declared in a state of emergency]. (2002,
J une 7). La Voz de Ica (Ica, Peru), p. 3.
Pavez Wellmann, A. (2005, February). Conflicto avisado que necesitamos
encarar: El agua de Ica se agota [A conflict we must face: Is Icas water
used up?]. CODEHICA: Revista de la Comisin de Derechos Humanos
de Ica, No. 89, pp. 16-18.


Pavez Wellmann, A., & Quinteros Ferreya, F. (2004, December). Los
grandes desafos y la crisis ambiental de Ica [Great challenges and the
environmental crisis in Ica]. CODEHICA: Revista de la Comisin de
Derechos Humanos de Ica, No. 88, pp. 4-6.
Pavez Wellmann, A., & Quinteros Ferreya, F. (2003a, December). Como
asegurar a Ica contra las inundaciones [How to secure Ica against
floods]. In CODEHICA: Revista de la Comisin de Derechos Humanos
de Ica, No. 82, pp. 6-8.
Pavez Wellmann, A., & Quinteros Ferreya, F. (2003b, December). Mud flow
control for flood prevention with dams, forestation, and environmental
management in an arid basin: Cansas Canyon, Ica, Peru. PowerPoint
Presentation in English. Retrieved March 19, 2006, from:
http://www.cas.usf.edu/GlobalResearch/PDFs/sympII_Weisskoff.pdf.
Peruvian Institute for Asparagus and Other Vegetables [Instituto Peruano
del Esparrago y Hortalizas]. (2004, February 26). The Probable
Economic Effect of Duty Free Treatment and a U.S. Andean Countries
Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Retrieved October 14, 2005, from
http://www.ipeh.org.
Peruvian Institute for Asparagus and Other Vegetables [Instituto Peruano
del Esparrago y Hortalizas]. (2005). Censo nacional de productores y
exportadores de esparrago. In Boletn IPEH. Vol. 3, No. 1, p. 11.
Retrieved October 14, 2005, from http://www.ipeh.org.
Piden que Quebrada Cansas sea declarada zona intangible [Ask that Cansas
Canyon be declared a special preserve]. (2006, J anuary 10). La Voz de
Ica (Ica, Peru), p. 3.
Las quebradas de Ica deben ser una zona natural protegida [The canyons of
Ica should be a nature preserve]. (2004, October 10). La Voz de Ica
(Ica, Peru), p. 3.
Rosales Vargas, J . (2002, November 17). Specialistas advierten sobre nuevo
peligro de inundacin [Specialists warn about new flood danger]. El
Comercio (Lima, Peru).
U.S. Department of Agriculture. (2005 August). World asparagus situation
& outlook. World Horticultural Trade and U.S. Export Opportunities,
pp. 1-5. Retrieved October 14, 2005, from http://www.fas.usda.gov/
htp/Commodity_Pages/Vegetables/veg_fresh.html.
Vie Perez, F. J . (1999). Un caudal de dolor e impotencia: Ica, 29 de enero
de 1998 [An abundance of pain and impotence: Ica, January 29,
1998]. Lima, Peru: Edigusa.

9 9
10

Part IV:
Natural Resource Use and Policy

9 9

9

Environmental Degradation
in a Conservation Model:
Major Forest Loss in Costa Ricas
Amistad-Caribe Conservation Area

Michael Miller

INTRODUCTION
Costa Rica is known globally for its impressive record of
establishing national parks and other types of protected spaces.
Largely since the 1970s, that country has developed an impressive
system of protected areas, which now covers approximately 28% of
the national territory. These areas are diverse in nature, ranging from
national parks, biological reserves, national monuments, natural
reserves, wildlife refuges, and indigenous reserves that are more
strictly protected, to forest reserves and protected zones that are
managed to allow greater economic-driven activities, such as wood
extraction (Evans, 1999, pp. 7-9). The first major step taken by the
Costa Rican government in developing this system was its passage
of the Forest Law of 1969, which called for the establishment of
protected areas (Asamblea Legislativa, 1969).
In many other instances, however, Costa Rica has had significant
difficulties in carrying out its progressive environmental statutes and
regulations. In fact, environmental movement leader Alvaro Ugalde
described his country as a leader in three things: conservation,
166 Michael Miller

deforestation (understood as the clearing of forests), and pollution of
river systems (A. Ugalde, personal interview, April 19, 2002).
Indeed, while a new and improved Forest Law of 1996 intends to
better protect forests outside of protected areas, major forest loss is
still occurring in several areas of the country.
This chapter examines the causes of the disappearance of a
substantial amount of forest in Costa Ricas rea de Conservacin
La Amistad-Caribe (ACLAC) (Amistad-Caribe Conservation Area).
The ACLAC is one region within a system of conservation areas
into which the entire territory has been divided, encompassing
roughly the southeastern corner of Costa Rica, running north more
than halfway up the Caribbean coast and south to the border with
Panama, and extending inland to the Talamanca Cordillera. (See
Maps 9.1 and 9.2.)

Map 9.1 Location of the ACLAC within Costa Ricas National
System of Conservation Areas
Source: Sistema Nacional de reas de Conservacin (SINAC) (2002)


Costa Rica is widely regarded as providing a model for the
developing world on how to design and execute a system of
protected areas. This chapter helps to explain why that country has
not been able to provide a better example of how to control forest
loss outside of such protected spaces. Answering this question points
toward what policies might best address this problem, setting the
Map 9.2 Map of Costa Rica with Political Boundaries and Topography
Source: Perry-Castaeda Library Map Collection, University of Texas (2005)
168 Michael Miller

country on a course to once again provide a model for other
developing countries. As I will explain, however, determining and
carrying out these policy reforms will be difficult, as the
disappearance of forest in the ACLAC originates in well-embedded
conditions: legal loopholes, poverty, insecure land tenure, corruption,
budgetary deficiencies, and ineffective judicial procedures.
Before describing the causes of heavy loss of forest in the
ACLAC and possible policy remedies, I will briefly describe the
methodology, relevant content of the Forest Law of 1996, and the
extent and consequences of the forest degradation taking place in
this area of the country.
METHODOLOGY
The following examination of why substantial deforestation and
thinning are taking place in the ACLAC is based upon qualitative data
collected during field research in the region in 2002. I interviewed
persons very knowledgeable about the subject, based on their direct
involvement in or active observation of the local implementation of
the Forest Law of 1996. Because the interviews were intensive,
discussions with six such persons provided a large quantity of data.
Additionally, interviewing six persons allowed me to gain
perspectives from various institutions, including government, local
indigenous organizations, and local environmental nongovernmental
organizations.
Also indicating the utility of carrying out six interviews, by the
last interview much information was being repeated, making
identification of key causal factors clear. Basically, I asked
informants to identify key actors in the deforestation or heavy
thinning of forests in the ACLAC, the nature of their behavior, and
important characteristics of the broader political, economic, and
social context. To foster open discussion of controversial subjects,
such as corruption, these interviewees remain anonymous.
KEY PROVISIONS OF THE FOREST LAW OF 1996
In the ACLAC, substantial forest loss has taken place despite
efforts to check it through invoking the Forest Law of 1996. This law
is truly a sustainable development policy, as it is aimed not only at
protecting the forests, but also fostering economic growth through

support to the forestry sector, social equity through support to
campesinos (peasants) involved in forestry, and democracy by
creating inclusive policymaking bodies.
Several provisions of this law are most relevant to the goal of
protecting forests. For the first time in Costa Rica, Article 19 banned
clear-cutting in forests, even for the establishment of forest
plantations. However, a loophole in this prohibition is its definition
of forests. This definition, laid out in Article 3(d), is highly
complicated as well as subjective. It requires that trees cover an area
of two or more hectares, be mature but of varying ages, be of varying
species, have one or more canopies that cover more than 70% of the
area, and contain more than sixty trees of fifteen or more centimeters
in diameter per hectare (Asamblea Legislativa, 1996, pp. 3883,
3898). Problematically for the goal of environmental protection,
clear-cutting is possible where public authorities determine that a
particular area does not fall within this definition of forests.
In the case of areas determined to, indeed, be forest, Article 20
explains that logging will be controlled through a permit called a
management plan. In addition to the ban on clear-cutting,
regulations implementing the Forest Law of 1996 dictate the
necessary components of a management plan. For instance,
explained one interviewee, a management plan must assure that
mature trees are left for seeding, trees that are scarce in the area are
not extracted, and at least 40 percent of each commercial tree species
is left in place. Outside of forests, a management plan is not
required.
Article 28 explains that forest plantations as well as
agroforestry systems and trees planted individually do not require
a permit for logging, or for transporting, industrializing, and
exporting the wood (Asamblea Legislativa, 1996, pp. 3899, 3905).
While agroforestry basically entails the cultivation of crops among
trees that might also be harvested, the meaning of trees planted
individually is much less clear. In practice, Article 28 has been
interpreted to broadly exempt areas outside of forests from obtaining
the otherwise-required permits. On such lands, only a forest
inventory must be completed before logging can take place. An
interviewee described the forest inventory as simply a declaration of
the basic profile of the trees in an area, such as how many trees there
are, the species present, and diameter and height of the trees. After
170 Michael Miller

this document has been developed by a public official, often that
official allows extensive logging, and sometime clear-cutting, to take
place.
Determining whether an area is a forest is left to two different
regulators. Article 21 explains that forest regents will be
responsible for designing management plans and monitoring their
execution. Although not government employees, these professionals
in forestry are granted public faith to carry out these functions. In
practice, this regulator first determines whether the area to be logged
is a forest as defined by the Forest Law of 1996. If yes, the forest
regent develops a management plan; if not, the forest regent
compiles a forest inventory and has greater discretion in determining
the amount of logging to be allowed.
As declared in Articles 6(b) and (c), it is still necessary for the
Ministerio de Ambiente y Energa (MINAE) (Ministry of
Environment and Energy) to approve management plans and help
monitor their execution (Asamblea Legislativa, 1996, pp. 3886,
3900). The Sistema Nacional de reas de Conservacin (SINAC)
(National System of Conservation Areas), which forms a part of
MINAE, does the legwork. SINAC is the system of conservation
regions into which the Costa Rican territory is divided, of which the
ACLAC is one regional division. Within the ACLAC, officials at the
regional and sub-regional offices approve and oversee the use of
management plans.
The Forest Law of 1996 also regulates the transport and
processing of wood. As described above, Article 28 declares that no
permits are necessary for transporting and industrializing wood
originating from forest plantations, agroforestry systems, and other
areas outside of forests. In contrast, Article 56 declares that logs and
boards originating from forests cannot be transported without proper
documentation. More specific requirements for this manifest are
dictated through implementing regulations. Article 55 further
declares that anyone possessing logs or boards, including wood
processors (e.g., sawmills and furniture manufacturers), must be able
to show an associated logging permit. Of course, if logs or boards
originated in areas outside of forests, then the processor will have no
management plan to show authorities. To enforce these
requirements, Article 6(g) calls upon MINAE to carry out
inspections of wood being transported as well as processed

(Asamblea Legislativa, 1996, pp. 3887, 3927-3928). Once again,
these responsibilities have been carried out by functionaries at the
ACLAC regional and sub-regional offices. The police also assist in
inspecting wood transporters.
MAJ OR FOREST LOSS AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
In spite of these provisions in the Forest Law of 1996, serious
forest loss is taking place in several areas of Costa Rica. To be sure,
the overall deforestation rate in Costa Rica has decreased. A study
by the Centro Cientfico Tropical (CCT) (Tropical Science Center)
and the University of Costa Rica estimated that on average 12,000
hectares of forest were lost per year between 1987 and 1997. A
follow-up analysis by the CCT and the University of Alberta
estimated that, on average between 1997 and 2000, this rate had
gone down to 3,000 hectares annually (Laboratorio de Sistemas de
Observacin Terrestre [EOSL] & Centro Cientfico Tropical [CCT],
2002, p. 9). Environmental movement leader Alvaro Ugalde named
several factors that have been most important in producing this
reduction: the fact that not much forest is left in Costa Rica, the
shrinkage of the countrys cattle industry, economic incentives for
the protection of forests established through the Forest Law of 1996,
and an increase in the number of private forest reserves (A. Ugalde,
personal interview, April 19, 2002).
Nevertheless, as demonstrated by satellite observation, large
areas of forest are disappearing on the Osa Peninsula in the
southwest of the country, in the Northern Zone, and in the Atlantic
Zone, which includes the ACLAC (Centro Cientfico Tropical [CCT]
& Centro de Investigaciones en Desarrollo Sostenible [CIEDES],
1998, pp. 12, 18; EOSL & CCT, 2002, p. 9). The problem on the Osa
Peninsula has received the most attention in recent years, probably
because the area harbors great biodiversity. For instance, one study
found that mature forests on the Osa Peninsula contain the third
highest species richness of 89 areas analyzed throughout the
Neotropics, which encompass Latin America and the Caribbean
(Barrantes et al., 1999, p. 1).
The lands included within the ACLAC also contain a high level
of biodiversity. In fact, because of the scenic beauty and scientific
value of this biological diversity, La Amistad National Park, located
172 Michael Miller

in the region, was declared a World Heritage Site. Interviewees
explained that deforestation or other serious degradation of forests is
occurring at many different sites within this region. However, this
environmental damage is concentrated along a forest frontier inland
from the Caribbean coast but not yet reaching the higher elevations
of the Talamanca Cordillera. Recently, MINAE identified such loss
of forests as the greatest threat to forest biodiversity in Costa Rica
(Ministerio de Ambiente y Energa [MINAE] and Programa de las
Naciones Unidas para el Medio Ambiente [PNUMA], 2002, p. 28).
Additionally, this process has negatively impacted rural
communities in the ACLAC. For instance, some logging in this
region is taking place illegally in aquifer recharge areas, threatening
the supply of drinking water (J imnez, 2002, p. 16A). Furthermore,
an interviewee explained that excessive logging is exacerbating
problems caused by banana plantations. Forests near rivers and
streams that helped to slow the flow of rainwater into these
waterways have been removed. With less buffer, water circulated
through banana plantations by their many canals is more quickly
reaching waterways, causing them to overflow into nearby
communities
Thus, substantial loss of forests in the ACLAC presents serious
threats not only to local species and ecosystems, but also to the
communities that rely upon these natural systems. The causes of this
forest loss are explored below.
BEHIND THE DEFORESTATION AND HEAVY LOGGING
The interviewing revealed that the greatest damage to forests in
the ACLAC is taking place on the land of campesinos, or peasants.
Generally in Costa Rica, campesinos with land dedicate between 30
and 40% of their plot to subsistence farming (principally the
cultivation of beans and corn), another 30 to 40% to commercial
farming (principally the cultivation of coffee), and the rest to
pasture. Additionally, some engage in forestry (Watson et al., 1998,
p. 22).
However, as Seligson (1980) points out, Costa Ricas peasantry
is diverse, including landholders and persons without land:
landowners with title, landowners without title, squatters, renters,
sharecroppers, steady nonplantation laborers, steady plantation

laborers, day laborers, and migrant workers. The titled landowners
are the elite among peasants, as they have control over means of
production, tenure security, and, although much poorer than most
urban Costa Ricans, are significantly better off than the rest of the
peasantry.
Nevertheless, the great majority of these landowners with title
are smallholders. Specifically, Seligson (1980) found that 53% of
titled landowners in Costa Rica hold less than 4 hectares of land, and
81% hold less than 10 hectares. Among landowners not holding title,
he found that bills of sale that had not been notarized were the most
frequently possessed proof of ownership. Other landowners without
a title had no such proof of ownership (pp. 88-91).
Indigenous groups also live in rural sections of the ACLAC. In
fact, the Talamanca Cordillera is the home of the majority of Costa
Ricas indigenous population. But in contrast to campesinos,
informants agreed that indigenous communities are not significantly
degrading forests. Typically indigenous peoples have cleared only
small areas for subsistence agriculture and grazing.
1

Campesinos and Poverty
Key in leading peasants in this region to cut trees on their land is
the fact that many live in poverty. Needing money in the short-term
to meet basic needs and having limited options for obtaining such
funds, campesino families often resort to felling trees to produce
wood for sale and open land for crops and grazing. One interviewee
explained that a cause of increased poverty along the Caribbean
coast was the devastation of the regions cacao crop by a disease in
the 1980s.
2
Cahuita and Puerto Viejo on the southern coast suffered
less because of budding tourism. But in other areas where cacao
cultivation had played a major economic role, more people resorted
to selling the trees on their land or even selling their land to banana
companies. Some campesinos attempted to switch to banana
cultivation but were often unable to compete with the prices offered
by larger banana companies. More recently, banana production has
decreased in the ACLAC. As a result, more people in the region are
unemployed and likely to fell trees for quick revenue as well as
opening space for subsistence farming and ranching.
3

174 Michael Miller

Rural poverty on the eastern side of the Talamanca Cordillera
cannot be adequately understood, however, without the longer
history of banana cultivation, exploitation, and discrimination. Until
the late nineteenth century, the province of Limn was inhabited
only by Native American groups. Because coffee, Costa Ricas chief
export, was grown on the eastern slope of the cordillera that runs
roughly down the center of the country, it made sense to develop a
port on the Caribbean coast and land transportation connecting to the
coffee plantations.
In 1871, the Costa Rican national government agreed to a
contract with North American Henry Meiggs for the development of
a railroad, which was later executed by his nephew Minor Keith.
Laying the groundwork for current economic and social conditions
in the region, Keith not only developed the railroad and a port in the
town of Limn, but also acquired land from the Costa Rican
government that he utilized to build a local economy based on large-
scale banana cultivation. Construction and operation relied heavily
upon migrant labor from the West Indies (Purcell, 1993, pp. 23, 25,
29).
As Seligson (1980) explained, the local banana industry came to
form an enclave economy:
The means of production were almost totally in the hands of the United
Fruit Company: the plantations, roads, railroads, docks, and ships were
either owned by, or on 99-year lease to, the Company. Plantations
which were not owned by the Company were effectively controlled by
it through its monopoly on transportation and exportation. (p. 57)
Further consolidating its power, Keiths United Fruit Company
used various tactics to exploit its workers. For instance, it paid
Anglos more than non-Anglos. It suppressed organized opposition
by importing labor from different Caribbean islands. It encouraged
divisions between Black and Hispanic laborers by using strike
breakers of one group to respond to strikes initiated by the other
(Purcell, 1993, pp. 30, 32). It also deported foreigners for union
organizing or participating in strikes (Bourgois, 1989, p. 215). Also
discouraging economic development in the region, each time the
company ceased production on infected or exhausted soils, it
systematically destroyed the infrastructure it had constructed
(railroads, bridges, telephone lines, etc.) to prevent competitors from

being able to renew production on a smaller scale (Bourgois, 1989,
p. 8).
The Costa Rican government did not confront the United Fruit
Company over such practices because a conflict with the Frutera
meant a confrontation with the economic, political, and ultimately
military power of the United States--a confrontation which Costa
Rica was guaranteed to lose (Seligson, 1980, p. 58). Furthermore,
that company has historically had subsidiaries producing and
purchasing bananas in several countries simultaneously, enabling it
to pressure governments by threatening to relocate unless it is
granted lower taxes and allowed to repress labor (Bourgois, 1989,
pp. 19-20).
The precarious nature of this enclave economy was exhibited
with the decline of banana cultivation early in the twentieth century,
caused by leaf spot diseases, government and public opposition to
the United Fruit Companys discrimination that favored West
Indians over Hispanics, and soil exhaustion. The company
eventually relocated to Costa Ricas Pacific coast. Because Blacks
were prohibited from moving west beyond the town of Turrialba,
many in the province of Limn were left in povery from which they
could not escape. In addition to paying wages, the United Fruit
Company had provided for basic needs such as housing and health
care (Purcell, 1993, pp. 28, 41, 43, 44). It was two decades before
the Standard Fruit Company reinitiated large-scale banana
production in the region in 1956, when a disease-resistant variety of
banana was created (Seligson, 1980, p. 76).
This history of dependence and exploitation of the people and
land explains why, even though Limn is once again the site of
major banana cultivation and includes Costa Ricas main
commercial port, it remains poor and sparsely populated. Bourgois
(1989) provides a vivid description of the substandard living
conditions found in a community near the Panamanian border which
relies on banana cultivation:
On the Costa Rican side of the border, where I spent most of my
time, the stores and restaurants consisted of shanty stalls stretching
single file along the muddy road paralleling the railroad that lead to the
Panamanian border crossing at the Sixaola Bridge. Behind the shacks,
sunken in a mud field, were the zinc-roofed cement structures of two
brothels and a dance hall. This shanty town had emerged almost
176 Michael Miller

overnight in 1978, when the company reopened its abandoned farms on
the Costa Rican side of the border. Consequently, there was no
provision for sewage or garbage disposal. Not surprisingly, alcoholism,
venereal disease, petty crimes, and random violence abounded in this
setting. (p. 5)
Campesinos and Insecure Land Tenure
Informants explained that insecure land tenure also leads rural
inhabitants in the ACLAC to cut trees. In particular, precaristas
(squatters) cut trees hoping to be awarded title to a piece of land.
Squatters typically invade more attractive land sites, such as areas
close to roads. Cutting trees allows them to make some money
quickly by selling the wood and also opens up areas for agriculture
and cattle-raising, allowing squatters to argue to the government that
they should be granted a title because they have improved the
land. Of course, since these persons do not have title to the land in
question, they are cutting the trees illegally.
4

One interviewee explained that squatting is a significant social
problem in the ACLAC because the area was long characterized by a
lack of regulation of land settlement. If someone lived on a piece of
land and had developed it, by custom his ownership was respected.
Thus, the attitude developed, still strong among squatters, that
settlement on undeveloped land is acceptable. In many cases, the
persons already living on such lands do not have legal title
themselves, making them more vulnerable to ultimately losing their
land to squatters.
These conditions are actually national in scope and have been
fostered by government policies. Beginning in the early 1900s, as the
price of coffee fluctuated and the population grew, agricultural
wages decreased and unemployment increased. One response of the
Costa Rican government was to create homestead laws that used the
public domain lands in rural areas as an escape valve. These laws
apparently gave every citizen a right to claim public lands but made
no sustained effort to keep track of land grants. Most settlers never
bothered to petition under the laws for more secure ownership. The
vast majority of settlers believed that the right to claim land in the
public domain also entailed having full ownership of the land, at
least when it came to lands they had developed. Also most settlers
were ignorant of titling rules or, even when they knew about them,

found it inconvenient to travel to the capital of San Jos to carry out
complicated procedures (Saenz & Knight, 1971, part II, pp. 6-8).
5

Exploiting the Socolar Loophole
Driven by poverty, insecure land tenure, and other factors,
campesinos in the ACLAC often clear trees by way of a process
interviewees explained as socolar. They begin by grubbing out the
sotobosque, or the shorter and less thick vegetation surrounding
large trees that are attractive for logging. Subsequently, they often
plant beans, banana, and plantains or graze cattle within the space
that has been opened.
Once a forest has been transformed into arboles en potrero
(trees in pasture) or an agroforestry area, if one has title to the land in
question then clear-cutting is legal under the Forest Law of 1996. As
explained earlier, this law prohibits clearing areas within forests.
However, because its definition of forests is highly complicated and
subjective, it is comparatively easy to convince forest regents and
ACLAC officials that an area is not a forest. In such an area, only a
forest inventory is necessary, the degree of logging is left more to the
discretion of the forest regent and government officials, and clear-
cutting is possible. This situation has likely contributed to the fact
that, in both 2001 and 2002, a larger portion of the wood extracted in
Costa Rica derived from agricultural and ranching lands than from
forests (Proyecto Estado de la Nacin, 2002, p. 213; Proyecto Estado
de la Nacin, 2003, p. 242).
According to one informant, peasants are generally aware that
eliminating the sotobosque may lead in turn to permission to log
more extensively. However, another interviewee did not attribute
such foresightedness to the peasants; rather they clear out the
underbrush primarily to enable agroforestry and ranching.
Because clearing out sotobosque can lead to heavier logging,
obstructing a major goal of the Forest Law of 1996, government
officials have attempted to check this activity. Campesinos have
responded by using various tactics to avoid detection. Interviewees
explained that a common ploy is to clear away the vegetation
surrounding trees during holidays and weekends when there are
fewer enforcement officials on patrol.
6
The informants also agreed
178 Michael Miller

that a major barrier to better control to this activity is that SINAC
has insufficient officials, vehicles, and funds.
The Role of Madereros and Forest Regents
Madereros are small logging and wood transporting companies,
typically only owning one or two trucks and a tractor. As a result of
the process described above, often when madereros (loggers)
approach campesinos and offer to cut their trees, the land in question
already includes pasture or agroforestry areas where logging can take
place with only a forest inventory and where clear-cutting might be
possible. However, one interviewee claimed that these loggers
sometimes press campesinos to clear more sotobosque and also
pressure landowners to allow more logging than they desire. While a
landowner with 200 hectares of land might have hoped to log on
only 80 hectares, the maderero might refuse to buy the landowners
trees unless he permits logging on the entire 200 hectares.
Furthermore, madereros often underpay peasants for their wood. The
advantage to the maderero is obvious: logging more extensively in
fewer locations lowers their expenses, and paying less for wood
increases their profit.
Lowering the leverage of peasants in such situations is the fact
that they often do not have the necessary equipment or time to cut
their trees and take them to market and that they can seldom shop
for more favorable terms with other madereros. Thus, peasant
families have little choice but to give in to such offers.
Interviewees agreed that madereros have taken advantage of the
campesinos economic need in the ACLAC to clear trees, reinforced
by insecure land tenure. Making the madereros offer very attractive
is the fact that, in addition to buying the wood they will extract, they
are also typically willing to pay for all the necessary bureaucratic
licenses. For instance, the maderero will likely offer to pay for the
development of a management plan or forest inventory by a forest
regent and for the campesinos land title. Once again, this situation
works to the advantage of the maderero in pressuring forest regents
to allow heavier logging. First, madereros can argue that they are
paying for the forest regents services and that the forestry engineer
should therefore accommodate their requests. Second, madereros can
threaten to switch to the services of a more cooperative forest regent.

In 2002 there were 482 licensed forest regents in Costa Rica
(Proyecto Estado de la Nacin, 2003, p. 244). Naturally, madereros
usually continue a relationship with more accommodating regents.
Third, madereros sometimes bribe forest regents in exchange for
having them identify areas targeted for logging as pasture or
agroforestry. However, because of the elimination of sotobosque, the
targeted area has already been converted into pasture or agroforestry.
In any case, once an area has been determined to not be a forest
according to the law, madereros have then pressured forest regents to
allow heavy logging following the development of a forest
inventory. One interviewee contended that, although forest regents
only rarely allow clear-cutting under such circumstances, they do
commonly allow for more than 60 percent of trees to be eliminated.
In addition to improperly classifying target areas as non-forest,
forestry engineers and madereros have engaged in other illegal
activities. For example, an interviewee explained that sometimes
forest regents design logging permits that misidentify tree species
(thus allowing protected species to be cut) and that mislocate trees
(thus allowing trees in off-limit areas, such as river banks, to be
logged). Additionally, sometimes madereros violate legally sound
logging permits. One interviewee explained that a maderero holding
a valid permit will also log beyond its geographic limits, log too
close to a river, or cut more trees than the permit allows. One
informant emphasized, however, that such permit violations are
uncommon.
7

Whatever their relative importance, these various forms of
illegal logging together account for a substantial amount of the total
logging in the ACLAC. In a recent study, researchers at the Centro
Agronmico Tropical de Investigacin y Enseanza (CATIE)
(Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center) found
that in the ACLAC, as well as in the rea de Conservacin
Tortuguero (ACTO) (Tortuguero Conservation Area) to the north,
illegal logging accounted for about 37% of all logging--the highest
rate among all the conservation areas studied (CATIE, 2001, p. 26).
Corruption, Lack of Resources, and Other Barriers
The clearing of sotobosque, classifying lands that are clearly
covered in forest as pasture or agroforestry areas, other forms of
180 Michael Miller

illegal activity, and heavy legal logging under forest inventories have
all taken place during the watch of MINAE, specifically its officials
at the regional and sub-regional offices of the ACLAC. These
officials are responsible both for approving or denying the permitting
decisions of forest regents and for helping these forestry
professionals monitor the subsequent logging.
The interviewees indicate that corruption is one factor leading
these enforcement officials to allow a greater degree of logging. A
common form of corruption is an official in the ACLAC who
approves an inadequate forest inventory or approves management
plans that allow illegal logging. Interviewees explained that, while
sometimes public functionaries are bribed (with the compensation
usually coming from madereros), friendship networks are also very
important in facilitating corruption. According to one interviewee, a
strong compadre relationship may develop between ACLAC
functionaries, forest regents, and persons working for maderero
companies, who are all active in the same geographic area. These
individuals interact closely and frequently and have sometimes
known one another since school days and may socialize (sometimes
close enough to go out together for drinks). As another source of
corruption, one interviewee asserted that deputies in Costa Ricas
Legislative Assembly supportive of madereros have pressured
leaders at MINAE to reduce enforcement efforts in the field.
Several other factors help explain why officials in the ACLAC
have allowed so much logging in recent years. One informant
emphasized that many MINAE employees have a forestry
mentality, as they have an employment or educational background
in this field. Another informant explained that, because the Forest
Law of 1996 grants authority to forest regents to design logging
permits, SINAC functionaries do not always do field inspections of
planned logging sites. Finally, ACLAC regional and sub-regional
offices have insufficient funds, employees, and equipment. One
informant stated that a sub-regional office might be responsible for
many remote logging sites spread out across a large area. And
controlling logging is just one of the many responsibilities of such
government officials.
Carlos Rodrguez, Minister of MINAE, agreed that the most
important cause of illegal logging in Costa Rica is weak enforcement
capacity. He emphasized that corruption occurs only here and

there within MINAE, ironically because its enforcement ability is
so weak that it is not necessary to bribe its officials. Rodrguez
added, We have one of the least trained, least prepared enforcement
units you could ever find in any country (C. Rodrguez, personal
interview, May 19, 2002). Similarly, the director of the rea de
Conservacin Arenal-Huetar Norte (ACA-HN) (Arenal-Huetar Norte
Conservation Area) located in the Northern Zone identified
insufficient enforcement capacity as the primary reason for illegal
logging in that conservation area. He complained of insufficient
enforcement personnel, especially at night and during holidays when
such crimes are usually committed (Quesada, 2002, p. 4). In the rea
de Conservacin Osa (ACOSA) (Osa Conservation Area), the
problem is similar: There are only twenty vehicles, but only ten of
them work; there is not enough gasoline, or personnel (Caldern,
2001, p. 8A).
According to researchers at Costa Ricas Proyecto Estado de la
Nacin (State of the Nation Project), the most important obstacle to
SINACs functioning in general is its insufficient budget.
Compounding this agencys financial strain is the fact that funds
must be diverted to pay persons whose land was appropriated to
become part of protected areas. When it comes to national parks,
biological reserves and national monuments, the government owes
these landowners approximately US$55 million (Proyecto Estado de
la Nacin, 2004, pp. 251-252). According to the Forest Law of 1996,
some of the revenues from a tax on wood sales are supposed to be
devoted to enforcement, but apparently this tax has not been
collected because of vague provisions in the law (Murillo, 1999, p.
4A). Further still, the secretary general of the Workers Union at
MINAE claimed that, not only has the budget for SINAC been
decreasing, but also most of the funds provided to this system have
gone toward administrative expenses, leaving only 40% of the
budget for enforcement (Martnez, 1999, p. 4A).
Problems within SINAC itself might also be responsible for
fewer resources being devoted to enforcement. A study by the
Contralora General de la Repblica (Comptroller General of the
Republic) of financial management within SINAC in 1999 and 2000
revealed important deficiencies, most notably inadequate data
management and coordination between the multiple components of
this large bureaucracy (Proyecto Estado de la Nacin, 2003, p. 228).
182 Michael Miller

Problems during Transporting and Processing
Government officials have also had a difficult time controlling
the transport of illegally logged wood. Informants said that wood
from the ACLAC is transported to towns within the region, such as
Limn, Siquirres, Cahuita and Puerto Viejo, as well as to San J os.
Madereros often transport illegal wood at night, on weekends, or
during holidays when there are fewer police on the roads. MINAE
banned the transport of wood during the night (Herrera, 2002, 4A),
but an informant contended that this rule was not being well
implemented because many police officers were not aware of it.
8

Additionally, corruption sometimes plays a role. For instance, an
interviewee explained that madereros pay police at checkpoints to
allow the passage of wood not accompanied by a proper manifest.
Another informant asserted that madereros use recycled manifests
that apply to wood moved in the past. For this strategy, the manifest
cannot have been stamped at police checkpoints. Thus, the maderero
must transport wood at night when checkpoints are not operating,
bribe the police, or simply be on friendly terms with police officers.
Further still, it was explained that in some cases SINAC officials
have provided extra manifests to madereros.
According to interviewees, wood extracted from the ACLAC is
mostly sold to sawmills, depositories, and furniture manufacturers.
Madereros are in a much less advantageous position with these
processors and depositories than they are with campesinos, regents,
and sometimes government officials. Madereros seek to sell their
wood as quickly as possible because they need to empty their one or
two trucks so they can return to the forests and pick up more wood.
As a result, madereros may feel compelled to accept lower prices
offered by processors. Wood industries are also empowered when
madereros attempt to sell illegal wood. Processors often demand a
lower price because of the risk involved in using such wood.
Impunity: An Overarching Problem
Finally, interviewees agreed that all of those complicit in illegal
logging, transport, and processing have been emboldened by the lack
of enforcement. First, court proceedings are long and expensive,
discouraging the government from prosecuting. Second, they
reported that landowners can avoid guilt by claiming ignorance of a

madereros illegal acts. The maderero can in turn argue the same
regarding a contracted logger, and this sequence continues until the
prosecution gives up, especially when someone who is named cannot
be found or who is believed to have moved to another country.
Third, the penalties in the Forest Law of 1996 are weak. Fourth,
many judges are not very environmentally conscious. It comes as no
surprise, then, that around 95% of accusations about violations of the
Forest Law of 1996 are unsuccessful (Proyecto Estado de la Nacin,
2003, p. 244).
ADDRESSING STRUCTURAL PROBLEMS AND THE
PROMISE OF MARKET-BASED STRATEGIES
In sum, the key causes of deforestation and heavy logging in the
ACLAC are poverty among campesinos, their insecure land tenure,
corruption among government officials and forest regents, lack of
sufficient enforcement funds, loopholes in the Forest Law of 1996,
and ineffective judicial procedures. One general conclusion is that
the primary engines of deforestation in Costa Rica appear to have
evolved over time.
To be sure, certain causes appear well-entrenched. Brockett and
Gottfried studied the command and control methods utilized to
protect forests in Costa Rica in the 1970s and 80s and found that
field personnel lacked the resources and knowledge to carry out
effective enforcement. Furthermore, one of their informants
commented that most landowners did not want to deal with the
Direccin General Forestal (DGF) (General Forestry Directorate)
(later incorporated into SINAC) because of excessive bureaucracy
and corruption. Another informant complained that DGF field
personnel were not dedicated to that agencys mission; low salaries,
among other problems, encouraged corruption, which was as much a
cause of illegal logging as the actions of landowners and loggers
(Brockett & Gottfried, 2002, pp. 17-18). Also mirroring the findings
documented in this chapter, Brockett and Gottfried (2002) found:
The difficulty of obtaining plans and permits has led landholders to
rely often on loggers, who frequently have drawn up fraudulent
management plans or bribed officials to obtain permits. The loggers set
the terms of the contract, paying a low price to owners, and only for the
wood they actually put on their truck (usually much less than what was
184 Michael Miller

cut). The loggers extract only the best wood, high-grading the stands,
and they often leave a heavily damaged forest behind. (p. 18)
However, the role of logging vis--vis agriculture appears to
have increased over time. In contrast to this chapters finding that, in
the ACLAC, since the late 1990s logging has been of central
importance to deforestation and other degradation of forests,
Brockett and Gottfried concluded that in Costa Rica deforestation
has clearly been driven by the demand for more agricultural land
rather than a demand for timber. Until the 1980s, most forests were
cleared for ranching, which requires large tracts of land.
Subsequently, as ranching began to pose less of a threat to forests,
pressure from banana cultivation increased (Brockett & Gottfried,
2002, p. 16).
9
Furthermore, campesinos now seem to play a more
important role in deforestation. According to one study in the 1980s,
campesinos cutting trees to meet basic needs were much less
significant than larger-scale business interests engaged in ranching,
coffee production, and wood extraction (Porras & Villarreal, 1986,
pp. 12-13).
Another general conclusion emerging from this analysis is that,
in order to more effectively carry out the Forest Law of 1996, it will
be necessary to tackle structural problems. Poverty, insecure land
tenure, corruption, lack of sufficient funds, legal loopholes, and
ineffective judicial procedures have led to heavy and sometimes
illegal logging in the ACLAC. While the Forest Law of 1996 might
be changed relatively quickly, the other problems are deeply
ingrained and can be significantly reduced only over the longer term.
Considering these very formidable barriers to improved
execution in the ACLAC of restrictions in the Forest Law of 1996,
perhaps holding more promise in the short to medium term for
controlling forest loss is a market-based approach rather than a
command and control one. In the Forest Law of 1996 itself, the
pago de servicios ambientales (payment for environmental
services) (PSA) offers economic incentives for forest conservation,
sustainable logging and reforestation. More specifically, the PSA
program compensates the owners of forests who protect them or
manage them (by logging them in a sustainable manner), and
compensates the owners of forest plantations. This compensation is
payment for their performing the environmental services of

sequestering greenhouse gas and harboring biodiversity (Asamblea
Legislativa, 1996).
There is, in fact, strong evidence that this incentive scheme is
useful in slowing forest loss. Between 1997 and 2001, this program
provided financing to 4,461 persons, amounting to coverage of
284,430 hectares (MINAE & PNUMA, 2002, p. 137). Awardees
were larger as well as smaller landholders, some involved in logging
and others simply preserving their forests. In reference to recent
forest cover studies indicating that net forest loss has finally stopped in
Costa Rica, government officials argued that this incentive scheme has
played a central role by encouraging increased preservation of forests
as well as reforestation on private lands (Fondo Nacional de
Financiamiento Forestal [FONAFIFO], 2002, p. 16).
Carlos Rodrguez of MINAE and environmental movement
leader Alvaro Ugalde agreed. They contended that, although
deforestation continues in Costa Rica, the annual rate has been
decreasing in recent years, and this economic incentive has
encouraged more people to maintain rather than to destroy their
forests (C. Rodrguez, personal interview, May 16, 2002; A. Ugalde,
personal interview, April 19, 2002). Illustrating how the PSA has
reached the rural poor, between 1997 and 2001 indigenous
communities received more than 221 million Costa Rican colones
through this scheme (FONAFIFO, 2002, p. 74). According to the
exchange rate of 360 colones per U.S. dollar, which was the case
approximately midway through the following year of 2002, this
amounted to roughly US$614,000. In some cases, this financial
assistance was crucial for families in these communities, as it was
their primary source of income (FONAFIFO, 2002, p. 23).
Thus, while the structural barriers to improved regulation of
forestry in the ACLAC might only be surmounted in the longer term,
in the meantime, a useful way of suppressing forest loss would be to
boost application of the PSA in that region. Paying campesinos to
preserve the forest or to log in a sustainable manner helps to stop at
its source the chain of events described earlier. At the same time, this
market-based approach still encourages the development of the
forestry sector, which has important values of its own.
10

Costa Rica has provided a model for the rest of the developing
world on how to successfully develop parks and other protected
areas. Similarly, the strategy just outlined might provide a useful
186 Michael Miller

model for other developing countries on how to better control forest
loss on private lands. Indeed, the causes of forest loss vary widely
across space and time. For instance, while logging operations have
played a major role in deforestation in Southeast Asia and West
Africa, they have recently played a minor part in Latin America,
where an expansion in cattle ranching explains much of the recent
increase in deforestation (Rudel & Horowitz, 1993, p. 2).
There is still much in common, though, between the causes of
deforestation in the ACLAC and those elsewhere in the developing
world. Peasants have cleared large amounts of forest in Latin
America as well as Asia and Africa, and poverty has been a key
motive (Dudley, Guilmour, & J eanrenaud, 1996, p. 11; Rudel &
Horowitz, 1993, p. 2). In particular, in recent decades the landless
poor have increased dramatically in tropical countries, leading to
increased colonization of forested areas (J ohnson & Cabarle, 1995,
p. 9). In the Peruvian Amazon, an average of 350,000 hectares of
forest is cleared per year through shifting agriculture by migrants,
who have come to the area primarily to escape impoverishment in
the Andean highlands (Bedoya Garland, 1995, pp. 218-219, 222).
Of course, it would be difficult to follow the strategy recommended
for Costa Rica in other developing countries. In addition to the
difficulty of carrying out major reforms aimed at reducing poverty and
addressing other structural problems, implementing a PSA-like
program would probably prove challenging. As Brockett and
Gottfried (2002) explained, Market alternatives traditionally have
been denigrated in Latin America, not only because of the
underdevelopment of markets and the regions statist heritage, but
because of a generalized distrust of capitalism (Brocket &
Gottfried, 2002, p. 22).
NOTES
1. The two largest indigenous groups in the region, the Bribri
and Cabcar, are described as practicing agriculture that is itinerant
and allowing cultivated areas to lay fallow, as well as carrying out
small-scale cattle grazing, hunting, fishing, and gathering (Borge &
Villalobos, 1994, p. 16).
2. Following this outbreak of the monilia fungus, cacao has only
been cultivated to a limited extent, such as organic production on a
small scale in Limn Provinces cantones (counties) of Limn and

Talamanca (J unta de Administracin Portuaria y de Desarrollo
Econmico de la Vertiente Atlntica [J APDEVA], 2000, p. 77). The
ACLAC accounts for a large part of the province of Limn, which is
one of several provinces into which Costa Rica is divided.
3. In 1997, the unemployment rate in the province of Limn was
higher than the national average (7.2% in comparison to 5.8%)
(J APDEVA, 2000, p. 71).
4. According to the Instituto de Desarrollo Agrario (IDA)
(Agrarian Development Institute), in the Caribbean region 42 squatter
groups recently invaded 8,869 hectares. There were 26 landless groups
with the potential to settle an estimated 5,041 hectares (JAPDEVA,
2000, p. 87).
5. According to one inhabitant of coastal Talamanca, Alphaeus
Buchanan, members of his community could not afford the services
of lawyer to obtain a title. Furthermore, in the past, lawyers had
convinced community members who were unable to read Spanish to
sign documents in that language that caused them to lose their
property (Palmer, 1994, p. 310).
6. Peasants often begin these activities farthest from roads and
paths where patrolling takes place. Landowners also avoid using
loud machinery. Furthermore, the vegetation surrounding trees is
commonly cut very slowly, and clippings are cut into small pieces so
that they will decay more quickly in the humid climate. In order to
make clippings disappear faster, sometimes they are burned or
covered with a poison. Additionally, poison is placed directly on
larger trees in an effort to dry out their canopies, which will allow
more light to pass through. With increased light, lower vegetation
adapted to shade slowly dies away.
7. Finally, logging sometimes takes place without a management
plan or forest inventory. The interview data point toward the
conclusion that, for the most part, this type of illegal logging is
carried out by campesinos felling a small number of trees. Peasants
cut trees without a management plan or forest inventory because
they are not aware of this requirement or because they are not able to
obtain the necessary land title and cannot find a maderero willing to
log without a management plan or inventory.
8. Additionally, illicit wood is moved in banana trucks with a
layer of bananas on top, is covered with a concealing layer of sand in
dump trucks, or is hidden in enclosed trucks. One informant only
188 Michael Miller

partly in jest suggested that illegal wood might be hidden in a truck
labeled Galletas Pozuelo, which is a popular cookie. Furthermore,
wood types that are not authorized in the manifest are often included
on logging trucks, but many police are not able to distinguish among
different types of wood.
9. In Central America as a whole, the cattle sector has been in a
crisis since the early 1980s. Edelman (1995) explains the relative
decline in the importance of ranching for deforestation comes as a
result not just of decreased demand for beef in the United States, but
also because of many other factors originating both in the United
States and Central America. For instance, in the late 1970s the U.S.
government discouraged beef imports by decreasing import quotas
during expansive phases of the U.S. cattle cycle. Also burdening
beef producers in Costa Rica was unprecedented inflation in the
early 1980s that led to a steep rise in interest rates (pp. 27, 29, 31).
10. According to recent assessments, in Costa Rica there are
7,280 businesses directly or indirectly linked to the forestry sector,
entailing 48,000 jobs (Proyecto Estado de la Nacin, 2004, pp. 271-
272). This sector also contributes approximately 5% of the gross
domestic product (Proyecto Estado de la Nacin, 2003, p. 241).
REFERENCES
Asamblea Legislativa. (1969). Ley Forestal (Coleccin de Leyes, Decretos,
Acuerdos y Resoluciones, II Semestre, I Tomo). San J os, Costa Rica:
Departamento de Archivo, Investigacin y Trmite.
Asamblea Legislativa. (1996). Ley Forestal No. 7575 (Expediente No.
11.003). San Jos, Costa Rica: Departamento de Archivo, Investigacin
y Trmite.
Barrantes, G., J imnez, Q., Lobo, J ., Maldonado, T., Quesada, M., &
Quesada, R. (1999). Evaluacin de los planes de manejo forestal
autorizados en el perido 1997-1999 en la Pennsula de Osa:
Cuplimiento de normas tcnicas, ambientales e impacto sobre del
bosque natural. Puerto J imnez, Costa Rica: Fundacin Cecropia.
Bedoya Garland, E. (1995). The social and economic causes of
deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon Basin: Natives and colonists. In
M. Painter & W. H. Durham (Eds.), The social causes of environmental
destruction in Latin America (pp. 217-248). Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press.
Borge, C., & Villalobos, V. (1994). Talamanca en la encrucijada. San Jos,
Costa Rica: Editorial Universidad Estatal a Distancia.

Bourgois, P. I. (1989). Ethnicity at work: Divided labor on a Central
American banana plantation. Baltimore, MD: J ohns Hopkins
University Press.
Brockett, C. D., & Gottfried, R. R. (2002). State policies and the
preservation of forest cover: Lessons from contrasting public-policy
regimes in Costa Rica. Latin American Research Review, 37(1), 7-40.
Caldern, M. (2001, March 2). Miseria en control de bosques. Al Da, p.
8A.
Centro Agronmico Tropical de Investigacin y Enseanza (CATIE).
(2001). La tala ilegal en Costa Rica: Un anlisis para la discusin.
Turrialba, Costa Rica: CATIE.
Centro Cientfico Tropical (CCT) & Centro de Investigaciones en
Desarrollo Sostenible (CIEDES). (1998). Estudio de cobertura forestal
actual (1996/97) y de cambio de cobertura para el perodo entre
1986/87 y 1996/97 para Costa Rica. San J os, Costa Rica: CCT &
CIEDES.
Dudley, N., Guilmour, D., & J eanrenaud, J . P. (1996). Bosques para la
vida: Documento de polticas forestales del WWF y la UICN.
Godalming, UK: World Wildlife Fund.
Edelman, M. (1995). Rethinking the hamburger thesis: Deforestation and
the crisis of Central Americas beef exports. In M. Painter & W. H.
Durham (Eds.), The social causes of environmental destruction in Latin
America (pp. 25-62). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Evans, S. (1999). The green republic: A conservation history of Costa Rica.
Austin: University of Texas Press.
Fondo Nacional de Financiamiento Forestal (FONAFIFO). (2002). El
rostro ambiental de Costa Rica. San J os, Costa Rica: FONAFIFO.
Herrera, M. (2002, June 6). Gobierno pone freno a minera. La Nacin, p.
4A.
J imnez, Q. (2002, August 7). Lucrarse dos veces con bosques. La Nacin,
p. 16A.
J ohnson, N., & Cabarle, B. (1995). Sobreviviendo a la tala: Manejo del
bosque natural en los trpicos hmidos. San J os, Costa Rica: World
Resources Institute & Consejo Centroamericano de Bosques y reas
Protegidas, Comisin Centroamericana de Ambiente y Desarrollo.
J unta de Administracin Portuaria y de Desarrollo Econmico de la
Vertiente Atlntica (JAPDEVA). (2000). Limn hacia el siglo XXI:
Potencialidades y oportunidades para el desarrollo humano,
documento i, conceptualizacin y diagnstico. San J os, Costa Rica:
Imprenta Nacional.
Laboratorio de Sistemas de Observacin Terrestre (EOSL) & Centro
Cientfico Tropical (CCT). (2002). Estudio de cobertura forestal de
190 Michael Miller

Costa Rica con imgines LANDSAT TM 7 para el ao 2000. San Jos,
Costa Rica: EOSL & CCT.
Martnez, R. (1999, June 12). Falta de dinero ahoga reas de proteccin. El
Heraldo, p. 4A.
Ministerio de Ambiente y Energa (MINAE) & Programa de las Naciones
Unidas para el Medio Ambiente (PNUMA). (2002). GEO Costa Rica:
Una perspectiva sobre el medio ambiente: 2002. San J os, Costa Rica:
MINAE & PNUMA.
Murillo, K. (1999, November 7). Aumenta tala ilegal en Costa Rica. La
Republica, p. 4A.
Palmer, P. (1994). Wa apin man: La historia de la Costa Talamanquea de
Costa Rica, segn sus protagonistas. San Jos, Costa Rica: Editorial de
la Universidad de Costa Rica.
Perry-Castaeda Library Map Collection, University of Texas. (2005).
Costa Rica. Retrieved on J anuary 5, 2006, from
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/americas/costa_rica.gif.
Porras, A., & Villarreal, B. (1986). Deforestacin en Costa Rica:
Implicaciones sociales, econmicas y legales. San J os, Costa Rica:
Editorial Costa Rica.
Proyecto Estado de la Nacin. (2002). Estado de la nacin en desarrollo
humano sostenible. Pavas, Costa Rica: Programa Estado de la Nacin.
Purcell, T. (1993). Banana fallout: Class, color, and culture among West
Indians in Costa Rica. Los Angeles, CA: Center for Afro-American
Studies Publications, University of California, Los Angeles.
Quesada, G. (2002, March/April). Talas aumentan en verano. San Carlos al
Da, p. 4.
Rudel, T. K., & Horowitz, B. (1993). Tropical deforestation: Small farmers
and land clearing in the Ecuadorian Amazon. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Saenz, P. C., & Knight, C. F. (1971). Tenure security, land titling, and
agricultural development in Costa Rica. San Jos, Costa Rica:
University of Costa Rica School of Law Agrarian Law Project.
Seligson, M. (1980). Peasants of Costa Rica and the development of
agrarian capitalism. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Sistema Nacional de reas de Conservacin (SINAC). (2002). reas
silvestres protegidas. Retrieved on J anuary 5, 2006, from http://www.
sinac.go.cr/ asp/index.html.

Watson, V., Cervantes, S., Castro, C., Mora, L., Sols, M., Porras, I., et al.
(1998). Abriendo espacio para una mejor actividad forestal. San J os,
Costa Rica: Centro Cientfico Tropical (CCT).

ACRONYMS
ACA-HN rea de Conservacin Arenal-Huetar Norte (Arenal-
Huetar Norte Conservation Area)
ACLAC rea de Conservacin La Amistad-Caribe (Amistad-
Caribe Conservation Area)
ACOSA rea de Conservacin Osa (Osa Conservation Area)s
ACTO rea de Conservacin Tortuguero (Tortuguero Cons-
ervation Area)
CATIE Centro Agronmico Tropical de Investigacin y En-
seanza (Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher
Education Center)
CCT Centro Cientfico Tropical (Tropical Science Center)
DGF Direccin General Forestal (General Forestry Directorate)
IDA Instituto de Desarrollo Agrario (Agrarian Development
Institute)
MINAE Ministerio de Ambiente y Energa (Ministry of
Environment and Energy)
PSA pago de servicios ambientales (payment for environ-
mental services)
SINAC Sistema Nacional de reas de Conservacin (National
System of Conservation Areas)

10. 10

10

The Case of the Shrimp Industry in
Eastern Panama (Darin Province):
Unsustainable Harvest of a Valuable
Export Product and Its Limited Impact
on Local Community Development
1

Daniel Suman

The eastern region of Panama (east of Panama City to the
Colombian border) has only recently been connected to the national
highway system. However, the Pan-American Highway ends in
Darin Province about 58 km from the Colombian border, and many
small communities in that province are poorly integrated with
Panamas urban core. This region is Panamas remaining frontier
area with some of the lowest social indicators in the country.
Despite this isolation, commodities from eastern Panama enter
global markets, and the region is not as isolated as it appears to be at
first glance. Today, shrimp provide the primary link between coastal
Darin fishing communities and the world. The high value of prawns
on the world market insulates the village residents from extreme
poverty. However, the sustainability of this fishery is in question,
due to the increasing numbers of small-scale or artisanal fishers
and their vessels, the use of illegal fishing methods, increasingly
sophisticated trawling technologies, the deforestation of the Gulf of
San Miguel watershed, and weak enforcement capabilities of
government authorities. The shrimp fishery is a textbook case of
The Case of the Shrimp Industry in Eastern Panama 193

globalization in which the causethe market-driven consumption of
the resource in rich countriesis separated from the environmental
and social outcomes of resource extraction in poorer countries
(Dietz, Ostrom, & Stern, 2003). The profit-drive demand for this
product completely overwhelms efforts to create a sustainable
community-based fishery.
This paper examines the sustainability of this fishery which is an
important source of revenue for Panama. It also describes a paradox:
Although the highest shrimp landings come from eastern Panama, its
coastal villages are among the poorest in the country. Resource
abundance does not necessarily translate into high social quality of
life indicators.
DESCRIPTION OF EASTERN PANAMA
The Eastern Tropical Pacific (ETP) is a biogeographical
province defined by climate and sea surface temperatures and,
subsequently, by species of fish and invertebrates. Extending from
Baja California, Mexico, to northern Peru, the ETP is comprised of
seven biogeographical regions with common coastal
geomorphologies and oceanic and climatic conditions and events.
One of these seven regions, the Panama Bight, extends 4,200 km
along the coastline from Panama to Ecuador and includes the Gulf of
Panama and oceanic areas of Colombia and Ecuador. It displays a
complex oceanography, high rainfall, high fresh-water runoff,
important upwelling areas, high productivity, and numerous large
estuaries with important mangrove areas (Forsbergh, 1969). More
than 40% of the mangrove forests in the ETP grow in the Panama
Bight region.
As defined for this chapter, Eastern Panama includes the
Pacific coastal areas from the northernmost reaches of the Gulf of
Panama, extending southeast more than 250 km to the Colombian
border. (See Map 10.1.) This region possesses similar environmental
and socio-cultural characteristics and falls politically into the eastern
portion of Panama Province and Darin Province.
This coastal region is marked by numerous riversamong them
Panamas largest (the Tuira/Chucunaque River basin) in Darin
Provinceand the Bayano River in Panama Province. The coastline
from the Bayano River eastward is low in elevation and supports broad
194 Daniel Suman

mangrove forests and mud flats for 80 km east to the rocky Brujas
Peninsula that ends in Punta San Lorenzo.
Panamas largest estuary, the Gulf of San Miguel, extends inland
between Punta San Lorenzo in the north and Punta Garachin in the
south. The opening of the gulf between the two points is 30 km. The
Gulf of San Miguel, a large estuary with an area of approximately
1,760 km
2
, is relatively shallow (although the deep channel reaches
40 meters depth in places). This exceptionally dynamic estuary is a
complex system of rivers, deltas, mudflats, freshwater wetlands, and
extensive mangrove forests. The daily tidal amplitude reaches up to
four or five meters. The dry/humid seasonal cycle follows the
movement of the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). While
the first three months of the year are drier, the annual rainy season
may bring more than a meter of precipitation in Gulf of San Miguel
coastal locations and up to four or five meters in the adjacent
mountains. Additionally, the inter-annual variability caused by
ENSO (El Nio-Southern Oscillation) results in significant oceano-
Garachin
Gulf of San
Miguel
Jaqu .
.
Tuira River
. Yaviza
Los Katos
National Park
Darien
National Park
Map 10.1 Map of Eastern Panama and the Darien Region.
Source: Microsoft MapPoint, 2005

graphic and climatic shifts in the gulf. Besides the temporal
variability, the gulf experiences great spatial variability resulting
from the mixing of great volumes of fresh water and salt water.
The Gulf of San Miguel watershed (14,877 km
2
) is the largest in
area in the Gulf of Panama (33,828 km
2
). Moreover, 45.2% of the
precipitation in the Gulf of Panama watershed falls in the Gulf of
San Miguels drainage area. The principal rivers of Darin Province
(including Panamas largest river, the Tuira River with its average
annual discharge of 29.2 km
3
) flow into the Gulf of San Miguel.
The coastline extends 130 km from Punta Garachin southeast
to the Colombian border. This is an active coastline fully exposed to
the Pacific Ocean. The continental shelf is narrow, extending only
between 5 and 40 km. from the coastline in this zone. The Serrana
del Sapo (Sapo Range), reaching a maximum height of 1,581 meters,
runs parallel to the coastline, and its forested slopes plunge into the
ocean.
Eastern Panama is undergoing rapid social change. The Pan-
American Highway west of Chepo was completed to Yaviza, Darin,
in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Eastern Panama Province and
western Darin Province have been sites of active colonization since
that time with the construction of secondary access roads. In the past
25 years, most of the original tropical forest has been logged and the
area converted to grasslands to support extensive cattle ranching.
The population has greatly increased but still remains low in
comparison to other rural areas of Panama. Small coastal villages are
generally not connected to the road system and retain their
traditional dependence on maritime transportation links.
Cultural diversity also characterizes the region. Native peoples
(Ember, Wounaan, and Kuna) have traditionally lived along the
rivers and today have significant control over some of their
traditional lands thanks to official recognition of comarcas
(government-recognized traditional lands that have some degree of
political autonomy). Afro-Colombianos and Afro-Darienitas
comprise an additional ethnic group that dominates coastal villages
and controls the local political life. Newer immigrants of Latino
campesinos from the central provinces of Panama form the third
ethnic group. These new arrivals tend to live along the new roads
and specialize in cattle ranching and agriculture.
196 Daniel Suman

SHRIMP RESOURCES IN EASTERN PANAMA
Penaeoid shrimp are an extremely valuable component of
commercial fisheries in near-shore areas throughout the western
hemisphere and account for the vast majority of the South American
catch (Bliss, 1990). The subgenus Litopenaeus has great commercial
importance in the Eastern Tropical Pacific, and the three species
(Litopenaeus occidentalis, Litopenaeus vannamei, and Litopenaeus
stylirostris) comprising this subgenus occupy tropical and
subtropical habitats from Baja California, Mexico, to northern Peru
(Perez, 1988). Adults may reach more than 20 cm. in length and
have life spans of between one and two years.
The life cycle of these shrimp species illustrates a complex
relationship between near-shore oceanic waters and estuaries. Adults
generally live and spawn in offshore sandy bottoms, while juveniles
are found in nutrient-rich estuaries. Post-larvae that reach estuarine
nursery areas develop into juvenile shrimp there.
Near-shore areas of the Panama Bight are ideal habitats for
Litopenaeus shrimp. (See Map 10.2.) Annual upwelling and high
river runoff result in nutrient-rich near-shore waters. The numerous
large estuaries with vast mangrove forests are ideal nursery habitats
for juvenile shrimp. The maximum spawning for shrimp occurs from
October to December when rainfall and runoff are highest. In its
larval stages, shrimp appear to move inshore to estuarine habitats
during these months and then grow rapidly during the maximum
upwelling season from J anuary to April with lower rainfall and
runoff (Forsbergh, 1969).
THE SHRIMP FISHERIES
Commercial shrimp taken in Panama, Colombia, and Ecuador
include white shrimp (Litopenaeus sp.), pink shrimp, and carabal
shrimp. The coveted species is clearly white shrimp because of their
large size and value. In Panama both industrial shrimp trawlers and
small-scale artisanal vessels target this valuable resource. The largest
shrimp are sold as prawns or langostinos. According to
Panamanian legislation, industrial vessels by definition exceed 10
GRT (Gross Registered Tons), while artisanal vessels are smaller.
Three types of shrimping occur in this region: industrial, small-scale
or artisanal, and aquaculture.

Map 10.2 Important Fishing Zones in Panama
Source: Created by author
Industrial Shrimping
Shrimp trawling began in Panama in the 1950s with vessels
originating in the Gulf of Mexico. The industrial fleet grew rapidly;
and in response to studies indicating overfishing, government
authorities in essence capped the fleet at a maximum of 232 vessels
in 1985 (Decretos Ejecutivos No. 10, February 28, 1985; No. 76,
October 4, 1994; and No. 56, J une 26, 1995). This fleet is
responsible for much larger shrimp landings than the small-scale
fleet. Government estimates for 2002 suggest that the industrial fleet
landed 970 metric tons of white shrimp while the artisanal fleet
landed 185 metric tons or 16% of the total (Repblica de Panam,
2004).
Today, the national shrimp fleet numbers 220 vessels owned by
nine different companies. A significant number of vesselsup to 15
or 20 at a timefishes in the rich shrimp grounds of the Gulf of San
Miguel, using bottom trawls (beam trawls). A typical trawler in the
aging fleet averages 18 to 20 meters in length with engines between
150 and 380 horsepower (hp). Vessels contain six or eight isothermic
chests that use refrigerated seawater for cooling. Each chest has a
198 Daniel Suman

capacity of 2,000 pounds; thus, the trawler may land a maximum of
12,000 to 16,000 pounds during a trip of two or three weeks. The
trawl net is 40 to 70 meters long with a mesh of 1 to 1.25 inches.
Each trawl can last up to four or five hours. Besides the captain, two
or three crew staff the shrimp trawlers. Thus, the industrial shrimp
fleet employs about a thousand individuals.
No landing data exist exclusively for the waters of Darin
Province. However, the government reports landings for the Darin
region which includes waters from the Panama Canal east to the
Colombian border (eastern Panama Province and Darin Province).
Landings of shrimp from the region exceeded 2 million pounds
(headless) in 2001, while the other two regions (central and western)
produced less than 100,000 pounds.
Time series data about the industrial landings of white shrimp
between 1960 and 2003 in the Darin region suggest that the
landings have decreased toward the present (Ehrhardt, 2003).
Landings between 1960 and 1972 oscillated between 3 and 4.5
million pounds (headless) of shrimp. Between 1973 and 1984, the
national landings ranged between 2 and 3 million pounds, while
between 1985 and the present, the annual catch fell to between 1.5
and 2.5 million pounds. Similarly, the catch per unit effort (CPUE)
appears to have decreased at present.
It is tempting to conclude that the current decreases in shrimp
landings are an indication of overfishing. However, some evidence
suggests that shrimp abundance may reflect regional decadal
variability in precipitation in the coastal watersheds (Ehrhardt, 2003;
Forsbergh, 1969). This hypothesis suggests that shrimp landings
correlate positively with years of high precipitation in coastal
watersheds. Shrimp abundance may also correlate to the strength of
upwelling in near-shore waters (Forsbergh, 1969). The ultimate
explanation for these data has yet to be determined.
The bottom trawls produce a significant by-catch of between 80
and 90% of the catch, known by crew as basura (trash) (Alverson et
al., 1994; Forsbergh, 1969). The trawlers run close to the mangrove
shoreline over the mudflats of the Gulf of San Miguel, resulting in
significant conflicts with the artisanal fleet over (a) use of this
marine space, (b) targeting the identical resources, and (c) damage to
benthic habitat and organisms. Executive Decree No. 124
(November 8, 1990) designated the northern reaches of the Gulf of

San Miguel as off-limits to shrimp trawlers. However, trawler
violations of this artisanal fishing zone are common.
Small-Scale or Artisanal Shrimping
In addition to the industrial fleet, some 1,000 artisanal fishers
(about 10% of them women) who live in coastal towns surrounding
the Gulf of San Miguel also catch large quantities of this high-value
resource. (See Map 10.3.) In 2003, 362 artisanal vessels had shrimp
permits in Darin Province from the General Directorate of Marine

Gulf of San
Miguel
Garachin
Ro Congo
Baha Pia
Jaqu
Playa de Muerto
Taimat
Punta
Alegre
Cucunat
La
Palma
Chepigana
El
Real
Puerto
Puerto Lara
Pacific
Ocean
Darien
Province
Punta
Garachin
Tuira
River
Yaviza
Samb

Mogue
Balsas
Rvier
Congo
River
Sabana
s River
Cucunat
River
0 15
km
Map 10.3 Coastal Communities in Darien Province
Source: Atlas de los recursos marino-costeros de la provincia del Darin
(2003)
200 Daniel Suman

and Coastal Resources (DGRMC). (See Table 10.1.) The number of
permits has remained constant since 1996 when the government
suspended the granting of new shrimp licenses. During the same
period, the number of artisanal finfish permits jumped by 280% from
89 to 338. (See Table 10.2.) Despite the cap on shrimp permits, it is
doubtful that the small-scale pressure on the shrimp resource has
remained constant. Many people land shrimp without a permit or
with only a finfish permit. The authorities enforcement capabilities
are so low that they cannot effectively regulate this activity.
Fishers comprise a significant percentage of the population in
Punta Alegre, Garachin, Ro Congo, and Taimat, all coastal
villages surrounding the Gulf of San Miguel. Due to the uncertainty
about the number of artisanal fishers as recorded in the DGRMC
database, these percentages should be used only as indicators of
fishings importance in these coastal communities. (See Table 10.3.)
The low percentage of fishers in some communities most likely
reflects the reality that some fishers fail to obtain permits, rather than
the comparative lack of fishings importance in these communities.
This fleet of more than 370 small dugouts generally uses 10-40
hp. outboard motors to land prawns from the shallow waters of the
Gulf of San Miguel. The principal artisanal shrimping zones are in
the northern (Punta San Lorenzo and Punta Morro de Buena Vista)
and southern (Ensenada de Garachin, Punta Patio, and Punta
Alegre) near-shore areas of the Gulf. (See Map 10.4.)
The fishers use monofilament gill nets with mesh size of three
inches measured knot to knot. They set four 100-meter-long nets
that, when attached, extend 400 meters across the near-shore waters,
preferably adjacent to mangroves and estuaries. The catch per vessel
may exceed 25 to 30 pounds per day of white shrimp for the most
competent fishers during peak resource abundance. The prawns are
large and fall into classes U7 and U15 (7 and 15 individuals per
pound, respectively).

Table 10.1 Shrimp Permits per Community Granted by the DGRMC, 1996, 2003
Port 1996 2003
Garachin 146 147
Taimat 45 38
Guagaral 6 4
Ro Congo 27 31
Punta Alegre 111 112
Arret 4 2
Pial 8 3
La Palma 23 20
Puerto Quimba 4
Puerto Caimito 1
Cucunat 1
Total 371 362
Source: Unpublished records of the DGRMC

Table 10.2 Finfish Permits per Community Granted by the DGRMC, 1996, 2003
Port 1996 2003
Garachin 41 145
Taimat 2 12
Guagaral 1
Ro Congo 2 8
Punta Alegre 1 66
Arret 2 3
Pial
La Palma 19 53
Puerto Quimba 4
Santa F 2
Puerto Lara 21 23
Puerto Pia 1 2
J aqu 7
Cucunat 3
Caa Blanca 1
Ports in Panama Province 8
Total 89 338

202 Daniel Suman

Table 10.3 Numbers and Percentages of Fishers in Coastal Communities, 2000
Community Population Number of Fishers Percentage
La Palma 1741 156 9
Mogue 266
Punta Alegre 605 381 63
Chepigana
Garachin 1247 625 50
J aqu 1253 15 1
Puerto Pia 641 4 1
Playa de Muerto
Ro Congo 132 83 63
Arret 199 11 6
Samb
Setegant
Taimat 371 107 29
Cucunat 398 6 2
Puerto Lara 333 49 15

Coastal residents in some areas use a prohibited fishing gear
(atajo) or one-inch net (often a fragment of a shrimp trawl net or
purse seine net) that they extend across canals and creeks in the
mangrove estuaries and hold by stakes driven into the mud. As the
tide ebbs, the atajo catches anything that cannot pass through the
one-inch mesh. Although the atajo is banned by Executive Decree
No. 41 (October 4, 1991), it is still commonly used in the estuaries
and creeks in the northern reaches of the Gulf of San Miguel on the
Cucunat, Congo, and Sabanas rivers, primarily by Wounaan
Indians. They subsequently sell their illegal, undersized catch along
the Pan-American Highway to some Panama City restaurants.
The artisanal fishers typically sell their catch to some 20
intermediaries for prices ranging from $4 to $6 per pound. The price
that a fisher receives depends on prawn size and fluctuates with the
loans that the fisher maintains with the intermediary for his or her
boat, motor, and gear. Our recent integrated coastal management
project estimated that the 2002 artisanal shrimp landings for the Gulf

of San Miguel ran to about 150,000 pounds caught primarily
between April and J uly of that year. The shrimp landings vary
considerably by community. Intermediaries in the Gulf of San
Miguel agreed that the average annual landings per vessel ranged
from 300 pounds in Garachin; 500 to 600 pounds in Taimat; and
800 to 900 pounds in Ro Congo and Punta Alegre. Catch per unit
of effort is generally greatest in April at the end of the closed season
(February to April), decreases in May, and recovers partially in J une
and J uly. This catch translated into an economic contribution of
about $608,000 for the shrimp fishers of the Gulf of San Miguel
coastal villages during 2002 (Ehrhardt, 2003).

Map 10.4 Important Shrimp Harvesting Areas for the Artisanal Fishing
Fleet in the Gulf of San Miguel.
Source: Atlas de los recursos marino-costeros de la provincia del Darin
(2003)

204 Daniel Suman

Shrimp Aquaculture
Shrimp aquaculture began in Panama in the 1970s, and shrimp
ponds occupy salt flats and mangroves along the Gulf of Panama in
the Cocl, Herrera, and Los Santos provinces of central Panama. In
2000, the area occupied by shrimp aquaculture ponds was 6,934
hectares in Panama with a total harvest of almost 3 million pounds of
shrimp (Repblica de Panam, 2002).
To date, this activity has not reached eastern Panama because of
the poor transportation network and because shrimp diseases have
plagued the industry for a decade. Expansion of this activity in the
future into Darin is a definite possibility, however. The deforested
lands to the north of the mangrove forests of the Gulf of San Miguel
are likely target areas for shrimp aquaculture.
THE MARKETING CHAIN
AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE
Although eastern Panama is a frontier area poorly integrated into
the nation, shrimp harvested from coastal and near-shore waters have
clear links with global markets. The marketing chain is composed of
numerous exchanges that transport shrimp from the Eastern Tropical
Pacific to consumers in the north (largely the United States).
Intermediaries
The shrimp intermediaries are local Darin entrepreneurs who
represent a handful of shrimp processors in the industrial fishing
ports of Vacamonte and Coquira (Panama Province). Some 20
intermediaries buy shrimp from small-scale fishers in the Gulf of
San Miguel. Each intermediary deals directly with his own processor
regarding time and means of shipment, payment and loans, and
purchases of equipment. The relationship between processor and
intermediary (loans for business and personal motives) parallels the
social relationship between the intermediary and the small-scale
fisher. Some fishers own their boat, motor, and nets or are in the
process of purchasing them from an intermediary. It is not
uncommon, however, for the intermediary to own the vessel and
motor (and permit) and to compensate the fisher as an employee.

Shrimp prawns are most often transported to Panama City by
small planes that fly shipments of 1,000 to 1,200 pounds from air
strips in Garachin, Punta Patio, and La Palma (all in Darin
Province). The intermediary receives $8 per pound for the prawns
but must also pay freight ($0.30/pound). Despite the high shipping
costs, air transport is preferred because the hour-long flight
guarantees a high-quality product. An increasingly popular
alternative is shipment to Panama City by small truck from Puerto
Quimba at the head of the Gulf of San Miguel. While less costly, this
operation takes four to five hours and also requires transferring the
shrimp by boat from the village to Puerto Quimba. The high fuel
costs ($3 per gallon of gasoline) and the distance (20-30 km)
between Garachin and Puerto Quimba make this transportation
option less attractive.
The largest shrimp intermediary in the Gulf of San Miguel (and
indeed in eastern Panama) bases his operations in Punta Alegre in
the central portion of the Gulf of San Miguel. He holds about 130
shrimp permits and buys the catch from artisanal fishers and their
representatives in numerous communities (Punta Alegre, Taimat,
Garachin, Ro Congo, and Gonzalo Vsquez). It is remarkable that
this latter community is located outside the Gulf of San Miguel in
Panama Province. Nevertheless, the Punta Alegre intermediary has
created an expanding business network throughout small coastal
villages in eastern Panama and is the first link between these
communities and global markets.
Processing Plants
Curiously, both the small-scale and industrial marketing chains
terminate in the same processing/exporting companies in Vacamonte
or Coquira (Panama Province), and these are controlled by a handful
of Greek-Panamanian entrepreneurs. These shrimp processors also
own or have an interest in the majority of the industrial trawling fleet
that unloads in Vacamonte and Coquira. About nine processing
plants in these two ports dehead, package, and freeze the shrimp.
The plants provide an important source of employment for perhaps a
thousand people.
The ultimate destination for most of the Panamanian shrimp
harvest is the United States. Darik EnterprisesThe Shrimp
206 Daniel Suman

Peoplein New York is the major importer. In fact, Darik carries
the Panama Bay brand long regarded by discerning chefs to be
one of the worlds finest shrimp (Darik Enterprises, 2005).
Panamanian domestic consumption of prawns is limited by the high
prices. Most prawns sold in the Panama City Seafood Market for $5
to $6 per pound are damaged or of unacceptable export quality.
On a recent visit to a seafood market in Miami, I confirmed that
the price per pound of prawns approached $20. This is 400% more
than the price received by the small-scale fishers in the Gulf of San
Miguel.
Export
The Gulf of San Miguel and the waters of the eastern Gulf of
Panama produce about 70 to 80% of Panamas total catch of white
shrimp, most of which are exported and which, in 2002, contributed
US$17 million to the national economy (Repblica de Panam,
2004). The 2002 value of all shrimp exports (from industrial, small-
scale, and aquaculture sources) was approximately $79 million or
37.3% of the total value of all seafood exports. Shrimp contributed
10.4% of the value of Panamas total exports during that year
(Repblica de Panam, 2005). In 2003 and 2004, respectively,
shrimp of all species and forms (fresh or frozen) accounted for
25.9% ($75,782,000) and 25.7% ($75,035,000) of total seafood
exports and 9.4% and 8.4% of total exports from Panama (Repblica
de Panam, 2005).
REGULATING THE SHRIMP FISHERY
The General Directorate of Marine and Coastal Resources of the
Panama Maritime Authority (DGRMC) regulates marine fisheries in
Panama. On February 10, 1998, Panamas Decree Law No. 7
consolidated the regulation of marine and maritime activities in a
single agencythe Panama Maritime Authority. Previously, the
Ministry of Commerce and Industry exercised jurisdiction over
fisheries through Decree Law No. 17 (J uly 9, 1959), known as the
Fisheries Law (Suman, 2002). The 1998 decree did not override the
1959 decree, meaning that it is still valid and provides the basis for
the DGRMCs authority over the fishery sector. In 2006,

preparations began for drafting new fishery legislation that would
replace the older law.
During the half century that shrimp has been an important export
product in Panama, a legal framework has developed to regulate the
activity. Executive Decree No. 10 (February 28, 1985) is central to
managing the industrial fleet as it prohibited issuing new shrimping
permits, effectively freezing the number of vessels at 232.
(Provisions do exist for substitution of licenses as older vessels are
retired.) Some analysts consider that the fleet had already grown to
an unsustainable size before capping so that this provision actually
provides little real protection to shrimp populations.
Executive Decree No. 162 (J uly 6, 1966) stipulated that trawl
nets cannot have a mesh size smaller than 1.75 inches for the entire
industrial shrimp fleet. A subsequent executive decree also limits the
power of vessel motors (Executive Decree No. 10, February 28,
1985).
Additional regulations for the industrial fleet address closed
areas and seasons. Industrial vessels are prohibited from operating in
estuaries, according to Decree No. 210 (October 25, 1965), although
estuaries are not appropriately defined. A more recent regulation
Executive Decree No. 124 (November 8, 1990)closed much of the
northern portions of the Gulf of San Miguel in Darin Province to
industrial shrimp trawling. Industrial fishing is also prohibited in an
ocean area important for sportfishing, in an area with a radius of 20
miles centered on Punta Pia on the oceanic coastline of Darin
(Executive Decree No. 1-B, J anuary 28, 1994).
Closed seasons for shrimp fishing exist for both the industrial
and small-scale fleets. This fishery management tool was first used
in 1975 after the industrial fleet had already grown to its present size.
Today, February and March still remain closed months for shrimp
fishing in the entire Pacific zone. The basis for this closed season is
the increased abundance of juvenile shrimp in Gulf of Panama
estuariesalthough great scientific uncertainty exists about the exact
time period for this event. In 2002, the DGRMC established a second
closed period in September and October for all shrimp fleets
(Executive Decree No. 88, J une 17, 2002). An additional measure,
adopted in 1993 (Executive Decree No. 55, September 28, 1993),
limited the number of days that each industrial vessel could trawl to
about 18 per month from September to J anuary. All of these
208 Daniel Suman

regulations attempt to reduce the impact of fishing effort on the
shrimp population.
The small-scale shrimp sector is also regulated by similar closed
seasons and permits. The DGRMC has not granted new artisanal
shrimp permits for several years, although this restriction has not
been promulgated by official regulation. Other regulations include
the minimum mesh size of three inches for shrimping gill nets
(Executive Decree No. 124, November 8, 1990). Although by
regulation the maximum length of gill nets is 200 meters (Executive
Decree No. 124, November 8, 1990), the DGRMC reached an
informal agreement with Darin small-scale fishers that permitted
them to use gill nets up to 400 meters long. The use of atajos in
mangroves and estuaries is illegal, according to Executive Decree
No. 41 (October 4, 1991).
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF SHRIMP FISHING
Perhaps the most serious environmental impact of industrial
shrimp fishing is the high incidence of by-catch from trawlers.
Perhaps 90% or more of the catch consists of non-targeted species,
and by-catch is particularly high in tropical shrimp fisheries
(Alverson et al., 1994; Spalding & Kramer, 2004). High-value fish
landed as by-catch are saved for barter or sale, often to small-scale
fishers who approach in their boats, or to a former DGRMC official
in exchange for his minimal enforcement efforts. However, most of
the catch is basura (trash) and is disposed, dead, back into the gulf
waters. The basura includes larval and juvenile stages of
commercially important fish. This massive mortality must also have
a significant negative impact on the marine biological diversity of
the estuaryalthough no studies have been made to confirm or
quantify this hypothesis.
Trawling also causes damage to benthic communities by
dragging nets across the soft bottom mud and sand. These nets level
small outcrops and other topographical features, all important for
marine organisms. The by-catch and basura also include a broad
spectrum of benthic organisms that have no direct commercial value
but are important for the well-being of the estuarine ecosystems.
Trawling close to shore in shallow waters causes serious
conflicts with artisanal fishers over the shared shrimp resource base.

Small-scale fishers believe, almost to a person, that the industrial
trawlers are taking their shrimp and are responsible for recent
economic difficulties. Industrial captains, for their part, blame the
increasingly numerous small-scale fishing vessels for decreases in
their catch. Industrial trawlers often damage artisanal gill nets as
they are soaking. Moreover, the by-catch negatively impacts the
finfish populations that many small-scale fishers target. Thus, the
operations have not only environmental, but also social, impacts.
The conflict between these two fishery sectors is serious and appears
to be growing as the resource base degrades and the number of
artisanal fishers increases.
Over-exploitation or over-investment also appears to be an issue
with both shrimp fleets (Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO],
2002). The industrial and small-scale vessels are used for only a
fraction of the time that they could fish. Both fleets must observe
extensive closed seasons, and trawlers are limited in the number of
days that they can fish. Even the artisanal vessels have relatively low
use. For example, during April 2002, the best month for shrimp
fishing, only 60% of the artisanal vessels with permits were
operable, and the average number of daily trips per vessel was 12
(Ehrhardt, 2003). These figures indicate over-investment in the
fishery.
Atajos with their one-inch meshes are illegal, but they are still
used in many tidal creeks that run through mangrove forests
nursery areas for shrimp and other marine resources. The use of
atajos is also a cultural problem because the Ember-Wounaan
ethnic groups make particular use of this illegal method. They claim
that they lack funds to purchase gill nets and, therefore, lack other
fishing alternatives. Occasionally, DGRMC officials enforcing the
law confiscate and burn these nets, creating ethnic mistrust and
resentment.
Thus, numerous activities affect the state of the shrimp
resources. The illegal atajos capture undersized shrimp in the
mangrove nursery areas. The dramatic uncontrolled increase in the
artisanal effort and the use of gill nets have exerted great pressure on
the shrimp population. For example, FAO (2002) estimates that the
number of gill nets in Panama increased from about 1,300 in 1986 to
14,000 in 1995. The industrial shrimp fleet, despite the cap on the
number of boats, continues to trawl with improved technologies in
210 Daniel Suman

near-shore estuarine areas, degrading the habitat and marine
resources. The cumulative impact of these pressures appears to be
leading to an unsustainable situation for the fishery.
An additional environmental issue is the by-catch of sea turtles,
since the industrial shrimp fleet does not always use turtle excluder
devices (TEDs). Concern about Panamas inability to enforce the use
of TEDs on its shrimp trawlers, which undercuts conservation efforts
for endangered sea turtles, led the U.S. State Department to decertify
wild shrimp exports from Panama to the United States on J anuary 1,
2005, as stipulated by U.S. legislation (P.L. 101-162, Section 609-b;
16 U.S. Code sec. 1537 note). The TED certification requirements
involve measures comparable to those used by U.S. shrimp trawlers.
At the time of the decertification, Panama joined several other
countries (Trinidad, Bangladesh, Haiti, India, Indonesia, and
Nigeria) also declared ineligible to export wild shrimp to the United
States (U.S. Department of State, 2005).
The decertification led the AMP/DGRMC to develop and
implement a series of training courses for captains of shrimp vessels
and to adopt Executive Decree No. 82 requiring the use of TEDs by
all shrimp trawlers in Panamanian waters (Panama Maritime
Authority, 2005). An inspection by the U.S. State Department and
the National Marine Fisheries Service on April 20-21, 2005, found
the situation in Panama had improved. Consequently, the United
States has since certified Panamanian shrimp exports.
Enforcing the TED requirement at sea remains a challenge,
however. For example, in Darin Province and the Gulf of San
Miguel, important shrimp areas, the AMP/DGRMC did not employ a
single official in 2003-2004 after the previous official was fired.
Early in 2005, the agency hired a new official. However, his only
equipment is a 20-foot fiberglass vessel and a very limited budget for
gasoline. Enforcement is only one of his responsibilities, others
being permitting and outreach. As a result, enforcement on the water
remains, for all practical purposes, nonexistent.
SOCIO-ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF THE SHRIMP FISHERY
Intermediaries obtain the greatest economic benefit from the
high-value shrimp catch. Small-scale fishers in eastern Panama lack
any type of cooperative productive arrangement that would allow

them to capture a higher percentage of the earnings from the sale of
shrimp, make their own market decisions, and provide social benefits
to members and their families. The AMP/DGRMC has attempted to
introduce an organized cooperative structure in some Darin coastal
fishing villages in recent years. However, these attempts have not
been successful because the handful of interested fishers lacked
management and organizational skills, capital, and equipment.
Processing the shrimp, whether caught by the industrial or by the
artisanal fleets, occurs outside Darin in processing plants in
Vacamonte and Coquira (Panama Province). The industrial catch
from waters adjacent to eastern Panama is not landed in Darin, and
Darin derives no benefit from the shrimp capture. In Panama,
neither the provinces, local governments, nor the organized fishers
possess legal authority over marine fisheries. Therefore, they have
no recognizable claim to these resources, nor can they exercise
regulatory authority over them. At least the small-scale catch passes
through Darin communities, and fishers and their families gain
from its sale. The contribution of shrimp to fishing households in the
Gulf of San Miguel communities was more than $600,000 in 2002.
The shrimp fishery is the most important economic activity for the
coastal villages of eastern Panama.
Agriculture in Darin also has links to the shrimp fishery. Darin
was Panamas largest producer of plantains until the Black Sigatoka
fungus destroyed this crop after the opening of the Pan-American
Highway in the early 1980s (Heckadon-Moreno, 1997). Moreover,
international monetary organizations imposed strict fiscal measures
on Panama in the 1980s. As a result, the government closed its
agricultural purchasing stations for plantains, rice, and maize in
remote Darin villages. The high transportation costs involved in
shipping crops to Panama City made Darin agricultural products
noncompetitive compared with those from central and western
Panama. Thus, interest in income from high-value white shrimp in
the early 1990s, coupled with low prices for agricultural products
and the lack of government subsidies for agricultural production, as
well as the Black Sigatoka fungus, have all stimulated an exodus
from agricultural employment to fishing for shrimp and other marine
resources. A result has been decreasing food security in Darin
Province and a dramatic increase in the numbers of small-scale
fishers.
212 Daniel Suman

ENVIRONMENT AND POVERTY:
DARINS COASTAL COMMUNITIES
Darin Province has some of the most pressing social needs in
Panama. In 2000, some 51% of homes lacked potable water supplied
by aqueduct, almost 40% did not possess latrines or any system of
sewage removal or treatment, and 67% did not have electricity.
Illiteracy rates in the province approached 25%. The U.N.
Development Program (UNDP) determined that more than 60% of
the population in Darin Province in 2000 lived in extreme poverty
and that the Human Development Index for the province was only
0.504compared to a national value of 0.707 (Organizacin
Panamericana de la SaludPanam, 2004).
The provincial economy depends on primary sector activities,
principally subsistence agriculture and extensive cattle-raising.
Darin is also the primary source of lumber for national markets and
export today. Of significance to this chapter, 70% of the national
fishery production originates from Darin waters, with shrimp, as
already stated, being the most valuable catch.
Clearly income from the small-scale shrimp catch is a major
source of income to coastal communities in eastern Panama, since it
injects an estimated $608,000 annually into the local economies of
coastal communities on the Gulf of San Miguel. The relatively high
price of prawns and high demand by exporters guarantee sale of the
productunlike finfish that only earn 10% of the value per pound
that prawns do.
The 10 coastal communities of the Gulf of San Miguel are
centers for small-scale fishing activities. Fishing appears to be
particularly concentrated in the villages of Punta Alegre, Ro Congo,
Garachin, and Taimat in the center and outer gulf areas. Punta
Alegre ($432) and Ro Congo ($425) actually have higher incomes
than other coastal communities, such as Garachin ($111) and
Taimat ($76). These first two specialize in shrimp fishing to a
higher degree than other coastal communities and are closely
associated with intermediaries who reliably export shrimp to Panama
City and processing plants in Vacamonte.
Census data indicate that the average income in these two
villages is also higher than the provincial average. The average
household income in Panama is $500 per month while it is only

$118 in Darin Province. Income in coastal communities varies
significantly. Darin coastal communities with the highest monthly
household income are Punta Alegre ($432); Ro Congo ($425); La
Palma ($349) and El Real ($290). Income from shrimp fishing
probably explains the higher incomes in the Punta Alegre and Ro
Congo, while the high percentage of government employees in La
Palma and El Real explains their high average household incomes.
The high incomes in Punta Alegre and Ro Congo contrast with
the problematic social situations in both communities and do not
translate into high percentages of homes with potable water, latrines,
and 24-hour electric service. Social indicators in these two villages
are, in fact, lower than average for Darin coastal communities. The
percentage of Darin homes without latrines or cesspools is high
(38%) compared to the national average of 7%. However, 67% of
homes in Ro Congo and 64% in Punta Alegre lack latrines, making
them among the highest of any Darin coastal community to lack
such services. Potable water is a critical issue in Punta Alegre. No
home is served with potable water, and a communal well operates
for only an hour each day. These statistics suggest that high-value
shrimp and household income have not translated directly into
overall benefits for these local communities.
No tradition of savings exists in these coastal villages. The only
coastal village with a bank branch is La Palma, the provincial
capital. However, La Palma is not important as a fishing village and
is situated several hours away by small boat from such important
fishing villages as Garachin and Ro Congo. Furthermore, many
temptations exist for small-scale fishers to spend the cash their catch
brings from the intermediary. In most instances, for example, the
intermediaries also own cantinas (bars) and billiard halls immediately
adjacent to the fish houses.
The shrimp boom is a relatively recent phenomenon of the past
decade. Perhaps time is required for the new wealth to trickle down
as improvements in these communities social situations. If the
intermediaries move into politics, perhaps they will translate some of
the financial benefits into improvements in social welfare.
The sustainability of the shrimp resource is another serious issue.
The question is whether shrimp will also follow the normal boom
and bust economic cycle that has been historically common in
Darin. Gold and tropical hardwoods were earlier extracted from
214 Daniel Suman

Darin with minimal benefit for the province and its communities
(Mndez, 2004). At present, compared to statistics for the past 40
years, the catch per unit effort and overall shrimp catch are both
decreasing. These changes may reflect long-term climatic shifts
(upwelling, precipitation, runoff) and/or overfishing. Although the
industrial trawling fleet is capped, technological advances make it
ever more efficient. Officially, the government is granting no more
small-scale shrimp permits. However, from my observations, the
number of small artisanal fishing boats continues to grow. The
impact of atajos on the health and sustainability of marine resources
in the regions estuaries remains a great concern since these
waterways are crucial as nursery grounds for many species of marine
resources.
Fisheries managers recognize that the management of penaeoid
shrimp populations is challenging because of their life cycles,
uncertainties in the information base, and the types of fisheries
involved. Even so basic a question as whether high levels of fishing
cause population instabilities has not been definitively answered
(Neal & Maris, 1985). This uncertainty is especially pronounced in
the eastern Panama case where scientific research and fisheries
monitoring essentially do not exist.
Moreover, the shrimp resources extracted from Darin waters
produce only minimum benefits for local communities. The artisanal
catch is exported from Darin frozen or chilled without being
processed. Processing, packaging, and freezing occur in urban areas
of Panama Provinceparticularly in the fishing port of Vacamonte.
Most of the frozen product is exported by container to purchasers in
New York. The industrial shrimp catch, which greatly exceeds the
small-scale catch, never passes through coastal villages in eastern
Panama and essentially creates no direct benefit for the region. In
addition, the trawling operations of the industrial fleet in near-shore
areas damage benthic habitats, produce high by-catch, and compete
with small-scale fishers for white shrimp prawns.
The enforcement of fishery laws and regulations remains a
critical issue. The existing fishing regulations, if successfully
implemented, might actually limit effort and sufficiently protect the
environment, thus leading to sustainability for the natural resources
and coastal communities. However, enforcement is minimal at best
and often nonexistent. No fishery inspector works on the Pan-

American Highway leading to Panama City. Currently, a single
fishery official is responsible for the entire province of Darin and
his enforcement capabilities are extremely limited.
BREAKING THE CYCLE
How might small Darin fishing communities benefit more from
the shrimp fishery? Some initiatives to break this unsustainable cycle
and help the small coastal communities in eastern Panama derive
greater long-term benefits from the shrimp fishery are available;
even though all initiatives may have potentially adverse
environmental or social impacts and rarely offer remedies without
unintended consequences. Decision-makers should carefully
consider both beneficial and adverse possible environmental,
economic, and social impacts of alternative courses of action.
Some type of marine protected area in the Gulf of San Miguel
could serve as a fishery management option that could promote
sustainable resource use and potentially also limit fishing effort. A
marine reserve (no-take zone) could protect important nursery areas
for juvenile shrimp and also preserve the benthic (bottom) habitat of
an area of the Gulf of San Miguel. Such a reserve could also support
healthy populations of other commercial species of fish. However,
enforcing the boundaries of such a marine reserve in near-shore
waters would be currently difficult, given the minimal enforcement
capabilities of the AMP or other governmental authorities.
A reserve would be a viable option only if the two major fishing
sectors (industrial and small-scale) both embraced the concept.
Achieving such buy-in to a reserve would involve negotiations with
all of the interested parties at the table and all agreeing to cede some
of their traditional fishing areas in the near-shore waters.
Some artisanal fishing leaders argue for community-controlled
fishing areas where only fishers from a given community would be
allowed to fish. These community fishing zones would most
logically be the gulf waters adjacent to each fishing village. If the
artisanal sector in each village were organized and accepted a
stewardship ethic, such a concept might offer promise for sustainable
fisheries. However, Panamanian legislation does not currently
recognize privatization of the seas, and the marine environment is
open for all to use. Without constitutional amendments or a new
216 Daniel Suman

fishery law, these community fishing areas could not pass
constitutional challenges.
Currently the northern interior reaches of the Gulf of San Miguel
are designated as an artisanal fishing zone. Although enforcement
remains problematic, Ro Congo artisanal small-scale fishers often
engage in self-enforcement when industrial trawlers enter the zone.
The potential for violent conflict clearly exists in this situation.
Many small-scale fishers would like the government to declare
another artisanal fishing zone in the southern coves and near-shore
areas of the Gulf of San Miguel (particularly the Ensenada de
Garachin and the coves between Punta Patio and Punta Alegre).
While these designations might reduce the conflict between the two
fishing sectors, designation would also require buy-in from the
economically and politically powerful industrial sector. Industrial
owners and mangers might accept an increased artisanal fishing zone
in exchange for a no-take marine reserve somewhere in the Gulf of
San Miguel that all fishing sectors would agree to respect.
The government or international donors might support the
location of shrimp and marine resource processing facilities in
Darin Province. Currently, marine resources that are not
immediately consumed in Darin are exported to Panama City fish
markets or to processing plants in Panama Province (Vacamonte or
Coquira). Processing plants in Darin Province would provide local
employment and training opportunities and add some value to the
resource before export from the province.
Co-management of the resource might be feasible with future
evolution in the organization of small-scale fishers. If organized,
they could also demand higher prices for products, better working
conditions, and improved social benefits. Most importantly,
organized fishers who could embrace a stewardship ethic might be
able to control the fishing efforts of the artisanal sector and other
current unsustainable practices. However, this possibility does not
appear imminent and would have to surmount substantial obstacles.
Many of the factors that Dietz et al. (2003) suggest as facilitating
effective governance of the commons do not presently characterize
Darin coastal communities. Little trustworthy information is
available about the status of the shrimp stocks and the efforts of the
fishing sectors. Social and environmental changes in coastal Darin
have been rapid in the past two decades. Social capital (Pretty, 2003)

is low in Darin villages that experience ethnic divisions, a lack of
cooperative fishing structures outside the intermediaries, and the
nonexistence of formal mechanisms by which to communicate with
the industrial fishing sector. Mechanisms to exclude outsiders from
fishing do not exist because Panamanian legislation does not permit
local or community control over the marine environment. Formal
mechanisms to limit the effort of the industrial and artisanal fleets
have not proved highly successful either. Resource users are highly
skeptical of the current minimal enforcement efforts. Thus,
community management of the shrimp resources will not be an easy
task.
Increase in the government regulatory presence in the area is
essential in all areas of government actionenforcement, permitting,
monitoring, and outreach and education. Although Darin produces
more than two-thirds of the marine resources harvested in Panama,
only one low-level government fishery official is stationed there.
The absence of infrastructure, equipment, and financial resources
severely limits his range of operations. However, without
government officials, it will be impossible to control the explosive
growth in small-scale fishers, the use of illegal fishing gear, and
industrial trawling in areas reserved for the artisanal fleet. The
existing government database of artisanal catch and numbers of
fishers and vessels will remain highly unreliable and not
representative of reality. Co-management efforts without dialogue
between government regulators and organized fishers will be
impossible.
Reducing the effort of the artisanal and industrial fleets is also
essential for the continued sustainability of the shrimp and fishing
activities in eastern Panama. Measures here might involve
continuing the cap on the number of vessels, controlling the
introduction of new technologies, reducing the number of vessels
through buy-back programs, and limiting the entry of new fishers
into the activity. These changes would be politically extremely
difficult for the government to adopt. They also demand a solid
information base upon which to make the appropriate decisions and
effective enforcement to ensure compliance. Thus, a controlled
reduction in fishing activity faces extremely difficult political and
social obstacles.
218 Daniel Suman

Some alternatives do exist for some fishers who are willing to
switch to the sectors of agriculture and eco-tourism. However,
changes to make local agriculture more competitive will result only
from changes in national agricultural policyspecifically,
subsidizing Darin agriculture to ensure that it is more competitive
with the agro-business in other areas of Panama. The remaining
Darin tropical forests and pristine coastline offer tremendous eco-
tourism potential, a possibility that some investors, government
planners, and the environmental community are just beginning to
comprehend. However, developing the areas eco-tourism potential
requires investment in infrastructure and guarantees of security in the
region. Kidnappings, drug traffic, and political violence from
neighboring Colombia still plague eastern Panama (Suman, 2005; La
polica, 2006), posing grave difficulties for the implementation of
these innovative alternatives.
CONCLUSIONS
Shrimp is one of Panamas principal exports, and most of the
countrys shrimp resources are captured in near-shore waters from
eastern Panama. The high-value white shrimp link eastern Panama
and Darin coastal communities to the world. This export product,
however, does little to reduce poverty in coastal communities in
eastern Panama or strengthen local community organizations.
Moreover, the rush to exploit this resource is causing significant
social conflict between fishery sectors and adverse environmental
impacts in the near-shore marine areas of eastern Panama.
New courses of action can stem the inevitable result of resource
degradation and social inequality. However, such changes will
demand political will, investments, vision, and significant changes in
Panamanian legislation. The existence of these factors is far from
certain.
NOTE

1. This manuscript was supported by the Program for the
Sustainable Development of Darin (PDSD) of the Panamanian
Ministry of Economy and Finances (MEF) and the Panamanian

Maritime Authority (AMP). Funding originated from the Inter-
American Development Bank by means of Loan BID 1160/OC-PN.
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About the Authors

O.P. Dwivedi is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the
University of Guelph, Canada, where he has taught environmental
policy and law, comparative public policy, and development
administration since 1967. His research foci include environmental
policy and law, development administration, administrative culture
and corruption, and public service ethics. His work spans a
geographic area that encompasses Canada, United States, Papua
New Guinea, India, Mauritius, and various developing nations.

Rebecca Lee Harris is Assistant Academic Director at the Dr.
Kiran C. Patel Center for Global Solutions at the University of South
Florida where she coordinates the Centers research and publications
programs. Prior to joining the Center, she was a post-doctoral fellow
at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington,
DC. Her research interests include agricultural policy, rural
development, and issues of sustainable development.

Gurleen Grewal is Associate Professor of Womens Studies at the
University of South Florida. She specializes in postcolonial feminist
theory and literature, U.S. women of color, yoga and Vedanta
philosophy. Her publications include Circles of Sorrow, Lines of
Struggle: The novels of Toni Morrison (1998) and the forthcoming
Postcolonialism and U.S. Ethnic Literature in Encyclopedia of
Ethnic American Literature. She is currently working on Silent
Revolutions: Transformations of the Self in Nature, Illness and
Spiritual Practice.
222

Kwabena Gyimah-Brempong is Professor and Chair of
Economics at the University of South Florida. His research focuses
on economic growth, corruption, income inequality, and human
capital in Africa. Dr. Gyimah-Brempong has been a consultant with
African Capacity Building Foundations Parliament Technical
Advisory Panel, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa,
and Stockholm International Peace Research Institutes (SIPRI)
project on Defense Budgeting Processes in Africa Project.

Lisa Fairchild graduated in 2005 with her Master's in
Environmental Science & Policy from the University of South
Florida. Her thesis examined the influence of stakeholder groups on
the development of policy designed to mitigate the area of hypoxia
in the Northern Gulf of Mexico. She is currently an Environmental
Scientist with LPG Environmental & Permitting Services, Inc. in
Mount Dora, Florida.

Renu Khator is Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs
and Professor of Government and International Affairs at the
University of South Florida. She is the author/co-editor of four
books, including Bureaucracy-Citizen Interface: Conflict and
Consensus (1999). Dr. Khator consults on several environmental
initiatives including Floridas National Estuary Programs and the
City of Tampas Environmental Taskforce.

Michael Miller is Assistant Professor of Government and
International Affairs and Environmental Science and Policy at the
University of South Florida. Prior to coming to USF, he taught
political science at Georgia Perimeter College in Atlanta and raised
funds for environmental nonprofits such as Campaign Coordinator at
Earth Share of Georgia. With on-going research in Costa Rica, his
primary scholarly interests continue to be Latin American
environmental politics and sustainable development.

Jorge Nef is Director of the Institute for the Study of Latin America
and the Caribbean and Professor of Government and International
Affairs at the University of South Florida. A native of Chile, Dr. Nef
previously served as professor in the School of Environmental
About the Authors 223

Design and Rural Development at the University of Guelph in
Ontario, Canada. His current research focuses on human security,
comparative politics and public policies, and international development.

Ella Schmidt is Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Social
Sciences, University of South Florida-St. Petersburg. Dr. Schmidts
research focuses on transnational indigenous migration from Mexico
to the U.S. and the creation of new social formations in both home
and host communities. She is the author of the forthcoming book,
Dreams from the fields: Farmworker lives and American realities.

Daniel Suman is Professor of Marine Science and Policy at the
Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and Adjunct
Professor of Law at the University of Miami. His primary research
focus concerns the establishment of Marine Protected Areas, with
projects in Southern Florida, Ecuador, Italy, and Panama. Dr. Suman
was Project Director for the two-year Integrated Coastal
Management project, located in the Darin Province of Panama for
which he and his team completed a Coastal and Marine Management
Plan in 2004.

Richard Weisskoff is Associate Professor of International Studies
at the University of Miami, where he founded and directs the
Program in Environment and Development for Latin America & the
Caribbean (PRENDE). Dr. Weisskoff has made many contributions
in the field of development economics, pioneering in statistical
studies of income distribution and poverty, trade & exchange rates,
health, transport, and input-output analysis. He has served on
missions throughout Latin America with the Agency for
International Development, Interamerican Development Bank, and
the United Nations.

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