Sustainability and Degradation in Less Developed Countries

Immolating the Future?

Sarah Lumley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351747738
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

This title was first published in 2002. The concept of sustainable development has increasingly gained currency as a policy determination tool, yet its interpretation and application is widely contested, especially with respect to the role of economics in the facilitation of environmentally and socially sustainable outcomes. Sarah Lumley assesses some of the fundamental assumptions of mainstream economic theory as part of an analysis of farmers' motives in adopting soil conservation on degraded lands in the Philippines. The text has a strong focus on the theoretical and practical interactions between environmental, economic and social aspects of sustainable development; it is both multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary, and draws on conceptually important points of each discipline that it encompasses.

Chapter 1

Sustainable Development and Land Degradation

Sustainable Resource Use

The work presented in this book makes a broad, multidisciplinary exploration of a range of issues that contribute to the unsustainable use of natural resources. This work has a particular focus on sloping agricultural land degradation in the Philippines. It considers the effects of hill farmers’ socio-economic circumstances on their conservation adopting behaviour and on their decision-making. The book is set in the overall context of sustainable development. This introductory chapter begins with a brief synopsis of the evolving theory of sustainable development and its application to social and environmental policy.

It is well recognised that a ‘green’ discourse which embodied aspects of sustainable development, including the still controversial ‘limits to growth’ arguments, existed in the 1970s (Buttel, 1998; Howes, 2000). Yet even further back, and following a similar rationale, some political economists, philosophers and scientists were supporting parallel notions of moral duty and applied utilitarianism with respect both to society and the environment.

For example, Harriet Martineau, a 19th-century political economist and journalist, translated via the popular press the work of intellectuals like Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo for the general population. Martineau believed in and espoused concepts of political economy and moral duty that bear a striking resemblance to today’s ideas about social and environmental sustainability. Yet, even in the 19th-century political economy as a means of determining policy was not without controversy. The poet William Wordsworth and the philosopher Thomas Carlyle, both friends of Martineau, expressed great concern that political economy would turn moral values into a ‘cost calculus’, and Smith, Malthus and John Stuart Mill were all ‘… at great pains to conserve “moral sentiments” and higher human values in the context of their [own] narrowly based proposals for utilitarian economics’ (Lumley, 2000 (a), p. 63).

Notions of sustainability were promoted at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972. Following the Stockholm Conference, a series of policy agreements was made. These agreements covered issues as diverse as ocean pollution, air pollution and endangered species (Elliott, 1998; Buttel, 1998; Howes, 2000). However, the term sustainable development only became popular in 1987 after the World Commission on Environment and Development published Our Common Future (WCED, 1987). Also known as the Brundtland Report after the WCED chairperson, this publication made, for the first time, a publicly heard call for a global strategy which linked economics with the environment. Although some of its terms and definitions were confusing and ill-explained, for example the words ‘growth’ and ‘development’ were used interchangeably, this report generated great interest in the topic of environmental sustainability. Our Common Future supported ‘sustainable development’ as a means of resolving poverty, pollution, inequality, loss of biodiversity, land degradation and the depletion of natural resources, thus juxtaposing social and economic well-being with environmental well-being. The report (ibid, p. 43), in a well meant phrase that has become something of a cliche, defined sustainable development as: ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’.

Our Common Future was followed by another publication, Blueprint for a Green Economy (Pearce et al, 1989), which also caught the imagination of economists, conservationists and the general public, and which made a definitive attempt to link the economies and the environments of nations globally. In Blueprint, proposals were made in which deals between developed and undeveloped countries, such as debt-for-nature swaps, could be worked co-operatively to resolve economic and environmental problems. Many of these ideas were neither completely new nor entirely practical, but their consolidation in a popular book helped to bring sustainable development discussions to a wider forum than hitherto had been the case.

By the late 1980s there was much literary activity in disciplinary areas relevant to most aspects of sustainability. Following the release of the Brundtland report, a new journal, and what some considered to be a new discipline, Ecological Economics, emerged. Here, among other issues, economists and ecologists sought to develop ways in which solutions to the problem of environmental degradation could be found. Many journal articles and books which addressed topics that coupled economics and sustainable environmental use were published in the five years that followed the first release of the Brundtland Report (e.g.Tietenberg, 1988; Pearce, 1989; D’Arge, 1990; Turner, 1990; Hueting, 1990; Pearce and Turner, 1990; Archibugi and Nijkamp, 1990; Friend and Rapport, 1991; Pearce, Barbier and Markandya, 1990; Tisdell, 1991; and Dragun and Jakobsson, 1992).

One of the problems that these and subsequent writers have tried to resolve is how to define properly the term ‘sustainable development’. This term has often been interpreted according to the interests and ideology of the interpreter, and in this respect has given little common ground for understanding and resolving the central issues involved. This has particularly been the case for those issues that concern effective social and environmental policy formulation (for example see Daly, 1990; Jacobs, 1993; Common, 1995; McManus, 1996; Bowers, 1997; Lumley, 1999).

In Australia, as in many other countries, there has been much concern about soil erosion and salinity, pollution of air and water resources, and what some see as unsustainable use of forest resources. In 1990, with the publication of its report on sustainable development, the then Australian Government initiated a process which aimed to develop and implement a strategy for ‘ecologically sustainable development’ by 1992 (Commonwealth of Australia, 1990).

In 1992 WCED supported the now renowned United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) ‘Earth Summit’ in Rio de Janeiro. At Rio, the non-binding agreement, Agenda 21, a global agenda for the 21st century, was signed as a plan of action to implement the similarly non-binding Rio Declaration. The Rio Declaration had outlined 27 guiding principles of sustainable development for governments globally (Elliott, 1998). The United Nations Convention Framework on Climate Change, and the Convention on Biological Diversity were also non-binding UNCED documents. Despite the much publicised proposal to ratify the binding Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change in 1998, there is yet to be an international agreement which legally upholds any of these recent global sustainable development policies. However, there is now no shortage of definitions and examples of proposed actions for sustainable develpoment.

Australia, like other developed and less-developed countries, continued to pursue its own policies for environmental and social sustainability. An interim Australian strategy on sustainable development, which was published in late 1992, described (ecologically) sustainable development thus:

In a general sense, ecologically sustainable development is about the way we use, conserve and enhance the community’s resources so that ecological processes, on which life depends, are maintained, and the total quality of life, now and in the future, is secured (Commonwealth of Australia, 1992; p. 3).

This definition was seen to reflect … ‘recognition that in Australia, economic development and a well managed environment are inextricably linked (ibid, p. 4). By 1993 the Australian Government had proposed a more specific definition for ecologically sustainable development: ‘development that improves the total quality of life, both now and in the future, in a way that maintains the ecological processes on which life depends’ (Commonwealth of Australia, 1994; p. 2).

The definition illustrates the difficulty that governments have in proposing ideas that are supposed to have some practical application. One of the problems faced by governments when trying to define such terms is that they attempt to avoid alienating interest groups, which may be opposed to each other (e.g. business and conservation groups) and so end up with a term that is difficult to apply to practical policy.

Despite continuing popularisation of the notion that economics and environmental management are linked, as mentioned earlier, this linkage has been recognised at some level for many years. Indeed there have been academic and practical arguments running on this theme as far back as the mid 19th century. Mayumi (1991) when discussing the cause of land degradation quotes a 19th-century agronomist (Liebig, 1859), who was concerned about land degradation and the exhaustion of the soil, as saying:

But who could have thought twenty years ago, when there was plenty of manure, that it would ever occur to these obstinate and wilful fodder plants to produce no more manure, and no longer spare and enrich the ground. The soil is naturally not the cause of this; for they teach that it is inexhaustible, and those still enough believe that the source from which it is derived will always flow (pp. 130–131).

Magumi argues that a thermodynamic analysis is appropriate for considering the process of soil degradation since: ‘the tremendous speed of matter and energy degradation of the earth is the genuine cause of land degradation’ (p. 35) and that the 19th-century agricultural economists of Europe ‘… did not pay sufficient attention to the importance of circulation of matter in order to maintain land fertility in the long run. Their interest was to increase the amount of crop yields in a short span of time’ (p. 38). This argument has some merit.

Since Our Common Future was published, the discourse on sustainable development has been growing more lively, more controversial and more complex. One environmental economist who has participated fully, and over the long-term, in the environmental economics/sustainable development debate is David Pearce, co-author of the definitive Blueprint series. In a recent book (Pearce, 1999) David Pearce presents a collection of his essays that spans over twenty years of his work in the environmental management and policy arena. He comments:

Few concepts have attracted so much political, popular and academic attention as that of ‘sustainable development’. While politicians are adept at embracing high-sounding objectives – especially when they are so loosely defined as to be consistent with almost any form of action (or inaction) – it is significant that ‘sustainable development’ now figures as a goal in dozens of national environmental policy statements and in the opening paragraphs of ‘Agenda 21’, the massive shopping list of world actions adopted at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992.

And,

While it is a popular pastime to collect different different and incompatible definitions of sustainable development, inspection of the words and of their origins suggests that defining sustainable development is really not a difficult issue. The difficult issue is in determining what has to be done to achieve sustainable development, assuming it is a desirable goal (p. 69).

Pearce then clarifies the issue for us by explaining that what we’re really talking about is sustainable economic development [my emphasis] and proceeds with his exposition from there. Given that there is still some dispute about whether economic development is what sustainable development alludes to, and given the heat with which the word ‘growth’ was contested early in the debate, when it was sometimes used interchangeably with the word ‘development’ (Daly, 1990), it may surprise some readers to know that the matter has been resolved. Perhaps central to this issue is the question of what constitutes ‘economics’, and how it is applied to environmental and social policy. A common misconception is the idea that all economics is about money and profit. Another is the confusion of rationality in economic theory with the expedient of ‘economic’ rationalism. According to Pearce (1999, p. 14):

These rather basic misconceptions would not matter very much but for the fact that critiques of economics and environmental economics are built up on the basis of this straw man. One suspects that the age-old confusion between economics as commerce and, economics as science, has not yet gone away.

The assumptions that underlie standard neo-classical economic theory are often little known, little understood, and difficult to challenge. If we are to accept that economics is intended to encompass the social dimension then it must also be accepted that economics is far broader than issues concerning finance and commerce. As such it is important to social and environmental policy. This is particularly so where people are directly dependent upon the environment for their subsistence, as they are in less developed nations like the Philippines (Home, 1996; Sponsel et al, 1996; Japan Environmental Council, 2000). Yet in more developed places like Australia, the European Community, Japan and North America we have come to realise that we also depend, directly or indirectly, on the environment for our survival (Gruen and Jamieson, 1994; Lumley et al, 2001; Ullsten and Rapport, 2001). Recent research has confimed that, in Western Australia at least, ordinary members of society perceive this dependence to be real. In a survey there, 98.5% of respondents believed that ‘Looking after the environment is important to our long-term survival’ and 91% believe that ‘The well-being of society, the economy and the natural environment are strongly linked’ (Lumley and Hercock, 2001). In this regard, environmental economics, ecological economics and the concept of sustainable development are all socially relevant. As Mishan (1979, p. 389) states of welfare economics:

… inasmuch as current allocation economics derives its rationale from welfare economics, the socially relevant part of that subject can have no affinity with the species of sophisticated games which economists can play with any ranking device that catches their fancy. As the term suggests, welfare economics is to be regarded as a study of the contribution economics can make to advancing social welfare.

The research upon which this book is based examines the socio-economic conditions of Philippines upland farmers in the context of their relationship to their environment, and particularly to the land that they cultivate. The work assesses the validity some of the assumptions in economic theory, and the effect of invoking such assumptions on the advancement of social welfare. In addition, the interpretation and application of some aspects of [Western] economic theory in a less developed nation are examined. This is done against a backdrop of land degradation and poverty, and uses an approach that considers the applicability of sustainability as a concept that can be used to advise environmental and social policy development.

The Problem of Land Degradation

One of the main reasons for land degradation is the use of non-sustainable agricultural practices. In many cases unsustainable agriculture begins with the removal of perennial vegetation and its replacement with shallow rooted annual crops. The cultivation of such crops often leaves the soil bare for extended periods, and results in the inexorable decline of the land upon which people depend for both their sustenance and their livelihood.

Pimental et al (1994) illustrate the importance of land degradation as an environmental and social problem in the following statement:

Rapid land degradation is a major threat to the sustainability of world food supply and affects most of the crop and pasture land throughout the world … Estimates suggest that agricultural land degradation can be expected to depress food production between 15 % and 30 % over the next 25-year period, unless sound conservation practices are instituted now …

Soil erosion is the single most serious cause of this degradation … The major cause is the employment of poor agricultural practices that leave the soil without vegetative cover to protect against water and wind erosion. Soil loss is particularly distressing because it take...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures and Plates
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations and Acronyms
• 1. Sustainable Development and Land Degradation
• 2. A Brief Social and Economic History of the Philippines
• 3. The Philippines and Leyte
• 4. The Socio-Economic Survey
• 5. Interest and Discounting
• 6. Preliminary Data Analysis
• 7. Observed Interest Rates and Perceived Discount Rates among Upland Farmers
• 8. Implications of the Results for Theory and Policy
• 9. Quo Vadis? Summary and Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Appendix: Questions for the Perceived Discount Rate Survey
• Index