Tuesday, May 6, 2008

The World’s Poor are Feeding the Rich

In the absence of 14 extra planets to cater for our over consumption, we might do good to let Cuba light our way…

By: Andrew Simms, New Economics Foundation

Using the ecological footprint measure, if the whole world wished to consume at the level of the United States – a consumption pattern which has been fuelled, incidentally, by the credit binge which led to the current economic crisis – we would need, conservatively, over 5 planets like earth to support them. But, under the current pattern of unequally distributed benefits from growth, to lift everyone in the world onto a modest $3 per day, would require the resources of around 15 planets like ours.

Where, you might ask, will the other 14 come from?

Flood Up vs. Trickle Down

Unlimited economic growth is defended as necessary to tackle poverty. And, conventional economic growth will happen in poor countries as a consequence of effective poverty reduction. But at a global level, the policies designed to pursue growth have become a mask for making the rich, richer, whilst leaving the poor with few benefits and abandoned to deal with the environmental consequences.

During the 1980s, the so-called lost decade of development – from every $100 worth of global economic growth, around $2,20 found its way to people living below the absolute poverty line. A decade later that had shrunk to just $0,60c, and the actual mean income of those living under $1 per day in Africa also fell.

There has been, in effect, a sort of ‘flood-up’ of wealth from poor to rich, rather than a ‘trickle-down’. It means, perversely, that for the poor to get slightly less poor, the rich have to get very much richer, implying patterns of consumption which, in a world facing climate change, cannot be sustained. It now takes around $166 worth of global growth – made up of all those energy-hungry giant flat screen TVs and sports utility vehicles – to generate a single dollar of poverty reduction for people in absolute poverty, compared with just $45 in the 1980s.

If we are serious about tackling poverty in a carbon constrained world, then, we need a new development model, better measures of progress, and a shift from relying on unequal global growth towards serious redistribution. If we think of the planet as a cake, we can slice it differently, but we cannot bake a new one.

Cuba – a real life laboratory

One country, very much and long maligned, provides a glimpse of what the near future may hold for others. Cuba has already lived through the economic and environmental shocks that climate change and peak oil hold in store for the rest of the world. Its sudden loss of access to cheap oil imports and its economic isolation were so extreme in 1990 at the end of the cold war, and its reaction to the shock was so contrary to orthodox approaches, and successful, that it was dubbed in Washington DC the ‘anti-model’. It is as near as we have to a laboratory example in the real world.

Cuba grew heavily dependent on cheap Soviet oil for its transport, industrial export-oriented farming and wider economy. Also, it sits in the flight path of the annual hurricane season, regularly contending with extreme weather events.

Then oil imports dropped by over half. The use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers dropped by 80 percent. The availability of basic food staples like wheat and other grains fell by half and, overall, the average Cuban’s calorie intake fell by over one third in around five years. But, serious and long-term investment in science, engineering, health and education meant that the country had a strong social fabric and the capacity to act. Successive reforms dating back longer reduced inequality and redistributed land.

Before their local ‘oil shock,’ Cuba had investigated forms of ecological farming far less dependent on fossil fuels, and had in place a system of ‘regional research institutes, training centers and extension services ‘ to support farmers.

The Anti-Model

At the heart of the transition after 1990 was the success of small farms, and urban farms and gardens. State farms later followed their example. Food programmes that targeted the most vulnerable people, the old, young, pregnant women and young mothers, and a rationing programme that guaranteed a minimum amount of food to everyone averted immediate crisis. Soon, half the food consumed in the capital, Havana, was grown in the city’s own gardens and, overall, urban gardens provide 60 percent of the vegetables eaten in Cuba.

Interestingly, Cuba’s experience both echoes what America achieved in a more distant time of hardship during World War II, when Eleanor Roosevelt led the ‘victory gardening movement’ to produce between 30-40 percent of vegetables for domestic consumption.

Cuba’s demonstrated that it is possible to feed a population under extreme economic stress with every little fossil fuel inputs.

The approach was dubbed the ‘anti-model’ because it was highly managed, focused on meeting domestic needs rather export oriented, largely organized and built on the success of small farms. The same countries’ approach to disaster preparedness and management is also instructive.

Compared to the deaths and destruction in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, when Hurricane Michelle hit Cuba in 2001 only 5 lives were lost, in spite of 20,000 homes being damaged, and recovery was quick. It was due to proper planning, and a collective approach managed by government, but owned at the local level.

As disaster expert Dr. Ben Wisner commented on the evacuation of 700,000 of Cuba’s 11 million population, ‘This is quite a feat given Cuba’s dilapidated fleet of vehicles, fuel shortage and poor road system.’

Forty years ago Robert Kennedy said that economic growth measured everything apart from that which really matters. But it is possible to assess if we are achieving human development whilst living within our environmental means.

Radical change necessary

The UN faces huge challenges. Not least is how to recognize and protect the large and growing number of people we can expect to be displaced in a warming world. The climate refugee crisis will dwarf that of political refugees. What will happen to the nationhood and economic areas of countries that could disappear entirely, like Tuvalu?

How can we change our locked-in thinking about economic development, and reorganize around the principles of resilience, social justices, sufficiency, ecological efficiency, and the capacity to adapt?

At the very least, to achieve poverty reduction in world threatened by climate change, we know that rich countries must radically cut their own consumption to free-up the environmental space in which others can pursue, as a first step, the Millennium Development Goals.

Impassable ecological obstacles lie on the path down which we chase the shadows of overconsumption to deliver our well-being, and expect the poor to be grateful for crumbs falling from the rich man’s plate. The good news it that another way is not only possible, as the philosopher A. C. Grayling writes, its better, richer and more enduring.