Ecological Debt: Prospective and Consequences on Land

By Dr. Arjun Kumar Karki and Dr. Rita Prasad Gartoulla

Land and human rights

In most developing societies, the right to land is regarded as an important aspect of identity. Land based agriculture provides livelihood to majority of the people in these societies. In addition to this, land constitutes the predominant source of income; land ownership determines the status and power in these societies, and land is considered as the principle determinant for classifying people into distinct classes.

The distribution pattern of land is skewed, as a result of which large masses of people do not have access to sufficient productive land resources to provide for their livelihoods. For example, the data based on Nepal government’s statistics state that 68.63 percent of households own only 30.5 percent of the total cultivated land, each household owning less than one hectare in Nepal. Likewise, the wealthiest 2.51 percent of households control over 18.70 percent of land, owning more than four hectares each in 1991. This shows that a small segment of the population controls most of the land resources and the opportunities rendered by the land (Karki, 2001).

As a result, the real tillers of the land are deprived of their tenancy rights. This group of people, includes Kamaiuas, Haliyas, Haruwas and Sukumbasis, are landless people in Nepal. The concentration of land in the hands of a few elite classes and severe exploitation of the peasantry through the excessive expropriation of labor has been the characteristics of Nepalese political economy throughout history. Thus, it can be said that semi-feudal agrarian relations play the principal role for landlessness and underdevelopment of Nepalese agriculture. Those who are squeezed out by this relation are often indebted and forced to sell whatever they have and enter into a ‘bonded’ service agreement with a landowner.

In fact, the glaring inequalities in terms of landholding and access to land are not unique to Nepal. They are common in most agrarian economies of the developing world. In a recent (2000) study on land, Ghimire (2000) states:

Ecological debt has become an indirect source of income for the capitalistic society because "capitalism always seeks new consumers otherwise it will not survive. It neglects the indigenous knowledge system and practices and it always places emphasis on profit. For example, when the dwarf wheat varieties were developed, they were presented in a magical package as a solution to combat hunger. Money, technology and knowledge came in the same package. High adoption of these varieties enabled the capitalists to supply more fertilizers, insecticides and seeds." (RRN, 1994) As a result of these, the inherent capacity of land became weaker and poorer.

On ecological debt, McNicoll says, "human survival is about food security. It’s a simple equation: either we eat or die … most of us, however, don’t have to worry about it, but maybe as many as 800 million souls on earth do have to worry about surviving." (McNicoll, 2000) These equations might have made ready to invest on land and the poverty; it is increasing rather than diminishing. Loans to countries where the land is the only means of livelihood, where the majority of the population remains hungry has become the pushing factor for loans to the lenders, and pulling factors for the governments that show no or least accountability to their people. The give and take of loan has never been an exercise for ecological, socio-economical, behavioral or other but always seeks return with much either cash or by neo-colonialism.

There are several why ecological debt came into existence.

Ecological debt as a concept emerged to understand and suitably tackle the problems mentioned above. It is a relatively new idea probably due to the fact that politically, more importance has been placed on financial issues than on the loss of natural heritage. To activate the discourse on ecological debt, a Debt Treaty consisting of 39 points has been formulated to regulate and control the prospective and consequences of ecological debt.

Almost all countries of the South have land-based economies. More specifically, land-based agriculture is the source of their survival. Therefore, any negative impact on land resources has a damaging effect on the very survival of the people, mainly those who do not have any options but land.

Land is the essential and no replaceable resource for supporting livelihoods of the people. Hence, land is the only assurance available for their survival and dignity. In case land is removed from their hands, they lose their identity. In this regard, land is that resource which shapes the way of life of the people.

But, the existing scenario of debt has posed tremendous threats on the people in several ways.

A large amount of the financial debt has been used to accelerate the production beyond the inherent capacity of the resources. In several occasions, creditors in the North have injected capital to the South to serve their vested interests, continuing the range of exploitation and suppression. Most loan funded projects are implemented to serve the interests of the markets, transnational corporations and commercial establishments in the North rather than serving the needs of the people in the South. This has created ecological imbalances, on one hand, and destroyed the very base of the people’s survival, on the other.

For example, the loan financing for promoting the so-called green revolution has further marginalised small landholders and farm laborers through mechanized farming systems, rampant use of the agro-chemicals and hybrid (terminator) seeds, monoculture practices for profiteering through the markets, commodification of livelihoods essentials of the people, and so forth. Similarly, the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) and much recently introduced Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) of the international financial institutions have further aggravated the situation, putting the smallholders at the brink of devastation. All these phenomena are responsible for the degradation of lands through increased occurrences of soil erosion, landslides, pollutant-loaded floods, and desertification and land alienation.

Not only this, the highly irresponsible act of the creditors has also put the land – based resources out of the reach of the people who have remained the owners since time immemorial. Under systematic monopolisation endeavours of the defamed multinational institutions such as the World Trade Organisation, gene piracy is promoted and the indigenous knowledge systems as well as the native bio-diversity resources of the people are severely threatened.

South Asian countries (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal and Pakistan) have two percent of global land that is inhabited by about 22 percent of the global population with a very low rank in the Human Development Index (HDI). Over 40 percent of the population live below the poverty line, and literacy rate, life expectancy, nourishment level, etc are lower than the world average (Jha, 1996).

Land degradation is a serious threat to the agriculture, irrigation and subsistence economy of the Nepalese people. The accelerated degradation is due to reduction in soil depth or quality as a result of natural factors along with human factors due to the growing debt that has resulted from excessive exploitation of the land and its natural properties.

Fertilizer, which is stocked and distributed to the farmers utilizing debts taken from other countries, is a major source of pollution (soil and water). Even underground water has been found highly contaminated for irrigating crops.

Pesticide used in agriculture farming has brought adverse consequences such as pest resistance, bio-accumulation of pesticide residues in food chains, persistence in the environment and adverse effects on non-target organisms.

Globally, as stated by Jha in 2000, land rehabilitation would cost about $141 billion. Again, financial assistance either in the form of debt or grant is necessitated for rehabilitation. Debt is first utilized for accelerating the over utilization of land and its resources, and then for rehabilitation schemes to address loss of land quality and related problems. International forums for fund utilization started to give loans in the name of rehabilitation of land. The rehabilitation activities also brought other problems concerning irrigation management, pesticides, plant hormones and fertilise use, transfer of tree plants from one place to other places, shifting stones, using wires in dams and several others. These have resulted in the further downgrading land condition. The investment made in the name of the restoration of the land has brought problems, like:

• The land is usually used for human activities such as: land clearing, agriculture, forestry, fisheries, grazing, water diversion, mineral extraction, fuel consumption, industrialisation, urbanisation, and recreation. The use of land for these purposes has increased the debt amount and brought problems like habitat destruction, deforestation, desertification, pollution, and eutrophication, loss of biotic diversity and human-animal loss.

In South Asia, which hosts one-quarter of the world’s population, the bulk of whom depend on agriculture, forestry and fishery (and where 60 percent of small farmers are women), food production is passing into corporate hands. This is resulting in a breakdown in the rural social structures. The existence of the small farmers as the central figure in the food production system is being threatened and so are the employment opportunities for agricultural laborers. There is growing landlessness and increased rural-urban migration bringing in its wake a whole host of social and economic problems.

Secondary food systems such as forest and water bodies (for fish) that are a vital source of food for the poor particularly during "famine" are being depleted fast under the onslaught of liberalization. Under the new agriculture, non-food grain production is growing faster than food grain production. And within food crops, the trend is towards so called high value and exotic foods. Production of coarse cereals and pulses is declining.

These changes in cropping patterns have led to greater dependence on imported food; and food imports are rising rapidly. Nepal, India and Pakistan, which until recently were food sufficient, have turned food-importers for staple foods. (PAN, 1997)

In Pakistan, where prime farmland is already under stress because of heavy waterlogging and salinity, 68 percent of the cultivators own land as small as three acres, way below the "official" subsistence level. While the area under food crops (wheat, rice, maize, jowar, bajra and barley) went up by 22 percent in the past two decades, that under cash crops (mainly cotton, sugarcane and tobacco) grew by 45 percent. Plagued by wheat shortages, the country is now planning to raise its wheat yield. (PAN, 1997)

"Over the period of liberal trade regime since 1987-88, Pakistan has started relying more on imports of wheat, edible oils and pulses (milk is an exception). These four products account, on average, for about two-thirds of the total food consumption and four-fifths of the total calorie and protein intake for the lower income groups (1991 study)," says Shahrukh Rafi Khan of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute of Pakistan. Capabilities of the poor have eroded over the structural adjustment period in Pakistan, with real wages sharply falling, unemployment rising and average household income falling-all of which have a serious impact on the poor. (PAN, 1997)

In Bangladesh, landlessness has been increasing heavily-from 34 percent among the rural population in the 1970s to 68.8 percent now; land rights of the Adivasis (indigenous peoples) in the forest area are ignored, as the forests are logged and illegally felled. Improper land distribution is leaving vast areas of fertile land under used and unused which is hampering food security at the household as well as national level. Meanwhile, there is a massive conversion of prime land for shrimp cultivation for exports, damaging the fragile ecosystem permanently (CPAN, 1997).

There is also rising concern in Bangladesh about how the monocrop-based agriculture adopted in the past decade undermines the country’s environmental and natural resource base. Modern agricultural technologies and international trade have also displaced women from agriculture and disempowered them, affecting women’s and children’s health. Women have neither access to resources nor ownership of land. (PAN, 1997)

Sri Lanka, a predominantly small-farmer economy was one of the first Asian countries to go in for Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) back in 1977-78. After 19 years of these programmes and liberalisation of agriculture, the country now suffers extreme rural poverty and widespread malnutrition, particularly among women and children. Sri Lanka, in fact, presents a stark example of how structural adjustment programmes, and the concept of "comparative advantages" when applied to the production of basic food grains, can play havoc with a country’s rural economy.

Nepal is an agricultural country where more than 80 percent of the economically active workers have been engaged in agriculture in their own lands or in rented or contracted lands. Only 17 percent of Nepal’s total area is agricultural land. The regional variations are substantial: for instance, the plain region, constituting only 17 percent of Nepal’s total area, contains 49 percent of its total agricultural land. The land owned is highly fragmented. Most of the landless poor belong to the ethnic minorities. (Mukherjee, et. al. 2000)

Agro-ecologically, Nepal can be divided into four broad ecological zones, namely: tropical, subtropical, temperate and alpine. The mountain environment (socio-economic and agro-ecosystems) has been correctly characterized by six specific parameters, namely: diversity, marginality, fragility, inaccessibility, niche, and adoptions (Jodha, 1990, and Pratap, 1996). Jodha correctly points out that agricultural and general development strategies for the mountain areas of the Hind Kush Himalayas (HKH) received little promotion of sustainable and productivity promotion measures, and strategies evolved in the non-mountain context were applied.

In South East Asia, Thailand, a food exporting country, saw a "spectacular expansion of agricultural land (mainly by extensive deforestation) up the 70s which propelled agricultural as well as industrial growth. In the late 70s to the 80s, agricultural land was increasingly shifted from the production of rice, the staple food, to commercial and export crops (mainly cassava, sugarcane, and rubber) which, among the other things, caused stagnation in agriculture.

Despite the accelerated industrialization, over 70 percent of the population still lives off the land. But the rapid changes are "pushing the poor aside, and leaving an increasing gap between the rich and the poor. Vast changes have occurred in real life, exacerbated by landlessness and the breakdown of culture and family relationships."

The persistent and aggravated deterioration of rural areas in turn causes other social problems such as city slums, the urban poor, crime, prostitution, etc. all of which are on the increase.

About 2.5 million families do not own land. There are 500,000 farming families and two million families who depend on cash crops such as cassava, sugarcane and rubber and their number is rapidly expanding. The share of rice in the gross domestic product from agriculture dropped steeply from 42.3 percent during 1961-66 (first plan) to 19.2 percent during 1987-91 (sixth plan), and that of cassava increased from 1.8 percent in the same period. (PAN, 1997)

Human, social and economic systems must remain within the carrying capacity of Planet Earth. Carrying capacity is defined here as the maximum number of human population that can be supported by a particular ecosystem or eco-region or physical landscape on a continued basis without irreversibly degrading the health and ecological processes. It is the health and the productive capacity of the ecosystem or agro-ecosystem that preserves and maintains biological diversity, soil fertility, watershed protection, and other material requirements needed by the human community for long-term sustainability. The human community must maintain the health or ecological integrity of the system to meet the basic needs of the people. (ACTCOM, 1996)

The right to food is also a right to safe quality of food. The dominant system is based on the monoculture of food crops and the use of hazardous chemicals (pesticides, herbicides, hormones and fertilisers). This system has, on one hand polluted the land and water, critically undermining the productive capacity of these resources, and, on the other hand, produced food which is rendered unsafe by high systemic content of the chemicals. Pregnant women and children in particular need health and nutritious food yet, often, they are the victims of unsafe and hazardous food items. (ACTCOM, 1996)

The key issue, in terms of the impoverishment of human population, environmental degradation as well as for sustainable development, is one of equity-as a major requirement internationally, nationally and inter-generationally. The equitable distribution of income, natural resources, and power is a major cause of both continued impoverishment of people and degradation of natural environment. Therefore, the principles of equity becomes the cornerstone of the conceptual framework for the analysis of land use and sustainable land production system. Equity can be analysed from three major dimensions-economic, political and social. (ACTCOM, 1996)

The colonial expropriation of the resources and the wealth of the global South within the last few hundred years has led to the concentration of poverty in the South and accumulation of wealth in the North. The economically and politically dominant groups accumulated wealth in their hands during the period of rapid economic growth in most of the countries in the world. This has, consequently, led to the widening of the gap between the rich and the poor within countries and between the North and the South (ACTCOM, 1996), and land has been a major determining factor for this.

The consequences of the structural inequalities inherent in the global economic system are due to international debt crisis. Creditors generally believe that the crisis was generated by ill-conceived policies and misappropriation of funds in the debtor countries. They see the solution of this crisis in free market policies and more investment in private sector whereas the so-called debtors believe that the causes of this crisis are the rise in interest rate globally, the fall in commodity prices, the collapse of the world trade in early 1980s, and transnational corporations benefiting from the policies and loans. The rich countries, the creditors benefited, not the debtor countries. The Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) imposed by the World Bank and International Monetary on the debtor countries have negatively impacted the poor and their environment in developing countries. The economies of developing countries have been structurally changed and modified to serve the interests of creditors, which, in effect, have debilitated the economy of the debtors and marginalized the majority of people. Structural Adjustment Programs has accelerated the rate of the exploitation of natural resources with a corresponding increase in the rate of environmental degradation, and negatively impacted agriculture and food production by mandating the debtor countries’ economies to a high percentage of export earning for debt repayment. The food exporting countries became net importers. It has also severely eroded health which has severely affected vulnerable sectors, namely, women, children, handicapped and senior citizens. Governments of developing countries do what they are instructed by IMF, WB and the creditors who first decide on the tariff for electricity, water and the prices of the commodities to be increased for debt servicing. In some countries, more than 50 percent of GNP has gone to debt servicing, critically undermining the social and economic security of their people. Creditors like the IMF and WB are not in the least concerned with the plight of people in developing countries. (ACTCOM, 1996)

Such development approaches that accelerate land use intensification and high input use for agricultural productivity, large-scale harnessing of location specific production possibilities, and market integration for generating more income options, and their impacts, must be carefully reviewed within the framework of debtor countries specifications. Such development approaches and their impacts may, on one hand, fail to respond to the imperatives of resource characteristics (mountain habitats and ecology and their linkages) and, on the other hand, accentuate the poverty processes. Policy makers and researchers must address ecological and socio-economic concerns within the framework of the geographical location specificities described above. (ACTCOM) Nepal, where SAPs were introduced over the last decade, saw a heavy shift from food grain cultivation to cut flowers and cash crops for export; a rice-exporting country (Nepal) 20 years ago, today it imports 30 percent of its rice requirements. Non-implementation of land reforms, urbanisation and industrialization, denial of easy financial assistance and other support services to small farmers, ecological degradation from high-input agriculture, among others, has led to massive displacement. And increased marginalisation of women who form the bulk of agricultural workers, had increased food insecurity (PAN, 1997).

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