The success of the Uruguay Round is a quantum leap in the economic colonialism of the last century – and Free Trade is not only in goods but services, where tariffs are no longer accepted. Services, in fact, are critical because, world wide, it is the economic sector which is increasing the fastest.
Now, consider a small country like Papua New Guinea, or New Zealand, a weak country which really takes this Free Trade propaganda seriously. In Time magazine there is an interesting article, “Feeling Fleeced”, about New Zealand. They have made everything free out there. The result is that the country is on the verge of collapse. One in four manufacturing jobs has disappeared. What chance does a small manufacturing company have against the Japanese, the Taiwanese and the Americans? None at all. They have gone bankrupt. It is the most shamefaced colonialism that the world has seen.
That is not all. There are investments, imports, intellectual properties, TRIPS and TRIMS. Countries shall no longer be allowed to refuse foreign investments on any ground. They all have to pay all these extra taxes – royalties – on patents.
We can see even the patenting of seeds. This is tremendously important in this area. The seed companies have all been brought by the large agro-chemical or oil companies. They are now developing, in their laboratories, all sorts of new hybrids, genetically engineered seeds amongst other things. These seeds are bred to function with the pesticides and fertilisers they sell, as part of a package. These seeds, while they are fertile, are not stable and have to be bought every year.
So the farmer who has for thousands of years put aside his seed for the next year’s planting, can no longer do so. He has to buy seeds from the seed company every year, and these seeds require pesticides and fertilisers. As you know the Green Revolution seeds are very sensitive to fertiliser application, whereas the traditional seeds in India are not at all sensitive and produce very high yields as Dr. Richharia of Bhopal has been at pains to point out for decades. As a result of all this, the developing countries will have to pay between 60 to 100 billion dollars extra every year to the industrial world.
It is difficult to see the advantage of this Free Trade, the ‘level playing field’ where everyone competes on an equal footing. The last thing I would want, if I were to meet Mr. Mike Tyson, the world heavy weight boxing champion, is a level of playing field! Countries that are not advanced economically have no chance, they are finished.
This whole GATT enterprise is to create a world-wide Free Trade Zone. They want to create a world in which corporations can do exactly what they want in which there are no longer social constraints of any kind. It does not matter if their activities destroy communities. That is what Free Trade is all about. Not freedom for the people to do what they want, but freedom for the corporations to do anything; freedom to pollute; freedom to destroy the sources; freedom to destroy communities, use up their functions, marginalise them and push them into slums; freedom to build Narmada and Tehri dams; freedom to go on destroying the ozone layer; freedom to change and destabilise the climate so that it becomes uninhabitable to humans and other living things – that is the sort of freedom that GATT is trying to obtain for itself – and what we need is the exact opposite.
If we want to survive on this planet we need massively to reduce the impact of our activities on an environment that is ever less capable of supporting us. To do that, is to reduce the scale of our activities, to return to the village and small communities that Mahatma Gandhi talked about, to conduct our activities at that level and to cater, not for a world market, but for a village market: at most regional markets. If we have a future on this planet that is the only possible scenario for us. And to get there we need to move in exactly the opposite direction to the one we are being enticed to move in.
Questions and answers
Do you really think that the role played by development, literacy for example in reaching the goal of greater life expectancy, providing drinking water or in reducing infant mortality, has been undesirable?
I fail to understand why literacy is such a big deal. The trouble is we identify education with western education. We totally ignore traditional educational systems. Yet even the most primitive tribes – in the south of Tanzania there is a tribe called Hadsa who are considered highly primitive. They have a vocabulary of over 10,000 words – and we have trouble using 20!
Most of the population in England read only the Sun, the Star and the Mirror. You read these papers, they are filled, with sex scandals; pictures of all sorts of violence. There is nothing else. Is there anything worth reading in that at all? What is the point of all this literacy?
I recommend to you a book by Ananda Coomaraswamy called The Bugbear of Literacy. What is to be gained by literacy, I fail to see. Looking at the shelves of book shops today I would have thought it was counter productive to know how to read all that. Your traditional systems of education which did not involve literacy is much more superior in many ways to our western education.
As far as drinking water is concerned, in my view, development has had the opposite effect. We are now moving to a situation, as a result of development, in which drinking water is going to be increasingly difficult to find world wide. Between 35 to 40 percent of irrigation in America uses water which is mined, non-renewable water. All the industry in the south-west of America, and their irrigated agriculture is based on the use of a single aquifer, the Ogallala aquifer, which is very quickly being destroyed.
Throughout the Third World – look at the case of India – you find that the local communities have increasing difficulties in finding water because water is being siphoned away by large plantations and export orientated enterprises. Water is becoming a massive problem also because of the growth of eucalyptus plantations which are being planted for rayon and pulp. You have got tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of problem villages in the country where they have no water at all, whereas they had water 40 years ago.
The availability of water is largely determined by forest cover. In South-West Africa the destruction of forests has led to chronic water problems in which people have had to dig wells further down every year. The world wide water shortages are the direct consequence of economic development. The International Water Decade’s main function was to provide equipment for wells and tubes. But it did not do anything really to enable one to get more water.
Is it likely that we will reverse this trend of development? We might still be able to change or improve the situation through sustainable development.
It sounds very nice – sustainable development. But what is it? First of all, is such a thing possible? Is it possible to change indefinitely in one direction? There is no life process which does this. If economic or sustainable development involves increasing your impact on the environment, which it must do if you need to increase people’s consumption, then it cannot be done because, I am afraid to say, we have to face the fact that our planet is already too heavily exploited.
Wherever you look you will see that land is over grazed: whether it is England, America, France, any country, the land is over grazed. Our croplands are over cropped; our wetlands are over drained; our seas are over fished. The impact of these activities everywhere is very much greater than the environment can support, whatever the environment is. So what is sustainable development going to do?
If you read the Brundtland Report which documents the problem reasonably well, it ends up by telling you that you have got to increase the rate of economic growth from 3.5 to 4.5 percent in Africa, and also in other countries. The Secretary General essentially tells us that we have got to increase world GNP by five to ten times before the world can become sustainable. When you read a thing like that, you no longer have too much confidence in the term sustainability.
Even the World Bank – Robert Goodman and Herman Daly – produced a document on sustainable development, in which the first article by Goodman tells us that the world has reached its limits. We cannot go any further, even if there is anything to be gained by going further. He points out that there is a study which shows that we are already using up 40 percent Net Primary Production (NPP), by photosynthesis on the terrestrial area, that is 25 percent of the whole. If we double GNP we will be using 80 percent, and if we double it again we will be using 160 percent, at which point we need magicians, not industrialists, to go any further.
You cannot increase the impact any further; you have to reduce the impact. So we have to increase our welfare without increasing the impact which basically means returning to smaller scale societies. You may say it is very difficult to do that – it is, very difficult. But to go on in the present direction is not difficult, it is impossible.
How will you change the nature of man, reverse time?
I do not think you have to change the nature of man. Man has been around – or something that looks like man – for about three million years or so. He has only been an agriculturist for about 10,000 years, since the Neolithic revolution. He has only been an industrialist for 150 years, that also in a very limited part of the world, England, and a few other countries.
You cannot generalise about man, on the basis of 150 years in a history of three million. It is like locking a man up in a cupboard. Put a man about 70 or 80 years old in a cupboard, turn him upside down for two days, and then open the door and see what he is like. It is supposed to give an idea of how man normally is. It is not going to teach you the true nature of man because man was not designed to hang upside down in a cupboard for 48 hours.
This is what the industrial experience is. It is not a satisfactory sample of the experience of our species on this planet. And the sum is quite different. Man was designed to be part of a family. He needs a family, a community; he is naturally religious, he has a set of aesthetic needs, biological needs, social needs, spiritual needs. But he has done without these material goods, which play an enormous part in our lives today, until very recently. That is reason enough to suppose that Karl Polanyi was right, and that means that material needs are very relative. We need money today only because we need to buy our food. Before this we did not need money; people led very satisfactory lives without it.
So I do not think you need to change man’s nature. On the contrary it is because of man’s nature that we cannot accept the world we are creating. This is true. Watson, the Nobel laureate realised that people just did not like the world that science is creating and he actually stated that if man cannot adapt to the world science is creating then we have to change man. We will have to produce, by genetic engineering, a new type of robotic man who does not mind eating polluted food and drinking polluted water, and living without a family and a community in the most hideous industrial landscape. We will have to genetically engineer and change the nature of man if we are to continue in this direction.
All these problems are emanating from the developed rather than the developing countries?
What you have, said is a critical issue. It is precisely what the Third World delegates at the UNCED prepcom meetings are saying. They are saying that all these big problems are being created by you in the North, which is perfectly true, and therefore why should we do anything about it. You must do it. If we have to do something about it, we want to be paid to do it – to stop producing CFC’s for instance. You must pay us to set up the new technologies to make refrigerators without CFC’s. This has been the position of your Ministry of Environment, all your delegates and there is a lot in that. Most of my work has been aimed at England; the Blueprint for Survival was just that. We have got to change. We have got to decentralise our society and move back to smaller communities, conduct our economic activities at a smaller level. It is very much more important that we in the North should do this, than that you should do this.
Free Trade is not in the interest of the Third World countries and it is being pushed by us, or rather by the western corporations, you see, as a means of satisfying their requirements, not as a means of satisfying your requirement. I am not here to tell you what to do; I am here to tell you how I see these major issues at the moment. There are no arguments about the fact that we are creating the problems.
Living in village or tribal communities is not as idyllic as it sounds. There is a great deal of oppression in small communities too.
It is going to be very difficult to live again, in these sort of decentralised communities. Whenever I talk about tribes, it is pointed out to me that I am incapable of living in a tribe. Well, that is obviously true because I have not been brought up in a tribe. But my answer to that is I am degenerate, that I have been brought up in big cities and luxury resorts. My father used to run luxury hotels. I am a degenerate and I can only fit in a degenerate society. The society that I can fit into is not worth fitting into in the first place. It is really very difficult, but that does not mean one can argue against small communities.
You talk about the oppression within a community. There is tremendous public opinion which is very powerful in a community. It is so powerful that people do not dare divert from these traditional norms. It is very unpleasant for us, it is intolerable. We are used to doing what we would like to do. But nevertheless it is the only method of social control we have ever seen. The police do not solve the problem. In Montreal a few years ago the police went on strike. The whole population went berserk and invaded shops, smashed the place, assaulted people – in other words, went mad. There is, in fact, no alternative.
The only method of social control we know of is exerted by public opinion and effecting the traditional ideas. Force is oppressive, but I am not suggesting we go right back to the past. We cannot recreate the past. We cannot eradicate the experiences of last 150 years. We have to create something which had many things in common with the traditional forms of the past, without recreating it exactly as it was. We would be incapable of doing it.
The tribals too want the benefits of economic development.
The 100,000 people on the Narmada – the tribals – who are willing to drown, who say they are not going to move, I cannot believe that they are too much in favour of economic development somehow. They want to go on living their own lives. In Stockholm, Medha Patkar who was given the Right Livelihood Award, came with a tribal man from that area. I do not think these people are all that keen on economic development. Even if they are not, the point is how do we answer these questions?
As I see it governments are not going to want these types of societies. If you see the Soviet Union, they have gone back to their original states. This has meant a job loss for Mr. Gorbachev, and the rest of his cabinet is desperate to keep the thing going otherwise they lose their jobs. Governments are not going to be on the side of this type of decentralisation. I find it difficult to believe that they are. They often say they are, but they never are. Government needs lots of money to stay in power.
The British government needs 40 percent of GNP to stay in power, to provide people with services, like increasing the National Health Service and the education system. If governments do not have this money to spend, they get voted out. So they are hooked on development, because it is only development which will provide them this money. They need to stay in power. The Dutch government, I believe, costs 60 percent of GNP. So governments are very much in favour of economic development. It is not easy. I am not suggesting that there is a ready made solution.
Why do you assume that people would find living in villages attractive? Everyone I am sure would prefer to live in big urban cities.
I don’t. I accept that big centres are more fascinating, for people like you and me. I have been educated to be an urban man. The whole of my education is an urban education. So I have been taught by my upbringing and by my experience on this planet to enjoy a lot of things I find in cities which I probably would not find in some distant village. I moved to a small village, by the way, 17 years ago in Cornwall. Many of my colleagues live there and some of them went in for agriculture on a small scale, rather unsuccessfully, I might add! But they have come back to the city, because they are so involved in things in the city that they cannot live miles away. I believe that I have no answer to that. This is not the problem. The problem is the fact that however fascinating to you and me, this kind of development is not sufficient. We are looking at people as a whole, at the natural environment, climate and other much more important considerations.
Man is more comfortable now because of scientific and technological advancement. Man has landed on the moon, which means that science can provide the answers to many of our problems.
I do not think, really, that going to the moon is a remarkable achievement. It is very, very impressive, but does not solve any of the massive problems. Man has never suffered from not going to the moon. If you want pebbles there are plenty of pebbles, there are very wonderful pebbles, impressive pebbles, there are pebbles everywhere you go! This is not the problem. I was on a television programme years ago called Thanks for the frying pan, because they looked at the spin-offs from the moon shots, and the one spin-off they had was the non-stick frying pan. I think we can live without that.
I do not think these high technology things are necessary. We are being proposed all sorts of high-tech adventures at the moment. The National Academy of Sciences have just resolved the climate problem: putting up 50,000 one sq. km mirrors into space, you see, to reflect the sun’s rays away! These high-tech things are not serious proposals. I think going to the moon is a game – an amusing game – but no more. It does not solve things about living long.
Longevity is not going up. It went up for a while, and infant mortality was reduced. But in the western world we have not heard of an increase in the expectation of life. And now it is starting to fall. We are creating ideal conditions world wide for the spread of infections and disease. Every time you build dams you create a niche for masses of disease carrying bacteria, for malaria which gives blindness. When you cut a forest down we come in contact with all the parasites and animals which have lived in these forests, carrying the origins of malaria, yellow fever, and new diseases rampant now in Amazonia. Every single disease, in fact, except smallpox, seems to be increasing world wide. So all our high-tech medicines may have made some people more comfortable but it has not reduced incidence of disease.
What are all these high-tech things going to do for us? We make atom bombs, but is that a great thing? Is it better to wage war with atom bombs or with bows and arrows? I do not see any great advance in these technologies. If you look at the actual effect it is negative.
To abolish everything seems to be going a little too far.
We have done all sorts of things without knowing the impact. Our scientists exploded an atom bomb in a magnetic belt of this planet, about 20 years ago, without knowing what this belt is for or the effect upon this planet. People wanted to dig a hole through the crust of the earth. So scientists started digging a hole and spent 100 million on that but nothing came out of it. They stopped, thank God!
They are going on doing things without the foggiest idea of the consequence of what they are doing to the planet, because they do not understand things. If you do not understand things, for Christ’s sake do not change them because we know that the planet works very well without digging holes through it, or exploding hydrogen bombs. What we do not know is if the planet will continue to work with these changes. So if the argument is against changes, then let us turn to the sort of life that we do understand.
You are trying to project a visionary society for the sake of argument.
The minimum thing that should come out of these discussions is that we should question basis assumptions. One of our problems is that we do not do this. We assume that development is right, that free trade is right, we assume that these are the means of building up wealth. But how do we know this is the case? The experience of the last 30 years does not confirm these assumptions, so let us question them. But no one questions anything. The organisers of UNCED are not questioning these basic assumptions. This is reflected in their preparatory papers.
Even if we did want to change things, we are bullied into following a certain path. How do we ordinary people deal with these bullies? Is the need to follow austerities only for ordinary people or is it for all?
This is a key question. We are faced with massive problems which our governments are not solving. The British government, the American administration, refuse to accept that there is any connection between the global warming and the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which has increased temperatures between five to seven degrees. They will do nothing. Obviously there must be some way that people can take matters into their own hands and join organisations.
These Non-governmental Organisations are becoming very powerful. Greenpeace has three million members in America. Local communities must become more powerful in applying pressure on governments and international agencies and taking whatever action is required – non-violent action – to try and change our policies.
I am personally convinced that if we continue moving in this direction for long, we are moving towards extinction of our species. There is no question about that. With the global warming we are seeing, the planet is becoming more uninhabitable. We have to do these things ourselves. The only measures taken in England, by the British government, are those imposed on it by public opinion. So we have to do the job ourselves, there is no doubt about it.
Is that possible if our government is threatened by the United States of America?
There is no magical formula. There are a thousand things to do, to apply pressure in every way, to try and reverse current policies world wide. The environmental advisor to Britain’s Prime Minister gave a talk at the Law Society in which he actually foresaw the invasion of Europe by hordes of people from North Africa, whose land was submerged by the rising sea levels which will necessarily accompany the sort of global warming people are envisaging. He has talked quite happily about 300 – 400 million people crossing the Mediterranean, invading England, etc. But I am afraid his views are not apparent in the behaviour of our Prime Minister.
The National Academy of Sciences actually said America does not have to worry about global warming because it is a big country with lots of different climatic areas, but, hinting that if the southern part of America became uninhabitable – Georgia, Florida, California because it is too hot – we could shift these people off to Minnesota or something like that – an astonishing suggestion on the part of the National Academy of Sciences. About a quarter of the population of Mexico has already moved into America. Texas and California are rapidly becoming Mexican. This is a perfectly possible scenario actually proposed by establishment people today.
We live in a world which is so rapidly becoming totally destabilised that almost anything is possible now.
·Ω·
Leave a Comment