PRODUCING POWER AT THE LOCAL LEVEL
by
Dr Robert Waddell (a founder of APACE)
Development: the conventional wisdom
Many of our problems have their roots in conventional economic theory. It follows, then, that the first and most important task is to inject ecological and political realities into economic theory.
Hitherto the notion that we live in a finite world has never seriously entered the equation. If the idea has ever entered anyone's head it has no doubt been filed in that capacious and convenient basket labelled ceteris paribus. For the traditional economist resources never run out; you only have to raise the price and more of the resource becomes available. In this connection Herman Daly once said in a talk in Sydney University that he had never noticed any positive correlation between prices and the diameter of the earth.
There is, of course, a continuing and unresolved argument between the doomsayers and the optimists regarding the impact of human activities on our planet and this enables the optimists to assert that we - that is both the `developed' and `developing' countries - can continue to develop our economies in traditional ways without serious ecological consequences.
The optimists may be right and it may be that new technologies may come to the rescue in the nick of time but it is our contention that no prudent person should take such an eventuality for granted. The prudent `no regrets' course is to assume the worst and to take appropriate action.
In this context devising `appropriate action' is the task of scientists and technologists on the one hand and political economists on the other. Here the term `political economist' is used deliberately in its nineteenth century sense to denote a person who realises that in the real world politics and economics are inextricably intertwined and that any effective economic prescription must take into account political realities.
For a current example of traditional economic thinking we shall choose a discussion paper put out recently by the Australian government's official aid arm AIDAB (now AusAid) titled 'Ecologically sustainable development in international development cooperation'. The paper was partly based on the findings of the Brundlandt Report Our Common Future(Ref.1) , and many of the Brundlandt arguments are to be found there. One of the arguments is that rich countries are the potential buyers of Third World commodities and also the providers of the capital and technology without which the Third World cannot develop. It thus follows that a recession in the `North' must necessarily result in recession or stagnation in the `South'. Growth in conventional economic parlance means an increase in per capita GNP; this is indeed the measure by which people determine whether a country is `developed', `less developed' or `least developed'. From this it follows that the chief objective of most development plans is to raise per capita GNP in the quickest and most effective way. Up to now the practice has been to identify a country's richest resources, whether of minerals or fish or timber or agricultural land or abundant cheap labour, and then to exploit these assets, usually with the help of foreign capital, loans, technology and expertise. Such a strategy will undoubtedly raise per capita GNP but whether it will result in an improved quality of life for the bulk of the population or an undevastated environment is another matter.
The Brundlandt message, for all the talk about the environment and non-renewable resources, appears to be that the way out of our predicament - namely the problems posed by poverty and a deteriorating environment - is `more of the (slightly modified) same'. More growth by the rich in order to provide for more growth by the poor.
The history of the last few `development decades' suggests that all too often this type of development results, among other things, in concentration of economic power in resource-rich areas, rapid and unplanned urbanisation, increased reliance on imported goods to the detriment of local manufactures, creation of urban slums, `dietary imperialism' (e.g. substitution of Coca-Cola for coconut milk), opportunities for bribery and corruption in connection with the granting of permits and licences, and wholesale degradation of the natural environment through industrial pollution, uncontrolled mining and logging and inappropriate agricultural practices.
We are certainly in favour of change which results in improvements in health, nutrition, education, population control and all the other usual desiderata, but we are not in favour of a mindless pursuit of growth as usually defined. Exponential growth (i.e. a constant annual percentage increase) is a recipe for cancer not ecological sustainability.
AusAID's argument is that `without the assistance of developed countries, developing countries may be unable to achieve and maintain an acceptable standard of living. They will fall increasingly behind in technology, and at the same time be forced to degrade both local and global environments'. In this connection several points need to be made:
1. The responsibility for the degradation of the global environment lies overwhelmingly with the developed and not the developing countries.
2. Many developed countries such as the USA, Japan and Germany are exporting polluting industries and their industrial wastes to developing countries.
3. Some of the ex-Third World countries which have the highest growth rates, for example South Korea and Taiwan, are precisely those which now have the greatest pollution problems.
4. AusAID goes on to say that `developing countries are more vulnerable to environmental degradation than richer countries and are less able to deal with it. Excessive soil erosion, deforestation, and pollution can be avoided through the responsible management of natural resources. Such management can lead to improved economic growth and ecologically sustainable development.' These sentiments are impeccable but they lay any Australian speaker open to a charge of gross hypocrisy when one considers Australia's environmental record. The Malaysian government, for instance, is well aware that we, along with other rich countries, long ago destroyed most of our forest resources and it therefore rejects moves by conservationists in Australia and elsewhere to stop the import of tropical timber and to dissuade the Malaysians from logging the rainforests of Sarawak, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands.
5. Much of the damage has been caused by inappropriate (`Northern') technology combined with inappropriate development strategies. AusAID reckons that without the help of the rich the poor countries will increasingly `fall behind'. We suggest the truth may be quite different. It may be that the developed countries have imposed development strategies and types of technology which are quite unsuitable for local conditions and that it is these strategies and technologies which are responsible for much of the environmental damage.
Development: towards an alternative approach
The major misconception which we have to clear away is that `developing' countries have full control of their destinies. This is patently not so. Anybody who has any knowledge of the political realities of these countries will know that in most cases the pattern of economic development is dictated in great part by one or other, or all, of the following bodies: the former colonial power (where applicable), international corporations, national and international aid agencies, foreign banks and international finance agencies such as the World Bank, the IMF and the Asian Development Bank. The myth nevertheless persists that these bodies are merely carrying out the wishes of the host government and that if things do not turn out well it is the fault of the recipients of aid, loans and advice and not the donors.
Let us take the case of logging, which is now considered to be the biggest threat to the environment in the South Pacific. It is the case that well before independence the colonial governments made inventories of the resources of the colonies and earmarked certain places as `areas of opportunity'. After independence the new national governments continued the practices of their predecessors and proceeded to encourage and indeed expedite the exploitation of these areas of opportunity. Lacking indigenous means of doing this effectively they called on foreign firms and foreign aid to supply the necessary expertise and finance. By now the die had been cast. The leaders of these countries, persuaded that growth in GNP was the key to development, now found themselves saddled with the obligation to service loans repayable in foreign currency with the result that their countries' economies became heavily export-oriented and less and less self-sufficient. They also found they had little control over how that foreign currency was to be earned.
Most countries have national forestry policies, full of rhetoric about sustainable and responsible husbandry. The reality is quite different. Even before Papua New Guinea achieved independence foreign logging companies were bribing local leaders in the provinces in a successful attempt to get logging concessions out of them. Nowadays the scale of bribery and corruption has increased exponentially as has the simultaneous destruction of the rainforests.(Ref.2) It is easy to blame the local people for the corruption but it was not they who started it. Moreover it was not they who had access to the information about the results of large scale deforestation. The contest was unequal, a battle between impressionable and ill-informed villagers on the one hand and sophisticated, efficient and unscrupulous business corporations on the other. Unfortunately the corruption which started in a small way at the bottom in colonial times has now reached the top and many government ministers in Papua New Guinea and elsewhere have been co-opted into the system and, in some cases, have become business partners in these foreign-owned ventures. Similar stories can also be told about corruption, environmental degradation and disruption of traditional life-styles in other areas such as fisheries and mining.
How is this process to be reversed ?
In an issue of UNEP's Our Planet, Maurice Strong, who was the Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro, argues that developing countries should not imitate the behaviour of developed countries. He writes:
Developing countries must design their own model to provide meaningful participation for the vast numbers of people who will be by-passed if they follow the development patterns of the North. The industrialized countries will need to reshape their model to make it more participatory and responsive to environmental needs and social needs. They must also provide stronger policy, financial and technological support to developing countries in making their transition to sustainable development.(Ref.3)
These are brave words but they do not reflect the way the real world works. While we have already agreed that developing countries should abandon the `go-for-growth' model we must take issue with the notion that developing countries are free to `develop their own model'. We have already pointed out that the governments of developing countries are not masters in their own house; we should also make the point that it does not suit the interests of the rich countries that the poorer countries should adopt alternative models. Whatever the rhetoric may be, the extraction of minerals and timber and marine life from the developing countries is not being pursued primarily for the benefit of the host countries but to satisfy the needs of the extractors. There is, furthermore, no sign that the major aid donors and international finance organisations are using their aid and finance to promote self-sufficiency or ecologically sustainable development. To change the mind-sets of the donors and expert advisers, not to mention those of the largely Western/Northern educated indigenous elite, would require a cultural revolution of gigantic proportions, and yet this is what Maurice Strong, himself a business man of a fairly conventional kind, is advocating.
To see that the prospect of such a radical change's occurring is becoming ever more remote one has only to look at the completion of the Uruguay Round and the formation of the World Trade Organisation as the successor to the GATT. This is a good example of the way in which the freedom of `developing' countries `to design their own model' is being even more restricted.
Lauded as a great blow for freedom of trade and a boost to global economic development, the Uruguay Round agreements, if strictly implemented, could have grave adverse implications for `developing' countries. `The same law', as some ancient sage had it, `for the lion and the goat is tyranny'. The very instruments which a government seeking to increase self-sufficiency might wish to use are likely to contravene the new rules of world trade. The Uruguay Round is designed to make every country an open economy, one which may have an open market for its exports but equally one which has to let imports into the country without restriction. This is a system which is designed to favour the existing power-holders and to make it difficult for new entrants to improve their situation.
This loss of national sovereignty is underlined by Dr Graham Dunkley:
The point to remember is that even before the UR [Uruguay Round] we have had the emergence of global monopolies and a highly integrated short-term capital market. This has already proceeded to such an extent that even basic economics text-books now say that national policy autonomy has been reduced and that in some circumstances fiscal policy can be ineffective..... The UR, which only goes part way towards free trade will substantially accelerate the globalisation of economies and undermine national sovereignty to some extent. Full free trade could almost eliminate the active economic role of the nation state. (Ref 4)
If it is difficult, not to say impossible to change the minds of the power-holders, the only alternative is to work from the bottom upwards and create grass-roots resistance to destruction of habitat, life-style and self-reliance. For this to succeed there has to be a concrete demonstration that such a strategy is a feasible alternative and can produce the desired results. Such a demonstration is to be found in Solomon Islands.
There are several reasons why logging is continuing on a large scale in the Pacific: the logging companies' commercial desire to exploit the last remaining stands of old growth rainforest timber; the desire of governments to earn foreign exchange in the shortest time possible; and the villagers' need for a cash income. For the villagers to resist this process there has to be a way of preserving their rainforest while at the same time satisfying their cash needs. One such way has arisen out of a joint operation between the villagers of Solomon Islands and APACE, a Sydney-based voluntary non-government organisation devoted to the promotion, design and application of appropriate technology.(Ref.5)
Over a period of fifteen years APACE has been involved, at the invitation of the villagers, in the designing and implementing of micro-hydro electricity generating systems in several villages in Solomon Islands. In these villages, initially in the Western Province, the people marshalled all their resources and worked co-operatively to create all the necessary infrastructure. The commissioning of the first system was not a quick fix but the culmination of years of preparation and consultation with the villagers. It was preceded and followed by courses of training in the operation, maintenance and repair of the system. This has been the pattern of all subsequent installations. In line with APACE's general philosophy, the bringing of electricity to the village was not seen as an end in itself but rather as a means of enhancing the independence and self-reliance of the community as a whole. To this end everyone in the village - men, women and children - was involved in the process and everyone received a benefit and therefore had a stake in ensuring a successful outcome.
A prominent feature of APACE's operations has been the involvement of women in the new technology. So often in the past when new technologies have been introduced into villages only the men have been involved and instructed in their operation. Women have not had a say in the planning or been consulted as to how they would like the technology to be used for their benefit.(Ref.6)
The people in these villages are now supplied with electrical power and can enjoy a number of benefits: they can run small cash-earning businesses such as bread-making, furniture making, and copra-drying; they can also have refrigeration facilities for the storage of fish and vegetables, not to mention pharmaceuticals. All this has enabled them to keep their rain-forest intact and to avoid all the problems that the loss of the rainforest had caused other villages, namely, loss of top-soil, loss of innumerable plant and animal species, muddying of fresh water sources and siltation of reefs and consequent loss of marine life.
In the case of Solomon Islands, APACE's Program Development Officer, Ms Donnella Bryce, and its Women in Development Officer, Ms Sasha Giffard, a mechanical engineer, together with six women from one of the villages, facilitated the first of a national series of women's workshops. The object of these workshops was to impart a knowledge of the workings and uses of micro-hydro electricity systems and their impact on village life. The women from the village where the first workshop was held had already been involved in the planning and installation of a system and were keen to pass on their knowledge and experience to other women who were anxious to have similar systems in their own villages.
Following the success of the first few installations a plan was drawn up to bring electricity to a large number of villages in the Western Province; this was the Western Province Rural Electrification Program.
In February 1995 the process took a further great step forward during a unique ceremony which took place in Honiara, Solomon Islands. A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Solomon Islands government and APACE was signed by the President of APACE and the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Mines, Energy and Minerals on behalf of the Solomon Islands government.
The Memorandum of Understanding represents a great advance in the process of devolving power - in every sense of the word - to the people in rural areas. It was a bold step for the government to take and showed great trust in the ability of the villagers and APACE to do something which everywhere else has been the prerogative of a centralised authority. In this case, however, the decentralised generation of electricity has been sanctioned by the Solomon Islands Electricity Authority, which will ensure that safety regulations are being observed. In the words of APACE President, Paul Bryce, `This event is the beginning of a new era of opportunity for Solomon Islands. Their government has taken a courageous and trail-blazing step, recognising that rural energy needs will only be satisfied by respecting the Melanesian customary strengths and traditions.'(Ref.7)
SIVEC
In addition, as a consequence of the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding, a working group called Solomon Islands Village Electrification Council (SIVEC) has been set up to draft a national rural electrification policy and to design an appropriate organisation to implement a community-based hydro-electrification programme.
We may now ask what the macro-economic implications are of such a bottom-up strategy.
Our contention is that so far economic development strategies have been formulated from the viewpoint of the developed countries. These countries see the developing countries as sources of raw materials, cash crops of all kinds and relatively cheap labour; the task of the local governments, in their opinion, is to exploit these resources in the most efficient way. This strategy leads to all the sorts of problems to which we have already alluded.
The alternative strategy is for the country concerned to put its own interests first and then to consider how and to what extent it will respond to the interests of others.
In an article titled `National Self-sufficiency' Maynard Keynes wrote:
I sympathise, therefore, with those who would minimise, rather than with those who would maximise, economic entanglement among nations. Ideas, knowledge, science, hospitality, travel - these are the things which should of their nature be international. But let goods be homespun whenever it is reasonably and conveniently possible, and above all, let finance be primarily national.(Ref.8)
Keynes's arguments in favour of self-sufficiency, although written in the 1930s have much in common with those underlying Dunkley's critique of the Uruguay Round in the 1990s. It is this pursuit of self-sufficiency which is the course we should like to recommend for countries like Solomon Islands.
On the face of it a small island economy has few defences against the forces of international capital but that is no excuse for taking no remedial action. There is happy medium between total self-sufficiency - which is impossible - and loss of control over the economy and the devastation of the country's natural resources and environment. The SIVEC agreement is a small but significant step in this direction.
When fully implemented the SIVEC agreement will have made a quantifiable contribution to the national economy, the environment and to national self-sufficiency and self-reliance.
The introduction of micro-hydro electricity into villages in Solomon Islands has stimulated the domestic economy. Before its introduction many villagers felt compelled to allow the logging companies to exploit their forest resources in order to raise the cash for various necessary purposes such as paying tax, making contributions to the missions, buying basic manufactured goods and fuel. The availability of electrical power has enabled the villagers to pursue various small cash-earning activities such as bread making, furniture making, drying copra and storing fish and vegetables in cool rooms for later sale in the local market. These are all sustainable activities in contrast to the `one-off' payments which they would otherwise receive from logging payments. Furthermore the money thus earned circulates within the country with the usual multiplier effects, whereas the greater part of the proceeds from logging go abroad and help to create employment in foreign countries. It is also the case that insofar as money is earned by the government from logging royalties it tends to be spent in the towns on imported goods rather than used to improve conditions in the village. In other words the so-called `trickle-down' effect is conspicuous by its absence.
The environment benefits in several ways. The initial impetus for designing and installing the first micro-hydro system arose from the anxiety of the villagers to preserve their section of the rainforest. They had seen the environmental devastation suffered by other villages and were determined not to allow the same thing to happen to them. To do this they had to find an alternative method of earning cash. They had originally been given a diesel generating set with which to generate electricity for their projects but it broke down, spare parts were unavailable, there were no workshop facilities and nobody had been trained in the operation, maintenance and repair of the system. There was also the problem of paying for the fuel which was costly and, of course, imported. The process which ended in the installation of the micro-hydro system followed a different course. There was a long preparatory period during which the project was thoroughly discussed with the villagers, the design was adapted to local conditions, the infrastructure was built by the people and the installation was a joint effort of APACE and the villagers. Training courses were arranged and were carried out both on location and in the University of Technology, Sydney and in Gymea Technical College. There is now a small team of trained people who can act as advisers and consultants to other villages which also wish to have micro-hydro systems. The benefit to the environment is three-fold: the rainforest has remained intact, no carbon fuels are needed for the operation of the system, and there is an end to the soil erosion and siltation of reefs which accompanied the logging in other areas.
The introduction of micro-hydro electricity to the villages was never regarded as an end in itself but rather a catalyst for community development. The very fact that all the villagers were involved in its installation and that all benefited from its introduction created an esprit de corps which spilled over into other areas of village life. Paradoxically the advent of the new technology engendered a drive to recreate the self-sufficiency which had been the distinguishing feature of traditional rural life. The practice of using money earned from the logging companies to buy tinned food was replaced by a concentration on growing food for domestic consumption and for sale on the local market. More good agricultural land was now to be used for the growing of vegetables and fruit rather than cocoa or coffee. Furthermore there was a move, encouraged by APACE amongst others, to use organic gardening methods which not only obviated the need to use imported chemical fertilisers but helped to improve and sustain the quality of the soil. In this connection a Permaculture specialist and member of APACE, Tony Jansen, is `developing a new APACE sustainable agriculture project called Integrated Kastom Agriculture for Solomon Islands. This project aims to address and propose solutions to problems of environmental degradation which are due to unsustainable trends in subsistence food production. The project will involve researching important traditional methods from a number of areas and integrating them with more intensive methods drawn from permaculture and organic farming. The project will include supporting a number of village-based models of integrated food gardening (to be developed by the communities themselves), a training program, and the development of a seed bank and organic farmers' network.(Ref.9)
The signing of the SIVEC agreement marks the culmination of this progress towards greater self-reliance. The very composition of the SIVEC planning committee tells its own story: represented on it are not only the government and members of parliament but people from the villages and officers of participating NGOs; the chairperson is a former MP and Minister who was himself involved in the micro-hydro project from its inception.
We are not suggesting that SIVEC is going to alter the whole future course of Solomon Islands' development but we do claim that it demonstrates the potential which the people possess to control their own destiny.
References
1 World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future, Oxford University Press, 1987
2 Goh Kiam Seng, `Environmental Issues in the Asia and Pacific Region', a paper presented to `Greening of Asia' conference, Sydney University, October 1990.
3 Strong, M. `Time to discuss new models', Our Planet, Vol.7 No.2, UNEP Nairobi, 1995.
4 Dunkley G. `The Uruguay Round of GATT: Benefits and Hidden Costs' 20th Political Economy Conference, Sydney University, 1994
5 A full account is given in Waddell,R. Replanting the Banana Tree, APACE, 1993. Copies obtainable for $A15 from APACE c/o UTS, P.O.Box 123, Broadway, NSW, 2007.
6. Rogers, B. The Domestication of Women, Tavistock Publications, London. 1980
7. `APACE agreement with Solomon Islands government', The Anchor,No.3 1995, University of Technology, Sydney.
8. Keynes,J.M., `National Self-sufficiency', quoted in Wheelwright, E.L. Capitalism, Socialism or Barbarism, Australian and New Zealand Book Company, Sydney, 1978, pp 21-22
9. APACE Newsletter 62 1995
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