Turn of the Screw
by David Moberg
In These Times magazine, April 2000
Central African forests that once echoed with the sounds of
wildlife are now filled with a "remorseless silence,"
Chicago Tnbune correspondent Paul Salopek reported recently. "It
is the silence of nature drowned out by the babble of human overpopulation,"
he wrote of his recent journey to Cameroon, describing roads penetrating
once-pristine forests and local hunters peddling "bush meat"
in the cities.
The worldwide threat to wildlife and ecosystems that support
them is increasingly catastrophic. Since the industrialized countries
have obliterated many of their wild places, most of the last great
spans of wilderness are located in less-developed countries. While
the chainsaws of industrial loggers and the machinery of miners
and oil drillers account for much of the damage in the remaining
forests, poor people-desperate for land-wreak havoc as well.
But the problem is less the "babble of human overpopulation"
than the brutality of the global economic system that entraps
countries like Cameroon. This cage-a combination of national debt
peonage and free-market fundamentalist policies-destroys human
lives as assuredly as it wipes out plants and wildlife, often
pitting the most exploited people against the environment.
Cameroon became entrapped when it sank deeper in debt as the
price of its oil exports dropped sharply after 1982. It turned
for help in 1988 to the International Monetary Fund and the World
Bank, which loaned money but demanded policies that led to currency
devaluation, budget cuts, privatization of public services and
widespread hardship. Under the IMF regime, meager education spending
stagnated, incomes declined and the debt burden more than doubled.
Cameroon was classified as a Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC).
In 1994 the IMF pushed Cameroon to rapidly accelerate its
timber exports. The number of logging enterprises nearly doubled
within a year, and lumber exports grew by 50 percent in the following
year. The forests were devastated, but the policies didn't help
relieve debt: World lumber prices were dropping, partly because
other countries were boosting their logging exports, often under
IMF pressure.
Cameroon's experience was not an anomaly. Although the HIPC
designation was part of a plan to boost these national economies,
in most cases HlPCs' debt burdens increased, spending on education
and health declined, poverty worsened and the environment was
ravaged. A Friends of the Earth analysis of U.N. data shows that
the loss of forest was 50 percent greater in HlPCs.
Like many countries, Cameroon was sending more money back
to rich countries than they were getting in aid: In 1996, according
to the debt-relief group Jubilee 2000, Cameroon paid out $2.20
in debt service for every dollar it received in grants. Debt service
is now 6 percent of GNP, more than education and health spending
combined.
The rich countries have begun to reduce or write off some
of the HIPC debt and have proposed that conditions for future
loans be more development-oriented. But the process is moving
much too slowly. And there is little indication that rich countries
are willing to try a new approach that focuses on balanced and
sustainable development rather than the quick-fix export of raw
materials. Even worse, according to Jubilee 2000, of the 36 HlPCs
that were supposed to benefit from a debt relief initiative agreed
upon last year, 15 will actually pay more in debt service after
they finish going through the HIPC process than they do now.
World Bank President James Wolfensohn has called debt cancellation
a "whimsical" idea that would "screw up the market."
Yet pursuing the payment of debts from these countries is criminal,
"screwing up" the lives of a billion people and devastating
the environment. Debt cancellation is a first step toward reviving
the economies of these nations in ways that raise living standards
and protect ecosystems. The protests at the IMF / World Bank spring
meetings this April in Washington will reinforce that message,
which has growing support across the political spectrum. For environmentalists,
the protests should also be a reminder that it will be impossible
to prevent the awful silencing of the forests without first fighting
for social justice and new rules for the global economy.
IMF, World Bank, Structural
Adjustment