Deep Ecology

Author: Tatjana van Bormann ~ Londolozi Communications

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Rediscovering abundant living
The Deep Ecology worldview asks that we do some deep thinking about who we are and what our role is on the planet. The term was coined by Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess in 1972 and defines an ecocentric environmental worldview. As it has its roots in philosophical traditions, the Deep Ecology view challenges us to explore further, not to accept the current status quo but to dig deep into essential questions of life, to extend our thinking beyond our own egos and recognise that we are part of the great interdependent community of life on the planet. Once we have deeply questioned our own beliefs, Deep Ecology then asks that we align our actions to those beliefs.

Celebrated author Fritjof Capra, who articulated the Web of Life concept in his book of the same name, has said that Deep Ecology is the place where ‘science, philosophy, and spirituality meet’.

Basic beliefs
In 1984, the concept of Deep Ecology was further developed with the drawing up of a list of eight beliefs, which now underpin a major philosophical and ethical movement. Briefly, the tenets, as written by Arne Naess and George Sessions, are as follows:

1. The wellbeing and flourishing of human and non-human life on Earth have value in themselves. These values are independent of the usefulness of the non-human world for human purposes.
2. Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realisation of these values and are also values in themselves.
3. Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity, except to satisfy vital needs.
4. The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of non-human life requires such a decrease.
5. Present human interference with the non-human world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.
6. Policies must thus be changed. The changes in policies affect basic economic, technological, and ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from what it is at present.
7. The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating quality (dwelling in situations of inherent worth) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living. There will be a profound awareness of the difference between big and great.
8. Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation, directly or indirectly, to participate in the attempt to implement the necessary changes.

Lifestyle guidelines
Arne Naess went a step further and defined some lifestyle adjustments for those who ascribe to deep ecology principles. These include:

1. Appreciating all forms of life
2. Protecting or restoring local ecosystems
3. Using simple means
4. Consuming less
5. Satisfying vital needs rather than desires
6. Attempting to live in nature and promoting community
7. Appreciating ethnic and cultural differences
8. Working to improve the standard of living for the world’s poor
9. Working to eliminate injustice to humans or other species
10. Acting non-violently.

(Source: G Tyler Miller Jnr, Living in the Environment: Principles, Connections and Solutions (10th Ed.), Wadsworth Publishing Co.)

Deep Ecology is synonymous with the concept of ‘think like a mountain,’ which means thinking beyond the self so that the wellbeing of the Earth becomes inherent in every action. It is also essentially a view that believes that ‘simple in means is rich in ends’. This thinking is, on first reading, immediately attractive, questioning our mode of existence, voluntarily reducing material comforts in order to rediscover abundant living through an existence that is in harmony with the planet. Deep Ecology is a radical concept, requiring adherents to embrace a complete shift in their approach to living. It is nevertheless a profoundly hopeful philosophy. In a time when the media put out a steady stream of planetary doom and gloom, Deep Ecology promotes solutions and a means of addressing current environmental crises.

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Nuclear Energy ~ The 'Anti' Position

Author: Olivia Andrews ~ Earthlife Africa

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The nuclear industry wants a new lease of life in South Africa. Currently there is one nuclear power reactor, Koeberg, situated near Cape Town, which contributes about 6% to South Africa’s total energy supply. Low-level waste from Koeberg is dumped at Vaalputs in the Northern Cape; waste from the weapons programme is stored at Pelindaba, near Pretoria. Eskom plans to build a Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR), a version of a reactor that was abandoned overseas and has never been successfully commercialised. The demonstration plant will be built at Koeberg, and if this is successful at least another 10 reactors will be built around South Africa. Eskom plans to build, use and sell over 200 reactors to create a potential export business. This will mean more waste buried at Vaalputs and hundreds of trucks carrying radioactive materials on our roads.

What follows are 10 reasons why nuclear power is not a solution for our country.

1. Health impacts
There is no such thing as a ‘safe’ dose of radiation. There is a growing body of evidence that low doses may actually be more dangerous, as they may mutate cells more easily than high doses, which can kill the cell. There is no debate as to whether radiation kills, maims, causes mutations, is cumulative, causes leukaemia cancers and respiratory illness, and attacks the immune system (with children, pregnant women and the elderly the most vulnerable).

The only disagreement is about what is legally considered an allowable dose. Between 1940 and 1950 the American, British and Canadian scientists who developed the atomic bomb laid down the first ‘safe’ levels of radiation: 150mSv per annum. The ‘safe’ level of exposure has been continually adjusted downwards as more research into the dangers is done. By 1990 the annual acceptable level of exposure in South Africa was reduced to 20mSv for occupational exposure and 1mSv for the general public. (This limit is 10 times higher than the limit laid down by the European Committee on Radiation Risk.)

Even if all fossil-fuel-generated electricity was replaced with nuclear power, there would only be enough economically viable uranium to fuel reactors for three to four years. To run one reactor, 440 000 tons of rock need to be mined, yielding 33 tons of uranium. Uranium mining is responsible for the greatest proportion of healthrelated damages of nuclear power. There seems little doubt that communities living near nuclear plants are at risk. Before South Africa begins to build new reactors, epidemiological studies of communities around Koeberg, Vaalputs and Pelindaba need to be carried out. In the USA, the numbers of radiation induced illnesses dropped after some plants were closed down.

2. Waste
There is no responsible way to ‘dispose’ of radioactive waste and it remains the biggest problem of the nuclear industry worldwide, remaining dangerous for at least 240 000 years (equivalent to 10 000 generations). There is no plan in place for the long-term storage or any final disposal site for radioactive waste anywhere in the world. How, then, is the expansion of the nuclear industry going ahead without addressing the current problems of waste storage? In the USA, the costs for locating a suitable site for the storage of high-level waste are running at $8 billion and no solution has been found.

The proposed PBMR uses fuel in the form of balls made from uranium coated with graphite as opposed to the rods used in the present reactor at Koeberg. The reactor will create about 35 tons of radioactive waste per year, a much larger volume than other designs. Over the 40-year life span of one PBMR, 4.7 million balls will be used and will need to be disposed of.

Low-level nuclear-waste storage sites are built in rural areas far way from densely populated areas. Can it be justified to expose someone to risk because they are living in a rural area? At Vaalputs, there is a community living within 24 kilometres of the site. Nuclear waste is a responsibility for hundreds of thousands of years and it will be future generations who will bear the health and financial costs. The best solution is not to produce any in the first place.

3. Economics
The proposed PBMR has cost R2 billion for the development stage; the demonstration phase is expected to cost another R11.3 billion. This could rise to as much as R25 billion if one were to include decommissioning costs. It is the South African taxpayers and electricity consumers who will bear the costs. The demonstration phase will make a loss rather than aprofit. The cost of electricity will only be brought down to competitive levels once 32 reactors have been built – a very unlikely scenario, given that not a single order has been placed to date. The PBMR business plan is based around large economies of scale requiring many customers and reactors. Estimated costs of the demonstration plant increased fivefold from R2 billion in 1999 to R10 billion in 2004. Media reports now estimate the costs to be R14 billion.

Nuclear power is expensive electricity. All states in the USA with nuclear power charge, on average, 25% more for their electricity. The economics are speculative and costs are escalating.

The cost of nuclear power doesn’t stop once plant construction is completed. Nuclear plants need to be decommissioned after their (approximate) 40-year life span. Toxic spent fuel produced from nuclear reactors needs to be stored safely for thousands of years before it is harmless, which has enormous cost, health and social implications. Nuclear power takes money away from clean alternatives and soaks up funding that should be used to develop proven clean, renewable sources of energy – wind, water and solar energy – which are all suitable for bulk baseload industrial generation.

4. Climate change
Global climate change poses a serious crisis. In South Africa, 74% of energy comes from coal so finding cleaner energy sources is a big challenge. Nuclear industries are exploiting concerns over global warming by misrepresenting nuclear power as a carbon-free electricity source and global climate saviour. However, the entire fuel chain of nuclear energy is extremely energy intensive and dirty. The nuclear fuel cycle releases CO2 during mining, fuel production, transport, plant construction and decommissioning, as well as for waste management far into the future. Uranium enrichment is one of the most energy-intensive industrial operations and, as demand for uranium grows and lower-grade ores are used, so CO2 emissions are expected to rise. Some debated research even shows that nuclear power generates less energy than it uses in the entire fuel chain over its lifetime. Climate change may change the market for nuclear energy, but it will not make uneconomic technology economic. Promoting one environmental disaster to solve another catastrophe is illogical.

5. World Market
The PBMR business plan is based on large economies of scale and requires high volumes of export. Who is going to buy this technology? Internationally respected analysts have shown that the worldwide market for nuclear power grew at less than 1% per annum over the last 10 years. The market for Renewable Energy is growing in leaps and bounds, between 25% and 45% per annum. It is strange that such supposed cutting-edge technology as the PBMR is failing to attract foreign investment. Since Excelon and Areva have pulled out there have been no new investors. British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL) is the only remaining investor and is in debt for £48 billion to the UK government for costly clean-up operations. The South African Industrial Development Corporation has diluted its shareholding from 25% to 12.5%, and Eskom is on record as saying that they, too, will be diluting their share in PBMR Pty Ltd, and wait to see if they wish to purchase.

6. Public input
Public money is being spent without any public accountability. The High Court found the Environmental Impact Assessment process to be fatally flawed when Earthlife Africa took the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism to court. The submissions made by Earthlife and other appellants were not even looked at by the decision-maker. The PBMR is being substantially funded by public money, yet the economic feasibility study is not in the public domain. Why should tax payers be funding the project but not have a chance to comment on the feasibility report? Even the World Bank will no longer fund nuclear programmes of any kind.

7. Transporting radioactive materials
Just for the proposed 10 PBMRs (as opposed to the proposed 216 units) there will be approximately one vehicle carrying radioactive materials every second day and approximately seven carrying chemicals every working day for 40 years between Durban, Cape Town and Pelindaba. This could grow to nine radioactive and 145 chemical trucks every day at full production. The container carrying the enriched uranium would cause a catastrophic radioactive incident if it fell more than nine metres into water. The impact will last for generations. Enriched uranium will be transported as a fine black powder, which is both difficult to manage and has similar toxicity (besides radiation) to heavy metals.

8. Jobs
Renewable Energy can create up to 27 times more jobs than the proposed PBMR and requires less imported expertise. Eskom’s job estimates for the PBMR are based on achieving a substantial number of export sales – about 20 per year – and are highly speculative. However, a detailed examination of the world market shows that few nations are likely to order new nuclear plants. Currently, the only local content of the proposed reactor would be some steel tanks and construction work. Renewable Energy, such as wind, is already at about 60% local content, and increasing.

9. Renewable Energy (RE)
South Africa is rich in wind, solar and ocean RE resources. In the USA, wind is already cheaper than coal, especially when the health impacts are included. In addition to wind, there are many other RE options, including wave (a few kilometres of coastline could supply Cape Town), photovoltaic, solar thermal, bio-mass, microhydro, etc. A mix of these technologies can easily provide all of the energy requirements for South Africa. Studies have shown clear evidence that there are sufficient RE resources in South Africa to provide for 13% of electrical demand by 2020, and easily 70% or more by 2050. RE is clean, sustainable, efficient and safe. Energy Efficiency (EE) provides/releases more capacity for serving new customers while cutting overall costs. Estimates are that we could easily save up to 30% of current capacity (about 12 900 MW, about 100 PBMRs) and utilise it for development, be it for communities or for business. This will also allow us time to grow our local RE-manufacturing capabilities. South Africa’s short-term electricity needs cannot be fulfilled by the PBMR due to time delays – the first commercial unit will only be completed by 2014.

10. Nuclear weapons proliferation
Any extension of the nuclear industry increases risks of nuclear weapons proliferation, particularly when involving international movement of materials. Spent fuel can contain weapons-grade plutonium, which is simple to extract. The documentation provided by the proponents shows that all that would be needed would be a crushing device, and boiling it in nitric acid to retrieve the uranium. Enriched uranium is already being traded illegally. Furthermore, nuclear power stations and spent-fuel facilities are vulnerable to terrorist attack.

Conclusion
Immediate action is needed to address climate change and greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector. Demand-side management, RE and energy-efficient technologies – not nuclear – are proven and viable solutions. Africa is not a dumping site for nuclear waste or a testing ground for unsafe nuclear technology. It is unjustifiable to use public funds to sponsor nuclear plants that are a threat to the environment and people. South Africa needs environmentally responsible development that will lead to an improvement in the quality of people’s lives and will lead to truly sustainable development – economically, socially and environmentally.

Nuclear Energy: The 'Pro' Position

Author: John Walmesley

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The emotional appeal of renewable energy is very strong. Windmills spinning on remote windy shores, solar farms hidden in the vastness of the Northern Cape, wave generators rising and falling with the Atlantic swell. Free energy. An end to ugly coalfired power stations, no more CO2, no more acid rain. No more nukes. It all seems so obvious. Why don’t they just get on with it? In many well-meaning minds, the desire to believe in such a scenario is overwhelming. Such minds filter out and reject any evidence suggesting that it may all be a pipe-dream. The reality is that, particularly in South Africa and certainly at this time, renewables are not a feasible source of bulk electrical energy.

In campaigning for a corner of the market, renewable energy enthusiasts are doing us a disservice. Eskom is already struggling to meet peak demand. Rather soon it will struggle even to meet the base-load requirement. In the next 30 to 40 years, we must build twice as many power stations as there are now operating. All today’s power stations will have to be replaced and load growth will have doubled the output required. That is the daunting reality. There is room for all. Of course we should economise. Of course we should use renewables wherever possible. Solar water heaters should go on every roof. If done magically overnight that would at least give us a couple of years breathing space – but it is not going to happen magically overnight. Strident insistence that renewables are an alternative to coal or nuclear power is clouding the main issue and delaying hard decisions already overdue.

Nuclear power has been with us for 50 years. The debate has been with us for almost as long. Protagonists on both sides repeat themselves ad nauseam. Nobody’s opinion is changed and the public is left wary, even alarmed, and no wiser than before. What really is the case for nuclear?

Renewables simply cannot do the job

The case is straightforward. There is no acceptable alternative. It goes against the grain to knock renewable energy but, for reasons outlined below, it is obvious that renewables are not a viable source of bulk energy in this country at this time. That leaves nuclear energy and, in the South African context, coal – and few would now argue that we can go on indefinitely adding to the 140 million tons we already burn each year. Rather, we should be seeking ways to reduce it. Like all major technologies for power generation, nuclear has its downside, in fact several. Because renewables cannot do the job and because coal is no longer environmentally acceptable, these have to be addressed. The most frequently voiced concerns are discussed below.

The need for a back-up generation

The critical problem with the best developed renewable sources, namely wind and solar power, is availability. Solar units with steerable reflectors may give useful energy for perhaps nine hours per day, wind (on average) for rather less. A windmill designed to give 1800 kilowatts (kW) in a good wind of, say, 14 metres per second (m/s), will drop to only 200kW at 4m/s. Windmills turning in a light wind are barely generating. Even in Demark, a 1000kW windmill will generate on average only 250kW, 25% capacity. Eskom’s three windmills at Klipheuwel, north of Cape Town, have so far managed 17%. Therefore, if solar or wind power is to be used on a significant scale, either a way must be found to store the power overnight (or for periods of calm or light wind) or back-up power stations must be built. Since South Africa appears to have run out of viable pumpedstorage sites, we have no option but to go for back-up power stations, either coal-fired or nuclear.

Coal-fired and nuclear power stations, however, can be run virtually continuously. Since they must be built, if only for backup, why then go to the expense of building the wind or solar installations in the first place? It can easily be shown that the coal or nuclear fuel saved while the wind or solar units are operating nowhere nearly covers the cost of building them.

Denmark

The situation in Denmark illustrates the problem. West Denmark, that excessively windy bit that sticks up into the North Sea, leads the world with over 12% wind power, one windmill for every 600 people. But Denmark has a nice reciprocal arrangement with Norway. When the wind is blowing strongly, power from Denmark is used to pump water into high reservoirs in Norway. When the wind drops, Norway sends hydro-power back to Denmark. When that degree of back-up will no longer suffice, Denmark imports power from Sweden or Germany, much of it nuclear.

South Africa is said to have no further pumped-storage sites for storing power overnight. Neither is there alternative technology for doing so in sight. We have no wealthy neighbours from whom significant quantities of energy can as yet be imported. Neither are there other forms of renewable energy that can provide the necessary back-up. Wave and tide energy are in their infancy and may or may not become economically feasible. Growing biomass to burn consumes vast areas of fertile, watered land. Let the research go on, but we need power now. The only options are coal and nuclear fission and, very expensively for ‘peak-lopping’, gas. If it is accepted that burning even more coal is no longer environmentally acceptable, there remains only the nuclear option.

Objections to nuclear energy

Many concerns are raised by the anti-nuclear lobby – and felt by the general public. Some are rational and demand careful consideration and action. Some are irrational, often stemming from exaggerated fear of radiation assiduously fostered by our small but vocal anti-nuclear movement.

In this connection, it is important to appreciate the role of the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR). Thirty-one countries operate nuclear power stations. Each one has established a national nuclear safety authority, a watch-dog organisation. Based largely on the recommendations of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) concerning exposure to ionising radiation, the national bodies establish national safety criteria and monitor operators of nuclear facilities to ensure compliance. The South African nuclear safety authority, the NNR, employs some 60 engineers and scientists working out of offices in Centurion. Eight NNR ‘inspectors’ are currently stationed at Koeberg. In assessing the proposed ‘pebble-bed’ reactor, the NNR is supported by TÜV (Rheinland), a German State licensing authority, and by the British National Nuclear Corporation (NNC).

Issues of concern are listed below, hopefully in order of importance – as perceived by the public. Each warrants a lecture in its own right to substantiate the summary statements made, but that is not feasible in this short article.

Radioactive waste

Low-level waste is buried in carefully designed and sealed trenches at Vaalputs in Namaqualand. There is no possibility of injury to the local population. High-level waste (HLW) consists of spent nuclear fuel or fission products extracted from spent fuel. Its initially extreme ‘toxicity’, unlike the toxicity of chemical waste, diminishes with time at first quickly, but eventually very slowly. Certain isotopes, like most naturally occurring radioisotopes, remain mildly radioactive for millions of years. After a ‘cooling off’ period of some 50 years (which accounts for the lack of urgency in developing national repositories) HLW will be sealed for several thousand years in corrosion-resistant containers. The containers will be sealed into tunnels driven deep into crystalline rock, salt or clay formations carefully selected for zero or minimal groundwater movement. Today’s analyses show that any radiation exposure to groundwater users in the far distant future will be negligible. The waste disposal ‘problem’ is more an issue of public acceptance than of technical difficulty.

Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) 165 MWe

The nuclear fuel (452 000 ‘pebbles’ is contained in the reactor pressure valve shown on the left (in red). High-pressure helium gas is heated from 500 to 900 degrees Celsius in passing downwards through the pebble bed. The gas expands through the outlet duct (yellow) to drive the turbine and generator (brown). The gas is then cooled, recompressed and passed back into the pressure valve.Under no circumstances can the ceramic fuel pebbles become hot enough to melt or otherwise to release significant radioactivity: hence the phrase ‘inherent safety’. The reactor pressure vessel is protected from external impact by two metres of reinforced concrete forming the ‘citadel’ (blue). The citadel is surrounded by a building (not shown) itself protected bya further metre of reinforced concrete.

Nuclear accidents

The safety of power reactors, like that of passenger airliners, improves with time. The 1979 Three Mile Island accident (in which no one was hurt) was a wake-up call to the nuclear industry. Major safety improvements were made in what are now called Generation II reactors such as those at Koeberg. They now constitute a tiny risk to the surrounding public well below the NNR criterion limit and far below risks otherwise accepted by the public in daily life. Chernobyl, in 1986, although not technically relevant, was a further shock. Generation III reactors now starting to be built are significantly safer still. In the PBMR pebble-bed reactor, the first of the Generation IV reactors, the risk of a major nuclear accident is eliminated completely.

Nuclear weapons proliferation

Reactors such as Koeberg and the PBMR are in no way associated with weapons. Neither the new nor the spent fuel can be used to make effective ‘explosive devices’. South Africa has shown, however, that given time a country with reasonably sophisticated nuclear technology can, if not subject to international inspection and, if necessary, political intervention, develop that technology to create weapons. This is an urgent and important issue for the world community.

Transport of radioactive materials

Of all objections raised to nuclear energy, the risk associated with nuclear transport is the most over-stated. Since 1971, the world has seen over 20 000 shipments of spent nuclear fuel covering over 30 million kilometres. There have, of course, been ‘incidents’ but never a situation involving over-exposure to radiation.

Radioactive effluents and cancer clusters

Liquid and airborne effluents from nuclear power stations are tightly controlled to very low limits. The environment around all such facilities is continuously monitored. Claims by the anti-nuclear organisations of nearby cancer clusters due to radiation are systematically refuted by local and national health authorities.

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Check this log tomorrow for the 'Anti' position!

Economics of the Environment

Economics of the Environment
Author: Prof James Blignaut ~ University of Pretoria, Director of Jabenzi, Beatus and affiliated to Green Growth Strategies



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Making two systems talk as one
The subject of Economics deals with the system of activities between producers and consumers. As in all systems, the outcome of this interactive process propels the system in a direction based on the flow of information through the system. The subject of Ecology, on the other hand, deals with the system of activities between various species and their habitats. As is in the case of Economics, the outcome of this interactive process propels the ecosystem dynamics based on the flow of information through this system. Both Economics and Ecology are hence self-organising systems that act and react to various information prompts. This implies that the future trajectory of both systems is therefore informed by what happened in the past. The agents of change (consumers and producers in Economics and species and habitats in Ecology) take note of what is happening within their respective systems and adapt to the changes. In adapting they are positioning themselves towards some future ideal.

It is most important within the context of sustainable development, however to understand that the Economic and Ecological systems do not function separately. On the contrary, they are imbedded within each other. Producers and consumers are not machines, and are therefore part of the ecosystem. Likewise, ecosystems provide resources and services to the economy and act as a wastebasket as well. So, ecosystems are also a part of the economy!

The biggest threat to the realisation of the sustainable development ideal is not in determining and understanding how Economics and Ecology as individual systems function, but how they operate as a single embedded system. Diagram 1 below shows this interaction in an extremely elementary way.

Poverty Alleviation through Sustainable Development

Poverty Alleviation through Sustainable Development
Author: Dr Eureta Rosenberg
Taken from http://www.enviropaedia.com/





What is the most important thing we can do with land – set it aside for nature conservation, or invite poor people to build homes and grow food? What is more important – reducing plastic-bag pollution or protecting jobs in the plastics industry? Saving wetlands or saving people? I hope you find these questions difficult, for they are non-choices, really. There is no need to choose between people and the environment. And yet there is a common belief that we need to address poverty first, before we can think about the environment. Actually, looking after the environment and looking after destitute people go hand in hand – a point that the idea of sustainable development is meant to convey.

What will help the poor?

Not presuming to speak on behalf of ‘poor’ people, I will restrict my comments to the links between poverty alleviation and environmental care. My aim is to illustrate the folly of pitting these two concerns against each other.
Approximately 18 million South Africans (45% of the population) live in poor households that earn less than R352 per adult per month. Power relations in poor households tend to be characterised by violence, fear, food insecurity, exploitative work and other pathologies. Three of every five South African children grow up in poor households. (Human Development Report for South Africa, UNDP, 2000)

1. Alleviate poverty through environmental protection
The poorer we are, the harder environmental issues hit us. Desperate for employment, poor people suffer the most unhealthy work environments. Without much choice as to where to live, they are more exposed to disasters such as floods and fire, and to toxic dumps, and polluted air and water. As their quality of life declines and their health deteriorates, these environmental issues render them even less able to make a living.
Land degradation and the loss of biodiversity affect poor people most, as they often depend directly on natural resources (for firewood, food and building material). When environmental degradation destroys opportunities for development in one area, those who have the financial means to do so can still move on to greener pastures. Being poor means having nowhere better to go.
It is thus in the interest of poor people that laws protecting environmental quality and safety are enforced, and that they have access to the law when their right to a healthy environment is violated. The common natural resources on which rural people depend should be protected by laws for sustainable use. Far from being ‘anti-development’, environmental policies can actually be used to protect the health and livelihoods of poor people, and increase their political and economic power.
But look – someone disagrees. There he is, collecting bait in the Knysna lagoon. His spade has once again been confiscated by the authorities, and he received another fine he cannot pay. He disagrees that environmental laws work for the poor. Hey, lady, he says, this is my only means of survival, and Conservation is taking it away!
But he and millions of others in the same boat should not be in the position of having too few livelihood options in the first place. Relaxing the environmental laws will not solve their problem. It will only provide a short reprieve – and soon afterwards a resource may be destroyed forever, thus affecting the livelihoods of many others in the future.

2. Strengthening livelihood strategies and increasing options
Those with few livelihood options often feel forced to exhaust even the few resources to which they do have access. Examples include overgrazing the land, hunting out the wildlife around ever-growing settlements, collecting muti plants to sell until none are left. This creates vicious cycles. When people can no longer survive on depleted land, they move into shacks in towns and cities, where the chances of a better life are also bleak.
Caring for natural resources so that they can be used indefinitely (sustainably) is an important way of increasing people’s livelihood options. Care means protection and restoration. If we protect the soil and increase its fertility, remove alien invasive plants and re-establish indigenous vegetation, we thus help people to make a living off the land – through farming, crafts and tourism – for generations to come. By protecting estuaries, where many marine species breed, we protect people’s ability to earn a living from the sea – sustainably. Renewing urban landscapes can help people grow food at home, and work and relax in safe and pleasant surroundings – indefinitely.
A livelihoods-centred perspective informed the ANC’s Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). The RDP puts people first, not profits. This is not the case with export-led and growth-oriented economic strategies, especially when these fail to take care of the ecosystems on which livelihoods are based. Current economics identify growth per capita as development, ignoring the way in which growth often depletes natural and social capital in order to produce money capital.
For the poor, boosting livelihood strategies and options makes a greater difference than the profits of economic growth, which by and large fail to trickle down to them from the consumer class. Some growth strategies can actually harm poor people. The livelihoods of millions of people around the world are threatened by exploitative ‘developments’ that benefit those who are already powerful. Logging, the extraction of minerals and oil, big dams – all displace people from where they had been able to derive a livelihood, onto barren lands and into city slums and menial labour. India’s Green Revolution was infamous for increasing the profits of a minority of richer farmers while devastating those people with more limited means or social status.

3. Basic incomes
An income does not always improve quality of life, but it can help. Economic growth in South Africa has failed to address the vast inequality in incomes, and government recently responded by increasing grants to the poorest 20% of households. Social grants are thus supplementing (or substituting for) the trickling down of wealth through economic growth. A Basic Income Grant has been recommended in order to alleviate hardship. This could also relieve the over-harvesting of natural resources in some areas.
Conservation of the natural environment is being increasingly recognised as a source of income for both government and communities. Over a period of five years, the Table Mountain National Park contributed a total of R377 million to South Africa’s Gross Domestic Product through employment and contracts. In just one year, the Park added more than R15 million of visitor fees to the tourism economy. Nature-based tourism is now the fastest-growing industry in the world travel business. The departments of Water Affairs and Forestry, Environmental Affairs and Tourism, and Agriculture recognised the successful marriage one could make between labour intensive conservation activities and poverty relief. The result was three environmental restoration programmes: Working for Water, Working for Wetlands and Land Care. Working for Water removes alien invasive trees; Working for Wetlands rehabilitates wetlands; and Land Care aims to prevent and reverse rural land degradation. Several conservation activities in the country’s National Parks also make use of poverty-relief funds. These initiatives all employ destitute people. As a solution to poverty, they unfortunately tend to lack sustainability, except where entrepreneurial skills and long-term opportunities are simultaneously developed.
Sustainable efforts to improve the land help people to secure their livelihoods while generating an income. In examples from Uganda, low-input agriculture helps the owners of small plots to farm with nature, using environmentally friendly pesticides and fertilisers that cost little. Not only do these farmers have food security, they can export their produce to new markets for organic produce, fetching a 20% higher price. Securing subsistence is an important form of sustainable development for the poor, a point that is overlooked by advocates of a move away from subsistence to commercial activities.

4. Improving basic services
Providing basic services is a huge task, not only because of the apartheid backlog but also the rapidly growing population. Struggling to deliver, government seeks to hand over the responsibility through various forms of privatisation. But privatising common natural resources such as water and energy has proven to be to the disadvantage of the poor. Around the world, privatisation has pushed up costs of services, despite promises that it won’t. The privatisation of Telkom saw increases in the price of local phone calls, while international calls became cheaper, to the advantage of wealthier customers.
However, providing services to the millions of still disadvantaged South Africans can present government and service providers with a great opportunity. We could become a world leader in sustainable development if we built new infrastructure in a resource-light, pollution-light manner and invested in public transport; grey-water recycling; waterless sewage; low-energy housing… to name a few. Such innovations also create new job opportunities.

5. Meaningful jobs
There was a time when economic growth meant more jobs – when growth was built on mining and other labour-intensive industries. Increasingly, economic growth is generated by industries, which are not labour intensive, either because they are mechanised or because they require small numbers of highly skilled people to run them. Creating jobs by investing in industry is a capital-intensive process and industrial jobs grow at a slow rate – slower than populations and the numbers of unemployed. And, in a free-trade regime, businesses need to be competitive, and industrial developments cannot be competitive and job-intensive at the same time.
For these very reasons, the world economy is now characterised by jobless growth, and South Africa’s strategy of seeking world market integration has not supported job creation. There have been 800 000 job losses between 1995 and 2000, and the number of unemployed people increased from 1.9 million in 1995 to 4.2 million in 2002. Better-than-predicted growth in the more recent past had little impact on unemployment.
Government recommends self-employment in the informal sector. In the process, we also look towards the environment for employment opportunities. Indeed, conserving nature and places of natural and cultural significance does create jobs, either directly in conservation or indirectly but more extensively, through ecotourism. This is why we increasingly understand conservation to be a form of development. Jobs can also be created by ‘greener’ lifestyles (e.g. making durable shopping bags), greener production (such as producing renewable energy technology), better waste management (e.g. jobs in the recycling industry) and environmental restoration (e.g. alien-clearing contractors). These kinds of activities require both high- and low-skill work.
Protecting the environment can also lead to temporary job losses, for example when a polluting business is closed down. However, if that business starts a more sustainable enterprise, jobs will be recreated. Failing to look after the environment, on the other hand, leads to long-term job losses – for example, when a fishing industry collapses.

6. Economic reforms
Efforts to alleviate poverty will not be successful without a complete overhaul of the economic systems that have maintained poverty for so long. We are using outdated economic models that lead to the redundancy of people, and poverty thrives (see Topic ECONOMICS).
Campaigns to alleviate poverty often call for international assistance. However, the track record of donor aid suggests that it may benefit governments more than it benefits the poor. Donors can use aid to reinforce their assumed supremacy and create positions and markets for their own citizens; recipient governments have been known to expand their consumer class and secure their own power base, under the banner of poverty eradication.
A more equal relationship between nations would be fostered by facilitating fair trade. This means scrapping the trade barriers that rich countries have erected against imports from poorer countries, while they ask for the liberalisation of poorer countries’ markets. Economists estimate that reducing unfair trade barriers could allow southern countries to generate $130 billion a year, roughly three times the sum total of the official development aid assistance.

7. Alleviating affluence
Poor people need to consume more environmental resources. What are the implications for the Earth? Not good, if they were to consume at the same rate as the ‘consumer class’. The environmental footprint of a wealthy person is far greater than that of a poor person. Even when we multiply the number of poor, we still find that a mere 20% of the population – the wealthy – is responsible for the bulk of the world’s consumption and pollution.
The global environmental resources are finite and unequally divided. To obtain more resource rights for the low-consumers, the over-consumption of the affluent must be reduced. The idea is to have both convergence (of the consumption of the poor, towards a more sustaining livelihood) and contraction (of the consumption of the rich, towards more sustainable lifestyles).
In practice, this means choosing a development path that is both pro-environmental and pro-poor, and de-linking economic growth from an increase in resource use, and social progress from economic growth. For individuals, it means that as our incomes grow, we should find ways other than excessive consumption to fulfil our personal ambitions and social needs (see Topic Consumerism).
It is a matter of promoting both ecology and equity, proving the point with which we started out – that poverty alleviation and environmental care go hand in hand.

8. Acknowledging rights
Poverty is about a lack of power. Poverty alleviation should thus also address situations in which some people have few opportunities to exercise their rights. Rather than thinking of the poor as needy persons awaiting hand-outs, recognise their basic rights to common resources.
‘Existing macroeconomic policies [in South Africa] leave existing power relations intact and reinforce the subordinate position of women and poor people.’ (Human Development Report for South Africa, UNDP, 2000)
South Africa’s democracy brought equal rights, but not yet equal access. Historical inequalities remain largely untouched by current economic policy, including black empowerment strategies. Unemployment figures are higher among women, and womenheaded households are more likely to suffer from poverty.

9. Slowing down population growth
Most measures to alleviate poverty will be easier if the exponential growth in human numbers slows down (see Topic Population).

10. Education and capacity-building
Education and training must help the unemployed, under-employed and youth at risk to move from being unskilled or redundant in one kind of economy to contribute productively to a new economy based on social justice and ecological sustainability. Equally important is capacity-building for government departments, which must deliver on poverty reduction and development. Policies such as the Integrated Rural Development Programme are well intentioned, but lack substance, particularly on sustainable development. Rather than recognising the many links between environment and poverty alleviation illustrated here, ‘environment’ is either ignored or tacked on to development policies and initiatives – when in fact it is at the heart of sustainable measures to alleviate poverty.

What you can do?

Three years ago, at the Millennium Summit, 189 countries pledged to pursue an ambitious global poverty fighting agenda embodied in a set of eight Millennium Development Goals. The first Goal is to halve extreme poverty and hunger by the year 2015. The Goals have been broken down into a list of targets that are specific, practical and realistic. They are technically feasible and financially affordable. But without social mobilisation, we will not progress from concept to achievement. A movement is needed to create awareness, trigger policy reforms, mobilise resources, and motivate actions to meet the goals, both globally and locally. The world cannot remain neutral... Doing nothing is not an option. Each of us can make a difference.
From an address by The UNDP Administrator, on the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, 17 October 2003

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