Development and the environment: the appalling story stated

Tony Lynch and Mohammad Tanzimuddin Khan

By the environment, we mean in the first place the total ecological setting: the land, water, air,
and all within it that provides the arena, conditions and resources for life, and so for human
life. The environment, in this sense, is the biosphere, and we are in it. In a second sense ‘the
environment’ is divided between the domestic and ‘the wild’. The former is that part of the
world that is subject to human control and management (the ‘human environment’); the latter
that is ‘outside’, perhaps a threat, but also a real or potential resource or dump. In the most
basic sense, development is a term for all and any impacts or efforts a living thing has on its
environment, insofar as those impacts shape the environment in ways conducive to its own
survival and reproduction. Human development refers to when human may want to dominate
and exploit the environment to better satisfy not merely the needs of livelihood provision, but
to build an ever ‘better’, an ever ‘richer’ and more ‘affluent’ world. This developmental process,
as opposed to accommodation, has an infinite, rather than finite, end, because it is never fully
satiable, even in principle.

HUMANITY, DEVELOPMENT AND THE ENVIRONMENT: THE

FAMILIAR STORY
Orthodox economics (neoclassical, Austrian, and Marxist) assumes this perspective of human
development and that the impulse to develop is universal.

Humans (whether because of self-consciousness or their imagination and intelligence) are

expected to see their environment as a place of scarcity to conquer in the pursuit of plenty.

From this perspective, human history is the tale of how people developed from a dangerous,
"primitive" world with no food to a richer, more pleasant one. Marshall Sahlins, describes it as
the transition from "subsistence society" where "the specter of starvation lurks" and people
work to survive due to "its initial technological inadequacy" to a world where "the gap between
means and ends is narrowed by agricultural and industrial productivity."
The lives of traditional hunter-gatherer foragers, who made up 90% of our species' history,
were torn apart by subsistence survival due to "technical abilities." So even when they weren't
alone, their lives were "poor, ugly, brutish, and short."

Sedentary plant and animal husbandry improved things greatly. It gave people more and better
food than they could acquire from plain subsisting, freeing up time for urban and cultural life
and "civilization" with its organizational hierarchies, elite literacy and numeracy, productive
specializations, magnificent architecture, and sacrificial religions.

With this story, development is always beneficial and wanted, regardless of its impact on the
environment or its resilience. Like any other project, development efforts occasionally fail.
However, these errors and misfires are necessary to achieve a desirable goal.

FROM ACCOMMODATION TO DEVELOPMENT

But does human nature really make development a practical need? How did devoted sedentary
agriculture become the norm, despite the costs? How did domestic production units, which
we must believe could cover basic family needs, become a desire for development? A
rudimentary family tree can be created to estimate how dedicated sedentary farming was. First,
"Goldilocks" ecological conditions for plant-dominated production, include river valleys with
"extremely rich alluvial soils that are re-fertilized every year by the flood-pulse." These soils are
ideal for broadacre grain production and plant agriculture. Water, soil richness, and annual
replenishment make planting easy and productive in these conditions (at least in good years).
The grain is healthy and easy to store, so it can handle crop failures and bad harvests to a certain
extent.

It appears that the Palaeolithic and early Neolithic, when producing plants was one of several
methods to survive, were not a "battle for existence" in which people were always at risk of
famine. It also had culture. Development was unnecessary since none of these things were true.
Instead, it was about ensuring people had a place to live with the least amount of effort, leaving
time for ceremony, play, conversation, rest, and handicrafts. Sahlins describes it as "Zen" riches.
The assumption was not that people's wants are endless even though resources are limited.
Instead, it was "that people's material wants are limited and few, and that technical means don't
change but are generally enough." However, the occasional and real benefits of sedentary field
agriculture in these situations were more than offset by the disadvantages of harder work, more
illness, a less varied diet, a more structured life, and a much smaller ability, due to sedentarism,
to deal with long-term environmental effects. The question is how something that may have
had a niche appeal to some people at some periods in the correct ecological conditions become
a lifelong commitment even when the hardships of agricultural life and labour pressed hard?
What kept people in this life when everyone else was doing well and working less?

DEVELOPMENT AND THE STATE

Based on the work of Mann (1986) and Scott (2017), the answer we propose is a set of
connected processes. First, a low-cost coordinating organizational power over domestic
production units. As long as these units are subject to the extractive demands of that authority
(the "state"), especially regarding land holdings, crop plantings, taxation, and corvée labor, they
form a political community. Second, to legitimate this new political order and the coordinating
authority, hunter-gatherer life was made to look awful and "impossible" for real humans.
Third, the cumulative loss of skills and knowledge from dedicated sedentary fixed-field
agriculture "closes off the escape route" through ideological demonization.

Cross-household cooperation seems natural for relatively high-density sedentary domestic

production units in a "Goldilocks" productive niche. Fixed-field agriculture, especially in
"Goldilocks" conditions, may be lost in conflict and chaos without some coordination amongst
household production units. Coordinated irrigation may boost yield.

With the widespread cultivation of "visible, divisible, assessable, storeable, transportable, and
"rationable" grains, this type of coordinating organizational structure will tend to create an elite
of managers and supervisors who will have, or claim to have, authority over specific household
production units, even though they will do less and less production themselves, or be forced to
do so. They will claim to have a specific expertise in this generalized coordinating authority,
which will be rewarded by wealth, power, and not having to farm.

Because it asserts rightful power over domestic production units, it is political. It also violates
the domestic production unit's independence by claiming rightful access to a piece of domestic
production (and the work that goes into it) for its own purposes and goals.
The new managerial elite's ambitions go beyond basic need provision, which dominates the
domestic mode of production. They claim a higher authority than the household and create a
new field where people can strive for security, status, power, and fame inside and across
political units.

A surplus-dependent, surplus-demanding managerial elite develops a group of people that

want to keep agricultural output going even when conditions aren't suitable. If farmers could
leave and return to hunter-gathering, all would be lost. Then, our political class's major task is
to figure out how to keep people on the land and creating a surplus that can be seized, even
when times are hard and others are doing better with more classic hunter-gatherer techniques.

Even though it leaves the authority susceptible to rebellion and flight, force and coercion are
part of the solution. Ideologies limit people's worldview and actions. Ideology is a natural
method to lessen this vulnerability. The proto-state's religion and (elite) literature promote the
"Neolithic prejudice" that hunting-gathering is a fearful, dangerous, and degraded way of life
for fearful, dangerous, and degraded people, and that, like Hobbes' "state of nature," it should
always be escaped from by submitting to a governing authority.

A simplistic perspective of ideological "fixing to the land" is that it's about convincing (or
misleading) landworkers that there's no other way to live, even if they're surrounded by others
who do. This is likely the wrong perspective. We know that terrible circumstances compelled
people to stay on the land. Thus, we should first focus on the unity and devotion of those who
wield authority to force others. If this management power to get things done isn't (roughly)
united, coherent, and committed to preserving it, there won't be any coercive power. Thus,
"Neolithic bias" was a belief system of the elite. That it didn't persuade farmers that farming
was their only option, regardless of field conditions or other people's lifestyles. Instead, it kept
elites together while they lost farming and practical trade skills. They must depend on others
for food as they no longer hunt, collect, or cultivate. They must regulate food production since
fighting among themselves would destroy it.

FROM DEVELOPMENT AS A MEANS TO DEVELOPMENT AS AN END

Development as the demand for production over and above "socialist" household life
accommodation gripped the human world with the advent of the agricultural state was a
monumental change, but it should not be exaggerated. Land and labor exploitation for surplus
extraction was not a goal for those who worked for themselves and a surplus-extracting elite.
The elite needed a surplus to maintain their status, but they didn't maximize it at the expense
of everything else. Elites prefer "unproductive expenditures" like temples, festivals, and
municipal services and "conspicuous consumption" of luxury goods than "frugal" reinvestment
in productive capacity. Development was unleashed when surplus reinvestment in productive
capacity became the norm.

Capitalism is one reason why development became an end in itself. Profits are only valuable if
they can be reinvested. Capitalists work hard to make money. The famous pig farmer from the
books plants more corn to raise more pigs to buy more land to plant more corn to raise more
pigs to buy more land.

No hog farmer would run on a treadmill unless their surroundings required it. This demand
can't be explained by a capitalist economy's needs because a capitalist economy had to exist and
grow before those needs emerged which state policies have spawned.

CAPITALISM AND THE STATE

As we've seen, progress starts with the state. Through its control of the "underproducing"
domestic production unit and desire for "surplus" appropriation, the state drives people from
trying to create a life to exploiting it. Development goes from building the state and making
elites happy to the very end of political life and policy.

The tale is complicated, but it boils down to how early modern European authorities came to
believe that "letting loose" their commercial and merchant agents would produce wealth and
make "productive" investments. The policy seemed to have two parts: making the state as rich
as possible and doing it in a non-political way by having people who created the riches want it
so much that they were glad to stay out of politics.

Polanyi(2001) and Hirschman(1977) tell this story, which doesn't assume a universal drive for
development. Instead, it shows how the activist state, through colonialism, guild suppression,
enclosure movements, and cleavages, got rid of any remaining concerns for ('mere') living
arrangements with the world.
The decision to free the commercial and merchant classes from traditional restraints by making
land and labor commodities instead of the general (pre)conditions for life itself and to celebrate
the "virtues" of greed and avarice as essential means to the "public good" meant "subordinating
the substance of society itself to the laws of the market" to maximize surplus (profit). More and
more, life was being developed. Thus, "economic growth" became the sole indicator of
"progress."

Creating a devoted capitalist class that, if not consciously, tries to abolish the political state may
release the productive impulse. This makes the state the servant of capitalism rather than its
master by actively altering the world to suit capitalism. The idea that capitalist greed will be
satisfied by the market and leave politics alone is ridiculous, both because the state is now
committed to capitalist development and because committed capitalist agents will have every
reason to turn their wealth and riches into political investments, where (more) profits can be
made by using state power to improve market creation, penetration, and control. Politicians
will become businesspeople in this business-friendly world. "The executive of the
contemporary state is basically a committee for conducting the common business of the whole
bourgeoisie," Marx famously said.

With a capitalist state, development wins over everything else, and this comes at the cost of
everything else. Development now permeates all aspects of life, including the state, which used
to be a force for freedom. No values or over-exploitation facts remain in the field. Development
has won, even if it means producing the terrible and unavoidable subsidence battle it promised
to end in the name of civilization.

CONCLUSION
Development creates elites and makes it easier to strive for glory, honor, and fame, but only
when all of these aims are boiled down to "economic growth" does development crowd out all
other values, allowing us to abuse the environment anyway we want. New technologies and
fossil fuels threaten the stability and resilience of the "whole ecological context" where humans
live. Given how big the capitalist state system is and how limited the resources (and dumps) it
tries to make an end that will never be satisfied, it threatens the end of civilization in a world
where almost no one has the hunter-gatherer skills or environmental resources our ancestors
used so well and for so long.

Do what? How can we shift development from growth to sustainability? At the very least, we
need to rebuild a system for the material reproduction of social life, which is underproductive
from an "economic" perspective. In the "socialist" household method of production, everyone
contributed and shared. Degrowth's "Zen-style" ecosocialism is needed. The biggest issue is
turning the state, which has many extractive bases, into a coordinating organizational authority
that is truly devoted to a general way of life that fits with an environment valued for its
potential to do so. That requires leaving capitalism.

Climate capitalism or carbon colonialism? The critical features of climate

change adaptation and mitigation policies
Nowrin Tabassum
Climate change necessitates actions for both adaptation and mitigation to deal with its severe
impacts at national and international policy levels. Two central bodies of the United Nations
coordinate the efforts of reducing the effects of climate change: the UNFCCC and the United
Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR). The Conference of the Parties (COP)
is the decision-making body of the UNFCCC, comprising the signatories to the Convention.
The COP meets annually and decides on climate change policies with a focus on mitigation
and adaptation. Protocols agreed by the COP are binding for its signatories. The UNDRR, on
the other hand, works in partnership with the governments, non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) and local com- munities of countries to reduce the risks of hazards through disaster
management procedures. The main difference between the UNFCCC and UNDRR is that
the UNFCCC takes a mitigation and adaptation approach, while the UNDRR focuses on
preparedness of disaster management, built on local knowledge and capacity through
resilience.
ADAPTATION
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment
Report, adaptation is: ‘[t]he process of adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects.
In human systems, adaptation seeks to moderate or avoid harm or exploit beneficial oppor-
tunities. In some natural systems, human intervention may facilitate adjustment to expected
climate and its effects’. IPCC also mentions how adaptation is related to disaster risk reduction:
‘Adaptation involves reducing risk and vulnerability; seeking oppor- tunities; and building the
capacity of nations, regions, cities, the private sector, communities, individuals, and natural
systems to cope with climate impacts, as well as mobilising that capacity by implementing
decisions and actions’.

Climate change adaptation might be incremental, transformational, proactive, reactive, public,

or private. Incremental adaptation is a series of small actions, adjustments, and behaviors that
reduce climate and extreme event losses or benefits. Building seawalls and embankments to
protect against sea level rise and riverbank erosion; executing coastal forestation initiatives to
minimize storm severity; and planting saline-tolerant crops to reduce food scarcity caused by
saline intrusion into agricultural lands are examples.

Transformational adaptation is more intense and may be new to a region or resource system,
i.e, New saline-tolerant crops in rising sea level zones help people adapt.

Proactive adaptation occurs before climate change is recognized. Reactive adaptation occurs
after effects are observed.

Private and public adaptation are respectively done by entrepreneurs, corporations and public
entities. Private and public entities sometimes collaborate on climate change adaptation.

Climate change adaptation involves public policy. According to Tompkins et al., public policy
related to climate change addresses adaptation in three ways: (1) to protect those parts of
society and communities that have the least ability to cope by addressing the causes of climate
change-related vulnerability; (2) to provide information for planning and stimulating
adaptation by non-state actors; and (3) to protect vital public goods like ecosystem services,
public resources, land use, coastal defense. Governments must offer or safeguard public goods
for all. National governments, international institutions, and foreign donors fund short-term
and long-term adaptation efforts to implement these measures.

MITIGATION
According to the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, climate change mitigation includes ‘human
intervention to reduce the source or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases (GHGs)’. It also
includes reducing the sources of other substances, which may contribute directly or indirectly
to limiting climate change. Examples include controlling emissions of carbon monoxide,
nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and other pollutants that can alter ozone
concentration, which has an indirect effect on climate.

The Kyoto Protocol (1992) is considered the first international attempt at setting binding
GHG emissions reduction targets for the high carbon-emitting countries. It also includes
mechanisms through which mitigation can be implemented: emissions trading, the clean
development mechanism (CDM) and joint implementation (JI).

Emissions trading allows countries to sell their unused emissions to countries that have
exceeded their targets. Generally, the government of a country issues a limited number of
annual permits that allow corporations to emit a certain amount of greenhouse gases. The total
number of permits is considered as a cap on emissions. If the corporations produce a higher
amount of GHGs than their permits allow, they are taxed. If they produce less GHGs than
their permits allow, they can sell the unused permits to other companies.

The CDM allows developed countries to invest in an emissions reduction project in developing
countries through subcontracting the projects to companies and non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) whose origins are in the developed countries. The developed countries
also create a partnership with the government of developing countries and their NGOs for
implementing such projects. On the other hand, JI allows a developing country to earn
emissions reduction through a project in another developing country.

Planting trees, converting non-forest lands into forests, restoring peatlands, enabling forests to
regenerate, and minimizing deforestation are some other mitigating strategies. Countries favor
REDD and REDD-plus forest management practices. Tracking GHG emissions and creating
energy-efficient transportation systems and infrastructure are some mitigating methods.
Residential and commercial buildings and solar-powered vehicles are being used in developed
and developing nations.

NEOLIBERAL THOUGHTS ON CLIMATE CHANGE

Laissez-faire economics and neoliberalism are related. Neoliberal policies emphasize market
forces, a free-market economy, limited government spending, regulation, and ownership, and
private sector control of economic issues. Neoliberal policies are thought to increase market
competitiveness and individual responsibility for adapting to changing conditions and
demands. Neoliberal values favor market and individual self-reliance over public sector
assistance.

Structural adjustment programs (SAPs) are a good example of neoliberal economic policy. The
World Bank and IMF lend money to poor nations for debt relief if they embrace SAPs. SAPs
vary each country, but they share some traits. SAPs fostered private sector growth, especially
exports, profit maximization, and a free-market economy by opening borders to foreign
investment.

Neoliberalism has downsides. First, healthcare and education need public sector intervention
to meet individual needs. These sectors should not be privatized and profit-maximized.
Pharmaceutical firms are blamed for placing expensive medicines out of reach of the poor.
Second, neoliberalism may increase wealth and income disparity. Neoliberalism promotes
self-responsibility and self-help, so skilled people benefit from managing their income sources.
Low-income people stay impoverished while high-income people invest in the private sector
and grow. Third, deregulation may cause unmanageable economic catastrophes. It may also
impair government management of public goods and services.

Market-based neoliberal adaptation and mitigation programs promote inequality and allow
rich countries to dominate developing ones through carbon colonialism.

CARBON COLONIALISM AND ADAPTATION/MITIGATION

The market-based neoliberal system of fixing carbon emissions and effects of climate change
generates capital for the investors of climate change adaptation and mitigation projects, which
results in another form of colonialism imposed by the Global North on the Global South.

1. Tree plantation : CDM and JI initiatives cultivate monocultural trees because they
absorb carbon from the atmosphere. The World Bank, USAID, EU, UNDP, and
UNEP fund emissions-reducing tree plantations.

Det Norske Veritas, a Norwegian company, recommended eucalyptus tree cultivation

for emissions reduction to the UNFCCC Clean Development Mechanism Board, and
the World Bank sponsored the project through the Prototype Carbon Fund in 2002.
Det Norske Veritas admitted that eucalyptus plants could not permanently store
carbon, but the projects were executed in Asia, Africa, and Latin America with
devastating effects. Eucalyptus trees are thirsty and absorb a lot of water, depriving
nearby plants of groundwater. Local groundwater-irrigated agriculture has been ruined.
Many native creatures were poisoned by eucalyptus leaves. This plant destroys
biodiversity and groundwater levels. The UNFCCC, World Bank, and other foreign
firms suggested the initiative as a carbon-reduction measure. But the Companies who
planted eucalyptus trees, made great profits. Plantar planted Brazilian eucalyptus trees.

CDM and JI collaborations between public and private entities of industrialized and
developing nations performed tree plantation initiatives. Despite the environmental
damage caused by eucalyptus plantations, these countries' public and private sectors
continued to support them. Industrialized and emerging nations' governments were
not accountable to their citizens for implementing environmentally harmful initiatives.

2. Land Acquisition and Forest Management : Before the implementation of the CDM
and JI projects, the local people managed the forests. However, the carbon sink projects
disqualified the local people for forest management and the lands were handed over to
foreign companies. This sort of land acquisition is described as neocolonial land
grabbing. In the same way that colonial powers acquired local lands in their colonies
and reaped the benefits, the northern corporations are grabbing land in Asia, Africa and
Latin America in the name of tree plantation and making profits.
 The northern corporations are mainly mining companies that produce energy from
fossil fuels. Examples include Chevron, Shell, Rio Tinto, Dow, BHP Billiton and East
Asia Minerals Corporation. These corporations are historically ill-reputed for
producing GHGs. However, the CDM and JI projects allow their carbon emis- sion to
be reversed if the emitters invest in emissions reduction or carbon sink projects – called
‘carbon offset’. So, fossil fuel corporations can still produce GHGs in the
petroleum-rich forests of the developing countries and justify it by showing that they
are investing in CDM and JI projects. Ultimately, therefore, CDM and JI projects do
not reduce GHGs but allow northern corporations to produce fossil fuels in developing
countries under the moral cover of climate change mitigation projects. Developing
countries have become a carbon dump and a victim of carbon colonialism by developed
countries.

3. Emissions Trading : According to the World Bank’s climate change data portal, the
highest emitters are the USA, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Japan, Germany,
China, Britain, Spain, France and Sweden. The UNFCCC and the international
community have influenced the low carbon emitters to undertake many climate change
mit- igation policies, including REDD and REDD-plus, and to engage in emissions
trading with the high carbon emitters. The characteristics of emissions trading – that it
allows high carbon emitters to buy the unused carbon credits from low carbon emitters
– enable the high carbon emitters to produce more carbon or continue emitting at their
current levels. Thus, the emis- sions reduction mechanism does not reduce carbon
emissions, and the low carbon emitters take the blame for giving indirect permission to
the high carbon emitters to produce carbon via unused carbon credits. Emissions
trading makes the low emitters a victim of, as Bachram (2004) puts it, carbon
colonialism.
4. Adaptation and Colonialism : Although climate change adaptation projects are based
on self-help or self-responsibility mechanisms of neoliberal thought, many foreign
donors are involved in implementing the projects in developing countries. Developed
countries agreed in Article 4(4) of the UNFCCC to invest in climate change adaptation
projects in developing countries. Funds for climate change mitigation and adaptation
are disbursed through international financial organizations like the World Bank, ADB,
 IMF and the UN. The fund-disbursement process is designed in a way that: (1) the
fund-channelling organizations (WB/ADB) receive a certain percentage of the funds as
their service charges; (2) the World Bank-channelled funds are provided as loans, not
grants; (3) the funds are adjusted with previous loans of the climate-vulnerable
countries, which they owe the donors, such that the funds are invested in
profit-generating projects to pay off previous loans to the donor; and (4) the
adaptation/resilient projects are implemented through a co-management approach
where organizations from donor countries are contracted to do the job.

There are several critical injustices embedded in these funds. First, the funds are given as
loans to climate-vulnerable countries, making them economically indebted to the
donors. Second, the original goal of the funds is to invest in projects that curb the
effects of climate change. Instead, the funds are used to pay off previous loans owed to
donors. An example of such a fund is Bangladesh’s climate change resilience project
through which one of the donors, the USA, adjusted the fund to take account of its
previous loans to Bangladesh. Third, channelling the funds via the World Bank/ADB
means that some funds are applied as service charges to the channelling organizations.
This could be avoided if bilateral agreements between the donor countries and the
recipient countries were signed. For all these reasons, the climate-affected countries
become further colonized by the powerful carbon emitters.

CONCLUSION
This critical analysis will help develop- ing countries understand why they agree to accept such
projects that are detrimental to their environment and economy. Based on the understanding
of the harmful effects, future research could be conducted on how development policies can
help improve the nature of mitigation and adaptation in an environmentally friendly and
pro-poor way.