AIDS as Ecological Collapse in Thailand

Question for Discussion: Why is the AIDS epidemic
a good metaphor or model for understanding the
larger causes of the global environmental crisis?

Readings: Usher, "After the Forest: AIDS as
Ecological Collapse in Thailand" ; Friedman,
"Concept Map of Deforestation"

Video: 60 Minutes: Child Prostitution in
Southeast Asia

AIDS and Global Ecology

The Society for Human Ecology (in-class)
Time: Major Disease Statistics (in-class)
Earth in Peril: Interactive Maps (in-class)
Global Map of AIDS Prevalence (in-class)
Regional Estimates of AIDS victims (Table) (in-class)
The Problem of the AIDS Epidemic (in-class)
The Human Ecology of AIDS in Thailand:
Larger Social and Environmental causes (in-class)
After the Forest: AIDS as Ecological Collapse
(in-class)
Concept Map of Deforestation (in-class)
Who is Responsible for AIDS (in-class)
and Environmental Destruction in Thailand?
Tourism in Thailand (in-class)
The Global AIDS Epidemic (in-class)
Deforestation in the World (in-class)
The Sex Industry in Thailand (in-class)
Lewis Synopsis of After the Forests essay

The Sex Industry in Thailand

Globalization, Human Rights, and
Sexual Exploitation
The Sex Industry in Thailand (in-class)
Prostitution in Thailand and
Southeast Asia
Bitter Harvest: Thailand's Sex Industry (in-class)
Child Sex Tourism Spreading in Asia (in-class)
Prostitution: A Modern Form of Slavery
Coalition Against Trafficking in Women

Tourism in Thailand

Deforestation in the World

Tropical Deforestation (in-class)
Earth in Peril: Interactive Maps (in-class)
Global Trends in Deforestation
What Drives Tropical Deforestation:
Summary of the Study
What Drives Tropical Deforestation:
The full Report
Concept Map of Deforestation
Rainforests and Global Warming
What is killing our Coral Reefs?
Deforestation linked to Coral Reef Damage

The Global AIDS Epidemic

Time: Major Disease Statistics
Global Map of AIDS Prevalence (in-class)
Regional Estimates of AIDS victims (Table) (in-class)
The AIDS Pandemic in Asia
WHO: AIDS Epidemic Update 2003 (in-class)
WHO: AIDS Epidemic Printable Graphs (in-class)
Global Summary: AIDS 2003
UN AIDS Report 2004
UN AIDS by Global Region 2002
Trends in AIDS infection by Region: 2003
WHO Declares Failure to Treat AIDS a
Global Emergency (in-class)
The Problem of the AIDS Epidemic
Map of AIDS in Sub-Sahara Africa (in-class)
United Nations AIDS

The Human Ecology of AIDS in Thailand

The Society for Human Ecology (in-class)
A Brief History of the Society for Human Ecology
Map of Asia
Tourism in Thailand
Studying the Human Ecology of AIDS in Thailand:
Larger Social and Environmental causes (in-class)
Deforestation in the World (in-class)
The Sex Industry in Thailand (in-class)
Concept Map of Deforestation (in-class)
After the Forest: AIDS as Ecological Collapse
(in-class)
Lewis Synopsis of After the Forests essay
(in-class)
Lewis: Who is Responsible for AIDS (in-class)
and Environmental Destruction in Thailand?
Globalization and AIDS
Trends in AIDS infection by Region: 2003

Studying the Human Ecology
of AIDS in Thailand

Map of Asia
International Congress on AIDS in Asia
AIDS in Asia (in-class)
Tropical Deforestation (in-class)
Concept Map of Deforestation (in-class)
Global Map of AIDS Prevalence (in-class)
Regional Estimates of AIDS victims (Table) (in-class)
Trends in AIDS infection by Region: 2003
Map of AIDS in Sub-Sahara Africa:
1986-2001(in-class)
WHO Declares Failure to Treat AIDS a
Global Emergency (in-class)
Coalition Against Trafficking in Women
Child Sex Tourism Spreading in Asia

Usher, "After the Forest: AIDS as Ecological Collapse in Thailand"

Just as the number of people being infected by the
AIDS virus rises each day, so ecosystems that took
thousands of years to evolve are being fragmented
and degraded in one human generation. The sense
of crisis is heightened by the apparent irreversibility
of the damage being done. Another obvious parallel
exists at the level of the system--the individual human
body with its internal regulatory processes on one
hand, and ecosystems in nature, on the other, be
they forests, swamps, rivers or fields. Immune
deficiency caused by AIDS, which triggers gradual
disintegration of the body's defence, mechanisms,
mirrors erosion of the ecosystem which destroys
the natural capacity to regenerate. (Usher, 11)

Whether the ecological crisis is a cause--or the
cause--of the epidemic, I cannot yet say. I am not
even sure that it is necessary to answer this
question. I believe it is enough, for now at least,
to trace how the processes of degradation in the
human body, the community, and the ecosystem
are linked physically, politically, and metaphorically, each reflecting and shedding light on the others.
(Usher, 12)

AIDS is a disease of the whole, however hard we
try to separate and point fingers, to quarantine and
ostracize and amputate. The whole of society is
vulnerable to this epidemic, and no healing will
take place unless it is a healing of the whole.
(Usher, 20)

Just as AIDS signals the collapse of human
immunity, so environmental degradation undermines
the resilience of an ecosystem. The rain no longer
falls in its usual cycles, and the soil no longer
clings to the hillsides. The streams dry up when
once they delivered water to lowland villages
through out the dry season, only to swell to
bursting with the coming of the rains. Forests that
once provided food and medicine and shelter
become waste lands or barren timber factories
that can no longer sustain communities. (Usher, 24)

The physical dimension of deforestation and the
accompanying loss of ecological 'services' mirrors
the disintegration of human bodily systems as
immunity is gradually worn down by AIDS.
Environmental erosion and the unraveling of
cultures founded on particular ecosystems are
among the pressures that force young people to
leave their villages and sell their bodies on the
market. (Usher, 28)

In the intensity of a crisis there is a tendency
to move towards greater polarisation, to
stigmatise and ostracise and separate. This
crisis of ecological collapse demands that to
survive, we move instead towards healing,
towards the whole. As women, we must learn
to become the measure of ourselves, in body
and in mind. We must find a strength within that
is so deep and so rooted that it cannot be
undermined.

Where production and preservation have been
sharply divided, plant diversity must return to
the fields, gathering must be permitted in the
sacred forest, human beings must re-discover
their small place in nature. (Usher, 40

Lewis Snyopsis of After the Forest essay

In her essay, "After the Forest: AIDS as Ecological Collapse in Thailand," Ann Usher argues that we can understand the growing AIDS crisis in Thailand and the growing environmental crisis as interrelated problems that arise out of a larger economic and social crisis created by development in Thailand. On first glance the AIDS crisis doesn't appear to have anything to do with economic and social problems; AIDS is spread through sex and the sharing of intravenous drug needles in Thailand. The environmental crisis, on the other hand, is caused by the destruction of natural resources such as forests and farm land, which is caused by increasing development and economic growth. But Usher demonstrates how the social and economic disruption caused by development has led to the growth and spread of AIDS in Thailand.

From 1964 to 1989, Thailand, with the support of the United States, the World Bank, and national and global corporations, committed itself to economic development. With the help of First World development loans and assistance, Thailand began to concentrate on selling its natural resources in a global market. By exploiting its forests, farms, and fisheries, Thailand could earn the money it needed to pay back its development loans and create a modern, industrial society. In order to support this development effort, the Thai government declared that the vast forest resources of Thailand belonged to the government. Traditional peoples and villages were pushed off these uncut, virgin forests, which they had been living in and depending on for hundreds of years. These "forest reserves," as the government now saw them should be made productive by allowing national and global corporations to log them. But this government-supporting logging quickly led to increasing deforestation and environmental problems such as soil erosion, desertification, the drying up of streams, and the destruction of diverse forest flora and fauna. From the perspective of the Thai government and development experts these were just temporary problems created by development. But these weren't the only problems created by development. The tens of thousands of people who traditionally lived off these forests were now displaced. They could no longer rely on the forests to provide the food, clothing, housing, and support they once could. Finding themselves forced off their traditional land, many people crowded into other government forest reserves, where they were then seen as squatters and trespassers to be forcibly removed by the government. Others tried to farm and survive on the marginal lands in the hills and uplands, which caused more soil erosion and increasing pressure on these environments. Those who could find new lands to settle on were forced to move to the burgeoning cities, where they would live in squatter communities. In addition to being forced off their lands because the government claimed their traditional forest lands, many rural Thai were forced off their land because of development-sponsored dam and energy projects, which flooded huge areas of fertile river valleys. Those who were forced off their farm land in these river valleys often moved to the marginal land on the hillside and on steep slopes, which only created more soil erosion and environmental problems.Faced with the increasing inability to live and survive as they traditionally had off the forest and farm land of rural Thailand, many rural peoples confronted a real choice: Either they take their families to the growing cities and live in squalor and work in low-wage jobs, or they encourage their children to move to the cities and send back money to support their larger families. Many rural Thai, facing increasing poverty and environmental problems caused by deforestation, began to sell their children, especially their daughters into prostitution. As a result, since 1964, Thailand has seen an explosion in child prostitution. The Thai sex industry is famous internationally for providing young girls for sex with European, Japanese, and American businessmen. Instead of shutting down Thailand's exploding sex industry in the 1980s, the Thai government tried to regulate it. Ironically, prostitution is illegal in Thailand. But by the late 1980s, the government was giving prostitutes AIDS test and certifying them as disease-free. By doing this, the Thai government was all but admitting that it depended on the sex industry and the tourism it brought to Thailand. By 1989, the Thai government was forced to admit that its policy of encouraging the rapid harvesting of Thailand's forests was a mistake. Deforestation was causing soil erosion, desertification, the destruction of plant and animal resources, a drop in rain fall, and water pollution. The rapid logging of Thai forests had displaced hundreds of thousands of traditional peoples, damaged the environment, and only managed to earn Thailand a modest economic return, which was mostly used to pay off its development loans. Faced with these environmental and economic problems, the Thai government declared a moratorium on new logging. But since 1989, global logging companies have been pressuring Thailand to allow them to create vast eucalyptus tree plantations, arguing that they will help solve the problems created by deforestation. But Thai experience with these tree plantations has led them to question this advice. Monocultural tree plantations do not protect the environment and provide the plant and animal resources that Thailand original forests did. But having created a major environmental problem with its commitment to development, the Thai government now has a growing economic and social problem. Thousands of rural families have sold their children into prostitution in Thailand's growing industrial cities. These young children are exploited by both local Thai and foreigners seeking prostitutes. Tragically, there has been increasing pressure for younger and younger prostitutes, because their customers believe that the younger prostitutes are clean and virginal and therefore don't have AIDS. But, of course, this doesn't stop the spread of AIDS throughout Thailand. The growth of the sex industry and tourism has led Thailand to be a major source of AIDS throughout the world. However, because local Thai men, both young unmarried and married men, traditionally see prostitutes, AIDS is spreading throughout Thailand.

So who is responsible for the larger environmental and AIDS crisis in Thailand? The Thai government for promoting development through deforestation and the destruction of the environment and natural resources? National and global corporations for logging Thai land without taking responsibility to support and protect the people who depended on these forests for their livelihood and survival? First World countries and global development agencies for not considering the impact of development on Thailand's rural, traditional peoples. The Thai families who sell their children into prostitution, and depend on their wages for their survival are also responsible? The global businessmen who come to Thailand attracted by its sex industry are also responsible.? The global tourism industry that exploits and profits from the Thai sex industry? Or, finally, First World peoples demands for cheap resources and increasing living standards?

Usher concludes that AIDS is the result of the breakdown of the immune system, and that like AIDS development causes the breakdown of local environments and traditional cultures. We can't blame the victims, the young child prostitutes or the poor rural peoples who are forced onto marginal land to survive. Instead, we must realize that the larger causes of the AIDS crisis and the global environmental crisis are interrelated and global. We all share some responsibility for these problems. We can't reduce the spread of AIDS unless we also address the economic and social needs of people. We can't end the environmental crisis unless we understand how people, villages, regions, nations, and our global society are dependent on a clean, healthy, diverse environment. Just as AIDS is not the disease of other people, so too is the environment someone else's problem. We are the environment, and to the extent development and economic growth threaten the environment, they threaten our health, our lives, and our future. Finally, social turmoil, poverty, and ethnic violence aren't just the problems of the Third World, they are also are problems, because, like it or not, each one of us plays a larger role in the lives and problems of our emerging global economy and society.