America, the Environment, and the Global Economy
Spring 1997-- Global Human
Ecology:
America, the Environment, and the Global Economy
Question for Discussion: What
are the strategies Third World women use to protect their local
environments?
Reading: Close to Home,
pp. 99-127
Video: CNN Earth Matters: The Baka People
Internet Sites and Documents:
Global Commitment for Women's Advancement and African Reality
Human Development in sub-Saharan Africa
Civil Society: new roles for African traditions, NGOs, women and youth in Africa
Laying the Foundations for Sustained African Development in the 21st Century
Women's One World : Beijing: Spirit of Sisterhood Prevails
Throughout the Third World today, national governments with the support of First World development experts and global corporations are pushing traditional peoples off of their land. Peasant farmers who have farmed their small plots for hundreds of years and traditional hunting and gathering peoples who live in the world's rain forest are facing expulsion from their land. Just as the United States earlier pushed Native American peoples off their land because they weren't using it productively, so too are Third World government pushing traditional peoples off of their land. Traditional peoples' land and way of life are being destroyed in the name of progress. Whether it is in Brazil, Cameroon, India, or the Philippines, traditional peoples and culture are now finding that they are increasingly marginal peoples with little to no rights to their land and to defend their way of life.
Let's now look at an example of a traditional people threatened by development. The Baka, or as many Westerners know them the Pygmies, have lived in the Cameroon rain forests of Africa for thousands of years. But in recent years, the government of Cameroon has sold their forest homes to global logging companies to harvest. Without consulting the Baka, these logging companies have become to log their home. The Baka are now facing an increasingly marginal future.
Rain forest aborigines crowded out
by newcomers, loggers
From Correspondent Gary Strieker, March 11, 1997
EASTERN CAMEROON
(CNN) -- The vast rain forest in central Africa is the home of
countless species of plants and animals -- among them, for 40,000
years, the aboriginal people of this forest.
Many call them Pygmies but, in eastern Cameroon, they are the
Baka. In a nation dominated by 13 million ethnic Bantus, there
are only 40,000 Bakas. And the Bakas who do live in the Cameroon
rain forest are overwhelmed by change and the ongoing destruction
of their forest home.
Samuel Nguiffo of the Center for Environment and Development says
the Bakas are caught between the majority Bantu and the logging
companies.
"Both of them have claims over the forest," Nguiffo
said, "and both of them are more powerful than the Bakas.
And most of them, for the Bakas, are enemies."
As timber companies push logging roads deeper into the forest,
outsiders follow the roads to trap and hunt wild animals, and
then slash and burn to plant crops.
After living in harmony with the forest for thousands of years,
hunting and gathering only what they needed to survive, Bakas now
find many of the forest's resources are exhausted.
The hunters say there are too few animals so that only the best
of hunters -- or those endowed with magical powers -- can catch
them. And the chief in one settlement says the noise from
bulldozers and chain saws drives animals away.
And because the forest has been so disturbed, it's hard to find
the special plants the Bakas use for food, medicines and rituals.
The Bakas are given little in return when they are displaced from
the forest. They have no legal title to any land in the forest
they've occupied since ancient times.
Government policy refers to them as "marginal social
groups," to be made into productive members of Cameroon's
society by surrendering their nomadic life to clear land and
plant crops.
Change, change, and more change
In other words, Bakas are expected to abandon the culture and
spiritual life that connects them to the forest, and to join in
its destruction -- a process already begun.
Alcoholism, prostitution, unemployment and exploitation by
dominant Bantus are common dangers confronting Bakas when they
leave the forest.
"They are facing a very violent civilization, and from this
civilization they tend to take only the bad aspects," says
university lecturer Roger Ngoufo.
In their new settlements, the Baka people are in transition, no
longer depending on hunting and gathering in the forest --and
facing an uncertain future in the fast-growing towns and villages
around them.
Several residents in the roadside settlements say they are happy
to be there -- the forest is too dangerous. But others say the
forest is paradise lost.
The settlements have little to offer -- no school, no health
clinic, and only a few menial jobs on a nearby Bantu plantation.
What they really want, and what they should have, says Noel
Olinga, who has worked with Bakas for 16 years, is a pristine
forest reserved for their hunting and gathering. But no one in
Cameroon takes that idea seriously.
The future looks especially bleak for the young.
"They're completely lost," says Nguiffo. "They're
not Baka, not full Baka -- they're somewhere in between."
Traditional Baka initiation rites are held every year to summon
the god of the forest, the Jengi, to induct young boys into
manhood and to bring good fortune. But many Bakas say they
haven't seen the Jengi in a long time.
What should the Baka do in the face of government efforts and global logging companies efforts to destroy their forest home and their way of life? Should they give up their traditional ways and flood into the growing cities of Cameroon? Should they demand that the government pay to relocate and resettle them? Should they demand that the government provide them new forest preserves to make their home in? Should they fight the government and logging companies to protect their forest home and way of life? Clearly, the Baka stand at the margins of Cameroon society. They have few choices, but the choices they do take will determine their future. They can't refuse to make a choice because the government and the larger Cameroon society will just roll over them.
The dilemma faced by the Baka is a common dilemma faced by Third World people throughout the world. For example, in Peru some native forest peoples have declared that they will fight for protect their homes from oil and mining companies. But can traditional hunting and gathering people really stand up to these global companies and to their own national governments who have sold their land and rights away? What can they do to secure their future? This dilemma is explored in a recent book called Savages, which looks at the struggle of Peruvian and Brazilian Indians to survive the onslaught of national and global development and the destruction of their lands and ways of life.
In their essay, "Filipino Peasant Women in Defense of Life," Loreta Ayupan and Teresita Oliveros document the struggle of Filipino peasant women to defend their small land holdings and traditional way of life against the forces of global development. In one small village, Aling Masang, peasant women met the bulldozers the government had sent in to clear the land of them in order to create an export processing zone for global corporations wanted to locate in the Philippines. They describe "pregnant women, nursing mothers, old women, and children" standing in front of the bulldozers, preventing them from destroying their land, shouting:
"We are not afraid of your guns! We are not afraid to die! Dying from your bullets is instant death. Losing our land is slow death for us, as it will bring about famine and hunger and the death of our rivers and everything alive in this land."
An important unanswered question here is why it was the women and children who stood up to the bulldozers. Where were the men?
In the case of many Third World rural farming communities, young men and married men work in the growing industrial cities and send back some of the money they earn in order to support the remaining family members who still live in these poor villages. Their young men and husbands work in the cities because their land is so poor that it cannot support their growing families.
So why don't these women and children and the remaining people in these rural communities simply abandon their land and move to the cities to join their husbands? Many of these people realize that they cannot survive in these exploding urban slums. In addition, they have always been small farmers, it is the only way of life they know and feel comfortable with.
We could also ask why doesn't the government protect and support the rights of these traditional rural small farmers. They have been farmers for hundreds of years, farming the same small plots, growing crops for subsistence and local production. Why should the government give their land to global companies in the form of export processing zones and large plantations for export crops? Why is the Filipino government refusing to protect the rights of its own people against the invading force of global industrial companies and economic interests?
In this case, the government of the Philippines is so in debt to First World banks as a result of twenty years of borrowing for development that it cannot afford to protect the rights of its rural farming peoples. Of course, a large part of the Philippines development debt is the result of graft and corruption by the former dictator of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos, who is rumored to have looted his country of between 8 and 10 billion dollars of development money. How can the Filipino people afford to pay back this stolen development money? Because the Philippines is under such pressure to pay back its huge debts, it has been forced to drastically cut government spending for education, health, and social services for its increasingly impoverished people. As a result of this pressure, the Philippines, now ruled by democratic leaders, is forced to deny the rights of many of its rural peoples, selling their land and undermining their traditional way of life. Faced with government pressure to push them off their land, these Filipino peasant women have no choice but to try to stand up to the global corporations who are trying to push them off their land. If they don't stand up for their land and rights, they will literally be bulldozed over by the forces of global development.
In her essay, "Green Earth, Women's Power, Human Liberation: Women in Peasant Movements in India," Gail Omvedt examines the growth of Indian peasant movements led by women. She argues that there are two major movements created and led by women: 1) an environmental movement to protect the rural environment and their traditional farmland, and 2) a farmers' movement to demand increased prices for their crops. Again, we must ask the larger question: Why are women in India leading these movements? India is a traditional society in which men traditionally dominate women and play the dominant roles. Just as in the case of the Philippines, Indian women are leading these movements because they are often the ones left behind by their husbands and sons who moved to the city, seeking work in industrial factories. But, in addition, Indian women often are responsible for raising and growing the food the family depends on in order to survive. Given their traditional roles, it makes sense that Indian women would organize to protect their small farms and their rural environment.
Omvedt focuses on a peasant environmental movement to protect the local water supply and ensure that all families get their fair share of water. These rural women are finding that the government of India is building dams and water projects that is diverting water from their small farms to large plantation farms owned by global corporations. This peasant movement, led by women, is struggling to make sure that the government will ensure that every family has enough water to continue to farm. Without water, their small farms and way of life would be threatened.
In addition to organizing to protect their environments and their water supplies, rural peasant women are also organizing and demanding that the government support higher prices for the crops they grow. Without these higher crop prices, and their continuing refusal not to rely on chemicals to farm, these small peasant farmers and peasant villages will fail. Unfortunately, the government of India has been subsidizing crop prices, ensuring that factory workers and urban residents can buy cheap food. The government believes that cheap food prices will support the growth of industry and industrial development in India. But, as these peasant women increasingly understand, cheap food prices, rising taxes, and the increasing cost of living will drive them and their families off their farms. However, the Indian government doesn't seem to be concerned with the future of small rural farmers.
Just as in the case of the Philippines, the pressure for global development is slowly undermining the way of life of small Indian farmers. Unless they stand up for their way of life, and try to collectively support each other, small rural farmers and their way of life will become a part of India's history. Just like other marginal people throughout the world faced with the increasing juggernaut of global development, if these Indian peasant women don't stand up to protect their way of life, they will be pushed aside.
By challenging the forces of global development, traditional peoples throughout the world are forcing their governments and people throughout the world to begin question global development as progress. Can we really afford to push traditional people off their land and force them to give up their way of life? Is development worth the continuing destruction of diverse traditional cultures throughout the world? Is it really progress if national governments and global corporations destroy and marginalize thousands and thousands of traditional people? Doesn't this tell us something about the larger inhumanity of our larger modern industrial culture?