The combination of poverty, environmental degradation and population growth, if not controlled, is a new form of dynamite which is creating a tremendous global insecurity in the world (and) is not limited to developing countries.
Dr. Huguette Labelle, President, The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA)
The development paths followed by Southeast Asian countries are based increasingly on monocentric industrialisation in urban centres where resources and services are increasingly concentrated. This has led to a relative shrinkage of the rural sector, increasing food prices and creating an unhealthy reliance on supplementary food imports. Rural communities in general and rural women in particular are especially vulnerable to the processes of impoverishment. These include: the degradation, depletion or loss of the natural resource base
· uncertainties in the commodities market, particularly during processes of "liberalisation"
· lack of alternative opportunities for income generation or gainful employment
Table 2 Estimates of Forest Cover Area and Rate of Deforestation
Land area |
Forest cover |
Annual deforestation | |||
million ha |
1980 million ha |
1990 million ha |
million ha |
% per annum | |
Asia and the Pacific |
892.1 |
349.6 |
310.6 |
3.9 |
1.2 |
Continental Southeast Asiaa |
190.2 |
88.4 |
75.2 |
1.3 |
1.6 |
Insular Southeast Asiab |
244.4 |
154.7 |
135.4 |
1.9 |
1.3 |
Source: FAO, 1993.
Notes:
a includes Cambodia, Lao, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam
b includes Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines
Thus the rural poor face an increasing challenge to meet their basic needs, the most basic of which is food security. This situation is exacerbated by ongoing environmental impoverishment, which may in turn lead to a loss of forest products, the depletion of soil nutrients, the pollution of soils and the contamination of water. The impact of these problems is especially felt by rural women, whose livelihood depends on access to natural resources, which are the factors of production.
Inequalities between the sexes in access to resources, entitlements and in the division of labour in the household, have made women the poorest of the poor. Poor women have:
· fewer social, economic, constitutional/legislative and political rights, including rights of access to such essentials as food, health care and education
· reduced access to labour markets and lower economic returns for their work
· fewer legal and customary rights over land, property, water, credit and other productive resources, such as energy, technology and information
· multiple burdens, including economic contributions through their productive work, resource management and conservation, household and community responsibilities, as well as the care of children and the elderly
This already unfair situation is worsened when increasing impoverishment leads to male migration or even abandonment, leaving women to manage the livelihood of their families entirely on their own. If the expected remittances from the migrating male family members do not come, the family suffers increased chances of falling into debt. These women and their families are among the most likely to become destitute, and it is no coincidence that women number over 60 percent of the absolutely poor and destitute in rural areas.
Poverty is a state of resource deprivation relative to basic needs. In rural areas, if one has little access to land or other capital resources, labour becomes the only asset that can be sold or mobilised through work, and by the reproduction of children. Research indicates that the relatively higher fertility rate found in the rural sector is often a response on the part of the rural population to impoverishment on the one hand, and high infant and child mortality on the other. In shoe, the poor tend to have more children because they are poor and because more of their children die before reaching maturity (see, for example, Caldwell 1982, Ruzicka 1984, and Handwerker 1986).
For the poor, the family is the significant unit of economic production. The labour of its members is maximised and pooled through the family. This mode of organising labour at the micro level shapes gender relations and the role of women as the biological reproducers of labour High infant and child mortality thus constitutes a compounding factor that further spurs fertility towards the goal of labour maximisation. This is especially so for smallholder agricultural producers and landless rural workers. In their labour-intensive mode of production, children are producers, labour recruits, workers, parental investments for upward social mobility, and pension providers for the elderly family members.
Such coping strategies at the micro level, however, inevitably have consequences at the macro level because the maintenance, or increase, of high fertility further degrades limited environmental resources. It is clear that macro-level planning for sustainable development must thus necessarily address the micro-level needs of poor households, especially those of poor women. If sustainable development is to be achieved, such planning must also address the serious imbalances between urban and rural areas.
The unequal distribution of development resources between the rural and urban sectors deprives the rural population of the determinants of general well-being, including:
· access to health care services
· adequate nutrition
· potable water
· decent sanitation
· adequate rest and relief from hard physical labour and drudgery
The excessively high mortality rates among the rural population are a result of unequal life chances between rural and urban populations, and between rich and poor. The rural population's poor health conditions account for the higher infant and child mortality rates as compared to those of the urban population. The disparities in infant and child mortality retest between rural and urban families2 in four Southeast Asian countries, are shown in Table 3.
Table 3 Indicators of the Child Mortality Rates of Rural and Urban Populations in
Some Asian Countries
Rural |
Urban |
Ratios | |||||||
Country |
Neo- natal |
Post- neonatal |
Child |
Neo- natal |
Post- neonatal |
Child |
Neo- natal |
Post- neonatal |
Child |
Indonesia |
55 |
60 |
88 |
29 |
17 |
15 |
1.9 |
3 5 |
5.9 |
Malaysia |
13 |
36 |
25 |
8 |
10 |
2 |
1.6 |
3.6 |
12.5 |
Philippines |
22 |
55 |
75 |
16 |
18 |
9 |
1.4 |
3.1 |
8.3 |
Thailand |
51 |
51 |
56 |
37 |
24 |
3 |
1.4 |
2.1 |
18.7 |
Source: Ruzicka 1984 (p. 34).
These death ratios illustrate the uneven development processes occurring in the rural and urban sectors of many countries. As noted by Ruzicka (1984:38,49):
High fertility and high mortality buttress each other.... Despite impressive improvements, in most low income countries of Asia, the hulk of deaths are stiff of children under five years of age.... Most are occurring from a rather limited number of largely related problems: immaturity (low birth weight), often related to mother's poor health, and nutritional status and frequent childbearing; malnutrition as an underlying or associated cause of a death which itself was due to infections (measles, lower respiratory infections, malaria), and the synergistic effects of diarrhoeal disease and malnutrition.
In other words, significant numbers of children in the rural population die because their families are too poor to keep them alive, especially when their mothers are themselves malnourished and in bad health. Such health problems tend to affect women and children much more than they affect men.
The health problems affecting rural women and children are by no means limited to the four countries listed in Table 4. In Vietnam, for example, rural women and children are also at risk from nutritional disorders and infectious diseases (particularly diarrhoea, respiratory infections and malaria The lack of clean drinking water is a major contributor to the spread of infectious diseases.
Table 4 Indicators of the Infant Mortality Rates in Selected Countries
Country |
Population growth rate 1980-2000 |
Infant and child mortality per 1,000 live births |
Maternal mortality per 100,000 live births, 1980 (%) |
Labour force in agriculture, 1980 (%) |
Indonesia |
1.9 |
aged -1 |
800 |
5 7 |
85 |
||||
aged 1 - 4 |
||||
121 |
||||
Malaysia |
2.1 |
aged-1 |
59 |
42 |
15 |
||||
Philippines |
aged -1 |
80 |
52 | |
43 |
||||
Singapore |
1.0 |
aged-1 |
11 |
2 |
7 |
||||
Thailand |
1.7 |
aged- 1 |
270 |
70 |
41 |
||||
aged 1-4 |
||||
51 |
Sources: World Bank, 1986 and 1992; UN, 1991; and ADB, 1986.
Many of the prevalent diseases are water-borne and linked to the poor state of water and sanitation. Less than hay the urban population and less than 10 percent of the rural population have access to safe and adequate water supplies. The remainder depend on a combination of shallow wells, rain water, rain catchment and ponds and rivers. During the dry season, water is sold at high prices and the use of polluted water is common.
SIDA: Country Gender Analysis for Vietnam 1992 UNICEF: Vietnam: the situation of children and women 1990
Other nutritional disorders include a high incidence of goitre due to iodine deficiency, a condition which adversely affects women's reproductive systems. One remedy for this is iodized salt. That this relatively simple solution has not been carried out reflects the poverty and inadequate transport of Vietnam's infrastructure. In mountainous Lao, a recent UNICEF survey estimated the incidence of severe cases of goitre to be fully 65 percent.
UNICEF's survey in Vietnam reported that half the children under five-years-old were malnourished. Fifteen percent were severely malnourished. This stark statistic is particularly tragic now that the country is the world's third-largest rice producer. It also implies that the bulk of Vietnam's rice crop is exported to earn foreign exchange, rather than for internal consumption by the population.
Studies show that malnutrition in rural populations can and too often does persist when development is focussed mainly on increasing export crops, even when the crop in question is a food crop. At the policy level, some confusion obviously exists between national food security and household food security, the assumption being that the former would lead automatically to the latter. This is not always true. A graphic illustration is the crop diversification policy found in many Southeast Asian countries whereby it is rural development policy to assign fruit trees and vegetables for cultivation in the high-altitude uplands, and staples for cultivation as plantation monocultures in the lowlands. Such a policy is generally motivated by a concern for crops cultivated for export rather than subsistence. But this reduces the smallholders' safety net of planting mixed crops that include both food and commercial crops, thus exposing them to greater uncertainties, such as the fluctuations of the commodities market, the vagaries of the weather, and pests. Monocultures fundamentally affect the diversity of food available which, in turn, affects nutrition, morbidity and mortality, particularly among women and children.
Macro development policies thus have significant environmental and human consequences. Policies such as those listed below are common to most of the countries of the region:
· resource extraction for export
· the absence of policy, or the lack of policy backup, to regulate resource over-use
· re-zoning of agricultural land for hydro-electric dams, industrial use, urban buildup, monocultural plantations, golf courses, roads, and so on
· monocentric industrialisation and urbanisation
· plantation monocultures and crop specialisation through contract farming oriented to the demands of the urban market, and not the needs of the rural food producers
· inadequate attention paid to small farmers, especially women on uplands and rain-fed farms, in favour of plantations and large farms
The adverse environmental and human consequences of these policies are illustrated in Diagram 1.
Monocentric industrialisation and urbanisation on the one hand, and rural impoverishment on the other, are perhaps the primary causes of the massive rural-urban migration now occurring throughout Southeast Asia. Both result from an urban-dominated development model, which has led to increasing disparities between the urban and rural sectors of society.
Table 5 Net Urban In-migration Rates and Sex Ratio, and Sex Ratio of Net Rural-Urban Migrations in Selected Countries, 1960-1980
Net urban in-migration rates |
Net rural-urban migration | |||||
Males |
Females |
|||||
Country |
1960s |
1970s |
1960s |
1970s |
1960s |
1970s |
Indonesia |
1.1 |
2.6 |
1.2 |
2.7 |
95.9 |
96.3 |
Malaysia |
... |
2.5 |
... |
2.5 |
... |
97.1 |
Philippines |
... |
1,6 |
... |
1.9 |
... |
80.7 |
Thailand |
... |
2.8 |
... |
3.1 |
... |
88.2 |
Source: UN, 1991.
Of particular relevance is the relationship between urban and rural areas. In countries with large rural sectors, such as Indonesia and Thailand, this has created an imbalance in population distribution, with increasing numbers of young people-both male and female - moving from villages to towns and cities, heavily taxing the infrastructural resources of the urban centres-housing, water, sanitation, waste disposal, transport, etc. Often these rural migrants become the "new urban poor" congregating in squatter communities.
Diagram 1 Environmental and Human Consequences of Development Polices
Table 6 Percentage of Population Residing in Urban Areas in Selected Countries,
1980-2000
Country |
1980 |
1990 |
2000 |
Indonesia |
22.2 |
30.5 |
39.5 |
Malaysia |
34.7 |
43.0 |
51.2 |
Philippines |
37.4 |
42.6 |
48.8 |
Singapore |
100.0 |
100.0 |
100.0 |
Thailand |
17.3 |
22.6 |
29.4 |
Vietnam |
21.9 |
27.1 |
Source: UN, 1991.
The rural exodus usually has negative effects on the agricultural sector. The older people generally stay behind in the villages to manage the farming. The resulting labour shortage thus compounds rural poverty, further jeopardising rural development. Farming lands lie idle and are bought up by urban investors for conversion into industrial sites, golf courses, country clubs, resorts and the like.
In this situation, the subsistence base of the rural population is reduced and depleted, especially for rural women and children, smallholders and the landless. Those previously able to provide for their own subsistence are now made dependent on wage labour, either in the urban or rural sector, The livelihood of those who stay in rural areas as wage workers-as plantation workers, for example become vulnerable to the pricing of commodities and labour.3 These in turn are seasonally affected.
A major reason for these negative consequences is the mix of goals that policies and programmes are supposed to fulfill simultaneously:
· economic growth
· social development
· debt servicing
· environmental conservation
This has led to numerous inconsistencies in policy formulation and implementation, as these various goals are not necessarily compatible and may even be in opposition to one another.
An example of policy inconsistency is sometimes seen in land allocation. Policies focussed economic growth and debt servicing tend to treat all land simply as property to be rented, sold or built up and used for commerce and industry. In contrast, policies focussed on environmental conservation tend to treat land as the habitat of flora and fauna to be conserved in their natural state. And policies focussed on social development tend to treat land either as a national resource or as a resource base for the livelihood of the community. These policy inconsistencies can lead to a three-way contradiction or even conflict between different ministries and departments, a situation which is usually resolved in terms of power-political, financial, or even military - often at the expense of rural communities, who are usually the most powerless people.
Extension services meant to address the needs of the farming community in rural development are themselves plagued by such problems as shortages in staffing, funds, and technical support, as well as a lack of sensitivity or awareness of the community situation, a lack of gender-sensitivity, and a lack of female extension workers who attend to the needs of rural women.
Moreover, in the course of their work, extension workers rarely consider marketing prospects when deciding which crops or activities to push for in the production of farming households. In other words, despite the many consequences of macro development policies passed down from the top, at the ground level the extension services do not adequately address the community problems resulting from these policies.
The dynamics of policies and their consequences are illustrated by the following case from the Philippines (see also Diagram 2):
Forest cover in the Philippines is fast disappearing and an increasing number of species of wild flora and fauna are either seriously endangered or have already become extinct. In 1972, the country had 10.4 million hectares of natural forest, covering 34 percent of the total and area. By 1990, there were only 6.16 million hectares of natural forest, covering 10.5 percent of the total land area. The Philippines is estimated to be losing about 1 19,000 hectares of forest each year. If this trend continues, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources estimates that all the country's forests will be completely gone in about 12 years.
This process of forest denudation has to be understood in the context of ecological interactions between highlands and lowlands, a vicious circle leading to increasing environmental degradation in both zones. Unravelling this vicious circle from the point of forest denudation onwards, we can trace a chain of consequences which, in turn, generate yet further deforestation.
Diagram 2 Irrigated - Rainfed Agricultural Production in the Philippines (and other countries)
Source: International Rice Research Institute, 1994.
The major causes of deforestation fall into two categories:
Accidental
· forest fires
· pests
· diseases
Economic
· commercial logging
· shifting cultivation
· subsistence cultivation
· excessive fuel harvesting.
Whatever the genesis, the consequences of denuding forest land are clear:
· flooding
· soil erosion
· salinization
· decreasing soil fertility
· loss of genetic resources.
The land in at least 22 of the Philippines' 73 provinces is already badly eroded. In 1983, about 45 percent of the 5.78 million hectares classified as suitable for crop production were found susceptible to erosion in varying degrees. In 1985, 50 percent of the country's seasonally-cropped areas apparently suffered from soil erosion (A Report on the Philippines 'Environment and Development, Issues and Strategies, 1992).
What is the effect of forest denudation on lowland irrigated rice farms? Studies show that upper watershed degradation brings about externalities imposed on lowland productivity, especially sediment flow affecting irrigation infrastructure. Pingali and de Vera (1991) tried to relate, econometrically, upper watershed degradation to irrigation infrastructure for each region of the Philippines. The results show that forest production through commercial logging and shifting cultivation, and mineral production through mining, have had significant negative effects on the area irrigated in the wet season. In the Philippines as a whole, upper watershed degradation leads to an average loss of 4,200 hectares per year of wet season irrigated land and 2,700 hectares per year of dry season irrigated land. This amounts to a production loss of approximately 24,000 tons per year.
The degradation of the irrigation infrastructure also adversely affects productivity in the lowlands. Another negative effect of this degradation is the contamination of irrigation water and canals from which families draw water for various purposes, including for bathing their animals. The contaminated water may also affect health, leading to increased susceptibility to water-borne diseases and high mortality, especially among infants and children. The degradation of the irrigation infrastructure, exacerbated by the high electricity costs of irrigation, has also expanded the area used for partially-irrigated and rain-fed farms, which has further led to a massive decline in rice production.
This leads to greater poverty for smallholder rice farmers. In many areas, the low income from rice has led to the conversion of land to industrial, recreational or residential use. Due to unemployment and the inability of rice farming to absorb the available labour force, plus the higher wages and greater opportunities offered by non-farm employment, male farmers migrate to the cities, particularly during the dry season. Unless technologies are forthcoming to increase crop productivity and cropping intensity by growing drought-tolerant crops, male migration will continue, leaving women as the sole managers of their animals, minor crops, and all household responsibilities. This, of course, increases women's already heavy workload enormously. In the lowlands, women from smallholder families also have to work on other farms in operations such as weeding and harvesting, tasks which compete for time and energy with their reproductive roles.
Low family income and lack of capital lead to a deepening indebtedness to meet the high input requirements of rice cultivation and daily household needs. The women are mainly responsible for borrowing paddy or cash--usually from private money lenders, who charge inflated interest rates of up to 25 percent a month. The responsibility for repayment also falls on the women. Yet despite the pressure to seek other income, opportunities are quite limited in their villages. So the women resort to various income-generating activities, such as:
· making and selling rice delicacies, thereby adding value to raw products
· working as hired labourers on other farms
· gleaning rice from the output of big mechanical threshers
· engaging in petty trading.
Most women also take care of swine and poultry in their own backyards, important sources of immediate cash. Another important survival strategy for rural families is for one family member to work abroad and send remittances. These are sometimes used for important farm expenditures, such as buying a carabao or a cow. Micro-studies show that for many farm families off-farm income is increasingly more important than income from farming itself
Lack of the irrigation that would enable farmers to grow two to three crops of rice per year tends to intensify land use and increase the yield per hectare through the use of modern varieties. Pingali and de Vera (1991) stated that rice production is characterised by long-term stagnation or declines in yields under intensive irrigated rice production. The degradation of the paddy environment can occur due to one or more causes: pest pressure, rapid depletion of micro-nutrients and changes in soil chemistry brought about by intensive cropping and increased reliance on low quality irrigation water.
Rola and Pingali (1993) have examined the harmful effects on human health of high pesticide use. Although women are not normally directly exposed to pesticides, they are affected by the misuse and mishandling of pesticide containers. This, of course, also affects their children's health. The over use of pesticides also harms the natural habitat. Fish in ponds and edible frogs and weeds-important indigenous food for poor farmers-are fast disappearing. Families have to resort to buying food. To do so they often have to borrow money.
Rural women who do not have access to alternative and remunerative employment in the village have to work as hired labourers in transplanting and harvesting operations, where they are paid either in cash or in kind (i.e., a share of the paddy). Their wages depend on their farming skills and speed. In transplanting, greater competition results in smaller take-home wages. Such rural women suffer from low returns on their labour and from low self-esteem in maintaining family food security.
Low incomes, lack of employment opportunities, increased indebtedness, and diminishing sources of home-produced foods-all these lead to less available food for a family with an average of six children. The poor quality of food and reduced mother's time in food preparation lead to child malnutrition and high infant mortality. In the absence of alternative support systems, the greater time mothers are obliged to spend outside the home leads to the neglect of child care, less time for breast-feeding and poorer feeding habits.
Environmental and economic pressures in the lowland, rain-fed areas result in the loss of sustainable livelihood and reduced employment. This has led to greater and growing migration from the lowlands to the upland areas, thereby merely transferring the environmental and economic pressures to higher zones. Conflicts consequently arise between the lowland migrants and the upland farmers and indigenous tribal communities. The resulting population pressure exacerbates the poverty and survival needs of the uplands people, including both migrant and indigenous communities. This, in turn, feeds further denuding of forest lands and environmental degradation, as the resources of nature become the only accessible goods that can be exploited. Resource depletion, poverty and unemployment lead to rural-urban migration, and the proliferation of city slums and squatter settlements, also imposing various negative environmental penalties.
