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BOX 3-1
Cotton Produced for Export in the Sahel
In 1983-84. as drought and hunger were taking hold in the Sahel region of Africa, five Sahelian nations Burkino Faso, Chad. Mall, Niger, and Senegal - produced record amounts of cotton. They harvested 154 million tons of cotton fibre, up from Z2.7 million tons in 1961-62. The Sahel as a whole set another record in 1984: It imported a record 1.77 million tons of cereals, up from 200,000 tons yearly in the early 1960s. Over the period that Sahelian cotton harvests were steadily rising world cotton prices were steadily falling in real terms. These figures do not suggest that Sahelian nations should plough up all cotton to plant sorghum and millet. But the fact that farmers who can grow cotton cannot grow enough food to feed themselves suggests that cash crops are getting too much attention and food crops too little.
Source: J. Girl, 'Retrospe, ive de l'Economie Sahelienne', Club du Sahel, Paris, 1984.
genetic resources. International trade patterns can also encourage the unsustainable development policies and practices
that have steadily degraded the croplands and rangelands in the drylands of Asia and Africa; an example of that is provided by the growth of cotton production for export in the Sahel region. (See Box 3-1.)
6. Growth in many developing countries also requires external capital inflows. Without reasonable flows, the prospect for any improvements in living standards is bleak. As a result, the poor will be forced to overuse the environment to ensure their own survival. Long-term development thus becomes much harder, and in some cases impossible. Yet trends in the movement of capital are worrying, Net resource flows to developing countries have fallen in real terms; in aggregate, there is now actually an outflow. (See Table 3-1.) The increase of international capital flows to developing countries expected over the rest of the 1980s is only half that thought necessary to restore growth to levels where a reduction in poverty can occur.[1]
7. A mere increase in flows of capital to developing countries will not necessarily contribute to development. Domestic efforts are of paramount importance. More external funding is also required, but it must come in ways that are sensitive to the environmental impacts. The point is that the reduction of poverty itself is a precondition for environmentally sound
development. And resource flows from rich to poor flows improved both qualitatively and quantitatively – are a precondition for the eradication of poverty.
- ↑ Department of International Economic and Social Affairs (DIESA), Doubling Development Finance; Meeting a Global Challenge, Views and Recommendations of the Committee on Development Planning (New York: UN, 1986).
