Chris Lewis

Environmental Ethics

A call for attention is demanded when examining the world’s situation of poverty, world hunger and the effects on global population. Facts can often mislead when calculating the criteria of what humans should do to comfortably sustain their well being. The current world situation now reflects a global spread of two billion people starving for food and slipping inexorably toward an inevitable death. It is a myth that food is scarce. Food is not scarce, and unfortunately that is one of the serious miscalculated facts that has circulated around the uninformed. Food, gloriously, is more abundant than we can imagine.

The United Nations studies show that the world is producing two pounds of grain -- more than 3000 calories worth -- for every living person each day (World Hunger p.13). This figure does not even include the calories derived from other plentiful resources such as fruits, vegetables and meat. However, our present-day world suffers from the problem of functioning in a manner that is balanced, humanistic, logical, sound and proper. The world is divided into rich and poor nations: (1.) A capitalist world economic system of "haves"(d.c.'s), and (2.) the"have-nots", or the backward, less-developed countries (l.d.c.’s).

In the second category are countries who are manipulated and exploited by the collaboration of transnational corporations from the developed world (the d.c.'s). The "haves" are comprised of elite societies who have made it their vocation to successfully produce, grow and to develop -- and to use this abundance as a powerful tool in controlling and directing opportunities for themselves in less fortunate environments. These practices have created an atrocity in the way relationships from the fortunate to the less fortunate are managed. They have become an insult to decent interaction within humankind, from people to people. Through direct and indirect action, these developed nations have stripped millions and millions of third-world (l.c.d.'s) people of adequate nutrition for life sustenance. This socially- caused hunger will remain inexcusable as long as the prevalence of such hunger results from unjustifiable acts or social institutions.

In examining the crisis of world hunger, it is important to separate what constitutes the social aspects and the biological aspects of the problem. Natural catastrophes, such as flooding and famine have and do account for many starving victims. On the social level, developed countries have insinuated their philosophy of “productivity” into the third world or lesser-developed countries for the purposes of making produce and more money.

The serious problem that arises here is that after the d.c.’s have stripped away thousands of acres of land that served as the food source for the indigenous people, the new food production does not provide a balanced system of distribution. The indigenous people rely heavily on subsistence farming and do not normally equate this with making money. When their land is gone, and there is no money in the pocket, the indigenous are left with unfed mouths. The food supply then goes to urban-middle and upper-income groups in the l.d.c.’s; it is exported to the d.c.’s or it is fed to livestock to create meat (which the poor can definitely not afford). Some of it gets destroyed or dumped to keep the prices up (World Hunger, p. 14).

Those who cannot provide the means to purchase food fail to impact the calculations underlying the market behavior of food producers and distributors. The distribution of social wealth, and of the government food and economic policies that sustain it, are unjust, unethical, and morally wrong.

What heightens this unjustifiable act of imposing development into the l.d.c.’s is the fact that once the d.c.’s have their hands on the precious lands, they do not utilize the land’s natural material to its maximum benefit. A World Bank survey shows that 3% of all landowners in the l.d.c.’s (mostly owned by large and powerful corporations) own 80% of the land, and with this land, only 44% is cultivated (World Hunger, p.13). The rest of the land is used for strip mining, mineral development or it is kept aside for future real estate.

Columbia is a perfect example: The largest farmers control over 70% of the land and only cultivate 6% of their materials (World Hunger, p.13). Another hidden fact is that over all, small farms are more productive per acre than large farms. Taiwan’s farms, with less than one and a quarter acres, produces a net income per acre that is nearly twice that of farms over five acres (World Hunger, p.14). According to the World Bank in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, and Guatemala, the smaller farms are producing a larger output per acre than large farms.

Therefore it is inadequate to say that there is insufficient land to meet the current world demand for food. Frederic L. Bender concludes these statistics by explaining; “…The existence of some two billion undernourished, malnourished or starving people must quite simply be the result of actions by those who do own the land, or of the operation of social institutions, such as the capitalist market. This constitutes a series of socially-caused violations of the right to life of those who neither own, nor have access to agricultural land, nor have money with which to buy food” (World Hunger p.14).

There are many varying moral approaches to the crisis of population and world hunger. Some philosophers have little sensitivity to the cry from the starving victims. For example, Hardin’s view is strictly utilitarian where he does not give any moral weight to the significance of existing loyalties. In his “impartialist” view, he states in his philosophy “Life Boat Ethics” that each nation has a carrying capacity. The nation’s natural endowment of resources can support a human population up to a certain point. If the nation’s population exceeds that point of carrying capacity, there will be a lack of availability and the population will suffer a dieback. He claims that it is morally wrong and unnatural to assist a nation struggling from overpopulation. By supplying food to the needy we are hindering the natural processes of the natural world. Hardin declares, “The world is one in which competition and cooperation characterize relations between humans and human animal interactions” (VD human pop, p.381).

The “Life Boat Ethics” approach could be considered if applied more than a century ago when each family cultivated its own food. However, in today’s day and age where food is “store-bought” and developed countries have dominated the food industry and distribution, it is absolutely unacceptable to ignore the people who starve. Unfortunately the natural process of population control does not exist for humans anymore, i.e., there are cures for diseases, there is shelter from natural disasters, and there are no human-predators. It was the developed countries who ignited the need to recognize socially caused hunger, and it is their duty, both for moral reasons and their own responsibility, to rectify and help the situation of starvation.

Social ecologists have a quite separate and different approach to that of Hardin’s. The social ecologist is highly concerned about man’s man-made environment and the human-nature relationship. Other moral interpretations of population and world hunger (to the social ecologist), ignores the social causes of the crisis. In other words, it is the way people organize their societies that is to blame, regardless of the population size.

Opposing all forms of hierarchy domination, class exploitation and oppression, social ecologist’s worry that corporate, bureau tic and state interests are much more inept to shape the future of the natural world than are subsistence, private and communal forms “of spiritual self regeneration.” Murray Bookchin states in his dialogue with Dave Foreman, “…the fact that our social ecological problems are fundamentally social problems requiring fundamental social change…. it makes a big difference in how societies relate to the natural world whether people live in cooperative, nonhierarchical, and decentralized communities or in hierarchical, class-ridden, and authoritarian mass societies”(Constructing Enviro Ethic p.24).

In order to get a grasp on the crisis of starvation, there needs to be a new, thorough, and consistent technique of managing the levels of productivity and food distributions where profit for the few takes precedence over nourishment for the many. It is necessary to revolutionize the way capitalist producers cultivate the land only to bring profit to its owners. Unfortunately, the government of the l.d.c.’s is weak and incapable of challenging d.c. corporations. As a result the growing corporate control over food production in the l.d.c.’s guarantees that political decisions effecting agriculture in these countries will primarily adhere to the interests of the elite and the corporate, leaving the needs of the hungry indigenous at bay.

From the moral standing of the ecofeminist, growing industry and development stirs high emotions on separate additional accounts. To be an ecofeminist is basically to be ecological and a feminist at the same time. For the ecofeminist, a main concern is the destruction of nature through development, or what they have entitled “maldevelopment”. Society is hurting nature’s harmony and violating the integrity of the interconnected, the interdependence and the organic.

The ecofeminists' view is that violence to nature is a associated with violence to women, for it is the woman who has traditionally depended on nature for both spiritual and physical sustenance, not only for themselves, but for their families and their communities. For example, excessive over-felling of trees near streams and rivers has destroyed forest resources and renewable supplies of water through hydrological distabilisation. This is water that women of the third world countries depend on for themselves and their families.

The dominant developed countries have failed to recognize the preciousness of nature’s resources to the subsistence economies. By excessive demand for raw materials, the resource intensive industries have disrupted essential ecological processes. As a result, poverty is prominent from the scarcity of water, fuel, fodder and food. Beyond the loss of materials for the subsistence economies' survival, “maldevelopment” has created injustice, inequality, exploitation and violence. The ecofeminists believe that it has ruptured the “cooperative unity of the masculine and the feminine and places man above and separate from nature and women.”(Van, p.273).

Ecofeminists attack the concept of “productivity”. The concept of economic globalization declares that if a nation is not producing for its own country’s consumption, then that country is not producing, with the exception of trading, then the country is contributing to global growth. Therefore, argues ecofeminism, a woman’s work which is sustainable production, is treated as not existing, which can therefore be argued that entire national economies can be made to disappear.

A stable river is not productive. Production takes place only when controlled by technologies for commodity production, -the river needs to be developed with dams. Women in a community, sharing the river to necessitate their water needs for their family and neighbors, are not involved in productive labor. If an individual is not involved in “productive labor” or purchasing goods from the production of labor, then that individual is overlooked or ignored. Most women of the third world or lesser-developed countries fall into this category.

Questions about economic globalization arise for the ecofeminist: For every growth that is visible, what is the destruction that is invisible? The goal is to make the invisible, visible. Ecofeminism would require that the world see all of the destruction that parallels with economic growth. Then it would be seen that “maldevelopment” does not create value, it only burdens destruction, dominance, and inequality.

Ecofeminists especially advocate for women in third world or lesser-developed countries. There is an assumption that progress and development is possible and for the good of all. Yet women, peasants, and tribes are struggling from the liberation of development. Their knowledge and practice undermined, women have lost their livelihood through destruction. Access to land ownership, employment for wages, technology, and small business loans are extremely rare for women if they should ever desire to convert to western lifestyle. Ecofeminism calls for a recognition that women have not shared in most “gains” from economic growth. Their wages have not increased and they still hold less property. In conclusion, the ecofeminists believe that the insinuation of capital marketing and development is a grotesque symbolism of the domination of man over women and nature.

World Hunger p.13

VD human pop, p.381

Constructing Enviro Ethic p.24

Van, p.273