Pessimistic prognosis

Whatever the achievements, reforms in the underdeveloped world still remain embryonic and fragmentary, writes Mohamed Sid-Ahmed

---

Last month, two alarming reports were issued just a few days apart, one highlighting the rapidly declining quality of our natural habitat, the other the crisis facing human development in the Arab world. The first report, entitled Ecosystems and the Millennium, was compiled by 1,360 scientists brought together by the UN from 95 nations, in the context of a programme initiated by Kofi Annan on the occasion of the advent of the third millennium.

By ecosystems is meant the relationship between living organisms, including the human species, and the natural environment surrounding them. This relationship, according to the report, is now fraught with tension, the delicate balance between Man and Nature under assault by the actions of the human race. The deterioration of the natural environment under the effect of economic development has begun to threaten development itself. The main conclusion reached by the team of scientists is that environmental degradation due to human activity has reached such a degree that the ability of ecosystems to respond to the needs of future generations can no longer be taken for granted.

The report states that 60 per cent of the ecosystems which provide the needs of life are now deficient, and that the adverse effects of this deficiency impact primarily on the rural inhabitants of poor nations that is, on that segment of humanity that needs development the most.

Not all the conclusions reached by the report are negative, however. For example, there is a marked improvement in the welfare of the middle classes. Also, agricultural production is growing at a faster rate than the global population. Progress in the struggle against poverty, hunger and disease depends on optimising the benefits that can be drawn from the ecosystems, and in this area the 20th century has made huge strides. The area of land converted into agricultural land between 1945 and 2001 was greater than all the land converted to agriculture throughout the 18th and 19th centuries combined. But change in any system is not linear. At a given critical threshold, the whole system can break down.

The Arab world has proven to be one of the most resistant regions to change, the obstacles impeding its attempts to overcome backwardness seemingly insurmountable. Contrary to the movements that became prominent in the struggle against pollution and global warming, mobilising research for development proved much more arduous.

The title of the second report, issued by the Amman-based UNDP Regional Bureau for Arab States is Towards Freedom in the Arab World. Written by an independent group of Arab scholars, policy- makers and practitioners, this third instalment in the series focusses on the issue of freedom in the Arab world and its relationship to good governance and human development. Diagnosing the main obstacles to rights and freedoms, the report identifies the most serious threat in the region as the high incidence of military takeovers in a number of Arab states, and affirms that the peaceful transmission of power is the only guarantee against various forms of conflict and internal subjugation.

The report warns that internal incompetence and subjugation on the one hand and external appropriation on the other has made conflict more acute. Deprived of access to democratic channels of political discourse, people are driven to resort to violent modes of protest. The authors of the report believe priority should be given to three reform initiatives: first, the lifting of the state of emergency in force in many Arab countries, second, an end to discrimination against various groups, particularly women, and, third, guaranteeing the independence of the judiciary. The report talks of a "crisis of legitimacy", in which Arab regimes, lacking the legitimacy derived from the will of the majority, resort to other sources of legitimacy. For example, some style themselves as the last line of defence against religious despotism, chaos and the collapse of the state, a formula the report condemns as "the legitimacy of blackmail".

Overcoming poverty, hunger and disease depends on the proper management of the ecosystems. And, as the poorest people are the most heavily dependent on those systems, they bear the main brunt of any breakdown in the system. The UN estimates that fully one-quarter of the global population lives below the poverty line: in 2001, more than one billion people lived on less than $1 a day.

Although per capita food production has grown in real terms throughout the last 40 years, it is estimated that as many as 856 million people, mainly in southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, suffered severe food shortages between 1995 and 1997. The earthquake that erupted in the Indian Ocean several weeks ago set off the giant tsunami which devastated coastal areas in southern Asia and, to a lesser extent, in some east African countries. Seismologists fear other similar eruptions in the future.

Then there is the growing water crisis, with more than one billion people lacking access to sources of potable water and 200 million living in the most arid locations on the planet. How to overcome such calamities?

Some reform initiatives were spearheaded by civil society organisations in 2004, such as the Sanaa Declaration and the Alexandria Charter, but according to the report, reforms in the Arab world have for the most part been embryonic and fragmentary and closer to cosmetics than to genuine reform. The lack of freedoms is very much linked to non-democratic rule as well as to tribal and ethnic traditions. It is even sanctioned by many constitutions which, instead of guaranteeing freedom of thought and belief, imposes constraints on liberties in the name of security and national unity.

Moreover, the situation in Palestine and Iraq does not encourage human development compatible with a globalised unipolar world, where partial reforms, however varied they can be are -- according to the report no longer effective or even possible.