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Ahimsa and Human Development - A Different Paradigm for Conflict Resolution
By Ms. Ursula Oswald Spring Introduction This complex scenario requires deep reflection over searching new solutions, making possible the conflict resolution in a non-violent way or through AHIMSA. This concept links "sustainable development" to universal values like equity, justice, peace and democracy.' In terms of a paradigm an increasingly interrelated and globalised world clashes with market forces to ensure the well -being of the poor and marginalised people all over the world. The new paradigm has two meanings of "oikos". The economy and ecology in a holistic way. It obliges companies to make their productive process more efficient, clean and environmentally more friendly. At the same time, the non-violent or peaceful process of conflict resolution before the eruption of violence or war is promoted from childhood onwards and is reinforced through mass media, informal education and peace games. A rational and efficient management of natural resources allows enormous energetic savings. Alternative sources of energy (wind, water, solar, geothermics), technological advances in the saving and conservation of energy, management of solid and liquid wastes, biotechnical advances substituting chemical fertilizers with organic ones, and diverse agricultural products with biological controls, open a new and distinct globalisation, within the framework of peace, sustainability, democracy and equity. However, there are structural obstacles to this alternative future. Armed Terror, Militarism or Ahimsa The pressing need for a shift away from the current state-centered militarised security paradigm is obvious when we witness the current state of violence and conflicts in the world. The current militarised security paradigm has brought us a total of 93 wars involving 70 states between 1990 and 1995, killing five and a half million people, including one million children. Another alarming satistic is that of the 40 million refugees worldwide, the majority of them are women and children. Irreversible environmental damage is often caused by the use of biological and chemical weapons, affecting women disproportionately as they are responsible for the well-being of their families and, also due to their reproductive role, they often have to bear the consequences of chemical warfare by giving birth to severely deformed or sick children. For poor women, this is an extra burden on their already hard lives. The arms trade serves the hegemonic interests of "major powers". For instance, in 1997 alone, the United States produced and partially exported: 1.406,505 small weapons and 2.235,136 bigger ones, as shotguns, machineguns and rifles, a total of 3.641,641 (Newsweek, 23-8-99: pp 36-37). In the South, both earnings and the proportion of the budget designated for social investment are reduced. A privileged elite in the Third World is created within the armed forces, opposing democratisation processes and a redistribution of wealth through direct repression. Recent military coups show the vulnerability of innocent people to military regimes in developing countries. ( Laos, former-Yugoslavia, Chile, Congo, Rwanda ). Sustainability and Natural Resources The air pollution will, as estimated, give rise to the world's temperature by 1:2 degrees by the year 2050 (Kyoto Summit. 1997). This means there will be at least 15 million people affected by floods, droughts, famine, hurricanes, monsoons, increasingly devastating forest fires, storms, earlier spring, heat waves, melting glaciers causing a loss of 37 thousand square kilometer per year (Times, December 13. 1999, p.10) - polar warming and rising sea -levels, together with vanishing biodiversity and spreading diseases (especially malaria, dengue, yellow fever). Bunyard (1999), calculates that the melting of permafrost could release about 450 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide and methane, reinforcing the global climatic change. "Oceans, instead of a vital sink for carbon could turn into a net source... with fifty times more carbon dioxide than is in the atmosphere." (p.72) The Hadley Centre predicts that global warming could cause the Amazon Basin to become a desert by 2050. The phenomenon of global warming is one of the most notable consequences of emissions, especially in low-lying countries with long coastal areas, such as Bangladesh or the Netherlands. In Bangladesh it is particularly worrying as its most fertile lands are located in coastal regions, that during floods caused by rising sea-levels, have suffered from a process of salinisation which has resulted in a drop in food production. During the monsoon floods from July to September 1998, a loss of around 2.2 million tonnes of rice production was reported, causing 14% decrease in its production. As an extremely poor country, with increasing levels of hunger, Bangladesh has few resources to resolve this problem. Warmer temperature could be ruinous for Chinese farmers. The increase of just one metre could affect 73 million of peasants and an area of 125 thousand square kilometre. These climatic changes are also causing famines, hurricanes, monsoons and droughts bringing about increasingly devastating forest fires, which affect biodiversity in flora and fauna. Over the last 5 years, there has been an average of 1,258 forest fires in a year in Mexico and in 1998, the worst drought in 70 years occasioning thousands of forest fires causing the death of 50 people and destroying 2,48,000 hectares in the first 5 months of the year alone. In Indonesia a similar drought caused agricultural and livestock losses, bush fires and forest destruction. Climatic changes are having pernicious effects on our lives resulting in huge natural disasters. In the past two years, more than 100 thousand people lost their lives through natural disaster, and at least a billion lost or were forced to reconstruct their homes according to the World Watch Institute. Damages were estimated at more than 200 billion US dollars. The biggest natural disasters in 1998 were the hurricane 'Mitch' which totally devastated large parts of Central America, the floods in China and Bangladesh, an ice-storm that affected Canada and New England; in 1999 the floods in Venezuela, India, China; the ice storms in Europe and recently, in 2000, hurricanes in Mozambique, Madagascar and South Mrica and forest fires in Indonesia. The fact is that natural disasters have affected the extremely poor countries of Central America, Asia and Africa. Why? Poor people are always severely affected by natural disasters because they are more likely to live in dangerous, insecure areas where disaster can easily strike, like in mountainous regions prone to land slides, in ravines, on river-banks prone to flooding, in any area where rich people do not want to live and where the poor can set up a home with little expense. Usually cheap, or recycled material, often what we consider as rubbish, provides little protection under normal climatic circumstances, and even less, when faced with heavy winds, flooding, earthquakes, fires, and other natural calamities. Over two decades, the consumption of drinking water has doubled. Twenty countries suffer from severe shortages with less than 1,000 cubic metres available per person per year. This scarcity can be easily translated into a potential war situation, especially considering that around 1/3 of the world population is without access to safe water. Since the beginning of 1980, intelligence services in the United States estimated that there were ten regions in the world that could become involved in a war because of water scarcity (Starr, 1992). The Centre for Natural Resources, Energy and Transport published a register of international rivers in which 214 river basins and lakes belong to two or more countries. Approximately 47% of the globe is located within international basins and 44 countries exist where at least 80% of their territory lies there (Biswas, 1993). This implies potential conflicts in the face of emergency situations, especially in the Middle-East, in countries like Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Iraq, as it is considered that the most conflictual international river-basins are those of the Jordan, Euphrates and Nile rivers. The World Health Organisation states that more than 500 million suffer from water-borne diseases (malaria, diarrhea, cholera, typhus, and dysentery) or have been infected from polluted water. In developing countries, around 81% of preventable deaths occur due to non-potable water with a rate of 25,000 deaths per day
(UNEP, Developmental Agenda "Sustainability" is not a new concept. It was popularised by the Brundtland Commission in its report "Our Common Future" where sustainable development was defined as satisfying the present needs, without interfering with the development of future generations. Nowadays, dozens of definitions can be found: the restructuring of the growing processes; the technological changes required to sustain it; the transformation of the relationship between existing depredation and pollution towards a process of renewal development. Sustainability is concerned with efficient water use and its saving devices, re-use, recycling and consumption reduction; water- saving techniques in agriculture and at the basin level, multi-level resource optimisation techniques, beginning with lineal programming up to decomposition (Arreguin, 1991). This implies a different productive process, the awareness towards a new growth model, the active participation of society and radical technological changes. To accomplish this, it is convenient to change the existing depredation and pollution relationship into a process of renewed development. In other words, development policies must be compatible, not only with the preservation of the environment, but also with its recovery, protection, rational management and social commitment. Free Market Income Trade and Equity Global consumption has increased at an unprecedented rate, reaching $24 billion in 1988, 16 times the 1990 level. Despite the significant population growth, the richest fifth of the world population today consumes 86% compared to the poorest fifth who are left with only 1.3%. Africa today consumes 20% less than 25 years ago and per capita consumption is rising in industrialised countries (UNDP 1988). As per graph one, 85% of investments, 85.5% of savings, 84.2% of international trade, and 84.7% of the GNP (Gross National Product) are also concentrated in the hands of the richest 20% of the world population. The other side of the coin shows us the world's poorest 200/0 who are left in the thin edge of the wedge, with only 0.9% of investments, 0.7% of savings, 0.9% of international trade and 1.4% of GNP (UNO, 1996). The world financial bodies, grouped into the Group of 8: G-8 whose financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), supported by regional development banks (Asian Development Bank, Inter American Development Bank and African Development Bank) should guarantee the smooth running of the world economy, Nevertheless, Bretton Wood required severe modifications in the face of the Asian crisis. which involved the world's second power, Japan whose contradictions and structural imbalances, such as the internal debt of more than $ US 300 billion, destabilished the world monetary system. The amount of dollars outside of the United States, also called "Hot money", totalled two billion dollars in 1962 (Roberto Martinez Le Clainche) while in 1990 this figure reached phenomenal proportions, being 125 thousand times greater, totalling 250 trillion dollars. This amount is equal to 50 times the total value of international trade and is 10 times that of the global GNP (Bill Orr, 1990). Resultantly, this money in currency is in a search for better investment opportunities. There is no legal framework which can control it, resulting in an increasing instability in world finances. Bank crashes are in other mechanism for transferring huge amounts of public earnings to a financial elite. Not only in Southeast Asia, but also in Latin America and Sweden, there were enormous amounts of collectively worked out money transferred to a small group, under the argument that the bank system has to work efficiently, i.e. between 1991-92, 18 banks were privatised in Mexico and 6 years later people had initially to pay 5.3 times the value of the original privatisation with hunger, poverty, low rates of educational achievement and quality of life. Another contradiction in capitalism is the growing unemployment. Mexico, with a considerable real growth rate of 24.4% in manufacturing production between 1994 and 1998, generated only 92.1% of the man-hours worked and gave employment to only 97.6% of the personnel employed in 1993, the year before the last economic crisis (INEGI, 1993-1999). The phenomenon of shrinking work forces will prevent full employment of the work force in future. This is particularly pertinent amongst women and young people who are obliged to seek employment in the temporary job market or to create a space for themselves within the informal sector with low pay and little or no rights. Growing unemployment rates are the result of a productive restructuring by multinationals, the transfer to intensive productive processes of the lobour force to Third World countries with accompanying low salaries and the closure of medium and small scale local industries in the interests of globalisation. The trilateral conformation of commercial blocks (Europe, Asia, North America) promoted since the seventies by Henry Kissinger, strengthens the internal markets of the block, although the weakest nations are marginalised from many advantages because of their lack of competitiveness in the medium and long term, the pre -eminence of multinationals in terms of production, commerce, transport, communication, and diffusion of technologies overcome the limits imposed by the conformation of these blocks and their tariff barriers. In fact, the negative consequences in the generation of employment, especially local production and its diversity, provoke a growing homogenisation of supply, accompanied by worldwide publicity campaigns which crystallize the consumer society, so long as there is sufficient purchasing power. A highly destructive phenomenon currently present in the majority of developing nations is, without doubt, growing internal and external debts. According to the World Bank and the IMF, the total external debt of developing countries increased to US $2 billion. Debts and the service of these debts not only generate new debts, but also mortgage the future development of these countries. Among 35 countries with low HID rank, 15 have external debts higher than their own GNP and 9 more than 75% of GNP. Highly indebted nations include Argentina, which pays 58.7% of GNP as debt service; Brazil 57.4%, Sao Tome 32.5%; Nicaragua 31.7%; Venezuela 31.3%; Ecuador 31%; Peru 30.9%; and Indonesia 30%. The highest debt crisis is still in Latin America and the Caribbean. (UNDP, p. 193-196) In short, internal contradictions of the model tend to eliminate two-thirds of possible consumers in the world burdening an increasingly reduced society, totally saturated by consumerism. In conclusion, the paradigm of the free market cannot generate full employment, guarantee quality of life, and ensure financial stability. Nor can it eliminate poverty or generate confidence that one's life-saving will be managed productively. Social Justice and Democracy
Statistically shown, 80% of the world's poor can be found in only twelve countries, namely: India, China, Brazil, Nigeria, Indonesia, Philippines, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Mexico, Kenya, Peru and Nepal. Although overall human consumption per capita has constantly increased, the poorest 20% have been excluded from basic health services, primary education at the same time as suffering from chronic malnutrition, while more than two billion suffer from anemia. More than a third of the world population does not have access to drinking water and many adults are illiterate. However, of a billion illiterate adults in the world, 60% are women (World Bank, 1998). In addition, 60% lack sewage facilities, 14% lack decent housing and 20% of children do not attend primary school. The AIDS pandemic has been an uninvited guest on the African continent over the past 20 years or more, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa where 70% of new infections occurred in 1998, rising to 90% in children under the age of 15. A staggering 83% of total AIDS deaths have occurred within this region and 95% of all AIDS orphans have been Africans. This is an alarming situation when we find that around one-tenth of the world's population lives in south of the Sahara. No country in Africa has escaped the virus. For example, in Botswana, Namibia, Swaziland and Zimbabwe, current estimates show that over one person in five between the ages of 15 and 49 has HIV or AIDS. Current estimates put the figure at a total of 33.4 million people worldwide infected with HIV. The crude reality is that around 95% of all HIV positive live in the developing world. The vast majority of them do not know that they are infected. In many countries the dominant mode of transmission is heterosexual. Women are being increasingly affected by the pandemic due to both social and biological reasons. Young people too are now at the greatest risk of being infected due to taboos and lack of sexual education. Often girls become infected at the younger ages than boys. In a recent study conducted in Kenya, 22% of 15-19 year old girls were infected with HIV against only 4% of boys the same age. These trends can be understood in the context of vast gender and social inequality. Malnutrition and hunger are both parts of complex and interrelated system of social, agricultural, economic and ecological realities. The current policies of high indebtedness, substitution of basic foodstuffs with export goods such as vegetables, tropical fruits and flowers, exploitations of livestock instead of food, the destruction of local and regional markets in the interests of multinational monopolies, the forced bankruptcy of agricultural producers facing high interests rates and constant increase in agrochemical and other consumables, falling prices of raw products, have had adverse impact on Third World peasants. On the one hand, scientific progress in medicine is changing the traditional demographic balance: the reduction of infant mortality has transformed developing nations into young populations, who have to survive with limited budgets. On the other, in industrialised countries, medical progress has increased life expectancy there. People in these countries are putting pressure on their governments for social security systems. Humankind is facing a clear dilemma; either a minor elite will systematically destroy the majority, through hunger, epidemics, misery, wars, ecocide and genocide, or world and local mechanisms of fair resource distribution will have to be developed along with worldwide solidarity and social investments. Resources are enough to meet the needs of the planet, provided they are better managed. In conclusion, gender and youth discrimination, urbanization, disease and hunger and the free market encourage direct exploitation of marginalised people. As such only a collective effort is needed to do away with inequality and exploitation in social, economic and environmental terms. Basic Needs: Fundamental Nonviolent Security In 1998, 18,461,487 cases of chest infections were reported in Mexico, while during 1997, this figure was 16,860,884. Analysing the extreme example of Mexico City, where almost 20% of the population suffer from asthma, including 11% of children according to the 1993 study, one finds that around 1,600,000 people in Mexico City suffer from asthmatic problems. In 1998 more than 70% of children were reported to be suffering from respiratory illnesses caused by air-pollution, many of them of reporting chronic breathing problems. According to the Ecological and Civil Protection Commissions, of the General Assembly, in Mexico City, a 90% increase in mortality rates was noticed during those days in which a state of emergency was declared due to high levels of contamination over the last three years. During 3 days of heavy pollution in May, 1998, the Secretary of Health reported that 17.5% of the population were complaining of breathing trouble. 19.1% with a dry cough. 34.9% with a sore throat, 36.8% complaining of chronic head- aches, 35.1% with streaming eyes, and 18.9% with hearing problems or ear-ache. In the other mentioned cities the situation 1s very similar. The eighties and nineties generations prefer to stay in their houses watching televisions, reading newspapers, watching their video, and traveling in their car. In every community, the philosophy of caring and sharing has been completely thrown out of the window, as if everyone has the right to be selfish under the auspices of neoliberalism. How many times do we see cars with only one occupant with so many people waiting frustrated, due to inadequate public transport? There seems to be no hope of putting more funds into public transport systems: whereas it is important to invest billions of dollars in building new highways. Concluding Remarks
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