85
helping in the overall effort to reverse the process of state
failure.78
The new Department of Global Security would be funded by
shifting fiscal resources from the Department of Defense. In
effect, the DGS budget would be the new defense budget. It
would focus on the central sources of state failure by helping to
stabilize population, restore environmental support systems,
eradicate poverty, provide universal primary school education,
and strengthen the rule of law through bolstering police forces,
court systems, and, where needed, the military.
The DGS would deal with the production of and interna-
tional trafficking in drugs. It would make such issues as debt
relief and market access an integral part of U.S. policy. It would
also provide a forum to coordinate domestic and foreign policy,
ensuring that domestic policies, such as cotton export subsidies
or subsidies to convert grain into fuel for cars, do not contribute
to the failure of other countries. The department would provide
afocus for the United States to help lead a growing internation-
al effort to reduce the number of failing states. This agency
would also encourageprivate investment in failing states by pro-
viding loan guarantees to spur development.
As part of this effort the United States could rejuvenate the
Peace Corps to assist with grassroots programs, including
teaching in schools and helping to organize family planning,
tree planting, and micro-lending programs. This program
would involve young people while developing their sense of civic
pride and social responsibility.
At a more senior level, the United States has a fast-growing
reservoir of retired people who are highly skilled in such fields
as management, accounting, law, education, and medicine and
who are eager to be of use. Their talents could be mobilized
through a voluntary Senior Service Corps. The enormous reser-
voir of management skills in this age group could be tapped to
augment the skills so lacking in failing-state governments.
There are already, of course, a number of volunteer organi-
zations that rely on the talents, energy, and enthusiasm of both
U.S. young people and seniors, including the Peace Corps, Teach
for America, and the Senior Corps. But conditions now require
amore ambitious, systematic effort to tap this talent pool.
The world has quietly entered a new era, one where there is
Eradicating Poverty and Stabilizing Population
187
strong coffee prices and partly because the government is steadi-
ly gaining in legitimacy—has helped turn things around.
Ranked fourteenth in 2005, Colombia in 2009 was forty-first on
the Foreign Policy list. Neither Liberia nor Colombia are out of
the woods yet, but both are moving in the right direction.
75
Failing states are a relatively new phenomenon, and they
require a new response. The traditional project-based assistance
program is no longer adequate. State failure is a systemic failure
that requires a systemic response.
The United Kingdom and Norway have recognized that fail-
ing states need special attention and have each set up inter-
agency funds to provide a response mechanism. Whether they
are adequately addressing systemic state failure is not yet clear,
but they do at least recognize the need to devise a specific insti-
tutional response.76
In contrast, U.S. efforts to deal with weak and failing states
are fragmented. Several U.S. government departments are
involved, including State, Treasury, and Agriculture, to name a
few. And within the State Department, several different offices
are concerned with this issue. This lack of focus was recognized
by the Hart-Rudman U.S. Commission on National Security in
the Twenty-first Century: “Responsibility today for crisis pre-
vention and response is dispersed in multiple AID [U.S. Agency
for International Development] and State bureaus, and among
State’s Under Secretaries and the AID Administrator. In prac-
tice, therefore, no one is in charge.”77
What is needed now is a new cabinet-level agency—a
Department of Global Security (DGS)—that would fashion a
coherent policy toward each weak and failing state. This rec-
ommendation, initially set forth in a report of the Commission
on Weak States and U.S. National Security, recognizes that the
threats to security are now coming less from military power and
more from the trends that undermine states, such as rapid pop-
ulation growth, poverty, deteriorating environmental support
systems, and spreading water shortages. The new agency would
incorporate AID (now part of the State Department) and all the
various foreign assistance programs that are currently in other
government departments, thereby assuming responsibility for
U.S. development assistance across the board. The State Depart-
ment would provide diplomatic support for this new agency,
186
PLAN B 4.0
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84
States made some token efforts to comply, but the WTO again
ruled in Brazil’s favor in December 2007, concluding that U.S.
cotton subsidies were still depressing the world market price for
cotton. The affluent world can no longer afford farm policies
that permanently trap millions in poverty in aid-recipient coun-
tries by cutting off their main avenue of escape.83
Whereas most U.S. farm subsidies depress prices of exports
from developing countries, the subsidy for converting grain into
ethanol raises the price of grain, which most low-income coun-
tries import. In effect, U.S. taxpayers are subsidizing an increase
in world hunger.84
Debt forgiveness is another essential component of the
broader effort to eradicate poverty. A few years ago, for exam-
ple, when sub-Saharan Africa was spending four times as much
on debt servicing as it spent on health care, debt forgiveness was
the key to boosting living standards in this last major bastion of
poverty.85
In July 2005, heads of the G-8 industrial countries, meeting
in Gleneagles, Scotland, agreed to cancel the multilateral debt
that a number of the poorest countries owed to the World Bank,
the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the African Devel-
opment Bank. Among other things, this initiative was intended
to help the poorest countries reach the Millennium Develop-
ment Goals. It immediately affected 18 of the poorest debt-rid-
den countries (14 in Africa and 4 in Latin America), offering
these countries a new lease on life.86
The year after the Gleneagles meeting, Oxfam International
reported that the IMF had eliminated the debts owed by 19 coun-
tries, the first major step toward the debt relief goal set at the G-
8 meeting. For Zambia, the $6 billion of debt relief enabled
President Levy Mwanawasa to announce that basic health care
would be now free. In Oxfam’s words, “the privilege of the few
became the right of all.” In East Africa, Burundi announced it
would cancel school fees, permitting 300,000 children from poor
families to enroll in school. In Nigeria, debt relief has been used
to set up a poverty action fund, part of which will go to training
thousands of new teachers.87
Even as debt was being reduced, development aid as a per-
centage of gross national income from donor countries
decreased in 2006 and 2007. Although it rose in 2008, aid is still
Eradicating Poverty and Stabilizing Population
189
no national security without global security. We need to recog-
nize this and to restructure and refocus our efforts to respond to
this new reality.
APoverty Eradication Agenda and Budget
As indicated earlier, eradicating poverty involves much more
than international aid programs. It also includes the debt relief
that the poorest countries need in order to escape from poverty.
For many developing countries, the reform of farm subsidies in
aid-giving industrial countries and debt relief may be equally
important. A successful export-oriented farm sector often
offers a path out of poverty for a poor country. Sadly, for many
developing countries this path is blocked by the self-serving
farm subsidies of affluent countries. Overall, industrial-country
farm subsidies of $258 billion are roughly double the develop-
ment assistance from these governments.
79
These subsidies encourage overproduction of some farm
commodities, which then are sent abroad with another boost
from export subsidies. The result is depressed world market
prices, particularly for sugar and cotton, commodities where
developing countries have the most to lose.80
Although the European Union (EU) accounts for more than
half of the $120 billion in development assistance from all
countries, muchof the economic gain from this assistance in the
past was offset by the EU’s annual dumping of some 6 million
tons of sugar on the world market. Fortunately, in 2005 the EU
announced that it would reduce its sugar support price to farm-
ers by 40 percent, thus reducing the amount of sugar exports to
1.3 million tons in 2008.81
Similarly, subsidies to U.S. farmers have historically enabled
them to export cotton at low prices. And since the United States
is the world’s leading cotton exporter, its subsidies depress
prices for all cotton exporters. As a result, U.S. cotton subsidies
have faced a spirited challenge from four cotton-producing
countries in Central Africa: Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, and
Mali. In addition, Brazil challenged U.S. cotton subsidies with-
in the framework of the World Trade Organization (WTO),
convincing a WTO panel that U.S. cotton subsidies were
depressing world prices and harming their cotton producers.82
After the WTO ruled in Brazil’s favor in 2004, the United
188
PLAN B 4.0
63
lion a year. (See Table 7–1.)90
The heaviest investments in this effort center on education and
health, which are the cornerstones of both human capital devel-
opment and population stabilization. Education includes univer-
sal primary education and a global campaign to eradicate adult
illiteracy. Health care includes the basic interventions to control
infectious diseases, beginning with childhood vaccinations.91
As Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs regularly
reminds us, for the first time in history we have the technologies
and financial resources to eradicate poverty. Industrial-country
investments in education, health, and school lunches are in a
sense a humanitarian response to the plight of the world’s poor-
est countries. But more fundamentally, they are investments that
will help reverse the demographic and environmental trends
that are undermining civilization.
92
Eradicating Poverty and Stabilizing Population
191
$29 billion a year short of meeting the 2010 target of $130 bil-
lion that governments agreed on in 2005. The bad news is that
many of these same countries burdened by foreign debt were
being hit hard when the global economic crisis brought falling
prices for their mineral exports, falling remittances from
abroad, and rising prices for their grain imports.88
As noted earlier, the Bank estimates that increases in fuel and
food prices have pushed 130 million people below the poverty
line. And the Bank projected that another 53 million would be
pushed below the line in 2009. In referring to the difficulty many
developing countries were already experiencing in trying to
reach the MDGs, Bank president Robert Zoellick said in March
2009, “These targets now look even more distant.”89
The steps needed to eradicate poverty and accelerate the
shift to smaller families are clear. They include filling several
funding gaps, including those needed to reach universal primary
education, to fight childhood and other infectious diseases, to
provide reproductive health care and family planning services,
and to contain the HIV epidemic. Collectively, the initiatives
discussed in this chapter are estimated to cost another $77 bil-
190
PLAN B 4.0
Table 7–1. Plan B Budget: Additional Annual Funding Needed
to Reach Basic Social Goals
Goal
Funding
(billion dollars)
Universal primary education
10
Eradication of adult illiteracy
4
School lunch programs for 44 poorest countries
6
Assistance to preschool children and pregnant
women in 44 poorest countries
4
Reproductive health and family planning
17
Universal basic health care
33
Closing the condom gap
3
Total
77
Source: See endnote 90.
65
in a downward spiral into poverty, environmental degradation,
social injustice, disease, and violence.” Unfortunately, the situa-
tion Cox describes is what lies ahead for more and more coun-
tries if we do not quickly take steps to reverse the damage we
have caused.
2
Restoring the earth will take an enormous international
effort, one far larger and more demanding than the Marshall
Plan that helped rebuild war-torn Europe and Japan. And such
an initiative must be undertaken at wartime speed before envi-
ronmental deterioration translates into economic decline, just
as it did for earlier civilizations that violated nature’s thresholds
and ignored its deadlines.
Protecting and Restoring Forests
Since 1990, the earth’s forest cover has shrunk by more than 7
million hectares each year, with annual losses of 13 million
hectares in developing countries and regrowth of almost 6 mil-
lion hectares in industrial countries. Protecting the earth’s near-
ly 4 billion hectares of remaining forests and replanting those
already lost are both essential for restoring the earth’s health—
the foundation for the new economy. Reducing rainfall runoff
and the associated soil erosion and flooding, recycling rainfall
inland, and restoring aquifer recharge depend on both forest
protection and reforestation.3
There is a vast unrealized potential in all countries to lessen
the demands that are shrinking the earth’s forest cover. In indus-
trial nations the greatest opportunity lies in reducing the quan-
tity of wood used to make paper; in developing countries, it
depends on reducing fuelwood use.
The use of paper, perhaps more than any other single prod-
uct, reflects the throwaway mentality that evolved during the
last century.There is an enormous possibility for reducing paper
use simply by replacing facial tissues, paper napkins, disposable
diapers, and paper shopping bags with reusable cloth alterna-
tives.
First we reduce paper use, then we recycle as much as possi-
ble. The rates of paper recycling in the top 10 paper-producing
countries range widely, from Canada and China on the low end,
recycling just over a third of the paper they use, to Japan and
Germany on the higher end, each at close to 70 percent, and
Restoring the Earth
193
We depend on the earth’s natural systems for goods, ranging
from building materials to water, as well as for services—every-
thing from flood control to crop pollination. Thus if croplands
are eroding and harvests are shrinking, if water tables are falling
and wells are going dry, if grasslands are turning to desert and
livestock are dying, we are in trouble. If civilization’s environ-
mental support systems continue to decline, eventually civiliza-
tion itself will follow.
The devastation caused by deforestation and the soil erosion
that results is exemplified by Haiti, where more than 90 percent
of the original tree cover is gone, logged for firewood and
cleared for crops. When hurricanes whip through the island
shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the carnage is
often more severe for Haiti simply because there are no trees
there to stabilize the soil and prevent landslides and flooding.
1
Reflecting on this desperate situation, Craig Cox, executive
director of the U.S.-based Soil and Water Conservation Society,
wrote: “I was reminded recently that the benefits of resource
conservation—at the most basic level—are still out of reach for
many. Ecological and social collapses have reinforced each other
Restoring the Earth
8
84
alternative is simply to cut only mature trees on a selective basis,
leaving the forest intact. This ensures that forest productivity
can be maintained in perpetuity. The World Bank has recently
begun to systematically consider funding sustainable forestry
projects. In 1997 the Bank joined forces with the World Wide
Fund for Nature to form the Alliance for Forest Conservation
and Sustainable Use. By the end of 2005 they had helped desig-
nate 56 million hectares of new forest protected areas and certi-
fy 32 million hectares of forest as being harvested sustainably.
That year the Alliance also announced a goal of reducing glob-
al net deforestation to zero by 2020.8
Several forest product certification programs let environ-
mentally conscious consumers know about the management
practices in the forest where wood products originate. The most
rigorous international program, certified by a group of non-
governmental organizations, is the Forest Stewardship Council
(FSC). Some 114 million hectares of forests in 82 countries are
certified by FSC-accredited bodies as responsibly managed.
Among the leaders in FSC-certified forest area are Canada, with
27 million hectares, followed by Russia, the United States, Swe-
den, Poland, and Brazil.9
Forest plantations can reduce pressures on the earth’s
remaining forests as long as they do not replace old-growth for-
est. As of 2005, the world had 205 million hectares in forest
plantations, almost one third as much as the 700 million
hectares planted in grain. Tree plantations produce mostly
wood for paper mills or for wood reconstitution mills. Increas-
ingly, reconstituted wood is substituted for natural wood as the
world lumber and construction industries adapt to a shrinking
supply of large logs from natural forests.10
Production of roundwood (logs) on plantations is estimated
at 432 million cubic meters per year, accounting for 12 percent
of world wood production. Six countries account for 60 percent
of tree plantations. China, which has little original forest
remaining, is by far the largest, with 54 million hectares. India
and the United States follow, with 17 million hectares each. Rus-
sia, Canada, and Sweden are close behind. As tree farming
expands, it is starting to shift geographically to the moist trop-
ics. In contrast to grain yields, which tend to rise with distance
from the equator and with longer summer growing days, yields
Restoring the Earth
195
South Korea recycling an impressive 85 percent. The United
States, the world’s largest paper consumer, is far behind the
leaders, but it has raised the share of paper recycled from rough-
ly one fifth in 1980 to 55 percent in 2007. If every country recy-
cled as much of its paper as South Korea does, the amount of
wood pulp used to produce paper worldwide would drop by one
third.4
The largest single demand on trees—fuelwood—accounts
for just over half of all wood removed from the world’s forests.
Some international aid agencies, including the U.S. Agency for
International Development (AID), are sponsoring fuelwood
efficiency projects. One of AID’s more promising projects is the
distribution of 780,000 highly efficient cookstoves in Kenya that
not only use far less wood than a traditional stove but also pol-
lute less.5
Kenya is also the site of a project sponsored by Solar Cook-
ers International, whose inexpensive cookers, made from card-
board and aluminum foil, cost $10 each. Requiring less than two
hours of sunshine to cook a complete meal, they can greatly
reduce firewood use at little cost and save women valuable time
by freeing them from traveling long distances to gather wood.
The cookers can also be used to pasteurize water, thus saving
lives.6
Over the longer term, developing alternative energy sources
is the key to reducing forest pressure in developing countries.
Replacing firewood with solar thermal cookers or even with
electric hotplates powered by wind, geothermal, or solar ther-
mal energy will lighten the load on forests.
Despite the high ecological and economic value to society of
intact forests, only about 290 million hectares of global forest
area are legally protected from logging. An additional 1.4 bil-
lion hectares are economically unavailable for harvesting
because of geographic inaccessibility or low-value wood. Of the
remaining area thus far not protected, 665 million hectares are
virtually undisturbed by humans and nearly 900 million
hectares are semi-natural and not in plantations.7
There are two basic approaches to timber harvesting. One is
clearcutting. This practice, often preferred by logging compa-
nies, is environmentally devastating, leaving eroded soil and silt-
ed streams, rivers, and irrigation reservoirs in its wake. The
194
PLAN B 4.0
85
South Korea is in many ways a reforestation model for the
rest of the world. When the Korean War ended, half a century
ago, the mountainous country was largely deforested. Begin-
ning around 1960, under the dedicated leadership of President
Park Chung Hee, the South Korean government launched a
national reforestation effort. Relying on the formation of vil-
lage cooperatives, hundreds of thousands of people were mobi-
lized to dig trenches and to create terraces for supporting trees
on barren mountains. Se-Kyung Chong, researcher at the Korea
Forest Research Institute, writes, “The result was a seemingly
miraculous rebirth of forests from barren land.”16
Today forests cover 65 percent of the country, an area of
roughly 6 million hectares. While driving across South Korea in
November 2000, it was gratifying to see the luxuriant stands of
trees on mountains that a generation ago were bare. We can
reforest the earth!
17
In Turkey, a mountainous country largely deforested over the
millennia, a leading environmental group, TEMA (Türkiye
Erozyonla Mücadele, Agaclandirma), has made reforestation its
principal activity. Founded by two prominent Turkish business-
men, Hayrettin Karaca and Nihat Gökyigit, TEMA launched in
1998 a 10-billion-acorn campaign to restore tree cover and
reduce runoff and soil erosion. Since then, 850 million oak
acorns have been planted. The program is also raising national
awareness of the services that forests provide.18
Reed Funk, professor of plant biology at Rutgers University,
believes the vast areas of deforested land can be used to grow
trillions of trees bred for food (mostly nuts), fuel, and other pur-
poses. Funk sees nuts used to supplement meat as a source of
high-quality protein in developing-country diets.19
In Niger, farmers faced with severe drought and desertifica-
tion in the 1980s began leaving some emerging acacia tree
seedlings in their fields as they prepared the land for crops. As
the trees matured they slowed wind speeds, thus reducing soil
erosion. The acacia, a legume, fixes nitrogen, thereby enriching
the soil and helping to raise crop yields. During the dry season,
the leaves and pods provide fodder for livestock. The trees also
supply firewood.20
This approach of leaving 20–150 tree seedlings per hectare to
mature on some 3 million hectares has revitalized farming com-
Restoring the Earth
197
from tree plantations are higher with the year-round growing
conditions found closer to the equator.11
In eastern Canada, for example, the average hectare of forest
plantation produces 4 cubic meters of wood per year. In the
southeastern United States, the yield is 10 cubic meters. But in
Brazil, newer plantations may be getting close to 40 cubic
meters. While corn yields in the United States are nearly triple
those in Brazil, timber yields are the reverse, favoring Brazil by
nearly four to one.12
Plantations can sometimes be profitably established on
already deforested and often degraded land. But they can also
come at the expense of existing forests. And there is competi-
tion with agriculture, since land that is suitable for crops is also
good for growing trees. Since fast-growing plantations require
abundant moisture, water scarcity is another constraint.
Nonetheless, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) projects that as plantation area expands and yields rise,
the harvest could more than double during the next three
decades. It is entirely conceivable that plantations could one day
satisfy most of the world’s demand for industrial wood, thus
helping protect the world’s remaining forests.13
Historically, some highly erodible agricultural land in indus-
trial countries was reforested by natural regrowth. Such is the
case for New England in the United States. Settled early and
cleared by Europeans, this geographically rugged region suf-
fered from cropland productivity losses because soils were thin
and the land was rocky, sloping, and vulnerable to erosion. As
highly productive farmland opened up in the Midwest and the
Great Plains during the nineteenth century, pressures on New
England farmland lessened, permitting cropped land to return
to forest. New England’s forest cover has increased from a low
of roughly one thirdtwo centuries ago to four fifths today, slow-
ly regaining its original health and diversity.14
Asomewhat similar situation exists now in parts of the for-
mer Soviet Union and in several East European countries. As
centrally planned agriculture was replaced by market-based
agriculture in the early 1990s, unprofitable marginal land was
abandoned. Precise figures are difficult to come by, but millions
of hectares of low-quality farmland there are now returning to
forest.15
196
PLAN B 4.0
88
Brazil, account for more than half of all deforestation and thus
have the highest potential for avoiding emissions from clearing
forests. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, also high on
the list, is considered a failing state, making forest management
there particularly difficult.
23
The Plan B goals are to end net deforestation worldwide and
to sequester carbon through a variety of tree planting initiatives
and the adoption of improved agricultural land management
practices. Today, because the earth’s forests are shrinking, they
are a major source of carbon dioxide (CO
2
). The goal is to
expand the earth’s tree cover, growing more trees to soak up
CO
2
.
Although banning deforestation may seem farfetched, envi-
ronmental reasons have pushed three countries—Thailand, the
Philippines, and China—to implement complete or partial bans
on logging. All three bans were imposed following devastating
floods and mudslides resulting from the loss of forest cover. The
Philippines, for example, has banned logging in most remaining
old-growth and virgin forests largely because the country has
become so vulnerable to flooding, erosion, and landslides. The
country was once covered by rich stands of tropical hardwood
forests, but after years of massive clearcutting, it lost the forest’s
products as well as its services and became a net importer of
forest products.24
In China, after suffering record losses from several weeks of
nonstop flooding in the Yangtze River basin in 1998, the gov-
ernment noted that when forest policy was viewed not through
the eyes of the individual logger but through those of society as
awhole, it simply did not make economic sense to continue
deforesting. The flood control service of trees standing, they
said, was three times as valuable as the timber from trees cut.
With this in mind, Beijing then took the unusual step of paying
the loggers to become tree planters—to reforest instead of
deforest.25
Other countries cutting down large areas of trees will also
face the environmental effects of deforestation, including flood-
ing. If Brazil’s Amazon rainforest continues to shrink, it may
also continue to dry out, becoming vulnerable to fire. If the
Amazon rainforest were to disappear, it would be replaced
largely by desert and scrub forestland. The capacity of the rain-
Restoring the Earth
199
munities in Niger. Assuming an average of 40 trees per hectare
reaching maturity, this comes to 120 million trees. This practice
also has been central to reclaiming 250,000 hectares of aban-
doned cropland. The key to this success story was the shift in
tree ownership from the state to individual farmers, giving them
the responsibility for protecting the trees.21
Shifting subsidies from building logging roads to planting
trees would help protect forest cover worldwide. The World
Bank has the administrative capacity to lead an international
program that would emulate South Korea’s success in blanket-
ing mountains and hills with trees.
In addition, FAO and the bilateral aid agencies can work
with individual farmers in national agroforestry programs to
integrate trees wherever possible into agricultural operations.
Well-chosen, well-placed trees provide shade, serve as wind-
breaks to check soil erosion, and can fix nitrogen, which reduces
the need for fertilizer.
Reducing wood use by developing more-efficient wood
stoves and alternative cooking fuels, systematically recycling
paper, and banning the use of throwaway paper products all
lighten pressure on the earth’s forests. But a global reforestation
effort is unlikely to succeed unless it is accompanied by the sta-
bilization of population. With such an integrated plan, coordi-
nated country by country, the earth’s forests can be restored.
Planting Trees to Sequester Carbon
In recent years the shrinkage of forests in tropical regions has
released 2.2 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere annual-
ly. Meanwhile, expanding forests in the temperate regions are
absorbing close to 700 million tons of carbon. On balance,
therefore, some 1.5 billion tons of carbon are being released
into the atmosphere each year from forest loss, contributing to
climate change.22
Tropical deforestation in Asia is driven primarily by the fast-
growing demand for timber and, increasingly, by the soaring use
of palm oil for fuel. In Latin America, by contrast, the growing
market for soybeans, beef, and sugarcane ethanol is deforesting
the Amazon. In Africa, it is mostly the gathering of fuelwood
and the clearing of new land for agriculture as existing cropland
is degraded and abandoned. Two countries, Indonesia and
198
PLAN B 4.0
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