Green paths to democracy

The war against terrorism is jolting Americans to the realization that we can never be secure unless we address the roots that give rise to terrorism. While we deploy thousands of our soldiers to fight the war, only by improving our overseas development assistance can we really strike at the underlying causes of global terrorism: poverty, inequity, environmental degradation, and the repressive regimes that often foster them.

Today we give less than 0.1 percent of our gross national product to foreign aid -- the lowest of all Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries and far short of the 0.7 percent United Nations target. This low level ensures that the world’s sole superpower is no longer a player in much of the developing world where human welfare is highly dependent on the goods and services offered by the environment.

In many developing countries, nature is the most important source of wealth and power. The natural resource base sustains local livelihoods and is the principal source of revenue for national development. With industrial sectors just emerging, the environment will continue to drive developing economies for decades to come.

Today, many progressive environmentalists are protecting nature by promoting democracy. Environmental organizations are leading national efforts in Uganda to develop a freedom of information act and in Tanzania to protect freedom of association. The State Department understands this dynamic and has called for governance to be a major theme of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in South Africa.

What is not fully recognized is the reverse -- the power of improved environmental management to promote and consolidate democracy, especially in the developing world.

Control of nature begets political power. Corruption, crimes, civil unrest, and conflict are associated with control over natural resources. Unaccountable officials and other elites monopolize natural resources in the name of national interests. Natural resources are claimed as political prizes, used to enhance personal wealth, and distributed as patronage to consolidate power. It is government of the few, by the few, for the few.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Africa, where environmental governance issues dominate the political landscape. In Gabon, leaders have silenced critics by using oil revenues to create a welfare state. In Kenya, land in forest reserves is handed out to party functionaries for political favors.

In Zambia, the government limits trophy hunting - an important conservation tool -- because its revenues fund opposition parties. In Southern Africa, water conflicts threaten to become water wars. And now we have learned that Sierra Leone’s diamonds and Tanzania’s tanzanite funded al Qaeda’s terrorism.

A new approach to development assistance is needed that builds on the reality that democracy and the environment go hand-in-hand. Foreign aid can be used to secure property rights for local people over land, to halt the illegal use of natural resources, and to ensure that governments invest environmental revenues consistent with popular will.

It can be used to strengthen the powers of regulatory state agencies to prosecute environmental criminals and to empower legislatures to more effectively oversee executive decisions on the environment. And it can be used to establish independent courts to interpret environmental laws and rule fairly and to create sufficiently autonomous local governments that are empowered to make environmental decisions in support of their constituents.

Given their dependence on natural resources, most people in the developing world consider democracy irrelevant unless it embodies local participation in natural resource decisions and good environmental governance. Without participation and benefits, the promise of democracy rings hollow and citizens become disillusioned.

Yet the US continues to define democracy by political party pluralism and build democracy from the top down. Rather than promote democratic governance by improving environmental governance, we ignore opportunities to strengthen the institutions and procedures necessary for ensuring transparency and accountability in natural resource management.

With development assistance now a popularly recognized tool for achieving homeland security, and democracy abroad an agreed upon prerequisite, we cannot afford to ignore the benefits of helping nations down their green paths to democracy.

Dr. Peter Veit is regional director of Africa of the World Resources Institute (http://www.wri.org/wri/).