ANDES-ENVIRONMENT: New Development Strategies Needed for Andes

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 5 1996 (IPS) - The seven Latin American countries which comprise the Andean region must adopt balanced strategies of economic development that protect native peoples and the resources of that mountainous area, a new report says.

The report, ‘Amanacer en los Andes’ (Dawn in the Andes’), produced by the 17-member Commission for Development and Environment of Latin America and the Caribbean, contends that the diversity of Andean natural resources and the region’s indigenous peoples must be protected.

“Sustainable development will have no chance if the two forms of development that presently exist in the region continue to be in conflict with one another,” the report says.

The authors argues that on the one hand, stands the traditional exploitation of natural resources by the indigenous peoples; on the other lies modern urban life, “spreading with crushing force into the countryside.”

Those two approaches must be reconciled, argued Augusto Ramirez Ocampo, a co-author of the report and former official of the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), which, along with the Inter-American Development Bank, sponsored the report.

“The development model of the North is a model of opulence and of waste in which it is impossible to sustain development in the future,” Ramirez said at the report’s launch here Monday.

But he added, “The model of the South (is) a model of poverty which destroys the environment and undermines protection of the environment.” What the seven Andean countries — Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina — need is a balance between the two models, he argued.

The report notes that, while Latin American governments are cutting the economic role of the state as part of a global trend towards liberalisation, the poverty of the Andes still requires state intervention.

“In a large part of the Andean region, the problem is not too much State presence, but too little,” the report says.

The authors urge governments to improve environmental training in water management, preservation of biodiversity and related fields. “There can be no attempt to match the pace of the developed countries in dealing with the environment without making a start by strengthening natural resource management systems,” the report argues.

Domestic and industrial waste, tailings from mining operations and solid residues have created in much of the region “a high- risk situation which also acts as a brake on development,” the authors say.

“It is time to put a halt to the conditions that cause millions of cubic metres of good soil to be lost every year, that destroy forests, swamps and energy resources, and that contaminate water and air, all of which result in the deterioration of cultural patrimonies and ancient traditions,” they add.

The report also calls for governments to coordinate their programmes with indigenous groups who form a large proportion of the region’s estimated 104 million people. Some 90 percent of indigenous Ecuadorans live in the Andes, as do roughly 60 percent of indigenous Bolivians and 40 percent of indigenous Peruvians.

The report’s most important contribution, however, is that it provides an overview of the region’s major problems in time for discussion at the next hemispheric summit on development issues, to be held on Dec 7-8 at Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, noted co-author Osvaldo Hurtado, former president of Ecuador.

“We seek to present a reality which is not properly known and is not sufficiently appreciated,” Hurtado said.

“These documents contain a great part of the technical know- how of the region,” said Fernando Zumbado, UNDP’s regional director for Latin America. He noted that the commission’s 17 members included many former heads of state, including Hurtado, Miguel de la Madrid of Mexico and Oscar Arias of Costa Rica. Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Guatemalan Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchu Tum were also included.

The authors draw attention to many Andean problems besides the major one of continuing poverty. The region is Latin America’s most violent, they say, with a rate of 37.6 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.

Drug-ravaged Colombia has the highest murder rate in the world (77.5 for every 100,000 people), but even less violent nations like Bolivia are suffering from a “climate of violence” linked to the trafficking of cocaine, the report contends.

At the same time, the authors are optimistic that the entire region has been undergoing a period of “the consolidation of democracy” ever since Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet transferred power to an elected government following a 1989 referendum.