Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
believed that the so-called modernization of poor nations could inhibit
the spread of communism (Rostow 1990). In opposition, dependency
and world-systems perspectives favored the replacement of imports with
domestically produced goods (Wallerstein 1974). Both theories, however,
envisioned a mechanized, industrial form of agriculture (Holt-Giménez
2006). The Green Revolution developed new cultivars of staple foods
that responded well to mechanized irrigation and chemical fertilizers and
pesticides that, with funding from the World Bank and U.S. Agency for
International Development, were exported around the world (Lappé
et al. 1998).
Despite the Green Revolution's tremendous increases in production,
world hunger in the global South, with the exception of China, rose 11
percent between 1970 and 1990 (Lappé et al. 1998).
2
Critical social
scientists argue that Green Revolution technologies favored larger farms
that could afford new seeds, chemical fertilizers, and irrigation systems,
or that could obtain credit. These farms then out-competed small
landholders, widening existing socioeconomic inequalities (Hewitt de
Alcántara 1976; Jennings 1988; Pearse 1980). At the same time, increas-
ing dependence on chemical inputs stripped soils of their fertility, which
in turn created increased need for chemical fertilizers (Altieri 1995).
While some continue to trumpet the Green Revolution's technical
advances and push for further developments, those working for food
sovereignty claim that it has exacerbated global environmental inequali-
ties (Rosset et al. 2006; Holt-Giménez 2006; Lappé et al. 1998; Altieri
1995). As in Lewis's research on Ecuador (chapter 5), the foreign founda-
tions that funded the Green Revolution ignored the local social and
political contexts in which they worked. Thus their seemingly well-
intended goal of feeding the world exacerbated existing environmental
inequalities.
Structural Adjustment Programs
The large-scale infrastructure projects called for by both proponents of
modernization and import substitution required fi nancing beyond the
capacity of the underdeveloped economies of the global South. Originally
designed to fi nance the rebuilding of Europe after World War II, the IMF
and World Bank fi lled this role (Mikesell 1994). In the 1970s, many
countries, especially in Latin America, borrowed liberally from these
institutions. Latin American debt quadrupled between 1975 and 1983,
rising to half the value of the region's gross domestic product (Marichal
1989). The economic recession of the late 1970s and 1980s increased
