Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
interest rates. In 1982, Mexico became the fi rst nation to default on its
debt, and others seemed certain to follow suit (Pastor 1987). In response,
the banks stopped lending money and refused refi nancing. Billions of
dollars worth of loans came due.
Responding to what has since become known as the Third World debt
crisis, the IMF and World Bank instituted a policy of structural adjust-
ment. In order to receive new loans, or to refi nance existing loans, debtor
governments would have to agree to implement a set of neoliberal pro-
grams and policies. Common elements of such programs include drastic
cuts to government social expenditures such as education and health
services, lifting import restrictions and price controls, privatizing any
state-owned enterprises, and deregulating markets (Chossudovsky 2003;
Finch 1985). Such structural adjustment programs are the ideological
opposite of food sovereignty, in that market mechanisms are dictated by
transnational fi scal policy rather than local control. Additionally, struc-
tural adjustment policies tended to result in increased concentration of
land and capital in the hands of transnational corporations and national
elites (Chossudovsky 2003; Smith, Acuna, and Gamarra 1994).
With regard to agriculture, structural adjustment programs led to the
elimination of any government price supports or subsidies that increased
access to Green Revolution technologies. In Mexico, for example, the
national government was forced to terminate its practice of providing
farmers with access to crop insurance, subsidized seed and fertilizer,
low-interest loans, marketing assistance, and high guaranteed prices
(Holt-Giménez 2006; Stone 2009). In place of its previous emphasis on
food self-suffi ciency, the government encouraged export crops (Stone
2009). Moreover, Mexican farmers, and farmers throughout the global
South, were forced to compete domestically with U.S. export commodity
crops subsidized by the U.S. Farm Bill and often available below the cost
of local production (Vorley 2001). This demonstrates that it is not only
demand and consumption from the global North, but also remote
national policies, that can strengthen environmental inequalities, echoing
Stephenson and Schweitzer's insight (chapter 3) that while multinational
fi rms play often primary roles, the drivers of transnational environmental
inequality are interlocking and complex.
Market-Led Land Reform
Together, the Green Revolution and structural adjustment programs
created an increasingly marginalized class of small farmers and landless
peoples throughout the global South, while clustering land and capital
