Foreign aid and wildlife

In my post-goat research, I began to realise that foreign aid, particularly that driven by religious zeal, was often misguided at best, and environmentally disastrous at worst. I came across a very interesting example, which I think encapsulates some of my concerns:
"...the World Health Organization Project, designed to eradicate malaria from Sri Lanka in the postwar years, achieved its purpose. But the problem today is that Sri Lanka must feed three times as many mouths, find three times as many jobs, provide three times the housing, energy, schools, hospitals and land for settlement in order to maintain the same standards. Little wonder the natural environment and wildlife in Sri Lanka has suffered. The fact [is] ... that the best-intentioned aid programs are at least partially responsible for the problems."
Interestingly this was a quote from an address on receiving an Honorary Degree from the University of Western Ontario, Canada, July 1, 1983, given by HRH Prince Philip.

I certainly would not suggest that malaria erradiction is not important, but all these programmes need to be thought through....thoroughly.

Supermarket baggage

Ireland brought in a tax on plastic bags in March 2002, and all shops and othersales outlets must charge customers 10p per plastic bag. Before the tax was introduced,about 1.2 billion plastic bags were given to customers annually. The levy has been a great success with a billion fewer non-recyclable plastic being and £2.25m raised for the new Environmental Fund. With whales, turles and other wildlife often dieing as a result of swallowing plastic bags, as well as the unsightly ltter they create, it is high time the British government introduced a similar measure, and started to demontrtate a real commitment to environmental issues.

Gaia in Africa

I have always liked the concept of Gaia Theory. It is relatively simple, and does explain a lot of what we observe in the natural world. And while snoozing on a train back from London last week, I was wondering how the impact of human populations could be explained using Gaia Theory. This in turn led me to think about the problems of Africa, and the way aid agencies were using goats, cows and other livestock to solve the problems of poverty and human suffering.

So I gathered some very simple statistics. The human populations of Africa, the cattle population and the goat populations. I got om to the FAO website and garnered data for 1961 and compared it with 2000. Pretty scary stuff. The human population leapt from 284 million to over 795 million, and similar increases occurred in all the livestock figures, viz cattle jumped from 122 million to 224 million, sheep and goats from 229 million to 451 million, camels doubled from 8 million to nearly 16 million, buffaloes from 1.5 million to 3.3 million and there were similar increases in all other livestock such as geese, chickens and ducks.

Gaia Theory assumes that the total biomass is more or less constant, and the increase in human and related livestock biomass has increased, and will therefore incur an equivalent loss from the ecosystem, probably of wildlife. The human biomass alone (assuming an average weight of 50kgs per person), will have increased by about 26 million tonnes. In the same period the biomass of cattle has risen by som 20 million tonnes, sheep and goats by 6 million tonnes. Taking these figures alone, it is an increase in mammalian biomass of at least 52 million tonnes. This represents nearly 9 million elephants -- or over a billion antelopes.

Now there's some food for thought. And we are still encouraging more livestock in Africa, and the human population is, to use a hackneyed phrase, a time bomb of which the fuse has been lit. Without the aid agencies putting more effort into controlling female fertility, wars, famine and disease are the only certainty for much of Africa. But a quick search of websites for information on what the big aid charities are doing to control female fertility, or subjects such as "population growth" reveal very few mentions at all. Worrying.

Cows for Africa

I am sure that all the worthy charities are very aware and carry out the appropriate research before spreading cows to the impoverished of Africa. But one of my corespondents pointed out that cows were perhaps not the best animal to help Africans. This was because most African populations have a relatively high intolerance to lactose. This is a gene that only occurs in about 5% of Scandinavian and northern Europeans, but is found in over 75-90% of Africans.

A paper published last June states that:
"On average, Sherman and Bloom found that 61 percent of people studied were lactose intolerant, with a range of 2 percent in Denmark and 100 percent in Zambia. They also found that lactose intolerance decreases with increasing latitude and increases with rising temperature, and especially with the difficulty in maintaining dairy herds safely and economically."
(see http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=25469)

Superficially, it would seem that those organisations advocating cows for Africa, are simply using the Europeans' familiarity with the cow as a symbol of fecundity to drive forward a campaign to colonise the continent with an animal product that are not part of the normal diet. Is this yet another form of imperialism?

I thought that perhaps goats milk might be better, but apparently it has only 'marginally' less lactose ( http://askdrsears.com/html/3/t032400.asp ).

Unfortunately my search of the internet for some positive data on the benefits of milk failed to yield results -- all I could find was information on the high levels of intolerance. Which rather reinforces the environmental negativity of cows. Any facts and figures would be useful.

The results of my research, albeit rather superficial, shows that the only Africans that normally have a significant degree of tolerance to lactose, are the nomadic herders -- and these are the very groups that are overgrazing and losing animals in droughts. The sedentary populations have the highest intolerance rates. So the Hutu in Rwanda are relatively intolerant, whereas the Tutsi are more tolerant. I am sure all this is well-known to the aid agencies promoting gats and cattle, but I found that very few others were very aware, and it seems to me to be an important issue.

Good Gifts from charities

There has been criticism of the practice of giving charity gifts, as these generally reflect the donors wishes, not the recipients. In fact in some case the recipients are unwittingly getting gifts they believe are entirely inappropriate. My criticisms of the 'Goats for Africa' were as a direct result of a well-meaning friend 'giving' my wife a goat a couple of years ago.

Rather than choosing a charity gift, for your friends and relatives, it is much better to give a gift voucher. My favourite website and charity gift catalogue is the Good Gifts (www.goodgifts.org). They offer Gift Vouchers that can be used to support any number of excellent charities, including the World Land Trust (and also goats). The important feature is that the person receiving the gift will actually get something they want, and feel good about it, whereas giving often means the donor feels good, not the recipient.

The Last Goat

I have just heard my latest broadcast on goats, on BBC Radio 4 Home Planet. Catch it on the internet if you really want to hear it (Tues 28 Feb). Unfortunately, the panel discussing the issue failed to address the issues that particularly concern me, as well as perpetrating several errors. They claimed that goats 'have a light footprint' for instance. Far from the truth in areas where the flora is impoverished, as in these habitats goats will devour almost everything left that is edible.

And then they went on to discuss the keeping of goats in close confinement --which is not related to the issue I was raising. I am sure that the Charities supplying goats in Africa try to ensure reasonable standards of animal husbandry. But I am also sure that many animals are kept in conditions that would not be tolerated in England. The supporters of goats have also consistently failed to address the issue of what to do with the goats in time of drought and famine -- another mouth to feed and water. And no mention was made of the veterinary costs of keeping goats in cages.

In the discussions and newspaper articles that have followed my initial comments I have been aware that many of the defenders of goats appear to have little direct knowledge. I have not only travelled extensively in the arid parts of Africa, Asia, Europe and South America, and seen first hand the effects of a wide range of grazing, I have also kept goats, sheep and other livestock (and still do). I have first hand experience of the differences in the feeding of goats and sheep.

My initial criticism remains: goats are a major cause of poverty in Africa, and should not be marketted as a solution. Individual cases do not justify a high profile campaign promoting the species as a whole.

Part of the problem is that the charities promoting goats and other livestock seem totally committed, and not interested in discussing the issue. ON BBC TV last week, Caroline Nursey, International Director of OXFAM was asked by the interviewer if OXFAM would be reconsidering its position, to which she responded with a clear negative. In the same programme she also stated unequivocally that "goats do not cause desertification". If OXFAM are taking such a hard line stance, flying in the face of all the evidence, it is difficult to see how a constructive dialogue can develop.

As a result of all the publicity and discussion, I have been giving serious thought as to how to address the underlying issues causing poverty in the arid regions of Africa. In my view, one of the most important issues is that of land rights. Where land rights are confused, ill-defined, or often non-existent, there is no incentive for using the land sustainably. Everyone will try and accumulate as large a herd of livestock as possible, otherwise a neighbour will graze the land with his flocks. If aid agencies addressed these issues, it might go a long way to longterm solutions. The problem is that it is not easy to market this to the public -- selling a goat is.

To conclude, I would like to reiterate my position. Individual goats, in carefully controlled circumstances may do little harm to the environment; however, in these circumstances they probably do very little to alleviate extreme poverty either. Promoting goats (camels and other livestock) as a solution to poverty is misguided, and gives the wrong messages to the world at large, as they (goats) are a significant cause of poverty in arid and marginal habitats (where poverty is often widespread). I would also suggest that anyone 'buying' goats should also ask questions about the economic effects of the trade, since livestock such as goats, and particularly camels, are often more important as a wealth and status indicators, than as a major food commodity.

It's a very complicated issue, being misrepresented as a simple solution.

Goats and the news

The Times took up the goat issue, and as a result I was asked to discuss the issue on TV with the International Director of Oxfam. Unfortunately there was not much of a debate, because Caroline Nursey of Oxfam appears to be in denial about the relationship between goats and desertification -- claiming that "There is no connection between goats and desertification". If this really is Oxfam's official position, then the matter is very serious, and they ought to read the website of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). A search on that site of "desertification AND goats" produces over 1750 results. But I hope that was a slip of the tongue -- unfortunate because it was seen by several million viewers.

The trouble with TV and radio is that the debate is always in short, soundbites. One viewer wrote into claim that my criticism of goats was hypocrisy, because we offered consumers the opportunity to buy rainforest. But this is not remotely comparing like with like. One is encouraging people to destroy the environment, while the other is trying to protect it. I did not criticise all the gifts that Oxfam and other agencies offer, only livestock, being used as a means of poverty alleviation. And I am not alone in recognising that in general, the supply of animals, particularly goats to very poor people makes no sense at all -- for a huge range of reasons. And I am far from the first to criticise. Animal Aid have an excellent website, with scathing comments. What has been particularly interesting has been the many letters of support I have received. But more of that next week.

The only reassuring thing about the discussion appears to be that not all the money raised by the various charities selling goats, actually goes on goats -- if you read the small print. And Oxfam stated that not all their goats were involved in poverty alleviation, but were part of other programmes such as conflict resolution.

But Oxfam's claim that goats were good for the locals because were able to cary on feeding in areas so overgrazed by sheep and cattle, that the latter had died in a drought, was a particularly scary concept.

I would suggest that anyone with first-hand experience of goat issues writes to Oxfam.