Without agreeing or disagreeing with you, Wirt, I would be cautious about putting too much faith in "socio-economic status" as single root cause of the pattern seen at the boarder of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The same pattern occurs in many places for many reasons.
http://earth.rice.edu/mtpe/bio/biosphere/topics/Forestapps/ynp_log.html -Geoff Poole Wirt Atmar wrote: > Regarding my contention that very poor human populations have a much greater > impact on the environment than do wealthy ones, a friend wrote and suggested > I > mention the obvious differences that exist between Haiti and the Dominican > Republic. It only took a minute's searching to find this NASA photograph: > > http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a002600/a002640/haiti_still_web.jpg > > The political border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic is as clearly > marked here as anywhere in the world from space. Haiti, the poorest country > in > the Hemisphere, lies to the left of the river in the photograph. While the > Dominican Republic is not wealthy, neither is it so poor that its people have > been forced to not merely deforest its landscape, but to denude it, further > greatly impovishering the population through soil erosion and leaving them > subject > to disasterous flooding. > > Let me go not very far out on a limb and paint a different world, however. > Let me suggest that if the average Haitian were as wealthy and as > well-educated > as the average San Franciscan, this image from space would be very different. > The human population on Haiti would be heavily urbanized into a few coastal > cities and these forest areas would not only be verdant but would have become > highly protected areas. > > There are certain populational forces that seem inevitable to me. When > disease and early childhood deaths are minimized, the pressure to have very > large > families dissipates. Similarly, if some semblance of lifetime economic > security > can be established, the pressure to have very large families is even further > dissipated. And most importantly, when young women are provided significant > economic and educational opportunities, populations begin to fall even below > replacement rate. Simultaneous with all of these events, as human populations > become more healthy and wealthy, they begin to concentrate themselves into > much > lower-impact urban areas. And as they become more educated, they begin to > demand > protection of the natural world. > > This pattern is not relegated to the United States alone. It is being > repeated in every developed nation in the world no matter its size: in > Europe, in > Japan or in Singapore. And I am sure that it will be repeated in China and > India > too as they too become increasingly more wealthy. As to the inevitability of > the pattern, I've enclosed an article below from the New York Times from a > few > weeks ago. While this one article could be dismissed only as ancedotal > evidence, I take it rather to be one data point in a relatively obvious > trend, one > that says even when substantial economic protectionism is attempted, the > trend > can't be stopped. > > As I wrote earlier, the knee-jerk reaction among ecology graduate students is > to often see a future dominated by dark clouds, of increasing pollution, of > limited resources, of burgeoning populations, starvation and massive losses > of > biodiversity. That all could well come to pass, but I am enormously more > optimistic than that. I believe that a far more accurate portrait of the > current > situation is one of the world becoming increasingly more healthy, wealthy and > wise. These are not situations we should bemoan. If we truly want to protect > the > biodiversity of our planet, our primary enemies should be ignorance, poverty > and disease -- as evident in the NASA photograph above. > > Wirt Atmar > > ======================================= > > ["The Urbanization of Nebraska"] > HOME ECONOMICS: Personal Accounts; Nebraska's Nostalgia Trap > By RICHARD DOOLING (NYT) 730 words > Published: February 5, 2006 > > Omaha - ON average, Nebraska's economy is doing just fine. But a man whose > head is in the oven and whose feet are in the freezer takes no comfort in > knowing that his average body temperature is perfectly normal. In the same > vein, a > casual glance at a graph of Nebraska's population growth shows slow, steady > increases, going all the way back to 1900, and conceals the fact that 74 of > Nebraska's 93 counties are in extremis, with lower populations today than > they had > in 1920. > > Over a third of the state's 1.7 million residents live in greater Omaha, > which is booming by many measures, including population growth. According to > Ernie > Goss, an economist at Creighton University here, Omaha is growing faster than > Des Moines, Kansas City and St. Louis. > > What about the rest of Nebraska? Well, it's big: over 77,000 square miles > (about 10 percent bigger than the six New England states combined) and 450 > miles > wide, roughly the distance from Boston to the District of Columbia. Most of > the economic growth occurs along the thoroughfares that form what local > economists call ''the fishhook'': Highway 275 from Omaha to Norfolk being the > hook, > and Interstate 80 from Omaha to Colorado being the stem. > > Outside of Omaha and the fishhook, large parts of Nebraska are arguably in > trouble. The dismal statistic that trends lower, year after year, for many of > these struggling counties, is population. > > Farms double in size with a regularity that rivals the seasons, while, almost > in tandem, the number of farming families falls by half. The costs for > schools, roads and police and fire departments remain relatively constant, > but the > bodies paying taxes, buying goods and developing land keep disappearing. > County > officials call it rural flight, brain drain or even mass migration, but > despite the alarums, nobody has found a way to stop the excursions. > > States like Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma and > Wisconsin have tried to fight the trend by restricting the corporate > consolidation of farms: Keep the farmers on their land by stopping vast > corporations from > buying 10 farms and consolidating them into one, which is basically what > keeps > happening. > > In 1982, Nebraska went even farther and embedded a ban on corporations owning > and operating farms -- Initiative 300 -- in its Constitution. Last December, > a federal judge in Omaha ruled that the ban violates the Commerce Clause of > the United States Constitution and the Americans with Disabilities Act > (because > the ban also requires that the person owning most of the farmland also supply > most of the daily labor). Some Nebraskans hope the ruling will be overturned, > but that seems unlikely. > > Opponents of these laws, which purport to protect family farmers, view them > as economic nostalgia -- like trying to protect the local paper by banning > Internet news sites and mandating that the newspaper be delivered by a > towheaded > kid on a bicycle. If rank protectionism is not the solution, then what is? > > Doug German, executive director of Legal Aid of Nebraska, who lives in the > central part of the state, just off the fishhook, in Eustis (pop. 425), and > provides legal services to the casualties of the state's poorer counties, > agrees > that rural Nebraska is at a ''tipping point.'' The antidote to its economic > depopulation, he believes, does not lie in bringing Intel or Toyota factories > to > the heartland, but in Nebraskans resolutely blooming where they are planted > and developing micro industries capable of flourishing anywhere, with the > help > of computer and Internet technologies. > > I hope Mr. German is right, but I wonder what kind of micro industry will > save the likes of Arthur County (half the size of Rhode Island), where the > population peaked at 1,412 in 1920, was 442 in 2000, and 402 in 2004? In > these > parts, during election season, the signs along the road say ''Vote for Helen, > County Assessor,'' because there's only one Helen, and she's running > unopposed. > > Instead of micro industries, a cynical futurist might see mega-farms, owned > by global corporations, and farmed by armies of robot combines, controlled by > global positioning satellite technology from offices in Omaha. > > ======================================= > >
