Re: Ecology

["Patrick Bond" <pbond@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From:          Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>
> ... In trying to get Marxists to
> think ecologically, it is necessary to see the entire realm of nature and
> society. Granted that electrical power is useful to industry and is also a
> hallmark of "civilized society", but so is food. What good is it to have
> electricity, when hunger destroys your concentration so much that you can't
> read a book at night. In many places where large-scale dams have been
> deployed, the results have been increased hunger:

Maybe a false dichotomy though, Louis, given distributional
patterns? I think one of the first questions -- consistent with
Russell's desire (which I share) to see the benefits of
electrification spread as widely as possible, so as to assure more
economic possibilities, greater gender equity, less deforestation,
better public health outcomes -- is this: who is consuming the bulk
of hydroelectricity? Certainly not the masses of working-class
households (responsible for about 3% of consuption in SA). No further
hydro or thermal plants need be built in S.Africa if we were to both
dramatically increase "lifeline" supplies to the poor, and change
consumption patterns to discourage massive minerals smelters
(producing aluminum for export, in a country with no bauxite!) and
hedonistic consumption by wealthy households. I did a piece on this
for a liberal-bourgeois rag a few months ago (below). Likewise
"demand side management" is vital to inject on the debate about
whether thirsty workers/poor people in Johannesburg benefit from an
absurd set of water-supply dam projects across the border in Lesotho
(two brief abstracts below)...

***

Power to the powerful:
Ideology of apartheid energy still distorts electricity
sector

by Patrick Bond

South Africa's surreal energy problems reflect the kinds
of contradictions you would expect during a transition
from apartheid economic history to a contemporary
electricity pricing system all too often based on
(`neoliberal') market-policy for households, complicated
by massive subsidies for big corporations, in one of the
world's most unequal societies.
          There are at least three world-class development
disasters here: our economy's skewed over-reliance on
(and oversupply of) pollution-causing, coal-generated
electricity; the lack of equitable access amongst
households along class/race lines (with serious adverse
gender implications); and periodic township rioting
associated with power cuts resulting from nonpayment.
          Plenty of other challenges for a revitalised energy
policy could be mentioned. But assuming Minister
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka wants justice to be done during
the ANC's second term (and is less distracted by shady
Liberian consultants or groundless attacks on the
auditor general than her predecessor), merely addressing
electricity distribution would require a serious
challenge to corporate power and neoliberal ideology.
Instead of praising the filthy rich (who can forget?),
the minister would have to subsidise filthy impoverished
townships currently suffocating under winter coal fumes.
          An outstanding recent book, The Political Economy of
South Africa by Ben Fine and Zav Rustomjee, puts this
sector into economic perspective. Here we locate
electricity at the heart of the economy's `Minerals-
Energy Complex,' a `system of accumulation' unique to
this country. Mining, petro-chemicals, metals and
related activities which historically accounted for
around a quarter of economic activity typically consumed
40 percent of all electricity.
          Thus Eskom was centrally responsible for South
Africa's economic growth, but, Fine and Rustomjee show,
at the same time fostered a debilitating dependence on
the (declining) mining industry. Economists refer to
this as a `Dutch disease,' in memory of the damage done
to Holland's economic balance by its cheap North Sea
oil.
          South African electricity consumption (per capita)
soared to a level similar to Britain, even though black-
-`African'--South Africans were denied domestic
electricity for decades. To accomplish this feat, Eskom
had to generate emissions of greenhouse gasses twice as
high per capita as the rest of the world, alongside
enormous surface water pollution, bucketing acid rain
and dreadfully low safety/health standards for coal
miners.
          To what end? Today, most low-income South Africans
still rely for a large part of their lighting, cooking
and heating energy needs upon paraffin (with its burn-
related health risks), coal (with high levels of
domestic and township-wide air pollution) and wood (with
dire consequences for deforestation). Women,
traditionally responsible for managing the home, are
more affected by the high cost of electricity and spend
far more time and energy searching for alternative
energy.
          Ecologically-sensitive energy sources--such as
solar, wind and tidal--have barely begun to be explored,
while the few hydropower plants (especially in
neighbouring Mozambique) are based on controversial
large dams that, experts argue, do more harm than
developmental good.
          Some inherited electricity dilemmas stem from a
racist, irrational and socially-unjust history.
Conventional wisdom even before 1948, we must never
forget, was that `temporary sojourners' were in cities
merely to work; they would not consume much--certainly
not household appliances--since their wages were
pitiably low. As Jubilee 2000 South Africa observes with
justifiable bitterness, more than half of the World
Bank's $200+ million in apartheid credits from 1951-66
were for Eskom's expansion, including coal-powered
stations. But none of the benefits found their way to
the homes of the majority of citizens. Even by 1994,
fewer than four in ten African households had
electricity.
          Meanwhile, corporate South Africa suffered the
opposite problem--an embarrassment of energy riches--
especially when terribly poor planning at Eskom two
decades ago led to massive overcapacity (which at peak
in the early 1990s allowed for more than 30% more
generation than demanded). The late-apartheid solution,
inherited and amplified today, was to give the
corporates ever-cheaper power and penalise the poor with
extremely expensive prepaid meter systems (which are
never installed, note angry community activists, in
bourgeois, formerly white areas).
          The meagre electricity consumed by low-income
households (less than 3 percent of the total) costs them
at least four times more per kiloWatt hour than paid by
well-connected corporates. Was it a coincidence, one
might reasonably enquire, that Eskom's finance officer
revolved out the door to head a major division of
Gencor-Billiton, and then won the same cheap pricing
deal for the ill-fated Coega zinc smelter that he'd
earlier given Alusaf? (Meanwhile, thousands of nearby
Port Elizabeth township households had their power cut
since 1997, due to poverty.)
          Defenders of the big corporates argued they help mop
up the excess capacity and do so at off-peak hours, and
that the poor create larger administrative costs per
unit. As a result, policy avoided the kinds of `cross-
subsidies'--by which big users pay more per unit than
those consuming a bare minimum--that the RDP called for,
and that are finally being installed in some large urban
water distributions. (Even a kiloWatt hour free per day
as a `lifeline' to all consumers could have a dramatic
effect on consumption for those who need it, while
higher prices would potentially teach big users to
conserve.)
          Instead, government policy has imposed `cost-
reflective tariffs,' as a 1995 document insisted. The
1998 White Paper is an improvement on previous versions,
but it too makes the counterproductive argument that
`Cross-subsidies should have minimal impact on the price
of electricity to consumers in the productive sectors of
the economy.'
          Worse, the Department of Provincial and Local
Government's Municipal Infrastructure Investment
Framework supports only the installation of 5-8 Amp
connections for households with less than R800 per month
income, which does not offer enough power to turn on a
hotplate or a single-element heater. (Thanks to social
movement advocacy, this is at least better than the
original policy, drafted largely by the World Bank in
1994-95, which had offered low-income households no
electricity hookup.)
          The 1995 energy policy also argued that `Fuelwood is
likely to remain the primary source of energy in the
rural areas.' As if on cue, Eskom began to wind down its
rural electrification programme and does not envisage
electrifying the nation's far-flung schools.
Notwithstanding Eskom's commercialisation fetish, its
economists had badly miscalculated rural affordability.
Paying as much as R0,48 per hour (compared to a
corporate average of R0,06 and bigger discounts for the
Alusaf), rural women use up their pre-paid metre cards
within a week and can't afford to buy another until the
next pension payout.
          But in pricing power out of reach of the poor, the
well-paid economists from Eskom, the World Bank and
government refused to incorporate `multiplier effects'
that would benefit broader society, were people granted
a small free lifeline electricity supply: better public
health, a cleaner environment, more SMMEs,
infrastructure construction jobs and more equal
relations between men and women.
          If Mlambo-Ngcuka cares about such `public goods' as
much as `getting the prices right' (for privatisation?),
she now has a chance to transform neoliberal electricity
policy, muffling that suspicious echo of apartheid-era
power.

***

                                     Debating
                         Supply and Demand Characteristics
                              of Bulk Infrastructure:

                        Lesotho-Johannesburg Water Transfer

                         by David Letsie and Patrick Bond
                         in M.Khosa and Y.Muthien (Eds),
               Infrastructure for Reconstruction in South Africa
        Pretoria, Human Sciences Research Council, February 2000

                                     ABSTRACT

      Relating bulk infrastructure requirements to basic
      household needs is not merely matching a supply-side
      response to aggregate demand curves. Both the supply
      and demand sides must be evaluated extremely
      critically during periods of scarcity (both
      fiscal/financial and ecological) when, as in the
      case of water for the Gauteng region, the society
      must contend with poor historical planning,
      inordinately unequal access to and use of resources,
      uncertain intergovernmental fiscal relations and
      municipal fiscal strain, ecological fragility, waste
      in consumption, lack of affordability for basic
      service consumption, ineffective subsidy systems and
      vigorous contestation of township politics. These
      are general problems common to South African
      infrastructure planning. In the case of the Lesotho
      Highlands Water Project, these problems catalysed a
      community challenge -- by leading activists of
      Alexandra township, later endorsed by the Alexandra
      Civic Organisation itself -- to not only the
      municipal and national government departments
      responsible, but to the World Bank team which did
      much of the bulk infrastructure design work. The
      failure of that challenge, in legal terms, does not
      undermine the technical and moral truths which were
      raised by Alexandra residents in 1997-98, which in
      turn may lay the basis for a more rational linkage
      of bulk and basic infrastructure systems in future.
      This chapter includes the five core documents
      provided by the Alexandra residents, the World Bank,
      the South African government and the Bank Inspection
      Panel, as well as concluding remarks.

(full text available from pbond@xxxxxxxxxx)

***

and forthcoming this year:

                       The Political Economy of Dam Building
                                                and
                      Household Water Supply in South Africa

                           Contesting the Effects of the
                          Lesotho Highlands Water Project
                        on Johannesburg Township Residents

Introduction

The Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP) is a costly,
poorly-designed, badly-implemented, economically-damaging,
and most important from our standpoint in this chapter,
distributionally-regressive megaproject. Its distorted
importance to the South African government was reflected, in
September 1998, in the route the South African National
Defense Force took during the controversial invasion aimed
at propping up an unpopular government which had effectively
been overthrown a few days prior. Rather than deploy troops
to protect the centre of the capital city, Maseru, which was
in the process of being burned to the ground by looters
(apparently because Botswanan troops dawdled on their way to
protect the city), the South African military force quickly
far up into the hills, engaged in a firefight that cost 17
soldiers' lives, and finally gained control of the area
around the Katse Dam (Southall, 1998). The Sunday
Independent (14/2/99) later reported from Maseru:

      The common perception here is that two South African
      helicopters flew to the site of the dam which was
      being guarded by Lesotho Defense Force (LDF) troops.
      From the air, they opened fire on the sleeping
      soldiers. South African special forces troops were
      then landed and massacred any LDF man they could
      find alive. The only dispute, especially in the
      highland villages near the dam, is the numbers
      killed. Some say 16, which is the official figure;
      others say 27. A serving South African officer, on
      condition of anonymity, maintained that "a certain
      captain" had perhaps been "rather over zealous" in
      securing the Katse dam. But he insisted that the
      context should be understood. When the South African
      troops entered Lesotho, they were aware that some
      opposition politicians had threatened to blow up the
      dam and there was a real fear that troops at the dam
      might damage the installation... The anger
      apparently triggered the rioting, directed initially
      at the many South African businesses in Maseru, but
      which soon spread to all foreign businesses. Once
      the rioting started, indiscriminate looting began
      and spread rapidly. "Nobody stopped them. South
      African soldiers just laughed and Basotho soldiers
      were looting too," said an Indian shopkeeper whose
      store was burned to the ground and who now works as
      a casual shop assistant. "They brought trucks and
      took away furniture on the top of cars." In the
      aftermath, Lesotho has had to deal with the loss of
      as many as 20,000 jobs in central Maseru and a
      massive dent in already badly battered investor
      confidence. It also faces ongoing bickering among
      the three major and nine minor political parties,
      widespread disillusionment with the entire political
      process and considerable anger and resentment about
      the events of recent months. All in all, an
      extremely volatile mix. But the water has begun to
      flow to South Africa from the multi-billion rand
      investment in the mountains and millions in
      royalties have begun to flow into the coffers of
      Lesotho. Given that the financial stakes are so high
      and the local political fabric so fragile, Pax South
      Africanus seems here to stay.

Was that prioritisation, and the billions of rands that have
been so far pumped into the LHWP, and many more billions in
the future, a good use of resources? This chapter relates a
core component of the case against the LHWP, namely that it
represents the worst traditions of Western development
solutions to what in reality are problems associated with
irrational apartheid-capitalist resource utilisation,
particularly South Africa's extraordinarily unequal
distribution of water. The LHWP exacerbates these underlying
problems by the way it bandaids a symptom, namely potential
water shortages in the Johannesburg metropolis, at the same
time increasing the costs of water to impoverished urban
users without reference to their needs or to the public
health, ecological and economic implications of insufficient
access to affordable water.
      This chapter reflects arguments and advocacy in favour
of a wholly different approach, and in doing so, unveils
some of the discursive approaches to environmental justice
associated with the LHWP that have not been publicly aired
and analysed to date. In short, say activists from Alexandra
township, rather than flowing through Johannesburg
townships' water and sewerage pipes--which are riddled with
apartheid-era leaks that drain some 40% of the water--at a
retail price far higher (the World Bank recommends five
times higher)(Roome, 1995) than existing water sources,
Lesotho's water should flow along its natural course through
the Free State and Northern Cape to the Atlantic Ocean.
Township pipes and taps should be repaired forthwith and
Johannesburg's hedonistic corporate and high-income
residential water consumers, as well as inefficient Vaal
River catchment area farmers, should pay much more for water
so as to subsidise everyone else in the name of both
conservation and social justice. Lesotho's own development
options should be dramatically widened in the process, with
the aim of ending the bizarre residues of neo-colonial
dependency based upon both migrant labour remittances and
misguided development projects (Ferguson, 1991).
      This was the essence of the argument made by civic
leaders in Soweto and Alexandra in late 1997 and early 1998.
It was endorsed even by Business Day newspaper's
environmental reporter (Ballenger, 1998b) as well as a
variety of environmental pressure groups, and taken to the
World Bank's "Inspection Panel" (a version of an auditor-
general) in April 1998 by three Alexandra residents (the
relevant documentation, including official reaction, can be
found in Letsie and Bond, 1999).
      But there was a strong backlash against the Alexandra
residents' argument. Also in April, a subset of civic
movement leaders changed position in the wake of what
appeared, objectively, to be intense political intimidation.
Likewise, under pressure, water sector professionals
associated with the National Water Conservation Campaign and
Rand Water (the catchment area water board serving greater
Johannesburg) reversed what were previously public
oppositional positions to LHWP expansion. An important
Lesotho church group also retreated from what appeared to be
a certain legal confrontation with the Bank over
compensation for displaced residents. The argument against
LHWP was publicly, vociferously, rejected by Bank staff and
by Water Affairs Minister Kader Asmal (who was also chair of
the World Commission on Dams at the time) and his Director-
General, Mike Muller, largely on grounds of the threat of
drought. In August 1998, the Inspection Panel also rejected
the critique.
      In the face of formidable political, technical and
financial opposition, does the critique of the LHWP bear
repeating in the form of this chapter (the first full
academic analysis)? Even if it failed, ultimately, to delay
the LHWP in 1998, would the critique help shift the South
African Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) into
a proactive "demand-side management" role, away from its
previous orientation to increasing the supply side of water?
      We must only hope so, for at stake is the future of the
LHWP (including three more dams beyond the controversial
Phase 1B), which not only already includes Africa's biggest
dam but also its largest transfer of water across catchment
areas. Moreover, even in late 1998, the ongoing financing of
major dams in the Tugela and Mkzomazi basins, the Mzimvubu
basin, the Orange River and the Western Cape vastly
outstripped resources spent on demand-side management,
notwithstanding the fact that new sources of water drawn
from supply enhancements would be physically exhausted
within three decades, as even Asmal recognised (Addison,
1998).
      At stake, as well, are the retail tariffs associated
with water supply in Johannesburg (indeed in all of Gauteng
province), as the impact of LHWP costs trickles down from
the huge project finance package to low-income customers,
and in turn, affects the affordability of a vital basic
need. The negative economic effects of the LHWP threaten the
so-called "brown" agenda--urban ecology, particularly as it
relates to (black) residents with low incomes--for decades
to come, but were particularly poignant and indeed ironic in
January 1998 when a predicted El Nino drought failed to
materialise and hence the first flow of LHWP water to
Gauteng was turned back from the already-overflowing Vaal
River.
      The main LHWP work to date--the $2.5 billion, Phase 1A
Katse Dam and tunnel, completed in January 1998--reminds us,
in several ways, of the impervious character of the global
dam building industry (McCully, 1996). At 185 meters, Katse
is the highest concrete dam in Africa and one of the largest
infrastructure projects in the world. The logic here is to
redirect Lesotho's rainwater away from its normal course
into the Orange River, which irrigates farmland to the west,
to Katse and then through 42 km of northerly tunnels across
a mountainous watershed. The next part of the project--the
$1.5 billion, Phase 1B Mohale dam and a diversion weir and
tunnel to Katse--is proceeding on schedule, in spite of
opposition, with financing confirmed in 1998 and initial
construction contracts signed. In addition to gaining
hydroelectric power from a European Union-funded plant at
Muela, Lesotho is expected to earn $50 million annually from
sales of Phases 1A and 1B water.
      Throughout, the World Bank was the central organiser of
technical, financial, social and ecological information
about the LHWP, and will continue in this vein in future.
Hence its involvement raises particularly interesting
questions about the professional competence and
participatory orientation of the world's single-largest
institutional investor in infrastructure, questions that
Alexandra township residents put to the Inspection Panel and
that deserve further consideration. Indeed, after a review
of the political context for the LHWP, the social,
environmental and economic critiques can be considered.
These critiques are appropriate for all bulk infrastructure
projects, and pose doubts about the Bank's commitment to
distributional justice and accountability that are also
reflected in other settings across the world (Fox and Brown,
1998).
      Ultimately, this chapter also considers the merits of
different ecological discourses emerging from particular
social struggles, or as Raymond Williams termed them,
"militant particularisms." Contrasting discourses are
intrinsic to the diverse politics of localities, but some
political-ecological themes may have more universal
discursive undertones. As anti-toxics activist Lois Gibbs
(cited in Harvey, 1996, 389) has argued, the growing
environmental justice movement takes the position "what is
morally correct?" instead of "what is legally,
scientifically, and pragmatically possible?" This position,
insists David Harvey (1996, 389), "permits, through the
medium of social protest, the articulation of ideas about a
moral economy of collective provision and collective
responsibility as opposed to a set of distributive relations
within the political economy of profit." Exploring the
difference between an "ecological modernisation" discourse
and the environmental justice rhetoric is important for
tracking the debate over the LHWP.
      What the LHWP's brown critics have mainly done thus far,
is argue on legal, scientific and economic grounds that, in
particular, Phase 1B should not be built for at least
another couple of decades and that more attention must be
paid to improving their own water delivery systems. As we
shall see, this argument was not successful. It remains for
public anger to build as water tariffs increase, as water
continues to be shut off notwithstanding public health
risks, and as the logic of water commodification and even
privatisation extends to such an extreme point that, as has
happened elsewhere, major social movement mobilisation
occurs around the unmet demand, codified even in South
Africa's 1996 Constitutional Bill of Rights, that water is
a human right.

(Full text available from pbond@xxxxxxxxxx)