Environmental activism is sweeping the developing world—and challenging some powerful interests

Marcos Chan RodrIguez never dreamed he’d get involved in politics. But last year the 53-year-old insurance agent began to notice that an alarming number of children and old people in his Mexico City apartment complex were suffering from severe bronchial ailments. He started paying closer attention to the procession of soot-belching trucks leaving the neighboring industrial complex— which includes the huge Tolteca Cement plant—and rolling right past the home where he lives with his wife and four children. "It struck me that we’re not just breathing pollution here," Chan says. "We’re breathing cement."

Government and plant officials refused to respond to his letters of complaint, so Chan and a few other residents conducted an informal poll and analysis of the area’s pollution level and presented the disturbing findings to their neighbors. Within weeks the community mobilized to form the Unidad de JardIn Ceylán, a grass-roots group that took its case to the growing leftist opposition in the Mexico City Assembly after the government responded only perfunctorily to its concerns. That finally aroused the ruling party’s interest; last summer the Ecology Ministry ordered a two-week, 50 percent reduction in operations at Tolteca during a period of especially bad air quality. This year Chan’s group is fighting to close the plant altogether. "I don’t think any of us ever intended to get involved in this thing from a political standpoint," says Chan. "But the ecological problem woke us up to the fact that there is very little democracy in Mexico."

Halfway around the globe, another citizens’ group has achieved similar success. In the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, people in the small town of Tehri have been rallying round a frail old man named Sunderlal Bahuguna to stop the construction of a $1.7 billion dam. Bahuguna, who has led a successful 15-year campaign to halt deforestation in the Himalayas by encouraging viilagers to cling to the branches when loggers approached with chain saws, decided to get involved when he discovered that the dam would completely submerge Tehri and several other villages and would denude much of the region, making it more avalanche-prone. On a cold morning in January 1990, he sat down outside the dam site and began a fast. Scores of local people kept vigil beside him; after 11 days without food, Bahuguna extracted a promise from the government that it would reconsider the plan in light of several reports that question the project’s technical feasibility. Since then, work on the dam has been sporadic.

Farmers and villagers: The world’s growing environmental movement is finding a new breed of leader. They are neither rock stars nor university students nor wealthy Westerners sitting in living rooms 10,000 miles from the scenes of devastation; they are, instead, farmers and villagers, working-class city people and forest dwellers in some of the most polluted countries in the developing world. The fight against ecological destruction is finally being taken up by those most endangered by it: the men and women whose children are dying of respiratory disease and whose habitats are being demolished by developers. From the mountains of Peru to the rain forests of Thailand to the reefs of the Philippines people tired of watching their governments sacrifice the environment on the altar of economic growth are beginning to fight back, mobilizing relatives, neighbors and

friends into a burgeoning network of grassroots groups. And though they have little funding, organization or experience in battling bureaucracy, they bring to their struggle a passion and an urgency that is challenging many of the world’s most ecologically insensitive governments to change their toxic ways.

The tactics of these groups are as varied as their targets. They are taking on everyone from loggers who decimate the rainforests to industrialists who pollute the air and water to developers who raze farm land to build golf courses. Many groups protest through traditional, nonviolent means, staging marches, strikes and boycotts. Some descend upon capitals that few of their members have ever visited before and organize pickets in front of government buildings. Others rely on more violent methods: blocking roads, torching bridges and vandalizing equipment used by loggers and developers. Many are willing to do whatever it takes to get their point across.

They face a difficult task. For the most part, they are up against powerful, deeply entrenched political forces desperate to boost their nations’ economies. Most governments of developing countries are trying to spur, not stifle, industrialization to help them compete in the First World. They depend on political and financial backing from big businesses and will go out of their way to preserve their interests. And though many government leaders dismiss these amateur environmental movements as nothing more than a nuisance, few deny that their appeal is growing at home and abroad—especially among vital Western creditors who are heavily concerned with environmental protection.

Most newcomers to the environmental movement are galvanized by the imminent prospect of losing their homes or livelihoods to the chain saws and bulldozers of progress. In Thailand, which has one of the fastest-growing economies in Asia, rapid deforestation, water pollution and dam construction are threatening to erode farms and force hundreds of thousands of people off their land. The farmers have begun to resist; when runoff from illegal salt mines in Maha Sarakham province poisoned a reservoir and river last year, hundreds of area farmers staged a noisy rally and blocked a local road to protest the destruction of wildlife. When 500 baton-wielding police broke up the demonstration, the protesters—bolstered by sympathetic students and activists—moved to the Interior Ministry in Bangkok. Since then, the government has outlawed rock-salt mining in the region; fish are returning to the reservoir and, for the first time in years, crops such as corn, pepper and beans are beginning to grow there.

In some places, pollution has become so blatant that people can no longer remain silent. When residents in the southeastern reaches of South Korea turned on their taps last month and discolored, foul-smelling water began spilling out, it confirmed their worst fears: a major business group had dumped untreated industrial waste into the Naktong River, which 12 million Koreans rely on for drinking water. Angry housewives dumped out jars of kimchi, the national dish of pickled cabbage, that had been made with the bad water, and area food manufacturers recalled and discarded tons of contaminated food. Seoul scrambled to restore public calm by quickly pronouncing the river water safe to drink (legislators from the ruling Democratic Liberal Party were photographed drinking tap water in the affected region), promising better enforcement of environmental-protection laws and announcing at~ increase in the maximum fines for violators. But the incident set off a wave of environmental activism; 33 environmental groups have formed an umbrella coalition in Seoul, and branches are springing up in most major cities.

Celebrity attention: To be sure, many of the neophyte ecological groups owe their success to outside help. They often depend on the advice and expertise of Western lawyers, academics and veteran activists to help direct their efforts. Some receive funding, supplies, technical assistance and moral support from international organizations like Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund; others have benefited from celebrity attention. British rock star Sting has helped lead the popular global crusade against the destruction of the Amazonian rain forest, and last year the Prince of Wales called for a boycott of tropical hardwoods to draw attention to the plight of two Indian tribes—the Yanomami of Brazil and the Penan of east Malaysia—endangered by deforestation.

Most of the movement’s heroes are much less famous and their struggles much less glamorous. In Kenya, for example, Wangari Maathai, founder of the nation’s grass-roots Green Belt Movement, has led a difficult battle to stop the government from building a 62-story office tower in a popular Nairobi public park. In late 1989, she wrote letters of protest to government officials and tried to get a court injunction barring construction. Angry parliamentarians struck back, calling her actions "ugly and ominous" and "a shame of unprecedented monstrosity." President Daniel Arap Moi accused Maathai and other critics of the project of having "insects in their heads." The Green Belt Movement was evicted from its downtown office, but Maathai continues to work out of her home; so far, construction on the complex has not begun.

On the Philippine island of Palawan, a local businesswoman named Erna Rafols is leading a solitary campaign to stop the deadly practice of cyanide fishing. She trains area divers to use nets to catch tropical fish for the Western aquarium market, instead of employing the more popular practice of spraying cyanide into the coral to stun the fish and force them to the surface, where they can be easily caught. Cyanide fishing causes the animals to die quickly once they reach Western markets. Worse, poison-laced fish sometimes appear on Filipino dinner tables. "~The fishermen] want to change but they need the money," says Marcelino Ganados, a fish-net convert." They think the poison stops in their stomachs." Rafols has received death threats for her efforts, possibly from exporters who don’t want their methods exposed.

Hate mail, name-calling and death threats are familiar to environmental pioneers in the Third World, which is perhaps part of the reason people there were so slow to sign on to the movement. For Chico Mendes, the renowned Brazilian rubber tappers’ union leader, the threats were more than just talk; he was gunned down in 1988 by a rancher infuriated by his crusade to curb deforestation. Mendes thwarted their efforts by teaching rubber tappers to form empates, or human barricades, between the men with chain saws and the trees they intended to cut. He also tried to establish extractive reserves—government-protected areas where the tappers could harvest products like nuts for export to Western companies. Mendes’s murder temporarily shook many of his followers, but the rubber tappers’ movement has resumed full force under new leaders such as Osmarino Amáncio Rodrigues (box).

If such setbacks deter the new environmentalists, every small achievement also helps to build confidence and solidify support. In Thailand, for instance, a successful movement to halt government construction of the Nam Choan Dam in 1988 encouraged environmentalists to win a logging ban 10 months later. "Before the Nam Choan success, people didn’t realize they had the power to fight the government," says Witoon Charoen, director of the country’s Project for Ecological Recovery. "Now they do."

They are also learning to build coalitions to strengthen their influence. In the southern part of Peru, municipal governments, shantytown associations, mothers’ clubs, various other non-government organizations (NGOs) and the Chamber of Commerce have all joined forces to form the ho Defense Front to protest air pollution by the Southern Peru Copper Corp. In India, more than 100 different environmental groups embracing a diverse crowd of lawyers, scientists, writers and doctors—not to mention peace-loving Gandhians and radical Marxists—forced the government to rethink construction of a dam over the Narmada River in Gujarat state. Last year at a rally in Harsud they launched an unprecedented coalition—the Movement for People’s Development—to coordinate all of India’s environmental projects.

In some cases, these coalitions are giving rise to Green political movements. Maneka Gandhi, who as V. P. Singh’s minister of environment and forest scrapped several large development projects and significantly reduced air pollution, has been described in the national media as India’s first Green politician. And last month the Green Ecological Party of Mexico was officially registered as a political party b~ the country’s electoral institute—after months of being denied a place on the roster. Elsewhere, established opposition parties have seized the torch of the environ mental movement; in Taiwan, for example the native Democratic Progressive Part1 has used ecological issues to score political points against the ruling Kuomintang.

Democratic change: For fledgling environmental movements in developing coun tries, the pursuit of cleaner air or water is often linked to the quest for democratic reform. "Environmental contamination in countries like Mexico tends to be a reflection of the moral contamination of the political system," says Mexican author Homero Aridjis. "You can’t solve the pollution problem in Mexico if you don’t solve the democracy problem, so when people get active in the first movement, they find themselves drawn into the latter." In countries with repressive governments, like Indonesia under President Suharto, Green movements often serve as a safe cover for groups seeking democratic change. "The only way to be anti-Suharto is through the environmental movement," says Jenni, a leader of one of the country's largest Green groups. "There is no other way to talk about Suharto or human rights." In some places, it works the opposite way; activists in Africa, for example, expect the democratic wave sweeping the continent to boost private environmental groups. "People want democracy because they want the right to speak about their problems and needs," says Jean-Marie Fayemi, a coordinator of a Nairobi-based environmental group.

Fearful of the growing influence of environmentalists; former ‘I’hai prime minister Chatichai Choonhavan came up with a plan to reforest the country by leasing land cheaply to commercial tree planters who would plant fast-growing eucalyptus and rubber trees. But environmentalists and villagers objected, demanding instead that native tree varieties be planted and that the villagers be allowed to protect them.

Some environmental movements have prompted more drastic—and violent—government responses. When the entire island of Bougainville declared last year that it was seceding from Papua New Guinea because of massive air pollution and deforestation, the government threw an economic blockade around the island, cutting off power, phone service, mail and food supplies. But the rebels have refused to give up; so far, more than 100 people have been killed in fighting between the two sides. Elsewhere, demonstrators are commonly confronted by armed troops. In Thailand, protesting villagers are often roughed up by gun-toting police officers; and in Indonesia last year, Army officials in Cibodes temporarily strung up a farmer by his beard.

Such incidents are likely to become less frequent as government authorities come to realize that harsh tactics only succeed in creating sympathetic support for activists. It seems clear that the developing world’s environmental movement will continue to swell. Nongovernment organizations are becoming more and more politically savvy, learning how to lobby, canvas and plan their battles. Increasingly, they are focusing their resources on educating the masses, and since most are led by villagers and workers, they carry tremendous credibility among local people." We don't want to fight every little battle," says Kenya’s Maathai. "But we want to raise consciousness and create a constituency so the next time we stand up, we’re not alone." By almost any measure, they are succeeding.

-SUSAN H. GREENBERG with RON MOREAU in Bangkok, TIM PADGETT in Mexico City, Suôip MAZUMDAR in New Delhi, PETER McKILLOPIN in Jakarta, JEFFREY BARTHOLET in Nairobi, MELINDA Liu on Borneo, ROBIN BULMAN in Seoul, and CRISELDA YABES in Manil

Source : NEWSWEEK, April 22, 1991

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