LIFELONG twitcher William Drury’s final book, Chance and Change, is
designed to annoy those conservationists wedded to romantic notions of nature’s
grand design. And by using anecdotes from his birding days, Drury also produced
a fascinating commonsense critique of ecological theory. His main message is to
use your eyes more.

It seems such an obvious thing to do, but as biologist Ernst Mayr’s
introduction points out, the formulaic models provided by scientists in the
1940s and 1950s, when Drury began his career, led to something akin to
“physics-envy” among biologists. Drury, a trained botanist, geologist and
zoologist, felt such approaches demeaned biology by taking it out of the field
he loved so much into the overly tidy world of mathematics. He made delightful
mockery of this position with an anecdote where his botany professor is
painstakingly searching a hillside for a “typical” plant.

His best sections included an attack on the idea of natural balance. Drury
considered ecosystems to be largely temporary constructs so seeing most species
in a community as superfluous to the operation of those sets of species between
which we can clearly identify important interactions. “Individuals and species
do not benefit, “he claimed, “as much by becoming integrated into a function
system as they do by maintaining options of disengagement so that they can crop
excesses in the good times and move out during a crunch.”

However, the example Drury highlighted—the deliberate removal of gulls
at Petit Manan National Wildlife Refuge, Maine, to increase the number of
nesting pairs of terns—has difficult connotations for those
conservationists who see “assisted” natural selection as akin to playing
god.

But Drury reckoned that if humans don’t play god, something else will, for
instance, the gulls whose bloody tactics he recounts in Chance and
Change. But as any conservationist would point out, entrepreneurs could
exploit his argument to remove a valuable species, rather than protect a
vulnerable one. Unfortunately, Drury ignored cash-motivated human intervention,
claiming that: “Human effects may alter, but they do not necessarily harm, a
natural system, nor do they necessarily change the system more than do other
primary or keystone species.”

So, has Drury’s approach been accepted? Of course, there are as many ways of
thinking about ecological management as there are members of the gull and tern
family. But a look at the work of Britain’s million-member bird charity, the
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, proves that interventionist
management to assist bird populations at risk is the norm these days, in Britain
at any rate. Thus some of Drury’s fiercest criticism of “laissez-faire
protection”, which he felt cannot protect desired species, is rendered
invalid.

Admittedly some conservationists do have a siege mentality, resisting change,
but this is more because they have seen the damage that economic and legal
systems can do to habitats than because of any deeply held, romantic view about
nature knowing best.

Drury did have the gift of making complex theories simple—a blessing
for amateur ecologists reading his book. He also helped to lighten the
complexities of ecological theory with his pen-and-ink drawings of birds and
plants. However, owing to his illness and death in 1992, the editing from the
College of the Atlantic, in Maine, betrays the hand of too many professional
biologists. For example, the book would have been better with a glossary. There
is an appendix, but this seems an excuse to give the Latin names for a range of
American birds and beasties.

The main problem is that Drury’s criticisms of deterministic ecology, which
has led to “wilderness” being thought of as places “untrammelled” by humans and
which encourages people to feel that “humans and nature cannot co-exist” have,
perhaps, not been so widely adopted in as crowded a country as Britain. But as
most examples in Chance and Change are limited to a tiny corner of the
island-peppered east coast of the US, it is no surprise that not all his barbs
hit their target.

Two years after its completion, the field station is still unoccupied and a
tree has fallen through the roof. The Brazilians cannot afford to run it. “It’s
a real white elephant,” says a British scientist who visited it recently. “It is
totally inappropriate—too big, too far away. It was a waste of money.”

It would never have happened, say critics, if Britain had given the money
without insisting that it was spent on British goods. Aid that is “tied” in this
way accounts for around 40 per cent of donations from OECD countries. Most aid
agencies claim that tied aid is a huge burden to the developing countries which
receive it, for if a government is forced to buy equipment, spare parts and the
services of consultants or scientists from the donor country, then it cannot
shop around for the best price and often ends up paying over the odds.

“Instead of giving money, a tied aid policy gives goods which end up as rust
heaps,” claims Robert Shaw, a Kenyan economics writer. “In a lot of cases it’s
not a gift, it’s a soft loan. Looked at cynically, tied aid is a disguised way
of promoting that country’s product. Any British embassy or high commission has
a strong commercial component—it is there to represent British companies.
In very big deals that becomes a dominant issue.”

A report published recently by the Overseas Development Administration (ODA),
Review of UK Aid Tying Policy, shows that heavy vehicles and industrial
equipment, as well as shovels and agricultural tools, cost recipients more if
they are bought from British companies. Some spare parts for vehicles are 30 per
cent more expensive if bought from Britain.

The OECD estimates that tying aid increases a developing country’s costs by
an average of 15 per cent. With tied aid worth $15 billion in 1994, the
extra cost to the developing world during that year amounted to some $2
billion. The OECD tried to reduce this burden with its 1992 Helsinki Agreement,
which restricts the use of tied aid loans to countries below a certain income
threshold. It has been partly successful. The volume of tied aid loans from
Spain, for example, fell from around 70 per cent of total bilateral aid in 1994
to 22 per cent in 1995.

Scared of change

But countries are finding ways to bypass the restrictions, such as replacing
loans with grants, which are not subject to the agreement. And despite
increasingly urgent calls from critics—including the World Bank and many
aid agencies—for countries to reduce their commitments to tied aid, there
is little apparent enthusiasm for doing so.

Last month, at a meeting in The Hague of the 21 members of the Development
Assistance Committee (DAC), the group of donor governments within the OECD, most
of the countries agreed in principle to the benefits of untying aid. But France,
Canada and Spain objected, and most of the others were afraid that they would
lose out if they agreed to act without them. Even the US government, once a keen
supporter of untying aid, is now more cautious, fearing that such a change might
prompt Congress to question its entire aid budget.

Nevertheless, the Netherlands and Japan have gone ahead and reduced their
commitments to tied aid. The Netherlands now ties less than 10 per cent of its
bilateral aid, and for the past 10 years has been trying to persuade other OECD
countries to follow its example. Countries say they are convinced and then back
off from doing anything about it, claims Fritz Meyndert, the Dutch government’s
coordinator on the DAC. “The problem seems to be that support for [overseas aid
programmes] is not as strong as it was, and so countries use tying aid money as
an argument to support their programmes. Yet untying aid hasn’t proved to be
damaging for us or for Japan.”

Aid agencies insist that tied aid does little to improve the economies of
poor countries and the living standards of their people. “The most effective aid
is geared to capacity building [improving skills] so recipients can improve
their own lives, but tied aid is about promoting goods and services from the
donor,” says Charlie Kronick, an adviser to Action Aid in London. “Not only is
this kind of aid expensive for recipients, it might not even be what they
·É˛ą˛ÔłŮ.”

A large proportion of emergency relief aid is also tied, even when it is
directed through nongovernmental organisations. John Broughton of the Overseas
Development Institute, an independent research group in London, says this is
completely unnecessary. “Surely it must be possible for humanitarian agencies to
establish formal contacts with local suppliers, in India or Mozambique, or
wherever there is a relief operation, so that local businesses can supply 10 000
blankets or whatever is needed, rather than shipping them all in from Rotterdam
or Britain.”

Robert Maxwell, chief executive of the King’s Fund, an independent health
charity based in London, accuses donor countries of sometimes putting their
interests before those of the recipients. For example, a donor country may
choose equipment for a hospital in Africa on the basis of what its domestic
companies can supply, rather than on what the hospital actually needs. Tied aid
often leads to poor countries being flooded with equipment which is complicated
to maintain and needs expensive spares from overseas. One survey found more than
16 different kinds of water pump in use in Kenya, each funded by a different
donor nation.

The British government has frequently stated that tied aid is good for
business. But even this assumption is being questioned. The ODA’s own report
argues that an agreement between countries to untie aid would benefit exports
and competition. During question time in the House of Commons in July, Foreign
Office minister Jeremy Hanley acknowledged that this would produce “significant
benefits”, but then went on to say that for Britain to reduce its tied aid
without other countries doing the same “would bring little commercial benefit
and would be unpopular with individual firms and businesses competing for
aid-funded contracts”. The ODA’s report also says that in the absence of
international agreement, the effect of untying British aid would be very small.
It goes on to warn that cutting back tied aid unilaterally could reduce public
support for Britain’s entire aid programme.

Yet enthusiasm for tied aid appears to be waning. “The consensus is that tied
aid doesn’t do a lot for balance of payments or employment, but no donor country
wants to be the first to stop,” says Kronick. Even industry chiefs are slow to
leap to its defence. Barbara Browntree, senior policy adviser at the
Confederation of British Industry, says: “We’re realistic about the way the role
of tied aid has diminished now that the Helsinki rulings focus it on the poorer
countries.” Nevertheless, the ODA insists that since 1977, British companies
have won ÂŁ4 billion of business through tied aid. The main beneficiaries
have been construction companies such as Trafalgar House and Balfour-Beatty.

Alick Goldsmith, director-general of the Export Group for the Constructional
Industries, says: “A small part of the bilateral aid programme specifically
supports projects that are developmentally sound and of industrial and
commercial significance to Britain. This has enabled Britain to promote hundreds
of sound projects in over fifty countries, and has paid for itself many times
over in terms of additional British jobs and exports.”

No more dams

Among those who have gained is the Devon-based truck manufacturer Reynolds
Boughton, which recently helped Pakistan to upgrade rescue and firefighting
facilities at nine of its airports. The ODA provided ÂŁ2.5 million to
support the deal, which enabled the company to win the ÂŁ7-million contract
for 19 airfield crash trucks.

There has been some change in the ODA’s attitude in recent years. In 1994,
the High Court ruled that the use of ÂŁ234 million from the aid budget to
fund the Pergau Dam project in Malaysia, linked to ÂŁ1 billion of arms
sales, was illegal. Following this fiasco, the ODA’s funding priorities have
switched away from supporting dam builders and metal bashers, and moved towards
consultancies.

But some critics believe the new policy is just as flawed. “The primary
purpose of Britain’s aid programme is to alleviate poverty overseas,” says Dan
Rees, programme manager of Voluntary Services Overseas. “Does exporting British
brains, via hundreds of university departments, increase the capacity of
developing world governments to be self-sufficient?”

Although the ODA insists that its aid programme now targets poorer countries,
and has long since ceased being used as a way of filling empty British order
books, there is puzzlement over the agency’s continuing commitment to tied aid.
“Is tied aid really aid, or is it about donors giving equipment which ends up as
rust heaps with pumps no longer in working order and no one who knows how to
maintain them?” asks Shaw. Action Aid is even more cynical. “The ODA’s goal is
to keep its budget up,” claims Kronick. “It’s not about aid.”

ON the morning Green Backlash arrived, an environmentalist friend
from Kenya rang saying he had something important to say, but would fax it
because “you never know who’s listening”. Reading a single chapter of Andrew
Rowell’s exhaustive reportage of the increasingly violent ways in which
anti-environmentalists are attacking green activists, made me appreciate that
caution.

That said, this excellent book’s strength lies in how it lets the actions of
the anti-greens and green groups speak for themselves. Rowell juxtaposes
misinformation and reality, while reminding the reader that the environmental
movement has the potential to beat this backlash.

The first round saw the environmental activists holding the moral high ground
as they campaigned—and sometimes won—against dams and clearcutting
forests. But the opposition—the political right, big business and the
state—are winning the second round. And Rowell applies his analytical
powers to the why and how of this.

The pro-business lobby, representing those with most to lose from
environmental cleanups, has turned ecological arguments on their head, and
thrown smears and violence against environmentalists to boot. It now claims to
represent true environmentalism, a practical credo upheld by realists. Rowell
describes the methods this lobby is using to change opinion. They include:
seemingly independent scientific reports, attempts to arouse fears of job
losses, intimidation and espionage.

Rowell points out that right-wing movements, such as Wise Use in the US,
corporate-front user groups like America’s Coalition for Vehicle Choice or
individual contrarians like Wilfred Beckerman, author of Small is
Stupid, seem to have wound up key environmentalists to the point that they
abandon their mission, diverting their energies to counter the counterclaims.
This orchestration of anti-green fervour leads to action: growing surveillance,
suppression, legal actions and violence. Some anti-green groups even suggest
that their members disrupt environmentalists’ activities.

But if truth is on the side of the good greens, why do environmentalists have
such problems coping with green backlash? Possibly because they are now facing
professional publicists putting the opposition’s viewpoint, but it may be that
it is a hard task to face the fact that they need to re-engage the sympathy and
trust of the public worldwide. For example, Greenpeace’s stance over the
disposal of the Brent Spar proved environmentalists could be mistaken. It was
widely reported. But Greenpeace did admit it had got its science wrong,
something Union Carbide still has not done after the world’s worst chemical
accident at Bhopal.

And if in the war of words, the anti-greens manage to label their opponents
as “terrorists”, then the environmentalists, who typically use non-violent
direct action in support of their aims, are at risk: skinned pets (a favourite
in America), letterbox burning (regular in Australia) or violence (typically by
security guards against anti-road protesters in Britain). There have been
murders too: the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior that killed cameraman Fernando
Pereira; and the killings of Brazilian rubber tapper Chico Mendes and Nigerian
activist Ken Saro-Wiwa.

Throughout Green Backlash, you feel you are in conversation with an
unstoppable eco-activist raging against the state of the world, the type who
doesn’t pause for breath except to say, “and another thing” before recounting an
even more heinous environmental crime. The style could wear you down—it
lends the book a tone often adopted by fundamentalists. But do not let his style
distract: Rowell’s more than two years of research and knowledge of his subject
should weigh against this. Greenpeace, which sponsored the book, is lucky to
have such a painstaking researcher on its side.