Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (66 page)

year 1900 to 2000, the Dominican Republic underwent more dramatic
socioeconomic change than did almost any other country in the New World.

Because of globalization, what happens to the Dominican Republic af
fects not only Dominicans but also the rest of the world. It especially affects
the United States lying only 600 miles away, and already home to a million
Dominicans. New York City now supports the second largest Dominican
population of any city in the world, second only to the Republic's own capital of Santo Domingo. There are also large overseas Dominican populations in Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, and Venezuela. The U.S. has already ex
perienced how events in the Caribbean country immediately west of His-
paniola, namely, Cuba, threatened our survival in 1962. Hence the U.S. has
a lot at stake in whether the Dominican Republic succeeds in solving its
problems.

What about the future of Haiti? Already the poorest and one of the most
overcrowded countries in the New World, Haiti is nevertheless continuing
to become even poorer and more crowded, with a population growth rate
of nearly 3% per year. Haiti is so poor, and so deficient in natural resources
and in trained or educated human resources, that it really is difficult to see
what might bring about improvement. If one instead looks to the outside
world to help through government foreign aid, NGO initiatives, or private
efforts, Haiti even lacks the capacity to utilize outside assistance effectively.
For instance, the USAID program has put money into Haiti at seven times
the rate at which it has put money into the Dominican Republic, but the re
sults in Haiti have still been much more meager, because of the country's
deficiency in people and organizations of its own that could utilize the aid.
Everyone familiar with Haiti whom I asked about its prospects used the
words "no hope" in their answer. Most of them answered simply that they
saw no hope. Those who did see hope began by acknowledging that
they were in a minority and that most people saw no hope, but they them
selves then went on to name some reason why they clung to hope, such as
the possibilities of reforestation spreading out from Haiti's existing small
forest reserves, the existence of two agricultural areas in Haiti that do pro
duce surplus food for internal export to the capital of Port-au-Prince and
the tourist enclaves on the north coast, and Haiti's remarkable achievement in abolishing its army without descending into a constant morass of seces
sion movements and local militias.

Just as the Dominican Republic's future affects others because of global-

ization, Haiti also affects others through globalization. Just as with Domini
cans, that effect of globalization includes the effects of Haitians living
overseas
—in the United States, Cuba, Mexico, South America, Canada, the Bahamas, the Lesser Antilles, and France. Even more important, though, is
the "globalization" of Haiti's problems within the island of Hispaniola,
through Haiti's effects on the neighboring Dominican Republic. Near the
Dominican border, Haitians commute from their homes to the Dominican side for jobs that at least provide them with meals, and for wood fuel to
bring back to their deforested homes. Haitian squatters try to eke out a liv
ing as farmers on Dominican land near the border, even on poor-quality
land that Dominican farmers scorn. More than a million people of Haitian
background live and work in the Dominican Republic, mostly illegally, attracted by the better economic opportunities and greater availability of land
in the Dominican Republic, even though the latter itself is a poor country.
Hence the exodus of over a million Dominicans overseas has been matched
by the arrival of as many Haitians, who now constitute about 12% of the population. Haitians take low-paying and hard jobs that few Dominicans
currently want for themselves—especially in the construction industry, as agricultural workers, doing the back-breaking and painful work of cutting sugarcane, in the tourist industry, as watchmen, as domestic workers, and
operating bicycle transport (pedaling bicycles while carrying and balancing
huge quantities of goods for sale or delivery). The Dominican economy uti
lizes those Haitians as low-paid laborers, but Dominicans are reluctant in
return to provide education, medical care, and housing when they are
strapped for funds to provide those public services to themselves. Domini
cans and Haitians in the Dominican Republic are divided not only economi
cally but also culturally: they speak different languages, dress differently, eat
different foods, and on the average look differently (Haitians tending to be
darker-skinned and more African in appearance).

As I listened to my Dominican friends describing the situation of
Haitians in the Dominican Republic, I became astonished by the close par
allels with the situation of illegal immigrants from Mexico and other Latin
American countries in the United States. I heard those sentences about
"jobs that Dominicans don't want," "low-paying jobs but still better than
what's available for them at home," "those Haitians bring AIDS, TB, and
malaria," "they speak a different language and look darker-skinned," and
"we have no obligation and can't afford to provide medical care, education,
and housing to illegal immigrants." In those sentences, all I had to do was

to replace the words "Haitians" and "Dominicans" with "Latin American
immigrants" and "American citizens," and the result would be a typical ex
pression of American attitudes towards Latin American immigrants.

At the present rate at which Dominicans are leaving the Dominican Republic for the U.S. and Puerto Rico while Haitians are leaving Haiti for the Dominican Republic, the Republic is becoming a nation with an increasing
Haitian minority, just as many parts of the United States are becoming in
creasingly "Hispanic" (i.e., Latin American). That makes it in the vital interests of the Dominican Republic for Haiti to solve its problems, just as it is in
the vital interests of the United States for Latin America to solve its own
problems. The Dominican Republic is affected more by Haiti than by any
other country in the world.

Might the Dominican Republic play a constructive role in Haiti's future? At first glance, the Republic looks like a very unlikely source of solutions to Haiti's problems. The Republic is poor and has enough problems helping its
own citizens. The two countries are separated by that cultural gulf that in
cludes different languages and different self-images. There is a long, deeply
rooted tradition of antagonism on both sides, with many Dominicans view
ing Haiti as part of Africa and looking down on Haitians, and with many Haitians in turn suspicious of foreign meddling. Haitians and Dominicans
cannot forget the history of cruelties that each country inflicted on the
other. Dominicans remember Haiti's invasions of the Dominican Republic
in the 19th century, including the 22-year occupation (forgetting that occupation's positive aspects, such as its abolition of slavery). Haitians remem
ber Trujillo's worst single atrocity, his ordering the slaughter (by machete) of all 20,000 Haitians living in the northwestern Dominican Republic and
parts of the Cibao Valley between October 2 and October 8, 1937. Today,
there is little collaboration between the two governments, which tend to
view each other warily or with hostility.

But none of these considerations changes two fundamental facts: that the Dominican environment merges continuously into the Haitian environment, and that Haiti is the country with the strongest effect upon the Dominican Republic. Some signs of collaboration between the two are
starting to emerge. For example, while I was in the Dominican Republic, for
the first time a group of Dominican scientists was about to travel to Haiti
for joint meetings with Haitian scientists, and a return visit of the Haitian scientists to Santo Domingo was already scheduled. If the lot of Haiti is to
improve at all, I don't see how that could happen without more involve
ment on the part of the Dominican Republic, even though that is undesired

and almost unthinkable to most Dominicans today. Ultimately, though, for
the Republic not to be involved with Haiti is even more unthinkable. While
the Republic's own resources are scarce, at minimum it could assume a
larger role as a bridge, in ways to be explored, between the outside world
and Haiti.

Will Dominicans come to share those views? In the past, the Dominican
people have accomplished feats much more difficult than becoming constructively engaged with Haiti. Among the many unknowns hanging over
the futures of my Dominican friends, I see that as the biggest one.

CHAPTER
12

China, Lurching Giant

China's significance
■ Background ■ Air, water, soil ■ Habitat,
species, megaprojects ■ Consequences ■ Connections ■ The future
■

C

hina is the world's most populous country, with about
1,300,000,000 people, or one-fifth of the world's total. In area it is
the third largest country, and in plant species diversity the third
richest. Its economy, already huge, is growing at the fastest rate of any major
country: nearly 10% per year, which is four times the growth rate of First
World economies. It has the world's highest production rate of steel, cement, aquacultured food, and television sets; both the highest production
and the highest consumption of coal, fertilizers, and tobacco; it stands near the top in production of electricity and (soon) motor vehicles, and in con
sumption of timber; and it is now building the world's largest dam and largest water-diversion project.

Marring these superlatives and achievements, China's environmental problems are among the most severe of any major country, and are getting
worse. The long list ranges from air pollution, biodiversity losses, cropland
losses, desertification, disappearing wetlands, grassland degradation, and
increasing scale and frequency of human-induced natural disasters, to inva
sive species, overgrazing, river flow cessation, salinization, soil erosion, trash
accumulation, and water pollution and shortages. These and other environ
mental problems are causing enormous economic losses, social conflicts,
and health problems within China. All these considerations alone would suffice to make the impact of China's environmental problems on just the
Chinese people a subject of major concern.

But China's large population, economy, and area also guarantee that its environmental problems will not remain a domestic issue but will spill over
to the rest of the world, which is increasingly affected through sharing the same planet, oceans, and atmosphere with China, and which in turn affects
China's environment through globalization. China's recent entry into the
World Trade Organization will expand those exchanges with other coun
tries. For instance, China is already the largest contributor of sulfur oxides,

chlorofluorocarbons, other ozone-depleting substances, and (soon) carbon
dioxide to the atmosphere; its dust and aerial pollutants are transported
eastwards in the atmosphere to neighboring countries and even to North America; and it is one of the two leading importers of tropical rainforest
timber, making it a driving force behind tropical deforestation.

Even more important than all those other impacts will be the proportionate increase in total human impact on the world's environments if China, with its large population, succeeds in its goal of achieving First
World living standards
—which also means catching up to the First World's
per-capita environmental impact. As we shall see in this chapter and again
in Chapter 16, those differences between First and Third World living stan
dards, and the efforts of China and other developing countries to close that gap, have big consequences that unfortunately are usually ignored. China will also illustrate other themes of this book: the dozen groups of environ
mental problems facing the modern world, to be detailed in Chapter 16,
and all of them serious or extreme in China; the effects of modern global
ization on environmental problems; the importance of environmental is
sues for even the biggest of all modern societies, and not just for the small societies selected as illustrations in most of my book's other chapters; and
realistic grounds for hope, despite a barrage of depressing statistics. After setting out some brief background information about China, I shall discuss
the types of Chinese environmental impacts, their consequences for the
Chinese people and for the rest of the world, and China's responses and fu
ture prognosis.

Let's begin with a quick overview of China's geography, population trends,
and economy (map, p. 361). The Chinese environment is complex and lo
cally fragile. Its diverse geography includes the world's highest plateau, some
of the world's highest mountains, two of the world's longest rivers (the
Yangtze and Yellow Rivers), many lakes, a long coastline, and a large conti
nental shelf. Its diverse habitats range from glaciers and deserts to tropical rainforests. Within those ecosystems lie areas fragile for different reasons: for example, northern China has highly variable rainfall, plus simultaneous
occurrences of winds and droughts, that make its high-altitude grasslands
susceptible to dust storms and soil erosion, while conversely southern
China is wet but has heavy rainstorms that cause erosion on slopes.

As for China's population, the two best-known facts about it are that it
is the world's largest, and that the Chinese government (uniquely in the