Conference on the ecological aspects of international development

Science has systematically created a powerful and rapidly growing body of knowledge. From this basic knowledge the advanced countries have produced the spectacular feats of modern technology: nuclear power plants, electronic machines, great increases in food production, synthetic chemicals and a significant increase in human longevity. The pressures in the underdeveloped world for sharing this new life are enormous. Numerous, intensive efforts are being made to apply modern technology to the problems of food production and industrial manufacture in these nations. Ambitious programs for transforming river basins in Asia and Africa, and reorganizing agriculture in Latin America are commanding both public attention and funds. These projects give a dramatic impression of future possibilities. However, confidence in the usefulness of modern science and technology may be seriously weakened if we continue to ignore a central element in a nation’s development - the specific character of its ecosystems. Experienced observers of the development processes have suggested that important aspects of these ecosystems have been ignored. Gilbert White points out that while irrigation projects in the Middle East and Asia are being added to, acreage equivalent to the nbw land is quietly going out of production. 1 In the Punjab district of West Pakistan, by 1949 modern canal irrigation had been extended to almost 40 million acres. By 1959 about 5 million acres had been seriously damaged by waterlogging or salinity and between 50, 000 and 100, 000 additional acres were being affected each year, many of them passing out of crop production altogether. 2 In the Helmand Valley of Afghanistan, an ambitious program for the irrigation of arid lands began to encounter difficulties after less than ten years. By 1959, waterlogging and salinity had seriously affected most of the new project areas away from the flood plains, forcing the curtailment of planned expansion. During this same time, more than sixty percent of the irrigated land of Iraq had been seriously affected by salting. In the delta of the Nile, one quarter of the land was threatened by the high water table, resulting from irrigation with inadequate farm drainage.