Salvadorans Facing Ecological Disaster
6/21/97
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Headline: Salvadorans Facing Ecological Disaster
Source: The Washington Post
Date: 6/21/97
Author: Douglas Farah
c Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company
Salvadorans Facing Ecological Disaster
Civil War's Damage Pales in Comparison
By Douglas Farah
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, June 21, 1997; Page A15
The Washington Post
SAN SALVADOR -- Throughout the 1980s, El Salvador's civil war was a focus
of international attention and billions of dollars poured into the country
to support the military that was battling a Marxist-led insurgency.
Now El Salvador, although at peace and out of the international spotlight,
is facing a more common problem that threatens more permanent
damage than the war: ecological devastation that is turning parts of the
once-lush country to desert, causing a severe water shortage and
making respiratory disease from air pollution a leading cause of death
among children.
And, Salvadorans complain, there is almost no outside aid available to
combat the threat because the United States and other nations do
not feel their strategic interests are directly threatened.
"Our ground water is running out, our surface water is increasingly
polluted, and we have less than 2 percent of our forest cover left,"
said Ricardo Navarro, director of the Salvadoran Center for Appropriate
Technology, a prominent ecology group here. "The most dangerous thing a
child can do in El Salvador is breathe. We will have to take radical
measures if we want El Salvador to live."
El Salvador now ranks just behind Haiti as the Western Hemisphere's most
deforested country. Only about 1.5 percent of its tropical forest
cover is left, and about 7 percent more of the land is protected only
somewhat by coffee trees. Even these trees are disappearing at an
alarming rate, environmental experts said.
At the same time, Navarro warned, "water is a serious problem, and it will
only get worse. . . . Just in the capital, the subterranean water
supplies drop a meter [39 inches] a year, and sooner or later those
aquifers will run dry."
Unlike other nations in Central America, El Salvador has no undeveloped
frontier because its small territory has long been occupied from
corner to corner. But like the rest of the region, more than 30 percent of
the people live in extreme poverty.
Much of the current crisis stems from El Salvador being the most densely
populated country in the hemisphere, with about 413 people per square
mile.
Deborah Barry, director of the Salvadoran Program of Investigation of
Development and the environment (PRISMA), said the problem of
population density is particularly serious in the San Salvador urban area.
According to a 1995 PRISMA study -- widely regarded as the
most reliable to date -- the urban area has 30 percent of the nation's
population, with 978 people per square mile.
"The state of the Salvadoran environment and its ongoing degradation are a
threat to the economic and political stability of the nation," the PRISMA
study said. "It is a serious impediment to future development."
In part, too, the war is to blame for the current crisis. Tens of
thousands of people, mostly subsistence farmers, were driven from
their homes along the northern border with Honduras, areas where the
fighting was most ferocious. Most migrated toward towns and urban
centers.
Those who remained in rural areas, and those who have returned, Barry
said, have to clear more land than before because the soil is poor.
In addition, most fuel is unavailable or extremely expensive, leaving wood
the cheapest and most available means of cooking. The deforestation
accelerates soil erosion, which in turn causes rivers to fill with
sediment, killing water life.
"There is serious desertification setting in in some parts of the
country," Barry said. "That leaves behind land that is no longer
recoverable for mankind's use."
The nation's river ways and ground water are fouled further by unregulated
dumping of industrial waste and garbage, often toxic. And
deforestation, especially close to urban areas, is accelerated because
there are no codes regulating how land should be used. In recent
months several of the few remaining stands of trees on the hills around
the capital have been razed to make room for apartments and
commercial buildings.
Environmental experts say another growing problem is the inability of
urban centers, especially San Salvador, to dispose of garbage
in an environmentally sound way. At the main dump, near the suburb of
Nejapa, the garbage is piled in huge mounds, where poor people fight
with each other and clouds of vultures over the right to scavenge goods.
According to the PRISMA study, the San Salvador metropolitan area
generates 1,255 tons of garbage a day, of which only 37 percent is
collected. Thee garbage that is collected I thrown on porous, volcanic
soil, where it decomposes and filters into the water table.
Uncollected garbage is dumped directly into streams and rivers, further
fouling them, or left to rot in piles, also posing a health
hazard.
Reforestation is difficult, with wood so scarce and valuable.
Environmental workers say trees are stolen, or cut as soon as they are big
enough to burn.
In recognition of the growing problem, the government recently created the
Ministry of the Environment to prepare legislation on emission
control standards, rational land use and control of water use and
pollution.
"There simply are very few laws now, and those that exist are not
enforced," said a foreign environmental expert. "We are looking at years,
maybe a generation, before things even begin to turn around, and by then
it may be too late."
Despite the fanfare with which the ministry was announced, it has almost
no budget, little staff and no institutional framework within
which to work.
With a vastly reduced aid budget, the United States is assisting
ecological protection efforts.
"The United States government has made a significant change in its foreign
policy to include environmental concerns," said a senior
U.S. official dealing with the region. "We can't say to a developing
nation, `Don't develop because it is bad for your ecology.'
One-third of the population lives in rural poverty, so we can't say don't
develop. But we can say development has to be sustainable."
Without the resources to carry out large-scale projects, U.S. aid is
focusing on smaller ones, such as a turtle hatchery to try to control
consumption of the eggs that are a popular delicacy here. The United
States also has helped provide devices for shrimp boats to
reduce the number of turtles accidentally caught in shrimp nets.
But the broader question is how to halt environmental collapse. Barry and
other experts said the only way to slow the deforestation is
to, in effect, pay farmers not to cut trees.
"Given the levels of poverty, you can't do anything without incentives,"
Barry said. "Some call it subsidies, I call it paying for
services. In 10 years we are talking about serious urban drought. This is
the decisive decade. A whole development style has to be
chosen and we have to deal not only with the whole country, but with the
whole region."