Examination of Witness(Questions 100 109)
DR STEPHEN
DEVEREUX
TUESDAY 3 DECEMBER 2002
Mr Tony Colman
100. We asked the same question of the Southern
Africa Director of the World Food Programme when she came to give
evidence about two weeks ago, and I paraphrase but she was saying
that crucially it was the national states who had the responsibility
of delivering the right to food to their populations. Obviously
the World Food Programme was their back-up. Clearly this is a
situation in Zambia where the President of Zambia has taken a
particular position. Do you want to comment on that particular
situation at all?
(Dr Devereux) It is a tricky one. It is difficult
to force a government to accept GM food aid, if they feel strongly
that the health and agricultural implications could be quite damaging.
So they are taking a longer term view in response to a short-term
crisis, and that I think is problematic. Are they responsible
for dealing with the short-term emergency right now, independent
of the possible long-term consequences; or do they have the right
to say no at this point, knowing that the longer term consequences
could be quite serious? They are trading off the present for the
future. I do not have a view about whether they have taken the
right decision or not. I think every national government has the
right to take or reject whatever advice and aid they are given
or offered. I do feel that national governments should be more
accountable than they are; and that partly means saying no more
often, particularly to pressures from the international community,
which sometimes forces them into policies which are damaging to
their own populations. There is no doubt that that has been the
effect of some policies. The international community does not
always speak with the same voice; it does not always share the
same objectives as the national government; even the donors themselves
do not always agree on the right way forward. Yet governments,
in response to poverty and the need for international assistance,
are adopting structural adjustment, liberalisation and poverty
reduction strategies which they did not actually design and choose
for themselves.
101. I think we have moved on to poverty reduction
strategies rather than structural adjustment. Could I suggest
you are suggesting that NGOs know better than elected governments?
(Dr Devereux) NGOs often have more information about
what is going on, on the ground, than governments, in the sense
of government officials sitting in the capital city. It is certainly
the case that in Malawi the NGOs working in the communities were
sending information to the central level in late 2001, which was
apparently ignored by the central government. They either did
not know or they were denying the evidence they were getting from
the field, from the NGOs. I think that is probably a reflection
of the power that NGOs now have, as having stepped in following,
to some extent, the scaling down and the withdrawal of the government
and the public sector generally, in the sense that we do not have
the same number of agricultural extension officers and other government
workers at community level that there were ten or 15 years ago
when the government were much bigger.
102. Obviously when we go to Malawi, Zambia
and other countries we see a situation where land is held communally.
Do you believe that one of the reasons why there has not been
a move forward in having a vibrant and strong agriculture-producing
economy in many African countries is because there is a lack of
agreement on private ownership of land, which would enable farmers
to be able to build up those farms and to be able to profit from
the production of crops that could be sold elsewhere within that
country? Zambia is an example where there is a lot of very fertile
land but a very strong view on not allowing individual ownership
of land to develop.
(Dr Devereux) This is a debate which has a number
of viewpoints and no clear consensus. My own view is that ownership
of land, or least access to communal land, provides a very important
safety net for households in Africa who risk losing everything
in the first drought if they have a potential opportunity to sell
that land. This is a view which is held very strongly by the government
of Ethiopia, and I do not entirely disagree with them. They are
very concerned that if land was privatised in Ethiopia then with
the first drought that comes along millions of peasants would
sell their land because they would need to buy food and they only
have land to sell, and they would be forced into the cities. They
would migrate to the city and become urban squatters, probably
very vulnerable to poverty and food insecurity but now in an urban
context rather than a rural. Some people would say, "Maybe
that's not a bad thing. At least we don't have urban famine on
the scale of rural famines".
103. This is a trend which is happening all
over the world and not just in famine areas.
(Dr Devereux) Yes. Certainly it is clear that development
(if we take by "development" urbanisation, people moving
off the land into towns, offices, factories and so on) is associated
with a decline in famine vulnerability. We should not reject the
potential for urbanisation in Africa to solve some of the problems
of poverty and food insecurity. However, I would be reluctant
to support a policy which, in a sense, forced people off the land
because they have to sell it in order to survive the drought.
That is not the way to urbanise Africa.
Mr Piara S Khabra
104. Firstly, with your vast experience of work
in Southern Africa and the Horn of Africa and the research on
famine and food security, you may have better ideas of how to
deal with different famine situations in many of the countries
of Africa. How, in your view, does the crisis and emergency response
in Ethiopia differ from that in Southern Africa? Secondly, are
there any lessons from Ethiopia—as regards the WFP's multi-annual
planning of food aid—which might be applied in Southern
Africa?
(Dr Devereux) I think that one clear difference between
Ethiopia and Southern Africa is that Ethiopia has a long, tragic,
but sometimes successful history of dealing with food insecurity.
In a sense, they are better prepared for the current crisis, because
they have had to deal with it in the past. They have an infrastructure;
they have an institutional set-up there. For example, even in
a normal year, or in most years, about 4-6 million people get
some kind of food assistance anyway. This year it is going to
go up to 10, 12 or 14 million, but the institutional structures
are in place. Ethiopia is better prepared logistically to deal
with the crisis. I think what is happening in Southern Africa
is as much a logistical crisis right now as anything else, because
they have do not have enough transport; they do not have the institutional
support; they do not have the presence of aid agencies like WFP
on the same scale; they do not have the history or institutional
memory for dealing with these kinds of crises. Southern Africa
more generally has a bigger problem in the short-term dealing
with the crisis, just because they are not used to dealing with
it as much as Ethiopia is. You mention the specific case of WFP's
multi-annual programming—one of the innovations that donors
are trying now in Ethiopia (the latest in a long line of attempted
innovations) is to take some districts out of the annual food
needs appeal process, whereby it is assessed every year how many
people will need food aid, and to try to work with them on a more
long-term basis to recognise that these districts are chronically
food insecure; there will always be people needing assistance
and, rather than wait for the annual food emergency appeal, they
will programme three or five years of assistance for that district.
The point about that is not just to make sure that food aid arrives
in time, because often it is late, but also to try to build assets
and protect assets and livelihoods in those communities. In a
sense, it is what we call "linking relief and development".
It is about trying to move beyond seeing every year as a food
crisis, and seeing it as a longer term development crisis and
making sure that interventions are protecting livelihoods and
not just saving lives. For example, using food for work or public
works programmes to build infrastructure, because road building
is still a very important feature of long-term anti-famine strategy.
105. Taking up a question and taking it further,
the distribution and ownership of land by small farmers is a problem
in many of the countries on the continent. What do you think about
the situation in Zimbabwe as far as distribution is concerned?
It is not going to help food production if the land is distributed
from big farmers to the smaller ones.
(Dr Devereux) Again, the land issue is very complex
all over Africa, and it is different in different places. Just
to pick up on the first point, it is certainly the case that in
highland Ethiopia and in Malawi, and in some other places like
Burundi, farm size per household is so small that some people
have called them "starvation plots"; you cannot grow
enough food to feed your family even in a good year, even with
fertilisers. Those livelihoods are going to remain unviable until
people find alternative sources of income: either they have to
work off the farm for six months of the year doing something else
to earn enough income to buy food, or they have to move out of
agriculture altogether. There is a kind of Malthusian crisis in
some places where it is a lack of alternative livelihoods to agriculture
that is keeping people trapped in their highly vulnerable livelihood
system. In Zimbabwe it is much more a policy issue. The land distribution
programme has been potentially very catastrophic for food production;
and it is more to do with policy and politics than it is to do
with actual land availability. There is plenty of land in Zimbabwe
which has been very badly distributed in the past, but the way
it has now been redistributed is not necessarily the way forward
in terms of guaranteeing food security for the poor.
Tony Worthington
106. Can we come back to Malawi and the issue
of what you do about it. Just to describe what we saw. We saw
severely depleted soil. There was an obsession with growing maize.
It was land which had been over-farmed, over populated for food
to support the population. There was dependence on foreign seeds
and foreign fertiliser, with obvious power for multinational companies
to exploit that. There was no legal system; there were no exports;
there were no animals to speak of; no internal means of producing
compost. Then there was AIDS. Nothing I have heard or seen makes
me think we will not be there next year in the same position.
What I am interested in from you is for you to say: how do we
get out of that? What are the key things that need to be done
in order to make that a more sensible agricultural land?
(Dr Devereux) Unfortunately, I think I share your
pessimism about Malawi. I do not see in the short-term any way
of avoiding a series of food crises as we have had this year.
In the long term we need to re-think again what policies are most
appropriate for Malawi. I am certainly not the person who knows
what Malawi should be doing in terms of generating economic growth;
but my feeling is that livelihoods need to be supported, and that
means a two-pronged approach looking at supporting agriculture,
increasing agricultural yields; by giving people access to input
which they do not have at the moment; and, at the same time, supporting
the opportunities for people to find income off farm. Malawi does
not have much of a non-agricultural sector, and that is one of
the main problems they face. Some investment and some thought
needs to be given to finding alternative livelihoods for people
who are presently farming but not making a livelihood out of farming.
One of the key points about agriculture in Malawi has been the
undermining of access to inputs over the last several years. As
you say, soil has depleted; there is very little livestock for
manure or ploughing in Malawi. The interventions that have been
put in place, for example DFID supported Starter Pack/Targeted
Inputs Programme, have provided some fertiliser and seeds to some
farmers but in a rather ad hoc way, and it does not give people
the choice over how much fertiliser they acquire and when and
so on. It is more about improving the structural provision of
inputs, and making them available at affordable prices to the
farmers, and giving them choice over their production. That is
one set of factors. The other set of factors is to try and find
alternative incomes for people so that they can move off these
very small plots and out of this vulnerable livelihood system.
At the moment, nobody seems to know where those alternative livelihoods
are going to come from. One strategy which I think the donors
are more or less behind right now is to try to set up a rather
large safety net programme for the foreseeable future of 10-15
years maybe; and, at the same time, to invest rather heavily in
primary and, increasingly, secondary education which has been
somewhat neglected, as a way of trying to give people the skills
base so they might find employment outside of agriculture. I think
that might be a longer term solution; but it is very important
to invest now in the next generation, otherwise the problems are
going to intensify.
Hugh Bayley
107. Mine is a macroeconomic question. When
we were in Malawi we were told that even in a good year Malawi
is not food self-sufficient. We were told that production last
year was down by 15%, I think. Either country by country or across
the region of Southern Africa, if one were to total the GDP of
the countries affected and total the value of the food deficit,
how does one compare with the other? What I really want to know
is: is it a shortage of resources, a shortage of money to purchase
food? It is an absence of money, or is it an absence of policy?
That there are the resources there to feed everybody, but choices
are made not to spend the resources in ways that do feed everybody.
I am asking you as our adviser, if the answer is not immediately
to hand could you chase after some development economist and get
a paper written looking at whether it is a resource problem or
a distribution problem?
(Dr Devereux) I think it is a very important question.
I do not have the figures to hand to answer that question here.
My feeling is that it is a combination of both. It is partly because
governments are so resource-constrained; they have so little foreign
exchange, particularly a country like Malawi, that they cannot
really afford to import food on a significant scale when a crisis
occurs; and the private sector which was supposed to be doing
this job is not responding partly because the policy environment
is uncertain and partly because of poverty, and there is not much
incentive for traders to provide small isolated communities with
food for a short time every hungry season. It is certainly a problem
of national resources. I would say, without going into too much
detail here, that government spending seems to be more pro-poor
than it has been in the past in countries like Malawi, and Ethiopia
for that matter. There is much less spent on defence in a country
like Ethiopia than there was before. The Poverty Reduction Strategy
Papers that have been completed in many countries, including Malawi
and Ethiopia this year, have a large component of pro-poor spending
in them. Health and education, and food security to some extent,
but less immediate, are getting much more attention from government
budgets than they were before. I would say probably it is a resource
constraint as much as a distribution issue. The resource constraint
is manifested in the fact that the government has had to go to
the international community for aid and they have had to write
the poverty reduction strategies to qualify for debt relief, and
at the same time they are continuing to pay a heavy percent of
their income in debt relief and accepting conditionalities that
they do not necessarily want to impose in order to get those funds.
So there is an issue of resource constraints leading to policy
problems that I mentioned earlier. That intersection, I think,
is what is creating a large number of problems.
Chairman
108. If one goes back to the 1997 White Paper
and then you have all that work on sustainable livelihoods, the
theoretical work the IDS, ODI, and others did, so we now have
maximising people's assets, a whole range of assets, and then
that leads on to the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers and so
on. When one travels through the Horn, goes to Malawi or whatever,
the extent of the impact of the HIV/AIDS disease combined with
drought seems increasingly to make a nonsense of those sorts of
concepts of sustainable livelihoods. Going back to an earlier
answer you gave to Tony Worthington about the need perhaps for
jointly owned organisations, between the local community and international
community, for dealing with the famine—I know that sustainable
livelihoods were not looking as far back as 1997, but do you think
that methodology needs revisiting in the light of the impact of
HIV/AIDS on Africa and the frequency now of drought and famine
in Africa?
(Dr Devereux) Yes, I do. The sustainable livelihood
approach is really just an analytical framework which looks at
the various assets—that households and communities, or even
national governments and countries, have, and then looks at options
for achieving livelihoods which are sustainable and self-reliant
in the longer term. One of the values of the approach is that
it identifies different types of assets that people and communities
have. Human capital is obviously one, and HIV/AIDS severely undermines
human capital, in the sense that it makes people unproductive,
it makes them ill, it drains household resources caring for them,
and it leaves large numbers of dependants who cannot necessarily
fend for themselves. What we are seeing, using the sustainable
livelihoods approach, is a collapse of the human capital component
of a household's asset base. The value of that approach is, therefore,
to identify where the gaps are so we can think of where to put
appropriate interventions. It is not obvious how you replace an
economically active cohort of the population that has been removed,
but certainly we can think of ways to introduce labour-saving
technologies or to provide livelihoods for people that do not
require heavy physical labour. That would be a way of dealing
with the human capital crisis that has been created by HIV/AIDS.
The other part of the framework is alternative livelihood strategies.
There are three that were identified in the original formulation:
agriculture intensification; extensification (farming more land);
and migration. This comes back to the point about urbanisation.
It might well be the case that a combination of agricultural failure
and HIV/AIDS will require people increasingly to urbanise, to
leave the land, to migrate to town and, hopefully, to find work
there in the informal sector and ultimately in formal sector jobs.
I think the framework is fairly useful. It has limitations, of
course, but it does indeed identify where the problems are, and
therefore suggest appropriate interventions.
109. Politicians and civil servants spend some
time working up policy and, for a long time, work up policy on
sustainable livelihoods and build up literature and practical
examples. Somehow one has the impression that, irrespective of
what is now happening, the policy is still pursuing those approaches
when clearly, just setting aside the drought, the impact of HIV/AIDS
on Africa is signalling something rather more seismic happening:
a million AIDS orphans already in Malawi alone. I wonder whether
it does not require people waking up and saying, "Maybe for
these countries we need a different type of intervention than
that developed through the 1997 White Paper sustainable livelihood
intervention, or have I got this wrong—it is just perspective
and scale?
(Dr Devereux) I think you may well be right on that.
One of the features of academics like ourselves is that we are
much better at explaining the last crisis than the next one. I
think some of the frameworks we have developed have explained
what happened in the past; but what is happening now is changing.
The crises we are seeing, particularly in Southern Africa, are
so different from what we have analysed or conceptualised in the
past that we need to think again. The Horn of Africa might be
a continuation of a fairly familiar type of scenario, where we
can apply the old models and the old framework; but I think the
Southern Africa emergency, where you have democracy, free markets,
campaigning opposition and active, healthy opposition press, fairly
fertile land, is a different story. What is going on in Southern
Africa is different from the Horn of Africa and requires new thinking,
and HIV/AIDS comes in, as you say, as a seismic factor there which
has not been adequately built into previous models. That is certainly
true. I think that the Southern Africa crisis which we are now
experiencing or seeing is something which requires us to look
again at policy and conceptual approaches.
Chairman: Thank you very much. Thank
you for answering all our questions.
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