China, Africa, Russia, India - forecasting scenarios - Transcript

Whole Earth, Spring, 1999 by Pw

one of the planet's foremost green think-tanks considers global scenarios

The Balaton Group is an informal association of systems folks, resource experts, activists, teachers, and friends working in their home countries toward a sustainable society. They meet yearly for five days on the shore of Lake Balaton in Csopak, Hungary. They support the work of members and encourage networking and mutual support among sustainability leaders. It's been a low-budget, low-profile organization. This is the first time its deliberations have been published outside its newsletter. We thank the Balaton Group for its generosity and Donella Meadows for all her help.

In October 1998, the Balaton group discussed the scenarios of the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The scenario we call "Hypermarket" emphasizes competition, globalization, individualism, and technological progress as a solution to scarcity, high throughputs, and information as both property and power.

The IPCC scenario we're calling "Regional Stewardships" emphasizes holism, partnerships, decentralization, ecological carrying capacity, skewing the market to preserve diversity, self-regulation under stewardship guidelines, transparency of information, and cooperation.

Here, in conversation with Balaton members, four celebrated appraisers of their respective countries respond to the Hypermarket vs. Regional Stewardships scenarios.

Russia

Commentary by Vladimir Hollantai

Extrapolation is not a useful exercise for looking at a future of Russia. Most trends are going in the wrong direction. Population is decreasing. Production is decreasing. Russia is probably the most unpredictable area in the world. We lurched too strongly into Hypermarket and outward trade. But very recent events (some happening during the Balaton meeting) give a ray of hope.

We should begin by understanding that Russia has been living for more than three centuries with traditional Regional Stewardships overlaid by a Hypermarket. Russia is a vast area with a severe climate which has furthered a national character of endurance, stubbornness, and survival. It has been a frontier, with no particular need for social compromise. There has always been extremism, lurching from one experiment to another. Russia is so big, with such momentum, that it's very hard to change. Change, when it has occurred, has come mainly through smashing.

Russian society developed under strong central power with few limits. There wasn't so much difference between the czars and the Politburo. Modernization came in the form of transplants (culture from France, technology from England and America), but the Russians remolded all the transplants their own way. Russians saw bureaucracy, the major transplant, as foreign, oppressive, and to be resisted and foiled. Therefore they show little respect for the rule of law and make an interesting mental distinction between "legal" and "legitimate." But the Soviet era brought highly progressive ideals (never realized), which had and still have the support of the population.

Hypermarket and Regional Stewardships exist side by side throughout the land; Hypermarket trying to modernize, Regional Stewardships clinging to old truths an/d habits. They lend themselves naturally to division into formal and informal economic sectors, far apart in productivity, technology, and mindset.

Population is dropping in some years by as many as one million people, which will lead to a labor shortage in twenty to thirty years; for now it is compensated for by abandoning obsolete productive facilities and by an influx of refugees, especially Russians returning from former USSR states. In the future, there will probably be vast immigration from China, Korea, and Mongolia.

The old Soviet regulatory mechanism has now been smashed, but nothing has been put in its place. There is no effective law enforcement, hence an outbreak of crime. No planned or regulated economy, hence black markets and Mafia. The old specialized economy, in which different units sent products directly to each other, is gone, and people long for some hierarchy to restore it. The people have to learn that freedom does not work without responsibility. (Freedom is loudly shouted, responsibility is still under the table.) They are like a submarine crew put suddenly into a jet plane. They are forced to learn fast; now many people understand the market, though they don't especially like it.

The Soviet system paid people half of what they needed, so they moonlighted. They learned to keep a part of themselves for themselves, not for society. The military was organized and privileged; it gave lucrative contracts to industry. When these contracts disappeared, industry went on building weapons and selling them wherever they could. Atomic weapons are dispersed throughout the country, probably in a fourth of the regions.

The fundamental driver of a market, the purchasing power of the people, has been ignored-indeed, the International Money Fund took what was left of it away. So entrepreneurs can only make money by selling abroad [or on the black market].