Globalization and the Environment: Greening Global Political Economy

6. The Case of West Africa

107 Chapter 6 The Case of West Africa In this chapter, the subject matter of cotton and textiles will be looked at from the angle of a particular region, West Africa. West Africa has seen a recent drastic increase in cotton production in the past decade and is also seen as a region that has very much dropped out of the bottom of the global economy. The quantity of cotton lint production for the whole region of Western Africa increased from 510,873 tons in 1990 to 887,419 tons in 2001, the last year for which figures are available (FAOSTAT, 2002). However, at the same time the value of cotton lint exports decreased from $544,811,000 in 1990 to $487,781,000 in 2000 despite this huge increase. This chapter will show that West Africa is very much part of a globalizing political economy, if not in the same way as the Tiger states or the industrialized West. First, a brief overview of the history of West Africa and its position in the international system over time will provide the necessary background introduction to understanding its position today. This overview will be followed by an analysis of the political economy of West Africa today. West Africa is here referred to as a coherent unit of analysis although this is obviously not necessarily the case. The subregions within West Africa can differ substantially from each other in varying issue areas; this will be pointed out when relevant. No analysis of the political economy of developing countries can be complete without relating it to the debt crisis and global institutional policy. This will be the focus of the next section that investigates the impact of the debt crisis and the role of structural adjustment policies in this part of the world. Then a link will be made between structural adjustment and general economic policy and linking this to social and environmental degradation in the region. The aim here is not to establish some sort of causality between slave labor or environmental degradation and the demands/pressures of the global political economy but rather seeing what sort of mechanisms underlie all of these phenomena. The second half of the chapter will be exclusively dedicated to the study of the global political textile economy in West Africa, particularly cotton. 108 Globalization and the Environment Rather than focusing on the microlevel, the aim will be to outline and understand the linkages between globalizing trends and local phenomena. Thus there is a microlevel element in this analysis bringing together local and global linkages. BACKGROUND The African and by extension naturally the West African political economies are heavily influenced by their colonial experiences. The dependence on, and the influence of, cotton in the West African colonies was discussed in chapter 5, which showed the historical significance of cotton for the region, the power relations between colonized and colonizer, and the effects this has had on agricultural and thus on social patterns and life forms. In effect, even the slave trade that dominated Africa’s external relations from about 1500 to 1800 was linked to cash crop agriculture. The trade in slaves delayed and also discouraged the use of African soil for cash crops as this would have a negative impact on the availability of slaves for trade, the future slaves being tied up in plantations in Africa (Wallerstein, 1986: 14). With decolonization the French and British political systems of representation were copied and used for African states. Thus it is possible to talk of African political economies while at the same time acknowledging that the economic and sociocultural makeup of West African societies are fundamentally quite different. At first sight oil-rich Nigeria and resource-poor Mali do not seem to have all that much in common. Not all West African states are Francophone and the different colonial experiences influence life today. The common ground between Western African states is mostly found in issue areas that can be painted with a broad brush: colonial experience, agricultural economies, debt servicing, structural adjustment programs, multi-ethnic/tribal societies, and peripheral status in the world economy to name but a few. Decolonization took place in the 1950s and 1960s and provided the basis for the post-colonial state. Chazan et al. summarize this situation: Although colonial governments retained many indigenous social institutions and brought about redefinition of others, colonial rule superimposed a new administrative structure on these social and political orders. This colonial...