Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010

Democracy Solves Hunger/Famine

Democracy prevents famine
Sen 1 [Amartya, Nobel Prize winner, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge and Lamont University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University , The Global Divergence of Democracies, p. 7-8, Google Books]

I have discussed elsewhere the remarkable fact that, in the terrible history of famines in the world, no substantial famine has ever occurred in any independent and democratic country with a relatively free press. We cannot find exceptions’ to this rule, no matter where we look: the recent famines of Ethiopia, Somalia, or other dictatorial regimes; famines in the Soviet Union in the 1930s; China’s 1958—61 famine with the failure of the Great Leap Forward; or earlier still, the famines in Ireland or India under alien rule. China, although it was in many ways doing much better economically than India, still managed (unlike India) to have a famine, indeed the largest recorded famine in world history: Nearly 30 million people died in the famine of 1958—61, while faulty governmental policies remained uncorrected for three full years. The policies went uncriticized because there were no opposition parties in parliament, no free press, and no multiparty elections. Indeed, it is precisely this lack of challenge that allowed the deeply defective policies to continue even though they were killing millions each year. The same can be said about the world’s two contemporary famines, which are occurring in North Korea and Sudan. Famines are often associated with what look like natural disasters, and commentators often settle for the simplicity of explaining famines by pointing to these events: the floods in China during the failed Great Leap Forward, the droughts in Ethiopia, or crop failures in North Korea. Nevertheless, many countries with similar natural problems, or even worse ones, manage perfectly well, because a responsive government intervenes to help alleviate hunger. Since the primary victims of a famine are the indigent, deaths can be prevented by recreating incomes (for example, through employment programs), which makes food accessible to potential famine victims. Even the poorest democratic countries that have faced terrible droughts or floods or other natural disasters (such as India in 1973, or Zimbabwe and Botswana in the early 1 980s) have been able to feed their people without experiencing a famine. Famines are easy to prevent if there is a serious effort to do so, and a democratic government, facing elections and criticisms from opposition parties and independent newspapers, cannot help but make such an effort. Not surprisingly, while India continued to have famines under British rule right up to independence (the last famine, which I witnessed as a child, was in 1943, four years before independence), they disappeared suddenly with the establishment of a multiparty democracy and a free press.

Famine leads to war

Cohen and Pinstrup-Andersen 99 [Marc J., Special Assistant to the Director General, International Food Policy Research Institute Per is Director General of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Spring, Social Research, http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2267/is_1_66/ai_54668884/pg_10]

Hunger and conflict usually have roots in colonial legacies and contemporary policies of racial or religious exclusion and political-economic discrimination (Heggenhoughen, 1995); and in struggles over control of strategic resources, such as land, water, trade routes, and petroleum. Sources of discontent include skewed land distribution and discriminatory economic policies that preclude decent standards of living. Unequal access to education and nutrition services and unequal treatment before the law inflame perceptions of unfairness. Human rights abuse based on race, religion, ethnicity, geographic location, political ideology, or occupation rouse animosities. In Central America, civil wars followed protracted food crises and human rights abuses, with demands for land, social justice, and democracy key to the conflicts (MacDonald, 1988; Barraclough, 1989). Tensions ripen into violent conflict especially where economic conditions deteriorate and people face subsistence crises. Hunger causes conflict when people feel they have nothing more to lose and so are willing to fight for resources, political power, and cultural respect. A recent econometric study found that slow growth of food production per capita is a source of violent conflict and refugee flows (Nafziger and Auvinen, 1997). In Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Sudan, governments were finally toppled when they inadequately responded to famine situations they had helped create. Unfortunately, none of these wars immediately improved subsistence conditions; instead, all magnified suffering and food shortages. Hunger spurs conflict in both rural and urban areas. Wolf (1969), Scott (1976), and others have shown the key role of subsistence crises in "peasant wars of the twentieth century" in such places as Mexico, Cuba, Vietnam, and Central America.

Democracy Solves Environment

Democracy solves environment – accountability, information flow and markets

Li and Reuveny 7 [Quan, Prof of poli sci at Penn State Rafael, prof of public and environmental affairs @ Indiana University http://cmp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/24/3/219]

Moving to the view that democracy reduces the level of environmental degradation, one set of considerations focuses on the institutional qualities of democracy. The responsiveness argument is that democracies are more responsive to the environmental needs of the public than are autocracies due to their very nature of taking public interests into account (Kotov and Nikitina, 1995). It is also argued that democracies comply with environmental agreements well, since they respect, and respond to, the rule of law (Weiss and Jacobsen, 1999). The freedom of information channel is offered by Schultz and Crockett (1990) and Payne (1995). They theorize that political rights and greater freedom for information flows help2 to promote the cause of environmental groups, raise public awareness of problems and potential solutions, and encourage environmental legislation to curtail environmental degradation. Democracies also tend to have market economies, which further promotes the flow of information as economic efficiency and profits requires full information. Hence, unlike the above argument, this channel expects that profit-maximizing markets will promote environmental quality (Berger, 1994).

Democracy solves environment – less war, famines and more repsonsiblity.
Li and Reuveny 7 [Quan, Prof of poli sci at Penn State Rafael, prof of public and environmental affairs @ Indiana University http://cmp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/24/3/219]

A second set of considerations on the positive role of democracy on environmental quality focuses on the effects of democracy on human life and crisis situations. The famines argument (Sen, 1994) observes that famines tend to promote environmental degradation because they divert attention away from longer-term environmental concerns. Since famines typically do not occur in democracies, argues Sen, environmental quality is expected to be higher in democracies than in autocracies. The human life argument (Gleditsch & Sverdlop, 2003) suggests that since democracies respect human life more than autocracies, they are more responsive to life-threatening environmental degradation. A related argument, the war channel, reasons that to the extent that democracies engage in fewer wars, they should also have a higher level of environmental quality (Gleditsch & Sverdlop, 2003), since war often destroys the environment of the warring parties (Lietzmann & Vest, 1999).