By the turn of this century, sub-Saharan Africa had experienced 25 years of economic and political disaster. While "economic miracles" in China and India raised hundreds of millions from extreme poverty, Africa seemed to have been overtaken by violent conflict and mass destitution, and ranked lowest in the world in just about every economic and social indicator. In the May/June 2008 issue of the Boston Review, economist Edward Miguel tracks comparably hopeful economic trends throughout sub-Saharan Africa and suggests that we may be seeing a turnaround. Nine experts, including Rosamond L. Naylor and Jeremy M. Weinstein, gauge Miguel's optimism.

"The global food crisis exposes the fragility of sub-Saharan economic progress," writes Rosamond Naylor. "Although the overall economic situation in sub-Saharan Africa appears to have improved in recent years, any discussion about a sustained turnaround for the region must consider the rural sector and the role of agricultural development in improving the life of the poor."

"We might ask whether Africa's new democracies are democracies at all," says Jeremy Weinstein. "While the small (but unnoticeable) uptick in Africa's recent economic growth is not in dispute, its causes are not entirely clear."

The turkey and ham many are eating this holiday season don't just appear magically on the table. Most are the end product of an increasingly global, industrialized system that is resulting in costly environmental degradation. Better understanding of the true costs of this resource-intensive system will be critical to reducing its negative effects on the environment, says an interdisciplinary team of researchers led by Stanford University's Rosamond Lee Naylor, Walter Falcon, and Harold Mooney.

"Losing the Links Between Livestock and Land" appears in the Policy Forum in the Dec. 9 issue of Science. It represents a synthesis of research by professors at Stanford University, the University of Virginia, the University of California at Davis, the universities of Manitoba and British Columbia in Canada, and the United Nations LEAD (Livestock Development and Environment) program within the Food and Agricultural Organization of UN.

"Sixty years ago, the link between the livestock production and consumption was much more clear and direct, with most consumers getting their meat and dairy products from small, family-owned farms," says lead author Naylor, an economist. Co-author Falcon agrees. "When I was growing up in Iowa, almost all farmers kept both chickens and pigs."

Today, meat consumption has sky-rocketed, and large-scale intensive livestock operations provide most of those products, both in the U.S. and around the world.

Particularly striking is the growth in demand for meat among developing countries, Naylor notes. "China's meat consumption is increasing rapidly with income growth and urbanization, and it has more than doubled in the past generation," she says. As a result, land once used to provide grains for humans now provides feed for hogs and poultry.

Numerous factors have contributed to the global growth of livestock systems, Naylor notes, including declining feed-grain prices; relatively inexpensive transportation costs; and trade liberalization. "But many of the true costs remain largely unaccounted for," she says. Those costs include destruction of forests and grasslands to provide farmland for corn, soybeans and other feed crops destined not directly for humans but for livestock; use of large quantities of freshwater; and nitrogen losses from croplands and animal manure.

Nitrogen losses are especially problematic, says James Galloway of the University of Virginia. "Once nitrogen is lost to the atmosphere or to water, it can have a large number of sequential environmental effects. For example, ammonia emitted into the atmosphere can in sequence affect atmospheric visibility, forest productivity, lake acidity and eventually impact the nutrient status of coastal waters."

Naylor cited Brazil as a specific example of the large impact on ecosystems and the environment. "Grasslands and rainforests are being destroyed to make room for soybean cultivation," she said. The areas are supplying feed to the growing livestock industry in Brazil, China, India and other parts of the world, leading to "serious consequences on biodiversity, climate, soil and water quality."

Naylor and her research team are seeking better ways to track all costs of livestock production, especially the hidden ones related to ecosystem degradation and destruction. "What is needed is a re-coupling of crop and livestock systems," Naylor said. "If not physically, then through pricing and other policy mechanisms that reflect social costs of resource use and ecological abuse."

Such policies "should not significantly compromise the improving diets of developing countries, nor should they prohibit trade," Naylor added. Instead, they should "focus on regulatory and incentive-based tools to encourage livestock and feed producers to internalize pollution costs, minimize nutrient run-off, and pay the true price of water."

She cited efforts in the Netherlands to track nitrogen inputs and outputs for hog farms as one approach. In the U.S., the 2002 Farm Bill provided funds for livestock producers to redesign manure pits and treat wastes, but she notes that much greater public and private efforts are needed to reduce the direct and indirect pollution caused by livestock.

In the end, though, it may be up to consumers to demand more environmentally sustainable approaches to livestock production. "In a global economy with no global society, it may well be up to consumers to set a sustainable course," she added.

Seed funding for the research was provided by the Woods Institute for the Environment, which supports interdisciplinary approaches to complex environmental issues. Naylor, Falcon and Mooney are affiliated with the institute and with the Center for Environmental Sciences and Policy in Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

In addition to Naylor, Mooney and Falcon of Stanford and Galloway of Virginia, co-authors are Henning Steinfeld of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization; Galloway; Vaclav Smil, University of Manitoba; Eric Bradford, University of California at Davis; and Jacqueline Alder, University of British Columbia.

Destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11th changed the lives of most Americans. It seems destined also to change the lives of most Pakistanis and Afghanis. Pakistan now finds itself in the middle, being squeezed on the one side by the United States and on the other by the Taliban faction in Afghanistan. No nation would choose to have either the U. S. or the Taliban as its enemy. Unless Pakistan is extremely lucky, it will have both.

I worked in Pakistan as an agricultural advisor during much of the 1960s, trying to help improve the productivity of the immense Indus River irrigation system. My travels took me into the catchment areas in the northernmost reaches of the country and into contact with the tribal groups and clans who are residents of that region. Although I no longer focus on Pakistan, I was not totally surprised to be contacted by a local television producer who was doing a feature story on that country. During the filming I was asked the question: "What is it that Americans just don't 'get' about the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan?" What follows is what I wish I had said in reply.

Most Americans do not know of, much less understand, the 2500 years of (unsuccessful!) invasions that have taken place in that part of the world. They cannot fathom the roughness of the terrain in the undefined border areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan or the incredible fearlessness and toughness of the people of the region. Very few Americans understand the traditions, rights, and obligations within and among the local clans, many of whom migrate back and forth with the seasons across an invisible border. Nor can they really imagine the extent of poverty, especially in Afghanistan, where life expectancy is still only about 45 years.

At the regional level, most Americans do not understand the depth of the tensions that still exist between India and Pakistan, the continuing problem of Kashmir in that key south-Asia relationship, and the presumed military alliance between Pakistan and the Taliban in continuing scrimmages against India in Kashmir. They further do not understand the problems of governing Pakistan, a country with incredibly divisive regional tendencies, within the aegis of an Islamic Republic.

Finally, American do not grasp how the "on again-off again" nature of U.S.-Pakistan-Afghanistan relationships appears to many people on the other side--people who are literally born with inherited friends and sworn enemies. Within my professional lifetime, U.S. relationships have ranged from genuinely close cooperation, which prevailed during the time of Presidents J. F. Kennedy and Ayub Khan; to more distant cold-war relationships that generally pitted the U.S. and Pakistan against the U.S.S.R. and India; to the widespread American military and economic support given both Afghanistan and Pakistan during the U.S.S.R. invasion of Afghanistan in the late 1970s; to a post Cold War move away from Pakistan and toward India; to the virtual stoppage of all support following the recent atomic tests by both countries. In short, many Americans are ignorant about the culture and history of the region, and many Pakistanis and Afghanis are totally confused about America's loyalty.

I do not know whether the U.S. and its allies will "invade" this region in search of Osama bin Laden, or if that happens, whether the "war" will be massive or surgical. I hope, however, that the U.S. has distilled several lessons from the region's ancient and modern history.

First, the Afghani people will not be frightened into doing anything. They would not even understand the concept. The tribal customs and obligations with respect to enemies are unbending. The tribesmen are both fearless and patient--ask the British, who were defeated three times over the last two centuries, or the Russians who most recently met a similar fate within the past 20 years. No one should underestimate the Afghani's skills as fighters, especially on their home turf--which is mainly rocks and caves and hills and mountains. The dozens of foreign monuments honoring the dead along the Khyber Pass Road from Peshawar, Pakistan to Kabul, Afghanistan are a grim reminder of just how ferocious the frontier people have been to those whom they regarded as outsiders.

Second, the extreme fundamentalist groups within Islam are a minority that challenge moderate Muslims in the region even more than they challenge outsiders. Nevertheless, the U.S. and its allies will have only the narrowest range of military options against the extremists lest these actions put moderate Muslims into the camp of the fundamentalists.

Third, U.S.-Pakistan relations have never been more delicate than at this moment. By virtue of location, information, and capacity to infiltrate, Pakistan's potential contribution to a "bin Laden solution" cannot be overemphasized. How the U.S. gets Pakistan's cooperation without at the same time pushing the moderates into the welcoming arms of the extremists is a diplomatic, economic, and military problem of unbelievable proportions. Unfortunately, history provides no ready-made answer to this dilemma, and that is what truly worries me - not only for the U.S., but also for moderate Muslims throughout the world.