This paper explores the obstacles facing LDCs in achieving development. It pinpoints three important factors that inhibit development: militarization, environmental degradation and poverty. Then it shows how these three factors cause each other in a way that constitute a real "development trap". The interlinkages and causation between these factors reinforces the trap even more tighter on LDCs.
Poor people are usually forced to put pressure on local environment for survival; this results in environmental degradation and competition over natural resources leading to social tension and armed conflicts; higher militarization (and consequently high military spending) follow automatically armed conflicts. Higher military expenditure have substantial economic costs, and particularly on economic growth. Therefore, we have widespread poverty and the trap is enforced on LDCs.
On the other hand, the causation can go the other direction. Armed conflicts and military establishments are considered as the most pollutant establishments. Thus they lead to environmental degradation that jeopardize the realization of economic growth due to the depletion of resources. However, economic deprivation and poverty, most often, are the main causes of social tension and armed conflict and the trap is again reinforced. In either event, the "development trap" results, from which there is no hope of escape unless one of the links of the causal chain is broken.
The elimination of poverty, long the objective of national governments and international organizations, is making slow progress at best. Improving degraded environments can also be a difficult long-term process, and may for all practical purposes be impossible. Therefore, the study proposes the reduction of military spending as the most practical policy option for LDCs, and the conversion of the resources thus saved to socio-economic development and environmental conservation.
The last section of the paper discusses the difficulties which faces the conversion process, and how LDCs can surmount them. It also shows the short-term and long-term prospects of the conversion process.
Mohammed's (1993 d) study on the Sudanese case is devoted for the verification of the existence of the "development trap" in the Sudan. Most of the causal linkages specified in this study require empirical corroboration, a task to be carried in the forthcoming study. However, the generalization of such a model on other LDCs can be carried without difficulties for the similarity in the trends of militarization, poverty and environmental stress. Nevertheless, more empirical research on individual LDCs is highly encouraged and have vital global and regional policy implications.
Table 1: Poverty in Regions of LDCs in 1985.
Region |
Extremely Poor |
Poor extremely (Including poor) |
Social Indicators | |||
|
No. (mn) |
Index (%) |
No. (mn) |
Index (%) |
Under 5 Mortality (per 1000) |
Life expectancy (years) |
Sub-Saharan Africa East Asia China South Asia Middle East & North Africa Latin America & the Caribbean All Developing Countries |
120 120 80 300 40 50 633 |
30 9 8 29 21 12 18 |
180 280 210 520 60 70 1,116 |
47 20 20 51 31 19 33 |
196 96 58 172 148 75 121 |
50 67 69 56 61 66 62 |
Sources: World Bank World Development Report 1990 (Table 2.1; 29).
