8 



to my colleagues. And then when we come back, I will continue 

 with some of the questions that I had specially about ecotourism 

 and about the dumping of hazardous waste in Africa. 



Mr. FrEizer. And we have been joined by Mr. Sanford and Mr. 

 Chabot here today. 



Mr. Frazer. Mr. Ambassador, I would like to know have the Af- 

 rican countries themselves taken any initiative that we can support 

 in trving to lessen deforestation, I am asking because about 2 

 months ago we visited Haiti, and I saw the same situation. When 

 I asked why it is that one hillside was completely denuded, I was 

 told that it was used for fuel. 



Could you tell me if, in fact, we are offering any alternatives to 

 the people of these countries to use as firewood? 



Mr. Pringle. Over the years, there has been a lot of effort to pro- 

 mote the use of more fuel efficient wood stoves and solar tech- 

 nology. And I believe that both of those efforts are continuing. I do 

 not have the exact project information, but I am sure that we could 

 get it for you.i 



You asked if there were any African initiatives. I think that the 

 new Desertification Convention, which the United States signed in 

 June, is in a very real sense an African initiative, to try to make 

 better use of existing foreign and domestic resources, and to try to 

 put more emphasis on community participation, to solve problems 

 of dryland degradation, which emphatically include the problem of 

 deforestation. 



Mr. Frazer. I just have one other question. The issue of one 

 country or one region being overpopulated and others not, you men- 

 tioned that oftentimes it has to do with the environment itself. 



But aside from the obvious problem of immi^ation in crossing 

 borders, what other problems would you anticipate that there 

 would be if there were an attempt to encourage countries that we 

 view as overpopulated, to shift their population to less populated 

 areas? 



Mr, Pringle, It is certainly not a subject on which I am person- 

 ally expert. But my guess would be that attempts to relocate would 

 probably end up costing a lot of money, and that this would be a 

 very expensive way to go at it. And I am more familiar with this 

 kind of thing in Indonesia frankly than I am in Africa. In Indo- 

 nesia, it has been rather controversial. It has been done, and it is 

 going on there, 



I do not know of any places, in my own personal experience, in 

 Africa where these kinds of efforts have been made. But I think 

 that you would find that that kind of approach does present a lot 

 of difficulties, 



Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you. 



Mr. Johnston. Perhaps we will have the members just ask one 

 question on this go around, because we have a vote. 



Mr. Johnston. Mr. Ambassador, the chair makes a good point 

 about population diversity. And there are 600 million people on the 

 continent that is four times larger than the United States. We had 

 a hearing last year on this very issue. And we came to the conclu- 

 sion that the condom is not the answer in Africa with the exception 



^ Project information appears in the appendix. 



