ENVIRONMENT: Global Economic Activities Blamed For Degradation

By Julio Godoy Reprint | | Print |

Julio Godoy

PARIS, May 16 2001 (IPS) - Almost ten years after signing the protocol on sustainable development at the 1992 UN summit in Rio de Janeiro, the nations of the world have not been able to recognise environmental degradation from economic activity and are moving head long into ecological disaster, according to experts.

The experts – representing economists, environmental activists and scientists – participated at the “Forum 2001 on Sustainable Development and the New Economy”, in the City of Sciences and Industry of La Villete, in Paris on May 14-16.

The Forum was organised by the Paris-based Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), with the support of the governments of France and Denmark, as well as of private companies.

“Ten years after signing the Treaty of Rio on sustainable development, the (ecological) record doesn’t match the good intentions,” Sven Auken, Danish Minister of Environment and Energy, said at the Forum. “The record is dismal, in fact. Environmental degradation has continued.”

Other participants agreed. “Every single indicator on environmental degradation shows that we are going in the wrong direction,” said Nitin Desai, UN Under Secretary General for Economic and Social Development.

Experts and scientists have attributed the failure to severe environmental degradation from economic growth to the continued dependence on fossil fuels as energy source.

“The most frustrating fact about this failure,” Auken said, “is that some governments and corporations still don’t see that sustainable development can occur without impeding growth”. Denmark, he said, has experienced an economic growth of 70 per cent since the first oil shock in the 1970s. At the same time, the country reduced its consumption of fossil combustibles, by switching to renewable sources of energy.

Simon Upton, a member of the OECD and former New Zealand Minister for the Environment, lamented that “most governments lack the courage to take decisions susceptible of stimulating ecological compatible growth for fear of provoking multinational corporations.”

Upton said Western governments have failed to convince their populations that higher prices for energy are a good thing. “Instead, everyone now thinks that fuel must be cheap,” he complained.

Auken criticised the recent decision by the United States to reject the Kyoto Treaty on greenhouse emissions. “This rejection is a dangerous setback,” Auken pointed out. “Non-ratifiers should restrain from obstructing the drafting of rules. As I said recently to the (US) administration: Don’t poison the pie you will not eat.”

US representatives failed to show up at the Forum that served as an unofficial proceeding to the forthcoming Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa in September 2002.

“The continued divide between the haves-and-have-nots is perhaps the greatest obstacle to sustainable development,” said Desai of the United Nations.

“While the poorest nations of the world consume 80 kWh per hour of electricity per capita, the richest countries consume 8,000 kWh,” he added. “Neither figure is compatible with sustainable development.”

Edgar Wilson, entomologist at the University of Harvard, supported Desai’s argument. Wilson warned that the ecological damage inflicted upon the earth by economic activity might be irreversible.

“Economists have long ignored the real cost of environmental degradation, because they don’t use the right statistics”, he said. “The key indicator for measuring sustainability is the ecological footprint.”

“This is the average amount of productive land and coastal marine environment appropriated by each person around the world for survival,” Wilson said.

The footprint of a person living in the developing world is about 2.5 acres. The footprint of a single citizen of the United States is about 10 times higher.

According to Wilson, if every person in the world were to reach the levels of consumption of the population of the United States with the existing technology, it would be necessary to have the natural resources of four worlds.

“Exploitation of the natural environment is growing at an unsustainable rate, risking human survival itself,” Wilson pointed out.

Anil Argwal, Director of the Centre for Science and Environment in New Delhi, India, also argued that the failure of traditional development policies could be explained by misinterpretations of the problems of the South. “There are urban development problems, which need specific solutions, and there are rural development problems, which must be treated altogether differently,” he said.

The key to solving the rural development problems, he continued, lies in the appropriate managing of basic resources, especially water and land. Argwal considered academic development policies conceived at the universities in the western world to be inappropriate for rural regions in the South.

“The person who knows most about the ecosystem of a village, is not a Harvard, Cambridge or even a Delhi University professor, but the villagers themselves,” he said.

Argwal substantiated his argument with the examples of Sukhro Maghri, Rallega Sidhi and Jhaba — three villages in India — where the populations have succeeded in harvesting water, thus increasing their living standards.

By harvesting water in regions that 40 years ago had become deserts, the villagers improved the agricultural performance and the communities’ gross national product, Argwal said.

Experts in other areas, such as transport, participating in the debates supported the conclusions of the panellists.

Michael Franck, President of the Chamber of Commerce of Paris, acknowledged that cleaner fuel, alternative energy and the swapping of old cars for new ones might reduce pollution. But he expressed little confidence that the new economy, driven by technology and Internet, would deliver solutions for the increasing traffic problems of modern cities.

“There is this popular misconception, that electronic commerce would help reduce car journeys, which make about 60 per cent of traffic in modern cities,” Franck explained. “Studies have shown that increased Internet shopping doesn’t necessarily reduce the number of private car journeys. On the contrary, electronic commerce increase freight trips, worsening the traffic.”

Other panellists argue that new technology may help reduce economic imbalances between the North and the South and make development sustainable.

“But technology alone won’t be enough,” Desai argued. “We also need adequate policies, social action and the worldwide awareness that sustainable development is not a question of solidarity with strangers, but a question of our own survival.”