Asia-Pacific, Development & Aid, Economy & Trade, Environment, Headlines, Human Rights, Poverty & SDGs

ENVIRONMENT: Wooing Asia’s Voracious Consumers to Be Planet’s Protectors

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Nov 3 2004 (IPS) - To some, China’s voracious appetite for timber from the forests of Indonesia, the Congo and South America will have dire consequences on the planet’s future.

The Asian giant is the world’s leading importer of round wood timber after Beijing banned domestic logging in 1999. Prior to that, China had been the 18th largest timber importer in the world.

Yet the head of a leading international conservation group is not lining up behind the critics of China – those who say that its hunger for natural resources to keep pace with its rapid economic growth will quicken the destruction of the earth’s environment.

”China has every right to develop and use the resource base of the world,” Achim Steiner, director general of The World Conservation Union (known by its initials IUCN) told IPS.

His recipe to save the planet is to woo China to march to a new tune, thus becoming the leader in a development model that places a premium on protecting the environment.

”China can have a positive impact as a result, by saying for example that it will only buy timber grown according to sustainable development methods,” Steiner explained. ”It has the opportunity of emerging as a leader in this field, moving away from the model Europe and America followed in the past.”

Such a need for China and the rest of developing Asia to head down this new road is due to feature prominently during the debates at a major international conference that the IUCN will host in the Thai capital from Nov. 17 to 25..

This spotlight on Asia during the Third World Conservation Congress, which is expected to attract over 3,000 environmentalists, government officials and business leaders, is timely.

It comes less than a month after a report by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) traced the impact of the rapidly expanding ‘ecological footprint’ on the planet. The footprint reflects the scale at which the environment is being exploited to satisfy the current world’s consumption and development patterns.

According to the WWF’s ‘Living Planet Report 2004,’ humanity’s demand on the resources has exceeded the earth’s supply capacity since the mid-1980s, with North American and Europe leading the assault on the planet’s limited resources.

The average footprint of a person today is nearly 2.2 hectares, which is in excess of the 1.8 hectares of land for natural resources available for each resident of the planet, states the report.

Some Asian countries, like China, India, South Korea and the Philippines, have given conservationists a reason to worry – and a case to lobby for change – due to the amount of resources they consume under the prevailing pattern of development.

According to the Global Footprint Network (GFN), a think-tank in Oakland, California, which works towards achieving ecological balance, China requires a land area twice its size to satisfy its resource needs.

India, the other booming engine of growth in developing Asia, is in the same league as China, states GFN on its website – also requiring a land area almost twice its size to meet its natural resource requirements.

China’s economy grew at over nine percent in 2003, reflecting a tide of development that has helped lift millions out of extreme poverty.

India, on the other hand, has seen growth reach in excess of eight percent, a figure that has not helped dramatically to reduce the estimated 840 million people living under less than two U.S. dollars a day.

The Philippines, which trails China and India with its four percent economic growth, also requires a land area double its size to meet its resource requirements.

But they are all dwarfed by South Korea, one of the few Asian countries to reach rapid developed nation status after the Second World War. According to GFN, this North-east Asian nation requires a land area six times its size to meet its natural resource needs to sustain its growth.

”India and China are pivotal to move away from exploiting the finite resources of the world,” Robert Mather, head of WWF’s Thai office, told IPS. ”Those two countries will have to be at the cutting edge of developing new technologies that are far cleaner and resource efficient.”

Like Steiner, Mather concedes that developing Asia cannot be denied the chance to enjoy the comforts that are taken for granted in Europe of the United States. ”You can’t expect China or other Asian countries not to turn down cars. But we have to provide them with choices that don’t result in destroying the environment, like hydrogen fuel.”

And Steiner has reasons to feel sanguine over Chinese policymakers casting an eye on new, environmentally friendly programmes. ”These are major issues in China, specially with agriculture development, water resources management, reforestation and pollution control.”

The Bangkok meeting will provide participants an opportunity to scrutinise trends underway in Asia in order to shift away from the old model of development, which is not viable, said Steiner.

”This congress should help reinforce the message that large Asian countries like China and India need to be more visible as influential actors to strike a balance between development and the environment,” said the IUCN head.