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Well-intentioned environmentalists in rich countries vs developing countries� interests
SURVEY: DEVELOPMENT AND THE ENVIRONMENT
A bit rich
Mar 19th 1998
From The Economist print edition
IN 1996 the United Nations held a "World Food Summit" in Rome to draw the world's attention to the plight of 800m malnourished people in developing countries. But much of the media coverage was hijacked by a group of women environmentalists who stripped naked and brandished signs at America's agriculture secretary. They were protesting about genetically engineered soyabeans produced by an American company. Many European governments and aid agencies, besieged by local environmental groups, have become less keen to fund research on genetically modified crops that might be grown in developing countries�even though these may help to prevent hunger.
This is just one example of how well-intentioned environmentalists in rich countries can sometimes work against developing countries� interests. Another is the campaign by rich-world green groups against the construction of large dams in developing countries. Under pressure from groups such as the California-based International Rivers Network, both the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank have become much more reluctant in recent years to finance such dams. Big dams have clear environmental disadvantages. The reservoirs they create can displace thousands of families and submerge large forests. But does that mean they should never be built, as some rich-world environmentalists argue? In the right places, dams can help control floods, irrigate crops and generate electricity cheaply and cleanly. The rich countries have already built dams in many suitable locations, but Asia, Latin America and Africa have barely started.
Good intentions apart, rich-country greens worry about the environment in developing countries because of its knock-on effect for the rest of the world. They lobby international bodies, such as the World Bank, and put steam behind the negotiation of global environmental treaties, such as that on climate change. This subject, also known as "global warming" or "the greenhouse effect", is perhaps the best example of conflicting priorities between the rich and the poor world. For the moment only rich countries have agreed to targets to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (released by burning coal, oil and gas). But developing countries too are coming under pressure to set themselves such targets. By around 2010 their carbon-dioxide emissions are expected to overtake emissions from rich countries. Climatologists dread the day when a billion or so Chinese can afford cars.
However, nobody can be sure what it will mean. The state of knowledge on climate change was summarised in a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a big group of scientists brought together by the UN (which excludes the views of a handful of scientists who think the theory of global warming is nonsense). This respectable body came up with the unsensationalist conclusion that "The balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on the global climate." On current trends, it reckoned, average global temperatures could rise by 2 degrees centigrade by 2100, bringing more storms, floods and droughts.
No scientist doubts that there is a natural greenhouse effect: without a protective layer of gases such as water vapour and carbon dioxide, the earth would reflect back much more of the heat it receives from the sun, and temperatures would plummet. No scientist doubts, either, that as man burns more fossil fuels, such as oil and coal, the concentration of these gases in the atmosphere increases. But there is plenty of uncertainty about how (and how rapidly) man-made greenhouse gases will affect the climate, given the huge range of other variables at work. Scientists have an imperfect understanding of the interaction between the oceans, the clouds and the weather. The oceans give out (and absorb) far more carbon dioxide than is created by man's activities.
Climate of fear
Among the many factors unconnected with man that influence the climate are changes in the intensity of the sun's energy, the eruption of volcanoes, natural phenomena such as the El Ni�o weather pattern and long-run shifts in the earth's orbit (which are thought to have caused past ice ages). Measurements taken on the earth's surface show that the global average temperature has risen by around half a degree centigrade during this century, but not in a straight line. Between 1940 and the mid-1970s temperatures appeared to be roughly stable. And measurements taken by satellite of the temperature of the earth's atmosphere (which go back only to 1979) show a flat trend.
If man-made climate change is indeed on its way, it may hurt some developing countries more than others. Low-lying countries such as Bangladesh could suffer particularly badly from floods; others might even benefit through increased farm output. Climate change may or may not kill people in significant numbers, and if it does, the worst effects are not likely to be felt until some time next century. On the other hand, local air pollution is definitely contributing to the early deaths of millions of city-dwellers in developing countries right now. So it is hard to argue that these countries should divert resources to reducing their greenhouse-gas emissions since the same money could save many more lives with greater certainty.
Some measures�such as reducing fossil-fuel subsidies�would cut harmful urban air pollutants while also, incidentally, curbing carbon-dioxide emissions. But such measures can only go so far. Coal, oil and gas are still much the cheapest fuels. Renewable forms of energy, such as solar and wind power, make economic sense only in remote areas where extending the electricity grid would be expensive. Developing countries are therefore right to argue that if rich countries are worried about global warming, they should bear the economic brunt of switching away from fossil fuels.
As for those genetically engineered plants, are rich-world greens right to want to ban them? They are worried about a variety of risks: that the plants might be dangerous to eat; that they could become devastating weeds; and that perhaps they would spread unpredictable strains of bacteria. But with any of these hazards, it is hard to see why the risks would be of a different order from those associated with crops bred by traditional methods.
It's unnatural
Greenpeace, the rich world's noisiest environmental campaigning group, cites an experiment in which a gene from a Brazil nut was transferred into a soyabean. People allergic to Brazil nuts were found to be allergic to the modified soyabean as well. But this health risk was picked up by safety tests long before the food reached the shops. The incident simply shows that, as with any new food containing a mix of ingredients, regulators need to be vigilant.
Genetically-modified crops might turn into weeds by escaping from farms, or by interbreeding with other species. Some of the characteristics that scientists genetically implant into crops�such as resistance to insect pests�could make them as successful off the field as on it. But the same is true of traditionally bred crops, many of which have indeed become weeds.
The fear over bacteria springs from one of the methods used for genetically modifying crops. Scientists employ "marker" genes to trace the insertion of DNA into a plant. These marker genes often confer resistance to antibiotics to the plants. Environmentalists worry that such antibiotic resistance might somehow be passed on to bacteria when the plant decays or is digested, making the bacteria more intractable. Yet there are no substantiated reports of antibiotic-resistance genes jumping from a plant to a bacterium. Moreover, bacteria in their natural state already contain thousands of antibiotic-resistance genes.
Within rich countries, environmentalists� concerns raise intriguing philosophical questions. Their campaigns often pinpoint issues that involve a conflict between preserving the natural order of things and changing it either through new technology (such as genetic engineering) or through economic growth (leading, for example, to the increased use of cars). The environmentalists� underlying assumption is that nature, free of man's interference, is generally benign and stable; yet much of the scientific evidence suggests otherwise (for instance, the climate is subject to big natural fluctuations; many plants are poisonous). Should preserving the natural order of things be a goal in itself? Or should there be some scope for playing around with nature (risk changing the climate, say, or altering the DNA of crops), the better to serve mankind's material needs?
For developing countries, such philosophical questions are largely irrelevant. Their most pressing environmental problems involve immediate human suffering, not some putative future disturbance of the natural order; and the solutions lie mostly in policies that foster, rather than hold back, economic growth. Many politicians in these countries still harbour the suspicion that concern about the environment is a rich-world luxury. Eager to appear "green" to an international audience, they pass strict environmental regulations, but do nothing to enforce them.
Remember Friedrich Engels's description of the rigours of life in 19th-century London? Hundreds of millions of people in cities all over the developing world are now enduring similar conditions. The problems of putrid water and polluted air are largely�but not inevitably�the result of rapid industrialisation and urbanisation.
In an ideal world, rich countries would give more attention�and aid�to these basic environmental problems in developing countries; but their environmental agenda is dictated by domestic politics and home-grown green fashions, so governments in developing countries will have to face up to tackling most of these problems themselves. If they fail, they will be risking not just the health of their citizens but possibly the health of capitalism too. People might start to assume, wrongly, that capitalism and foul living conditions are natural bedfellows, just as Engels did last century.
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Source: The Economist
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