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North hides nefarious aims under green cloak
Thompson Ayodele
ENVIRONMENTAL groups from rich countries
have for years waged a campaign
against those in poor countries who want to
harness their natural
resources for economic growth. Their efforts threaten to
do lasting harm to the
aspirations of millions of poor people in Africa, Asia
and Latin America, and must be
resisted at all times and in all places.
One of those places is the Copenhagen climate change
summit taking place in
Denmark. Thousands of delegates from around the world
are gathered there trying to
work on ways to limit global warming. But it is
increasingly clear to those of us in the south
that the north is using the
summit as a way to maintain their living standards,
while keeping the developing
world in a state of destitution.
For example, just this week a document emerged that
outlined a plan to stop poor
countries from clearing some of their forest lands to
make room for more productive
uses, such as palm farming, rubber farming and urban
development. The suggestion — encapsulated in the
so-called “Danish text” — is
risible and morally obtuse and its emergence threatens
to torpedo the entire
conference.
Every nation in history has harnessed its resources in
the early stage of its
development. Indeed, Europe itself was arguably the most
forested region on the planet
for most of its history until it started its economic
growth path several centuries ago. Over the
course of many decades,
Europeans sensibly altered and re-altered their land use
to permit more productive
agricultural use and enterprise, with the resultant job
creation.
Today, nations across the developing world aim to do the
same thing — to harness some
of their natural endowments to create products for sale
in world markets. And so
countries in Africa and Asia develop palm
plantations to sell palm oil across the globe.
Farmers in Latin America alter
land uses to grow fruits, vegetables and flowers to
satisfy customers in their
region and beyond.
These efforts come with some ecological costs, just as
they did in Europe , North
America , Japan and other places in the north in decades
past.
Only once the northern nations became rich — and not a
moment before — could they
afford the environmental protections they now demand of
their poorer neighbours to the
south.
The environmental campaigners scored a victory this
week, forcing a major
multinational corporation, Unilever, to stop purchasing
palm oil from a southern
hemisphere producer.
The victory by the environmental activists will do
nothing to protect the
environment but it will toss thousands of poor people
out of their jobs.
How Greenpeace employees can sleep well at night after
an effort such as this is a
mystery . Of course, they live in rich countries where
everyone has soft pillows,
fine linens, heating and air- conditioning, which must
make sleeping with a guilty conscience easier.
The victory over Unilever is just a start, and green
groups are hoping to use
Copenhagen as their vehicle to, in effect, outlaw
developing world vegetable
oils across the globe.
If they succeed, millions of people whose livelihoods
depend on natural resource
industries will be thrown into economic chaos.
A little-reported but critical aspect of this story is
that green groups
are making common cause with large European vegetable
oil producers. The European
producers do not like the competition from Africa and
elsewhere, and so they are
pressing the European Union to halt imports of competing
vegetable oils.
They mask their protectionist efforts under a cloak of
environmental
urgency, but the end result is the same — Europeans
maintain their jobs and living
standards while the poor countries are denied
opportunity.
The rich-world campaign against palm oil is worrying on
many levels. It shows how easy
it is to promote a one- sided argument regarding forest
destruction without balancing it with the many
benefits that can arise from
changes in land use — principally benefits to some of
the world’s poorest and most
vulnerable people.
It also shows how easy it is for protectionists and
businesses to use
environmental issues to pass laws and regulations so as
to further protect their
interests, regardless of the implications for trade, the
world’s poor and consumers
around the globe.
This episode also exposes the troubling hypocrisy at
play in the climate change and
broader environmental debate.
Europeans used their own resources and those from many
other nations in
order to advance, become powerful and improve the living
standards of ordinary men,
women and children.
Poor countries need to be given the same opportunity.
Basic notions of decency
insist on it.
Thompson Ayodele
Ayodele is the Executive Director of Initiative for
Public Policy Analysis, a public policy think-tank in Lagos and a
fellow of American Enterprise Institute, a Washington DC think tank.
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