Global Warming and the South
by Helena Norberg-Hodge. This is an excerpt from the Economic Design dimension of Gaia Education’s Design for Sustainability curriculum.
Many environmentalists and concerned citizens in the West subscribe to the thinking that the countries of the South should have the right to continue increasing their emissions and then, once they have reached a certain level of industrialization, gradually reduce them. The assumption is that industrial production in India and China, for example, is necessary to reduce poverty. On the surface this thinking makes sense. It is underpinned by the feeling that rich countries have no right to make demands of the so-called poor countries. The argument goes like this: “We have benefited from conventional industrial development; we can’t tell people not to follow in our footsteps.” This ignores the fact that, in reality, we in the West have robbed them of the ability to follow in our footsteps; they have no “Third World” to exploit. The fact is that much industrial production in the South is aimed almost entirely at satisfying the consumerist needs of Western markets, usually at the expense of local workers and their communities. Rising CO2 emissions in the less developed parts of the world are not a sign of positive endogenous development, but rather a direct result of development and globalization policies. These same policies are responsible for a dramatic increase in poverty for the majority, while benefiting only a small wealthy elite.
Globalising pollution and poverty
Part of the problem stems from the way we have been taught to conceive of the history of industrialization. In the 1980s, we were told that we had moved on from the era of heavy, dirty industry into a new, cleaner and much more efficient post-industrial world. Even ecological economists fell for this ruse. The idea was that, thanks to modern technology, we were using less energy and generating less pollution. “Look how clean the Thames/Hudson/Seine is,” we were told, “There haven’t been so many fish in the river since World War II.” While it is true that advances have been made in cleaning up industry — scrubbers on incinerators, effluent purification systems, etc. — pollution continues to increase on a global scale. Much of the dirty production in the West was simply shifted to countries where labour was cheaper and environmental standards more lax. Energy consumption has actually increased as goods are transported over longer and longer distances.
Today, most manufactured goods and a large proportion of agricultural products that are consumed in the North are produced in the South. Global corporations benefit from raw materials and cheap labour in the South. In the industrialized countries, where salaries are high and resources are both more depleted and protected, global corporations cannot reap as large profits, so the expansion into the South is essential for their growth. And it is these institutions that are behind the notion that people in the West cannot tell the South to limit their carbon emissions. In fact, some years ago, Lee Raymond president of Exxon-Mobil travelled around the developing world, warning leaders not to participate in treaties on climate change if they wanted to attract foreign investment.
Localising production, increasing prosperity
It is essential that the West immediately reviews its ecological footprint and reduces its consumption of fossil fuels, as well as other natural resources. There is no doubt that the global North should bear the financial burden of reducing CO2 emissions. However, it does not make sense, in the name of equity and justice, to argue that the South should have the right to continue increasing its CO2 emissions. To a great extent, those emissions are our dirty laundry. They are the waste caused by using the most fertile lands of Africa to grow the vegetables that fill the aisles of European supermarkets. They are the smoke billowing from the factories of China that produce an endless stream of plastic trinkets for our manufactured consumer needs. They are the pollution created by sweatshops churning out goods that we could perfectly well produce for ourselves, allowing peoples of the South to use more of their labour and resources to provide for their own needs.
One of the best ways of reducing both CO2 emissions and poverty in the South would be to strengthen the existing, decentralized demographic pattern by keeping villages and small towns alive. This would allow communities to maintain social cohesion and a closer contact with the land. A strategic way of doing so would be to help provide decentralized renewable energy to the rural peoples of the South (who constitute almost half the global population). It would be relatively easy to do so; throughout the less industrialized world there is a tremendous potential for using solar and wind, as well as small-scale hydro. To introduce such an infrastructure would cost vastly less money than the mega-billion dollar projects that are increasing fossil fuel consumption in the South. This could also help to dramatically improve the standard of living and prevent the tragic mass migration into slums where the quality of life drops dramatically, even as dependence on petroleum and other non-renewable resources escalates.
Now is the time to stand together — both North and South. As politicians are so fond of saying, we need to level the playing field. But this time, we must do it for real. No more hidden economic agendas that pit rich against poor, no more distortions of the realities behind so-called development and progress, no more avoiding taking action on the largest environmental threat of our time. There is still time to make the necessary changes. And I am hopeful that, with all the knowledge and appropriate technology we have, we can work together to tackle climate change and build a genuinely sustainable, diverse and peaceful world.
This is an excerpt from the Economic Design dimension of Gaia Education’s online course in Design for Sustainability. The course will start on 19 March 2018, so sign up now!
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