Business As Usual
As one the commentators put it, the declaration of the World Resources Forum 2009 is aimed at the developped countries. If a developping country minister had a look at it, here is what he could read :
- Seek international agreements world-wide on per-capita targets for natural resource extraction and consumption
- Introduce with urgency resource use targets in areas of particular concern – like fresh water
- Focus research and development on the goal of increasing resource productivity ( ... ) national economies will become less dependent on resource imports, in particular fossil energy carriers.
If we took a country full of natural resources, with a lot of domestic economic problems, such as so many african countries ( inequality, urbanisation, political instability .. ) he would say : " That's a developped countries concern. I don't care. " and he will be right. He will have plenty of other problems more important to solve before being concerned with sustainable issues.
Ashok Khosla claimed for the same thing. He asked us to keep in mind that without solving poverty problems, our concern makes no sense.
Economics do support this idea, saying that we should focus in the fields where we can bring the most benefit, at the lowest cost, and here is a list, called the Copenhague Consensus, that we should consider.
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business as usual or new thinking
In fact, poverty and resources are closely linked - something that Ashok Khosla would certainly agree. His presentation showed a range of examples on that point, how to reduce poverty while and by increasing the use of resources.
How are they linked in particular? The arguments can be found in publications like those of the Poverty-Environment Initiative (PEI). To sum up:
the poor are more vulnerable to pollution - caused by resource extraction, processing and disposal. Additionally, damaged eco-systems cannot fulfill their cleaning services anymore.
Low-income countries require resources for their development (so reducing our resource consumption frees up resources for their use).
The poor tend to rely more on natural resources then the rich (especially but not exclusively the urban poor)
Will the leader of a poor country be right? While you seem to have a strong opinion on that, I am not so sure (especially as lacking experience as a poor-country policy maker and citizen). But I suspect it might make sense for them to see this issues in an integrated way.
(btw, pure economic theory tends to be even wronger in poor countries that it is in general ;-)
Thanks Martin, The
Thanks Martin,
The materials you gave me are highly useful and your comments are very relevant. Nevertheless, I express here a comment an african friend of mine told me after the declaration. He told me : " I work with african politicians and I know how they think. " That was I am quite skeptical.
BTW, if you refer the Copenhague Consensus as a pure economic theory, let me disagree with you.
___ Guillaume