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Published on Monday, August 26, 2002 by the Guardian of London
Ecological Decline 'Far Worse' Than Official Estimates
Leaked paper - OECD's grim warning on climate change
by John Vidal in Johannesburg
The real level of world inequality and environmental degradation may be far worse than official estimates, according to a leaked document prepared for the world's richest countries and seen by the Guardian.
It includes new estimates that the world lost almost 10% of its forests in the past 10 years; that carbon dioxide emissions leading to global warming are expected to rise by 33% in rich countries and 100% in the rest of the world in the next 18 years; and that more than 30% more fresh water will be needed by 2020.
The background paper for last month's Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development pre-Johannesburg meeting on sustainable development draws on many previously unseen UN, World Bank, World Trade Organization, and academic papers.
Although the governments of the world's 22 richest nations who make up the OECD have seen the document, many of the calculations are new and considerably different from their own.
It calculates that less than 0.1% of of the average income of the 22 members of the OECD actually finds its way to the world's low income countries and just 0.05% went to the least developed countries. Recent US and EU initiatives, it says, "will not meet targets at any time soon".
Donor assistance for environmental protection and basic social services has declined to less than 15% of all aid compared with 35% at the time of the last earth summit in 1992.
The OECD paper calculates that rich countries now subsidize their industries by up to $1,000m a year, including more than $300bn in agriculture. This, it says, is having increasing effects on the development of poor countries. and on environmental degradation. If unrestricted market access were given to just the four richest economies in the world, it would increase per capita incomes of more than 2 billion people in the world's most populated countries by 4% a year.
Meanwhile, the paper finds that foreign assistance from western European countries, including private funding and direct investment encouraged through national policies, was more globally oriented in 1900 than it is today.
It says that if the EU, Canada, Japan and the US allowed migrants to make up 4% of their workforce, the returns to poor countries could be $160bn to 200bn a year - far more than any debt relief could provide.
The paper's calculations of environmental degradation suggest the many conventions, treaties and intergovernmental agreements signed in the past decade have had little or no effect on stopping the rush for timber and mineral resources in the developing world and that extinction of species is now reaching 11% of birds, 18%-24% of mammals, 5% of fish, and 8% of plants.
Over the next 18 years, says the report, global energy use is expected to expand by more than 50%, and by more than 100% in China, east Asia and the former Soviet Union. Transport is by then expected to account for more than half of global oil demand.
"The non-renewable fossil fuel resource base is expected to be sufficient to meet demand to 2020 though problems beyond that point are foreseen for natural gas and possibly oil," the report says.
It adds that OECD countries subsidize the emission of global warming gases by $57bn - almost exactly what the report estimates it would cost to meet international targets. The paper suggests that investing the money in reducing climate change emissions would have next to no effect on the global economy. "Through the provision of subsidies on fossil fuels governments are effectively subsidizing pollution and global warming as more than 60% of all subsidies flow to oil, coal and gas."
Environment and development groups yesterday reacted to the report with horror.
"The rich world knows this is happening," said the chair of Friends of the Earth International, Ricardo Navarrez. "We in poor countries have always known the climate is changing, aid does not come, and the poor are getting poorer. The richest countries are here in Johannesburg to keep the system going."
Depleted resources: Key facts from OECD report
Fisheries
· Nearly 50% of all fish stocks are fully exploited, 20% are overexploited
· Only 2% of global fisheries is recovering from overfishing
Forests
· On current trends by 2025 15% of all forest species will be extinct
Development
· 60% of the world's population lives in ecologically vulnerable areas
· 3 million people die each year due to air pollution and 5 million due to unsafe water
Foreign investment
· 80% of global finance flows went to rich countries in 2000, with the entire African continent receiving less than 1% of direct foreign investment
· In 1914 40% of western European investment went to Africa, Latin America and Asia. In 1990 less than 20% went to those regions
Water
· Global water withdrawals are expected to rise 31% by 2020
· Most groundwater resources are being replenished at a rate of between 0.1% and 0.5%
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of
Yeah, I read that at commondreams. Let's see how much mainstream media coverage it gets in the US. I'm betting not too much, but I'd love to be wrong.
Not only is it worse than we thought, but our governments have been lying to us about it. Anyone surprised? Me either. This is just more proof that the State serves the interests of the ruling class and not the interests of the working class.
vox
Economists have provided capitalists with a comforting concept called the "free market." It does not describe any part of reality, at any place or time. It's a mantra conveniently invoked when it is proposed that government do something the faithful don't like, and just as conveniently ignored whenever they want government to do something for them.
What they need to do is get rid of debt and use appropraite technology to improve people loves long term and allow the development of noisey polluting industries to get going!
Vox,
Yeah, lol, Common Dreams.
I agree with you that coverage will be slim, if at all. Sure, NPR or some PBS show will talk about the Earth Summit, but will they talk about this report and these statistics? And even if they do, that's about it. I'm hoping there will be newspapers that will run the article.
And, yes, this is just further proof of the lovely relationship between government and business. Do we have the resources, ability, and technology *right now* to drastically change our bad habits? YES! Why don't we employ these new practices, new sources of energy, new farming methods, abundant resources (such as hemp- with over 40,000 uses!), and fuel/energy alternatives??? Answer: Private corporate interest. Loss of money. Change of power. And the fact that these corporations can still reign supreme after criminal scandals, invasive lobbying and bribery, and very obvious and proven environmental destruction shows that they truly are in the driver's seat. Government is too soft with these guys to see it any other way.
As a friend of mine said last week, "You rip off $50 from 7-11, you'll get 10 years. You pull an Enron, you go to Switzerland."
RAM,
I agree that we need massive debt relief, as well as the use of better technology in the third world. But help the development of noisy, polluting industries?
Isn't that just a short term solution? As we have seen in most of the West, heavy industy only leads to the need to stop such heavy industry. Surely you read the article? Why would we want to start more of the same problem all over again in other parts of the world?
Yes, from a purely economic standpoint, I'm sure it would be a good thing. But thinking only from a purely economic standpoint is why we are in the mess we are now. And why corporations are allowed to reign.
Better for the third world would be medical aid by the lowering of corporate drug prices- especially for those with HIV/AIDS, solar and wind power techonologies finally mass produced and globally distributed, the end of their dependence on petrochemical...excuse me...'seed' companies who genetically modify the seeds they sell to be sterile (no seeds)- therefore keeping the third world farmer a safely dependent customer, sex education along with resources and funding, abortion funding and education, debt relief as was said, and fair trade in purchasing their goods. Maybe Vox can shed light on what developing nations need from the world economy standpoint. And maybe I'm wrong, and that they do need polluting industries.
But if they do because there is *no* other way, things are worse than I thought. But there are other ways, and the problem is that government and business will make sure what 'ways' there are or not. But then again we already talked about government and business here today, so I don't have to reiterate how fucked things are.
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of
"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." - William Blake
\"Revolutions are dreamt up by intellectuals but their aims are so unrealistic they\'ll stoop to drastic measures. Following the revolution the worthy passions for rebirth are swallowed up by bureaucracy and mediocrity. Intellectuals dislike this so they
What Fires of History said.
I was going to go into a rant about how to solve the worlds problems, but FoH summed it up rather elloquently.
Ultimately, we need to break the grip big business has on the governments of the more powerful nations. Put them in their place and the solutions will follow.
>Yes, from a purely economic standpoint, I'm sure it >would be a good thing. But thinking only from a purely >economic standpoint is why we are in the mess we are >now. And why corporations are allowed to reign.
That would be from the same economical school that taught the financial geniuses at Enron. It's like the "trade not aid"- bs, it totally disregards that most of the tools to help people out of poverty and starvation is already available, at little costs for the developed world other than maybe the loss of sweatshops and peasants...
Appropriate technology is the way to go, but it is more or less banned thanks to the needs of business-alliances to fuel third world leaders' LearJets...
\"We have the temerity to declare that all have a right to bread, that there is bread enough for all, and that with this watchword of Bread for All the Revolution will triumph.\"
- P. Kropotkin
