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[Figure:
www.globalwater.org] |
Problems on the Road to Sustainable Development:
Justice and the North-South Conflict
The history of the relationship between the rich countries in the North and the poor countries of the South is a history of fundamental injustice. Their forms have gone through a change: From direct exploitation and suppression in the age of colonialism via the indirect exploitation following independence in the last thrid of the 20th Century to marginalisation in the present age of globalisation.
This injustice has been provisionally hidden until today by calling the poor countries "developing countries". The thought behind this is that (until now) underdeveloped countries are concerned for whom (in principle) the road to development is open. Development in this sense means subsequent development with the aim of becoming like the industrialised nations of the north already are, by ideally taking the shortest and best route and leaving out several pathologies in the development process of the north (refer to the page on "Development" for information on further problems of this development concept).
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With global problems like the climate change (see Basic Course 4) a further dimension of injustice is added: Whereas the problems are caused over proportionally in the north, the consequences of the desertification or extreme weather conditions occur over proportionally in the south. This extends to the threat to the existence of numerous small island states, which will no longer exist if the sea level continue to rise any further.
The North is living above its means
"From the local to the global level, much experience shows that resources (water, wood, oil, minerals etc.) utility area (land for construction projects, settlements and infrastructure) and earth, sea and atmosphere have become scarce or unstable as natural inputs for economic growth. As a consequence of this, the promise that development will continue for ever has collapsed.
As a result, if all countries were to follow the industrial example and emit an average of 11.4 tonnes of carbon monoxide a year per capita, the emissions from six billion people would add up to around 68.4 billion, which is more than five times as much as the 13 billion tonnes the earth can absorb. In other words: if all countries were attain to the present living standards of the rich countries, we would need five planets to serves as a source for the input and resources required for economic advancement."
[Source: Wolfgang Sachs, Nach uns die Zukunft (After us the Future). Der globale Konflikt um Gerechtigkeit und Ökologie (The Global Conflict Around Justice and Ecology), Frankfurt/Main 2002, p. 71]
What is clear is that "development" in the normal sense no longer provides an option. This fundamental conflict, which brings the injustice that reigns clearly to light, swamps the combination of "sustainable development". The dimension of environmental protection noted as being urgent needs "somehow" to be added to the original development concept that has become irresponsible in the meantime, without one having to dispense with the perspective of "development" as a concession to the countries of the South.
Perspective from the South
However this ends nothing in the fact that, from the point of view of the South, the North is making itself rich at the cost of the South via unbridled growth, and has attained a high level of prosperity and has now declared that the "limits of growth" have been reached, and are now hindering the South in its growth. This is exactly the criticism that accompanied international environmental policy from the outset (see History).
The Policy of the USA
The policy of the USA, the single remaining superpower, as by far the largest emitter of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, is oil on the fire of this criticism. Inglorious examples of this can be seen in the dictum of former president George Bush sen. in advance of and at the Rio conference, that the American life style is not subject to negotiation, as was their dropping out of the Kyoto Protocol carried out by his son as president. |
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"Two different topical threads run right through the history of the sustainability debate, one concerning the developed world and the other concerning the developing world. Typically, one deals with matters like rain, the ozone hole, climate change, demographic zero growth, drug misuse and species dying out in the first group. For the second group in contrast, the priorities are soil fertility loss, desertification, water quality and the access to it, rapid population growth, unsettlement and war."
[Moss Mashishi, Director of the Johannesburg World Summit Company; quoted from: Wolfgang Sachs, Nach uns die Zukunft (After us the Future). Der globale Konflikt um Gerechtigkeit und Ökologie (The Global Conflict Around Justice and Ecology), Frankfurt/Main 2002, p. 41] |
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Sustainability and Justice
These brief keywords on the North-South conflict and on global injustice should suffice to make a central problem on the road to sustainable development clear, namely the relationship of tension between sustainability and justice. You cannot have the one without the other, as the following text excerpt from Wolfgang Sachs accentuates:
"Irrespective of in which arena - whether climate, biological variety or trade: if the North fails to succeed in reaching environment-policy agreements which the South accepts as fair, sustainability will be pushed to the sidelines. Without justice no ecology. If, from its own side, the South freely demands a larger share of the exploitative economy, then sustainability will be pushed to the sidelines as well. Justice is not compatible with environmental protection except when it is strived for within the framework of environmentally-friendly development. This is why the opposite applies: without ecology no justice."
[Source: Wolfgang Sachs, Nach uns die Zukunft (After us the Future). Der globale Konflikt um Gerechtigkeit und Ökologie (The Global Conflict Around Justice and Ecology), Frankfurt/Main 2002, p. 39]
[Author: Ragnar Müller]
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