Wise, prescient words. Yet last week, as preparations accelerated for the 30th observance of Earth Day, on April 22, the global environment–both ecological and human–seemed in worse shape than when Gandhi spoke them. True, many of the developed world’s rivers are cleaner, and many of its corporations profess a new sensitivity to ecological issues. In Africa, Asia and Latin America, however, billions of people continue to grapple with the problem the late prime minister identified. Advanced economies can be kinder to the environment. But for the world’s poorest, advancement–or in many places, simple survival–seems to mean being cruel to it. Can the gap ever be bridged?
The news is not encouraging. In West Africa and parts of Asia, firewood gathering has produced deforestation on a vast scale. The Washington-based World Resources Institute estimates that just one-fifth of the world’s original forest cover remains intact. Meanwhile, on the next rung of the developmental ladder, cities such as Beijing, New Delhi, Lagos and Mexico City have become environmental nightmares on account of accelerating industrial and vehicular pollution. Carl Pope, the Sierra Club’s executive director, expresses alarm over how widespread pollution-related illnesses are in China–especially in communities near coal-based industries. The costs of treating patients? Billions and billions of dollars.
“Developing countries sometimes have a hard time backing out of economic mistakes,” says Pope. “The developing world needs to be smarter than the rich countries of the industrialized North about long-term investments for economic growth. Why? Because they cannot afford the vast expenditures involved in cleaning up the mess generated by inefficient technologies.”
Being “smarter” than the rich countries isn’t easy, though. That came clear last week in Havana at the first-ever summit of the Group of 77, the organization representing 133 poor countries around the world. Leaders of those countries chided their counterparts in rich countries for trying to impose Western standards of environmental regulation–rules, they said, that would inhibit much-needed economic growth. It was outmoded Western technological imports–such as power plants and smokestack industries–that often contributed to developing nations’ evironmental decline, these leaders said. But where was the more sophisticated Western technology that they could afford?
It’s a complex set of problems–made even more complex, alas, by the plethora of agencies and institutions competing for the financial resources to sort them out. The United Nations alone has some 54 agencies and commissions focusing on “sustainable development.” Then there’s the World Bank, and the various regional development banks. The European Union has its humanitarian and development bureau. Don’t forget the “rich man’s club,” the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. And each of the OECD’s 29 members–the donor countries that channel about $40 billion annually to poor countries–has its own bilateral development and environmental agencies.
Are these organizations really doing anything to solve the South’s economic-ecological conundrum? If they could manage to align and consolidate their agendas, it would at least be easier to tell. As it happens, the Millennium Summit–scheduled at U.N. headquarters in New York in September–offers them a timely opportunity to do so. President Clinton and other world leaders who are expected to participate have a unique opportunity to demonstrate a very high level of political leadership. Some are bound to call for the creation of yet another global bureaucracy. A more practical step would be to empower a couple of existing organizations with additional muscle, perhaps joining them in a strengthened alliance in the twinned cause of the environment and development. Why not call this new effort “The Indira Gandhi Initiative for Earth’s People”?
