Global Development: Benevolent or Villainous?
By Adam M. Roberts

In Johannesburg, South Africa this summer, government representatives and nongovernmental leaders from across the globe will convene the World Summit on Sustainable Development to discuss the future direction of global development. Delegates to the meeting will examine issues including global poverty, women's role in society, protection of the environment and natural resources, and the eruption of the bubbling human population, currently tallying over six billion people and expected to rise to somewhere between nine and eleven billion people by 2050. More people results in more pressure on the already fragile environment and the inevitable destruction of entire ecosystems and a terrible loss of biodiversity. It means more wild animal extinctions and more animal cruelty. Distinguished Harvard Professor and Pulitzer Prize winner E.O. Wilson laments that we treat the environment "with such unnecessary ignorance and recklessness" and notes "When we destroy ecosystems and extinguish species, we degrade the greatest heritage this planet has to offer and thereby threaten our own existence."

Elephants are worth more alive than dead as tourism revenues from photographic elephant safaris can bring money to local communities for decades. Birdwatching and whalewatching are other examples of economically beneficial ecotourism.

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The World Summit, sponsored by the United Nations, will examine the human impact on Earth and how to develop an integrated approach toward sustainable development. The goals are to establish a political declaration on the need for sustainable global development, create a specific plan of action toward that end, and build partnerships to achieve these short and long-term goals. It follows ten years after Agenda 21 was created at the Rio Earth Summit. The comprehensive Agenda 21 document acknowledges the need to combat deforestation and sets out goals to manage forests, to establish a comprehensive plan for sustainable agriculture and rural development, to conserve biodiversity, and to protect the oceans and coastal environments.

A number of difficult issues will be before the delegates to the Summit. Human poverty is a pervasive global problem-the Chairman of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development notes that over 1.1 billion people live in absolute poverty across the globe. That is one out of every six people on the planet. Moreover, 113 million children of an age to attend primary school in developing countries do not receive a basic education (this figure does not account for illiterate, uneducated children in wealthier nations such as the United States). Without education, children will grow up to have more and more offspring, adding additional weight to the increasingly overpopulated world in which we live.

This population enlargement creates greater poverty and hunger. Unfortunately, the way in which hunger is addressed may come at an imperiling global cost. For instance, while fishing has fed people across the globe for millennia, over-fishing and increases in illegal catches systematically have reduced fish populations. Some species already are commercially extinct, facing biological extinction in the (near) future without sufficient cautionary decisions. Intensive agricultural expansion could provide food more cheaply to those in need.

However, we know in the United States that intensive animal factories, such as those built for hogs,

 

 

 

 

 

Laying hens, cruelly crowded in wire battery cages, are never released till they are slaughtered. Intensive egg factories create massive pollution of air and water and fly infestation for neighboring communities. (United Poultry Concerns)

lead to air pollution, poisoning of water wells and nearby streams, and unbearable cruelty to the confined animals. Agricultural and rural development should focus on sustainable, small-scale humane family farming, not large-scale corporate animal factories.

As industry moves into local communities, whether for agricultural development or other manufacturing, forests often are destroyed, wiping out the vibrant species of plants and animals that previously sought sanctuary among the trees. The alarming rate of global deforestation hits hardest in the developing countries, notably those in Africa and South America where much of the world's most diverse and richest concentrations of wild animals exist. Illegal timber harvests increase the chances that forests will be felled unsustainably, enriching the wallets of the wealthy while leaving local people and wildlife further impoverished. Ecosystem and species decimation has disastrous consequences for humanity. Who knows how many life-saving plant species are destroyed in untapped areas because of indiscriminate corporate greed?

When various industries expand, so too does industrial pollution, which causes environmental degradation and exacerbates climate change. Global temperature shifts impact agricultural production adversely and increase the spread of disease, both having disproportionate impacts on the poor.

Furthermore, unrestrained industrial expansion causes monumental urbanization and creation of bigger and bigger cities, which wipe out the natural environment and its denizens. Instead of creating sustainable local communities, wildlife, wild places, and unfortunate humans succumb to monstrous urban sprawl.

The live wildlife indigenous to many of these poor regions of the world can be an economic asset if approached properly. Some advocate the expansion of wildlife trade (live animals such as reptiles or parrots and animal parts such as skins or hunting trophies) as a means to alleviate poverty. The United Nations Environment Programme, for example, prepared a document on the interrelationships between Multilateral Environmental Agreements and the World Trade Organization.

Within the document, which was made available during one of the World Summit Preparatory Sessions, wildlife trade is advocated because allegedly "the potential economic value of these species can be translated into tangible economic benefits for populations whose livelihood depends on wildlife." The more appropriate "sustainable" approach is to cultivate an understanding that live animals in their natural habitats are worth more to local communities than slaughtered animals or animals that are captured cruelly and shipped abroad. A live elephant, for instance, can bring benefit to a community in Africa for decades through well-administered ecotourism. The recent Commission Chairman's report acknowledges appropriately that "Actions are required to promote sustainable tourism development in order to increase the benefits from tourism resources for the population in host communities, and maintain the cultural and environmental integrity of the host communities."

Life on earth is balanced fragilely. The UN reminds us that more than one billion people lack safe drinking water, that infant mortality is ten times higher in developing countries than wealthy countries, and that "in 1996, 25 percent of the world's 4,630 mammal species and 11 percent of the 9,675 bird species were at significant risk of extinction." The outcome of the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg must include recognition of the interrelationship among poverty, population growth, environmental destruction, wildlife decimation, and massive cruelty to animals. An integrated approach toward remedying these debilitating global ills will increase the chances of holistic healing. We must take great care not to address hunger by polluting the environment with animal factories that also cause animal cruelty; and not to address poverty by fouling the air, increasing the temperature of the earth or cutting down the life-giving forests, subsequently wiping out the myriad species within the forest havens. Dr. Wilson correctly notes that our salvation comes by embracing an "environmental ethic," which, in his words, "is the only guide by which humanity and the rest of life can be safely conducted through the bottleneck into which our species has foolishly blundered.