Sustainable Development – The book and the ideology
Paul Driessen
Senior Fellow - Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise
August 15, 2002
Scarcely a day goes by these days, without a grim new report warning of “dire consequences” if the world does not quickly adopt new protocols on “sustainable development.” Most of these studies are produced or sponsored by the United Nations, and are intended to set the stage for the UN’s upcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development, to be held in Johannesburg, South Africa at the end of August.
These protocols are backed by dozens of countries (most notably the European Union), hundreds of wealthy activist groups, vast armies of bureaucrats, literally billions of dollars of taxpayer and foundation money, and throngs of sympathetic journalists. But now an important new book challenges the themes, assumptions, analyses and “solutions” advocated by the sustainable development movement.
Sustainable development: Promoting progress or perpetuating poverty? is thought-provoking, well researched and backed by extensive data. Edited by Julian Morris, co-director of the International Policy Network, the book brings together the experience and thoughts of seventeen experts from five continents. It should be required reading for anyone heading to Johannesburg or dealing with issues of trade, development, foreign aid, environmental protection, and a better future for people and our planet.
Ask an environmental activist to define sustainable development, and he will most likely say it means we must “meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” It’s pious and altruistic, but incredibly vague.
Less vague are the means by which SD proponents intend to achieve their brave new sustainable world. Those are spelled out in detail in a 300-page manifesto known as Agenda 21.
Agenda 21 proposes that national governments pursue sustainability by controlling education, land and energy use, economic production and consumption, transportation, markets, labor, trade, housing, policy making processes and people’s daily lives. It would do so through centralized government plans and edicts, monitored and enforced through the United Nations and global NGOs (non-governmental organizations).
As Professor Morris points out, this vision of sustainable development primarily reflects the aesthetic preferences of a small cadre of bureaucrats, multinational NGOs and wealthy foundations in developed countries. The needs, views and concerns of poor people in poor countries were largely ignored.
The activists’ vision is likewise rooted too much in conjectural problems and theoretical needs of future generations – and too little on real, immediate, life-and-death needs of present generations. It focuses too little on fostering economic development, and too much on restricting development – typically in the name of protecting the environment.
Agenda 21 and the Johannesburg summit also reflect the assumption that we are rapidly depleting our natural resources and destroying the planet. These beliefs have been vigorously challenged by numerous scholars, including Ronald Bailey, Robert Bradley, Gregg Easterbrook, Bjorn Lomborg, Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore and the late Julian Simon.
Their work demonstrates that environmental quality has been steadily improving, at least in the developed world, human health has never been better, and we are not running out of anything. Indeed, as resource economist Bradley points out, the world’s proven reserves of crude oil totaled 68 billion barrels in 1947. Over the next 50 years, we consumed 783 billion barrels – and yet we still had proven reserves of 1,050 billion barrels at the end of 1998!
“True sustainable development,” says Morris, requires a shift in focus away from false perceptions and supposedly desirable outcomes – and toward an institutional framework that allows and encourages people to improve their lives, make the best use of available resources and improve the environment. This framework must include decentralized ownership and control of property and natural resources, enforceable property and contract rights, free markets, limited regulation, and empowering individuals and communities to take charge of their own lives.
The Johannesburg protocols, however, fail to do this and thus make it increasingly difficult to address truly critical Third World problems.
· 1.6 billion people still do not have access to electricity, and 3 million (mostly women and children) die from acute respiratory infections, because they are forced to cook and heat with wood and dried cow dung. Hydroelectric dams and coal or gas-fired power plants could eliminate this indoor air pollution, but SD proponents oppose all these energy alternatives and favor wind and solar power.
However, wind power requires giant turbines that slaughter birds by the thousands, and generating electricity equal to just 20% of America consumption would mean 230,000 hectares of turbines (an area the size of Virginia or Cuba), according to American Wind Energy Association data. And gas-fired generators would still be needed, to produce electricity whenever the wind stops blowing. Solar power has similar limitations.
· 1.3 billion lack access to clean drinking water, and more than 2 million (again, mostly children) die of water-borne diseases every year. Environmentalists oppose the dams and water projects that play an essential role in solving this problem.
· 300 million people contract malaria every year, and 2 million die. The 30-year death toll (since a DDT ban went into effect) stands at 50 million, mostly children and pregnant women, nearly all in the Third World, the majority in sub-Saharan Africa. But radical greens still oppose even limited, carefully controlled use of DDT in homes to combat this killer disease.
· 800 million people are chronically undernourished. But most sustainability proponents favor severe restrictions on the biotechnology that could replace crops with insect and drought resistant varieties, increase crop yields, and reduce both the need for pesticides and the amount of land being farmed.
· 3 billion people live on less than $2.00 a day. But the protocols would limit the right of Third World countries to develop. They would also reduce wealth and buying power in developed nations that are important trading partners and sources of foreign aid, and give rich nations a rationale for barring imports that contain biotech products or result from allegedly unsustainable practices.
And yet, Johannesburg summiteers cynically suggest that they will hold foreign aid hostage until African and Asian leaders ratify sustainable development treaties that will prolong this agony.
Free Africa Foundation president George Ayittey notes that “what exists in many African countries is a ‘vampire’ or ‘pirate’ state – a government hijacked by a phalanx of gangsters, thugs and crooks who use the instruments of the state to enrich themselves, their cronies,” their tribesmen, and various bureaucrats and educated elites. The poor get almost nothing – and little of the aid promised at the first sustainability conference in Rio de Janeiro has ever materialized.
No wonder Africa’s villagers and honest politicians have become so disenchanted with these attempts to impose First World treaties and policies on the Third World.
As Morris observes in closing: “It is our duty to ensure that the institutions we pass on to our children, and our children’s children, enable them to progress. And we must strive to ensure that institutions which enable progress are adopted widely, so that people alive today are able to improve their lot; to live rather than subsist; to create rather than copy; to be free rather than be oppressed.”
It can only be hoped that the sustainable development movement and Johannesburg summit will take heed.
Sustainable development: Promoting progress or perpetuating poverty? is available for $15.00 (plus $3.95 shipping and handling) from the International Policy Network (IPN), 1001 Connecticut Avenue, NW - Suite 1250, Washington, DC 20036.
Paul Driessen is a senior fellow for the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise. Contact him at paul@cdfe.org.
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