| JOHANNESBURG--"Why
is there despair?" South African President Thabo
Mbeki asked during his address at the WSSD yesterday. "Since
the means exist to banish hunger, why are so many
without adequate supplies of food and others are
faced with famine, including millions in this region
of Southern Africa?" These
are legitimate questions, and they were raised the
same day that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan pointed
out in Johannesburg that in Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique,
Swaziland, and Zimbabwe, 13 million people are threatened
with famine. This isn't the way the people who gathered
in Rio at the Earth Summit in 1992 envisioned the
world ten years hence.
Secretary
General Annan may have unwittingly
answered President Mbeki's question
when
he told WSSD delegates that, "Over
the past decade, at conferences and summit
meetings such as this one, the world
has drawn up a far-reaching blueprint
for a stable, prosperous twenty-first
century." "This summit," he
continued, "like its landmark predecessors
in Stockholm and Rio de Janeiro, focuses
on a key component of that blueprint:
the relationship between the human beings
and the natural environment."
The notion that poverty can be eradicated,
and that health standards for the poor
can be raised, by blueprints drawn up
by politicians and their advisors at
international conferences is at odds
with historical experience. Great scientific
breakthroughs that led to substantial
improvements in the lot of mankind, such
as the development of the germ theory
of disease, the purification of drinking
water through chlorination, and the placement
of life-sustaining medical equipment
in hospitals, didn't come about as the
result of blueprints or conferences.
They, together with countless other advances,
were made possible by the dedicated work
of scientists, physicians, engineers,
and others toiling in obscurity where
they applied human ingenuity to problems
that had perplexed the world's best minds
since time immemorial.
Confronting
delegates to the WSSD is the sad fact
that high public-health
standards, economic property, and political
freedoms (complete with the rule of law
and protection of property rights) have
not made their way to the world's poorest
regions. Kofi Annan was off the mark
when he told delegates yesterday that, "A
path to prosperity that ravages the environment
and leaves a majority of humankind behind
in squalor will soon prove to be a dead-end
road for everyone."
In truth, those left behind in squalor
never embarked on the path to prosperity,
because, with rare exceptions, the countries
in which they live lack the political
institutions, education systems, and
the public-health infrastructure that
are the foundations for economic advancement.
And,
contrary to the prevailing opinion
at the WSSD, the environment has not
been "ravaged" by the developed
countries. On the contrary, the air and
water in places like the US, EU, Japan,
Canada, and Australia is of a quality
that would have been unimaginable only
a few generations ago. But the environment
was ravaged in the old Soviet Union,
leaving a ghastly mess for Russians,
Ukrainians, and others to clean up. And
the environment is being ravaged in developing
countries where poor sanitation, lack
of access to reliable energy and clean
water have given rise to deplorable living
conditions. In the case of the old Soviet
Union and today's developing countries,
it is the lack of wealth that led to
environmental degradation.
In addition to the reliance on conferences
and blueprints to get things done, those
seriously interested in improving living
conditions in developing countries have
erred by hitching their star to the modern
environmental movement.
When
he asked yesterday why people are being
swept to their graves "by
floods that are without precedent in
recent history," President Mbeki
demonstrated just how successful the
environmental movement has been in imposing
their apocalyptic vision on public consciousness.
There is nothing "unprecedented" in
the recent floods. Indeed, as the climatological
record clearly shows, floods are a regular,
if often tragic, occurrence in China,
Europe, North America, South America,
and the Indian Subcontinent. Attributing
natural events to human causation, such
as emissions of greenhouse gases, makes
for great propaganda, but it can also
make for disastrous policies based on
a complete misreading of nature and man's
interaction with it.
For a
variety of reasons, Africa missed out
on the "green revolution" that
enabled farmers in Asia and elsewhere
to raise agricultural productivity dramatically
in the last few decades. To feed the
hungry in Africa, African farmers need
access to modern crop-protection technologies
and to genetically modified crops. But
both pesticides and GM foods are ritually
condemned by environmental organizations.
To deal with the problem of waterborne
diseases, poor people need access to
water purification technologies. But
chlorination, the most widely used and
effective of them, is ritually condemned
by environmental groups. To rid themselves
of the health effects of burning dung
and firewood for fuel, poor people need
access to modern energy. But fossil fuels,
hydroelectric power, and nuclear power
are ritually condemned by environmental
groups. To be healed from illnesses or
accidents, poor people need access to
modern medical devices. But IV bags,
catheters, blood bags, and other medical
devices, because they are made with plastic
softeners, are ritually condemned by
environmental organizations. In none
of these cases, can they point to any
credible evidence to support their claims
that the proper use of these technologies
poses a threat to public health. Alleviating
the suffering of the poor and malnourished
will begin by severing the links to a
movement whose agenda will keep them
in bondage for decades to come.
Bonner R. Cohen is a senior fellow at
the Lexington Institute in Arlington,
Virginia.
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