Only good environmental governance can sustain real development in Latin America

Sep 26, 2009 Letters

Dear Editor,
Old dancing partners, with new faces, are making well-coordinated steps across the countries of Africa and Latin America.
In the face of the global financial recession and, what appears to be, the end of the Monroe Doctrine, these partners are moving lightly across the geopolitical spectrum to the increasingly sweet sound of South-South cooperation.
They are, in effect, creating a different, not new, perspective of geopolitics and giving substance to it in this 21st century. But what are the implications for good environmental governance and global warming in the south?
For quite some time now, the concept of good governance, as against good government, has been the watchword for international, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations and other institutions.
It is about enhancing the ability of the people to gain better life, greater options to choose from and ensuring transparency and accountability in administration.
It is also about greater participation, by the people, in the way their communities are governed by political administrations.
Add to that the environment, and good governance defines itself as multi-level interactions – local, national, international/global – among, but not limited to three key actors – state, market, and civil society – which interact with one another in formal and informal ways in articulating and implementing policies in relation to the environment for sustainable development.
As applied, in this article, it immediately sets the framework by which governments, corporations, and local communities must account for their stewardship of the environment.
We, at ECHO, have always held and will continue to hold the view that stewardship of the environment or the lack of it is the main cause of global warming.
As a result, planet earth is responding, in unprecedented ways, to our quest for greater development.
Both developed and underdeveloped countries are constantly pushing to improve the state of their economies and the standard of living of their citizens.
It is a good thing. But in their quest many countries, particularly in the north, have destroyed their natural environment.
Therefore, their insatiable quest for development has encouraged them to seek natural resources in countries whose forests, waterways and other aspects of the ecology are intact.
Many countries of the north are paying greater attention to investment opportunities in the south. However, within recent times, countries of the south have elevated the scale of investment and cooperation with other countries of the south.
There now appears to be a noticeable shift in the political engagements in the south. Russia, China, India and Iran are all examining business prospects, and in some cases, making heavy investments in the South, in apparent south-south cooperation.
Many reasons can be advanced for this shift including the global financial meltdown, which sent many corporations reeling in bankruptcy: America’s lack of attention in Latin America, because of other international events, significant among them; the war on terror, and the demand for raw materials by China and India.
This cooperation is very visible between Asia and Latin America. It is not that trading between Asia and Latin America is new, but the huge scale and almost overnight investments that are connected to China and India are new.
In fact, the current level of trading between Latin America and Asia has made China and India very significant actors in Latin America because they have the scope to influence the politics, and level of development of those countries involved.
As it now stands, China is Brazil’s largest single export market. This is so because of the negative global financial situation and the fact that Brazil can meet the demand.
About five months ago, talks between President of Brazil, Mr. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and the President of China, Mr. Hu Jintao, resulted in an agreement by which the Chinese Development Bank and Sinopec will lend Petrobras $10B.
This will permit a return of about 200,000 barrels of crude oil a day for ten years from that country.
Again, Chinese corporations and companies have made significant investments in oil in Ecuador and Venezuela. It is also looking at stakes in Argentina. It is possible that Chinese companies have become the biggest foreign investors in Ecuador’s oil industry.
But for Latin America one pertinent question remains: how will this cooperation affect the health of the natural environment?
This is an important question because the environment is the basic unit upon which all life in their forms depends for their existence and survival. Therefore, all nations must take into account the integrity of the environment in any programme, project or activity aimed at development.
It is clear, that the heavy impact of the demand for raw materials, by China and India, has ratcheted up world prices for various commodities. On the one hand, it is good for economics, as it helps to advance the interest of developing countries. On the other, it pushes for greater exploitation of the natural resources of the environment.
Sometimes, this is done at the expense of the health of the environment, whether it is deforestation, pollution of rivers and waterways or the destruction of biodiversities.
These affect the traditions, cultures and values of communities. Therefore, such actions, in the name of development, have the potential to disrupt entire local communities and the lives of people.
Many of these developing countries are attempting to put in place the appropriate environmental laws and relevant supporting institutions with the requisite capacity, to ensure good environmental governance. This is a serious problem because the environmental systems are yet fragile and could not adequately address certain environmental challenges.
In some cases, even where these are in place, governments are willing to flex to multinational corporations, to encourage development, because they can then use it as a justification to hold on to the reins of political power.
In some countries, the regimes are propped up by large corporations. For example, there is much speculation, by Earth Rights International – a rights group – that Total and Chevron are propping up Burma’s military government by gas projects in that country.
However, it is in this space that, political and corporate interests become intertwined. As a result, governments become more concerned with representing the interest of large corporations than the welfare and well being of the people, who have entrusted them with power. This constitutes a democratic deficit.
The thing is ordinary citizens are too busy scraping out a living, from the doldrums of economic woes in developing countries, that they really cannot spare the time or energy to worry about the business of governments. Therefore, many governments and corporations get away with policies and activities that destroy the environment.
Add to that, the lack of financial and other resources for poor countries to even begin to think about addressing environmental problems. These countries need development, anyway and everywhere. Therefore, they settle for anything.
Then, what about the environmental laws and rules of India and China? In many areas these countries are pressing against challenges to develop alternative sources of energy. China, in particular, holds the sharp two-edged sword of providing a defence against global warming by pursuing technologies in alternative energies and an offence to the environment, by being the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, in the world.
There are terrifying concerns about environmental degradation in China and India; there is the ongoing problem of pollution. For example, water quality is a major problem in certain parts of China. According to Jin Jiamin, of the Global Environmental Institute, the reason is industrial pollution. Smog blankets large Chinese cities.
Also, the industry of importing dangerous e-waste (derelict computers and other electronic waste) continues to increase in Guizhou, despite laws that are in place to shut the trade. Monitoring the environmental activities and stewardship of corporations is tedious in these countries, let alone in developing nations. It is highly possible that such companies would feel no sense of obligation to maintain standards that would protect the health of the natural environment in poor and developing countries.
In India, pollution is frightening in many parts. There were reports, in the British Guardian newspaper, that in the Punjabi cities of Bathinda and Faridkot, high levels of uranium are contributing to a sharp increase in the number of birth defects, physical and mental abnormalities, and cancers.
This is not to say that corporations working out of developed countries, in the north, do not commit similar environmental transgressions but they have a greater level of accountability. Recently, Brazil returned a large shipment of waste to the United Kingdom. The waste was shipped to that country under the guise of recyclable plastic. Since that incident, three persons have been arrested in connection with it. Accountability, transparency and ethical standards are the guiding principles of the systems in those democracies, to prevent corporations and companies from breaching rules and regulations, even beyond their borders.
Therefore, the countries involved need to examine whether this cooperation is really helping or retarding growth in the south. Looking at the wider picture it may appear to be improving the economics of Latin America, but it could also just be assisting the prosperity of some countries, in the south, while keeping others in poverty for generations. Unless this south-south cooperation can set the framework for good environmental governance it would not be able to sustain real development in Latin America.
Royston King
Executive Director
Environmental Community Health Organization (ECHO)