Poverty, environment and global instability

 

More poverty = more violence = more environmental degradation

ccording to the United Nations Program for Environment (UNEP), in poor countries of the southern hemisphere, a billion people have no clean water, 1.3 million are exposed to soot and smoke. Almost a quarter of the world's population is fed at a cost of three dollars per day and this situation has been aggravated. In 1982, thirty countries had poor; in 2000, that number reached 47.

Vicious cycle

The inability of the world to reduce the levels of poverty is contributing to global instability in the form of terrorism, wars, diseases and environmental degradation. It is a vicious cycle: environmental degradation exacerbates poverty, contributing to further global instability. It is almost impossible to ensure lasting peace and stability when there are huge inequalities and the natural systems that sustain us are under threat. Little can move forward in terms of environmental conservation and natural resources if billions of people have no hope or chance to download, because need to find their survival at any cost, this cost is usually environmental.

According to the Worldwatch Institute, infectious diseases - many of them related to water quality - currently kill twice as much as cancer. The lack of clean water or sanitation kills 1.7 million people per year, of which 90% are children. Most of the wars or armed conflicts of recent years is linked to control of economic or ethnic minorities on valuable natural resources, be they minerals, gems, oil, water or wood, as was the case in Angola. The military spending for 2001 was estimated at 839 billion or 2.3 billion per day (according to UNDP). The United States accounts for 36% of world total.

Eritrea, Burundi, Pakistan, the military spending equal or exceed the sum of spending on education and health. Natural disasters - caused or aggravated by deforestation, disorderly occupation and territorial climate change - the cause of large displacement of population, now known as environmental refugees. Floods force the migration of people from Bangladesh to India, a movement that has lasted 10 years and has displaced about 10 million people. And there are another 40 million environmental refugees in the world, calculating only those who left the country, without considering the internal migration and the 12 million political refugees, officially recognized as such.

The model of globalization

The current Brazilian reality points to the enormous concentration of the surplus generated by economic activity in the hands of a few to the detriment of large sections of the population. Pressed by poverty and the instinctive need for survival, these economic minorities in predatory act on the environment, causing deforestation of ecosystems for housing, food, or energy production. Copies of wildlife, for example, become a source of food for the excluded. Today, the current model of globalization in the world is a major cause of environmental deterioration, because the character development of mortgage Planet.

The free market systems, which seek to profit at any cost, readily allow the failure to nature, whose features are "free." The criteria governing the systems of developed countries' industrialization created the conditions that adversely affect the environment. Thus, the causes of poverty and environmental degradation in developing countries are directly related to the development model of industrialized countries, imposed on poor countries via IMF. This model causes damage to the environment by contributing directly to global warming and the destruction of the ozone layer and to foster inequality and poverty in the world.

The imbalance directly affects the competitiveness in international trade. Developing countries face, on average, twice as trade barriers for their products than developed countries. In addition, thanks to grants that totaled $ 300 billion per year, the agricultural products of developed countries are sold at prices between 20 and 50% below cost of production, unstructured producers in developing countries. Hence increase the rates of unemployment and therefore poverty. When poor countries demanding the WTO (World Trade Organization) can hardly a fair result for them.

Differences also arise at the other end of the consumption, the waste. A new type of transfer of waste begins to reveal, with the discovery of toxic waste deposits specialized in IT industry in China and India. The United States exports somewhere between 50 and 80% of producing this type of waste, called ex-garbage. It is almost impossible to preserve the environment is still a huge gap in income, food gap, gap values and gap in education. Not been a significant decrease in any of these gaps. Neither the efforts of the UN, nor the large investments of capital in the form of foreign aid from rich nations, have had effect.

Indeed, the differences in income and value decreased during the last decades. That is because the transfer of industrial technology from rich nations to poor, in the rare times that happens, just benefiting a small industrial sector, not the poor masses. The imbalance shows up also in the market of petroleum and derivatives. With less than 5% of world population, the United States consume 26% oil, 25% of coal and 27% of natural gas worldwide. The cars, which run in the United States, representing one quarter of the world fleet and emit more carbon than all sources - industry, transport, agriculture, energy - in Japan, the fourth country in the list of global emissions of pollutants.

The consequences of these emissions, however, fall on the poor countries most vulnerable to climate change. Of the 700 natural disasters recorded in 2002, 593 were related to climatic events. The human tragedies behind the statistics remind us that social and environmental progress is not a luxury to be put aside when the world has to face economic and political problems. Fluctuations in the global economy and the broad effort to restore peace in the Middle East could divert the resources needed to address the causes and consequences of poverty. It is important to note that, in extreme poverty, the marginalized individuals in society and the national economy has no commitment to prevent environmental degradation, because the society does not prevent its degradation as a person.