Champion Briefs

Resolved: Developing countries
should prioritize environmental

protection over resource extraction
when the two are in conict.
Champion Briefs
January/February 2014
Iincoln-Douglas Brief

Copyright 2013 by Champion Briefs, LLC

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The Evidence Standard ______________________________ 3

Topic Analyses ____________________________________ 12
Topic Analysis by Michael Fried ________________________________ 13
Topic Analysis by Brian Hodge _________________________________ 25
Topic Analysis by Paige MacKenzie _____________________________ 34
Topic Analysis by Josh Roberts _________________________________ 42
Topic Analysis by Jack Ave ____________________________________ 49

Frameworks ______________________________________ 56

Evidence for the Affirmative _________________________ 62

Monitoring the Environment ___________________________ 63
Developing countries cant and wont monitor their emissions
international backlash and low tech. _______________________________ 63
Rich countries havent given the developing countries the cash needed. ___ 64
There is no enforcement mechanism. _______________________________ 65
Developing governments focus on resources harms international mining
companies. ____________________________________________________ 66
Foreign economic investment will happen with focus on resources. _______ 67
Developing countries are hurt the worst by environmental issues. ________ 68
The polluter should pay for the impacts of the pollution. _______________ 69
There are many competing interests when it comes to environmental
policy in developing countries. ____________________________________ 70
It is often difficult to identify the indigenous peoples of a region where
resources are being extracted. _____________________________________ 71

Environmental Impacts _______________________________ 72
Global warming causes global resource wars. ________________________ 72
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Without environmental protection, climate change can cause massive war
of resources, which could escalate into large conflict. __________________ 74
Even a small rise in global temperature would lead to mass starvation
despite CO2 fertilizationthe result is extinction. ____________________ 76
Deforestation has drastic global consequences. _______________________ 77
Developing countries are the most heavily affected by global warming
based on GDP. _________________________________________________ 79
Developing countries are more vulnerable to climate change multiple
reasons. ______________________________________________________ 80
No resources without an environment in developing countries they
control food production, which is a key internal link to economic growth.
Lack of environmental protections means disaster. ____________________ 81
The polluter-pays principle solves for environmental harms. ____________ 83
Environmental protection is key to keeping a stable economy. ___________ 84
Environmental protection can save lives and help the economy. _________ 85

Extraction Harms the Environment _____________________ 86
Stopping resource extraction can stop deforestation. __________________ 86
Extraction, specifically oil booms, can be devastating for development. ___ 87
African development will be atrocious will create authoritarianism if
they tap their oil reserves. ________________________________________ 88
Literally no oil state in Africa has avoided an increase into corruption
after tapping into oil. Its democratic backsliding. ____________________ 89
Sustainable African extraction requires a power-to-the-people system
that has not yet been established. __________________________________ 90
Resource curse is real six reasons. ________________________________ 91
Biotic resource extraction can lead to over-extraction and decreased
yield. Fishing as a case study. _____________________________________ 92
Resource extraction always creates environmental harms. ______________ 93
Resource extraction causes socio-political harms. _____________________ 94
River water quality goes down with economic development. ____________ 95
Economic development fails to decrease carbon emission levels. _________ 96
In Nigeria, oil drilling has led to negative utilitarian impacts. ___________ 97
Oil spills in Nigeria have had horrible ecological consequences for locals. __ 98

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Extraction Unequally Harms People ____________________ 100
Resource extraction unequally harms individuals based on social class
and geographic location. ________________________________________ 100
When nations prioritize resource extraction, human environmental rights
abuses occur because of the prioritization of national interests over
individuals. ___________________________________________________ 101
Policy makers justify hazardous actions by distancing themselves from
the people who are harmed. _____________________________________ 102
Scientific research is used to distance policy makers from the negative
effects their policies have on the environment. _______________________ 103
Population growth (development) empirically leads to deforestation. ____ 105
Extraction trades off with public goods kills growth. ________________ 107
Developing countries more likely to use violence, but this violence props
up an unequal exchange and allows rich countries to appear
unaccountable. ________________________________________________ 108
Studies have found a correlation between oil extraction and
authoritarianism in the Middle East. ______________________________ 110
Resource extraction leads to financial instability. ____________________ 111
Focus on resources is inversely correlated with education levels. ________ 112
Focus on resource extraction stops social class movement. _____________ 113
Focus on resource extraction creates an economic cycle that only causes
more harm to the environment. __________________________________ 114
The environmental consequences of resource usage harm the poor who
cannot keep up. _______________________________________________ 115
Resource extraction in Rwanda leads to a vicious cycle of poverty. ______ 116
The nature of certain pharmacological extraction methods means that
justice may not be distributive. ___________________________________ 117

Extraction Favors Capitalism and Western Domination ____ 118
While seeking resources, countries assert their domination. This is the
root cause of human right abuses. ________________________________ 118
Resource extraction is aggressive exploitation that links to capitalism. ___ 119
Ecological degradation is a result of capitalism, so extraction ultimately
just entrenches the domination of the already rich country. ____________ 120
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The global economic system robs third world countries blind when it
comes to resource extraction prioritizing resources dooms the
developing countries from the start. _______________________________ 122
Rapid extraction can cement existing power relations and can subjugate
different peoples. ______________________________________________ 124
Developing countries are threatened into resource extraction. __________ 125
Resource extraction is historically associated with violence. ____________ 126
Developing countries perceive it as a rich countries problem they want
it to be an issue of fairness. ______________________________________ 128
Resource extraction can lead to government corruption. ______________ 129
Developed countries use developing countries for cheap resources at the
cost of the environment. ________________________________________ 130
The African diamond industry has been taken over by non-state actors. __ 131
Resource extraction in Africa allows militias to commit acts of violence. __ 132
Fear of nationalization means resource extraction firms will try to stop
economic development. _________________________________________ 133
Resource extraction harms democratically elected governments. ________ 134
The resource extraction industry re-entrenches authoritarian regimes. __ 135

International Agreements are Key ______________________ 136
International agreements are key to success of environmental protections
developing countries cant solve on their own. ______________________ 136
Transparency initiatives are a good first step, but they cant solve the
corruption. ___________________________________________________ 137
Tariffs in developed countries destroy the economic benefits of resource
extraction. ___________________________________________________ 138
The nature of developing governments deters economic benefits of
resource extraction. ____________________________________________ 139

Prioritizing the Environment is Obligatory _______________ 140
Reliance on resources strips the planet because of perceived human
needs; we must acknowledge the value of nature. ____________________ 140
Protecting the environment is crucial. We dont have time to spare
because the effects may become irreversible. ________________________ 141
Businesses have a moral obligation to be ecologically sustainable. _______ 142
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By prioritizing resource extraction, we view the Earth as an instrument
for human ends in which we can abuse; this is the root cause of the
environmental crisis. ___________________________________________ 143
A focus on the developing countries helping the environment is misguided
this is a global issue. __________________________________________ 145
Poor countries cannot just wave a magic wand to create environmental
protections, they need funding. ___________________________________ 146
The amount of natural resources in developing countries has a negative
relationship with economic development. ___________________________ 147
Developing countries need to focus on the environment, advanced
countries will be fine either way. __________________________________ 148
Aquaculture waste creates a cycle that destroys biotic natural resources. _ 149
Aquaculture harms native biodiversity. ____________________________ 150

Evidence for the Negative __________________________ 152

A/T Environmental Degradation Claims ________________ 153
Studies of environmental degradation must take sociology into account. __ 153
There may not be a direct correlation between development and
environmental degradation. _______________________________________ 154
Natural gas doesnt solve the Co2 problem other countries, the market,
and methane leaks make the switch to Co2 benign. ____________________ 155
Economic growth solves environmental degradation in the developing
worldcreates incentives for more efficient use of natural resources. ____ 156
Environmental degradation poses the largest threat to developing
countries. ______________________________________________________ 157
Attempts to curb environmental destruction globally would cost
developing countries more than developed countries. __________________ 159
Addressing climate change is creating more problems than its solving. ___ 160

Extraction is Key ___________________________________ 162
Developing countries cannot secure the environment without a stable
middle class nearly impossible without securing economic growth; they
need resources first. ______________________________________________ 162
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No link between resource extraction and conflict. _____________________ 163
International monitoring can solve oil money exploitation. _____________ 164
Small-scale mining decreases the gender gap in employment. ___________ 165
Small-scale mining is the key to alleviating poverty in developing
countries. ______________________________________________________ 166
There are alternatives to dirty resource extraction that can be effective. _ 167
Studies prove that resource extraction can be environmentally friendly. __ 168
Finding and extracting resources leads to long-term economic growth
empirics prove. __________________________________________________ 169
Lack of restrictions on resource extraction is key to solve overpopulation. 170
Mineral extraction aids the GNP of developing countries. ______________ 171
The economic benefits of resource extraction outweigh environmental
concerns. _______________________________________________________ 172
Focus on resource extraction leads to increased levels of Foreign Direct
Investment (FDI). _______________________________________________ 173
Africa can fight poverty with resource extraction and still protect the
environment. ___________________________________________________ 174
Lack of resources leads to war Several countries prove. ______________ 175
Lack of resources leads to war Rwanda proves. _____________________ 176
Resource extraction has fueled the economy of developing countries for
years. __________________________________________________________ 177
Resource extraction increases transnational communication and helps
state recognize national interests.___________________________________ 178
Science helps even resource competition for developing countries. _______ 179
Research investments will stop rapid depletion of resources. U.S. case
study. __________________________________________________________ 181
In the United States, resource extraction aided economic development. ___ 182

Conflict Between Nations _____________________________ 183
Developing countries are lagging because they expected the US to care. ___ 183
Western countries believe that developing countries are the problem and
they hurt western nations they think Western intervention is key. ______ 184
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Poor countries see the West as colonialist in their environmental policies;
the West sees poorer countries as dangerous. _________________________ 185
Capitalism is good for the environment _____________________________ 186
Its unreasonable to force poor people in developing countries to adapt
environmental policies. ___________________________________________ 187
The word Developing creates a perception that creates an unfair
situation. _______________________________________________________ 188
Portraying developing nations as a homogenous, poor entity disables
developed nations to compare their decision-making calculus. __________ 189
Environmental protection is a tool of consumerism used to fuel the
global capitalist economy. _________________________________________ 191
Resource endowed countries do not run out of natural resources. ________ 193
Peru is effectively utilizing its mineral resources. _____________________ 194

The Economy is the Top Priority _______________________ 195
Developing countries only want to act when they see an economic benefit. 195
Developed countries are abandoning their environmental policies because
of the economy. _________________________________________________ 196
China isnt fixing it right now either; could be because of developed
countries backpedaling. __________________________________________ 197
Chinese emissions high now but may decrease. _______________________ 198
China will only change for economic reasons tangible reasons are key. __ 199
Brazil is also changing for economic reasons. Ball _____________________ 200
Developing countries unwilling to protect the environment without
growth. ________________________________________________________ 201
Research shows that environmental quality rises with increased income of
a country. Therefore, the economy is key in order to fight environmental
problems. ______________________________________________________ 202
A strong economy is key to promoting environmental protection. ________ 203
Environmental protection is impossible without a stable economy. _______ 204
Economic growth causes rising living standards without sacrificing the
health of the environment. ________________________________________ 205
Developing countries should focus on protection from the environment
rather than protection of the environment. __________________________ 206
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There is no resource curse if its accompanied by domestic investments.
America is a prime example. ______________________________________ 208

Protection Ignores Key Groups ________________________ 209
Environmental protections have ignored minorities. ___________________ 209
Small-scale mining has empirical benefits across cultures and nations. ___ 210
Blind environmental protection may lead to human rights abuses. _______ 211

Environmental Protection Fails _______________________ 212
The hand of the free market is increasingly recognized as a myth,
consensus is that the market cant solve environmental destruction. ______ 212
Neo-classical models of the economy have destroyed the environment,
modern standards of economic growth always crowd out issues of
ecological health. ________________________________________________ 213
Sustainable development is a myth. _________________________________ 214
Polluter-pays fails and doesnt protect the environment. Market solutions
have mixed and often unpredictable results. _________________________ 215
A focus on global environmental protection statutes wouldnt help
developing countries. _____________________________________________ 217
Creating laws to protect the environment dont work in a vacuum. They
have to be assigned on a case-by-case basis. __________________________ 219
When dealing with environmental protection, forcing countries to adhere
to policies may have negative side effects. ____________________________ 220
Western Environmental Policies hurt the people of developing countries
DDT ban proves. ________________________________________________ 221
Environmental protections are a mask they seek to limit the ability for
countries to develop. _____________________________________________ 222
Environmental legislation can be devastating if done incorrectly usually
by NGOS. ______________________________________________________ 223
End green protection now its an issue of principles for the U.S. ________ 224
Topic Analyses
Champion Briefs
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Resolved: Developing countries should prioritize environmental protection over resource
extraction when the two are in conflict.

Introduction

The 2013 January/February resolution also acts as the Tournament of Champions topic so
it entails a longer period of debate. I noticed as a competitor that longer debates mean that Aff
cases I could win with in January were different than those that I could win with in April. This
fact personally altered the types of strategies I would be inclined to run during the totality of the
Jan/Feb topic. Personally, I would save the positions that I thought were the most strategic for
the TOC, and engage on more topical debates during Jan/Feb tournaments to have a refined
understanding of the best stock arguments. My topic analysis will, thus, explore dual-
interpretations of the topic: developing countries should prioritize environmental protection over
resource extraction when the two conflict, as some interpretations will be best suited for stock
topical debate, while others may be appropriate in isolated strategic circumstances.

Basic structural features about phrases in the resolution make this topic good for debaters
who want to run unique interpretations in rounds. I never debated a topic that used the word
should, so that initially stuck out to me after a first reading of the topic. Should functions as
the evaluative term for this resolution. Evaluative terms are verbs that generate the source of
burdens for both debaters. Typically, at least in the days of my debate career, resolutions used
words or phrases like: ought, ought not, justified, unjustified, is permissible, is not permissible.
Never have I ever seen a topic use the word should; so, to be honest, I initially laughed at the
resolution thinking about the new ways debaters can spin the evaluative term should to alter
traditional affirmative and negative burdens. Minimally, debaters need to be prepared to
precisely define should to offset their opponents definition.

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On a more general note, however, the resolution seems extremely broadanother reason
why interpretative issues will remain highly important. The resolution gives us the terms,
environmental protection, and resource extraction. The vagueness of protection and
extraction means that the resolution does not have many natural topical limits. There are infinite
policies that states can justify in the name of environmental protection or resource extraction;
this resolution uniquely allows debaters to employ radically distinct ground under topical
interpretations of these terms as they seek fit. In this way, the core substance of the resolution is
itself up for debatein thinking about the topic then, debaters should feel prepared to discuss,
research, and investigate a plethora of different types of examples of protecting the environment
and extracting resources. Indeed, the vagueness of these terms should force debaters to think
about crafting uniquely strategic cases that get out of traditional pitfalls that stock debate entails
for their respective side.

Finally, the phrase when the two conflict confuses me for multiple reasons, and Im sure
will provide for non-clashing debates. The resolution employs two conceivable plural subjects,
first a plural subject developing countries and a double comparison between environmental
protection and resource extraction. As such, the pronoun two at the end of the resolution, in
the phrase when the two conflict becomes unclearwhat exactly is the conflict of the
resolution? Is the conflict between two developing countries, or is it a general conflict between
environment and economy? There are multiple different types of cases that different
interpretations of the phrase when the two conflict can bring about. As such, debaters must
take the time to carefully choose interpretations of the NFLs 2013 Jan/Feb resolution.

Key Terms

Developing Countries: This term will be the source of many T and kritikal positions. Negs will
run topicality based upon what particular conception of developing countries the Aff chooses to
defend in round. There are multiple interpretations of developing countries. On the one hand,
developing countries are states that are developing, so the resolution may be a question about the
obligations of all states in the world. In topic literature however, the term of art developing
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countries seems to be exclusive of developed countries, in which the modifier developing
carries the connotation of that the country is less-developed. Under such an interpretation, the
Aff would defend the resolution as a question only about third world nations. In this sense,
topicality can inevitably be run on which of the two interpretations of developing countries the
Aff chooses to defend. More importantly, the latter interpretation of developing countries,
which paints these countries as having lesser or worse off living standards than first world
countries, seems to open up good kritikal and possibly even pre-fiat ground for negatives to
criticize affirmatives discourse. To compensate, many Affs will specify a group of countries
internationally recognized as and considered to be developing. Specification of particular
developing countries will be very common for the duration of the topic so debaters should feel
the need to explore countries they are interested in and think about unique cases for those
countries. The most substantively engaging positions will be ones that are the most in-depth and
use great empirical evidence.

My favorite thing about the new resolution is the use of a new evaluative term, should.
This topic forces debaters to come up with new round-applicable interpretations of the word
should. Should implies there is reason that motivates action. The substance of the reason that
motivates action is not a specified condition of the word should. In this sense, should differs
from words like ought, because ought seems to imply a moral obligation so fuels the normativity
of morality in debate rounds. Should does not seem to imply morality. This leaves the gaping
question, what type of reason is sufficient to argue for the prioritization of environmental
protection over resource extraction? Because of this, I think this topic uniquely encourages
debaters to investigate different political theories that motivate state action. Arguments about the
cosmopolitan, realist, or moral nature of the state should be clarified or defended in frameworks
of affirmative cases, otherwise I think debates may lack clash. Additionally, I think both sides
can make new types of permissibility arguments regarding the nature of should, and, as such,
new clash over permissibility will exist on this topic. Debaters should challenge themselves to
think of warrants for permissibility for each side based off the word should, and be prepared to
defend against converse interpretations.
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On a different note, should seems to imply a very straight forward efficacy-based
interpretation of the resolution, so should can be argued to wholly justify a comparative worlds
util-based policy approach to adjudicating rounds. I suspect this will motivate a great majority of
debaters to run plans.

Prioritize is one of the more straight-forward terms in the resolution as it seems to imply the aff
must show environmental protection should come before issues of resource extraction when the
two conflict. But, debaters can always find a way to problematize even the seemingly most
innocuous word like prioritize. Affirmatives must be careful to watch for negative debaters who
try to argue the resolution is false based upon a nuance in the meaning of the word prioritize.

Environmental Protection is officially defined by the Organisation for Economic co-Operation
and Development:

Environmental protection refers to any activity to maintain or restore the quality of
environmental media through preventing the emission of pollutants or reducing the presence of
polluting substances in environmental media. It may consist of: (a) changes in characteristics of
goods and services, (b) changes in consumption patterns, (c) changes in production techniques,
(d) treatment or disposal of residuals in separate environmental protection facilities, (e)
recycling, and (f) prevention of degradation of the landscape and ecosystems.
1

The vast number of actions that qualify as Environmental Protection means the
affirmative likely has a lot of ground to cover and should pick a policy that appeals to them.
Alternatively, the resolution may be interpreted as a more general question, in which the
principle of protecting the environment is the source of affirmative ground. In such a case,
specification would be unnecessary as the resolution would be a more abstract question.

1
https:stats.oecu.oigglossaiyuetail.asp.IB=8S6. Befinition of "Enviionmental
Piotection". ulossaiy of Enviionment Statistics, Stuuies in Nethous, Seiies F, No. 67, 0niteu
Nations, New Yoik, 1997.
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On a different level, environmental protection is vague, which leads me to ask myself a
few questions. Does the Aff assume solvency for environmental protection? Can the Neg win
by proving that environmental protection is impossible? Conversely, does the Aff win merely by
proving they help the environment? Although some will probably try to argue such positions are
sufficient, logically, I think they are not due to the word over.

Over implies the Aff has the burden to prove environmental protection must specifically
be prioritized above resource extraction. As such, does this mean the Aff must not only prove
that they can protect the environment and that protecting the environment is good, but also that
resource extraction is bad? This seems to imply a rather large burden of proof for affirmatives,
something strategic negative debaters should strive to exploit.

Resource extraction is convoluted because there are questions of what counts as a
resource, who is extracting the resources in the resolution, and if such resource extraction is the
cause to environmental degradation claims that Affs will be making. I think that negatives
should invest in specific examples, or counter plans, that defend a specific resource extraction.
The ambiguity over resource extraction means that the Neg will likely be able to choose from
multiple types of counter plans, ranging from actor CPs, advantage CPs, PICs, to normal CPs
arguing for a specified implementation of resource extraction against environmental protection
policies. Potential problems for specification arise out of concerns that the Negs counterplan
need be specific to the environmental problem that the Aff specifies; debaters must be prepared
to theoretically defend the interpretation they deem best.

When the two conflict, is a phrase that the framers of the resolution use to purposefully instill
clash in rounds between the principles of environmental protection and resource extraction. The
problem however, is this might give the Aff a burden to prove that there exists a specific conflict
between environmental protection and resource extraction. In other words, can the negative win
by proving resource extraction and environmental protection do not conflict? In my mind, the
framers include the phrase when the two conflict to prohibit negatives from winning rounds in
this way. Notice, this has larger strategic implications for negative counterplans since
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affirmatives can argue that the phrase when the two conflict refers to counterplans that solve
for environmental protection harms being unfair. Minimally, I think the phrase when the two
conflict has the potential for breeding frivolous apriori and T debates based upon the words
two and conflict.

Concerns

A) Debatable Interpretations of the phrase: developing countries should prioritize environmental
protection over resource extraction when the two conflict. Thinking about putting together the
key terms to form a single coherent interpretation of the resolution is daunting, but reasonable,
debatable interpretations of this resolution will resemble:

1. Benefits of environmental protection outweigh those of resource extraction when the two
conflict, so affirm.
2. Two developing countries are conflicting over a specific environment-resource issue, and
environment should come first.
3. As a global community, all developing countries have obligations to prioritize environmental
protection.

This third interpretation gives rise to positions about environmental obligations, what will
function as the source of vast Affirmative topic literature. Indeed, arguments about the existence
of moral obligations against resource extraction will make up a great basis of affirmative
philosophical ground. Negatives will strive to provide reasoning why resource extraction is
normatively good for the state. As such, the clash of the substantive debate is very predictable.

B) Good Empirics. Debaters will want to defend empirical scenarios that they find interesting.
Boring, antiquated policy DAs about environmental disasters in the nineties will be accounted
for on this topic. As such, debaters will need to cut new empirics about environmental disasters,
extinction, and diseases. Much like with the Nuclear Weapons topic, when debate about nuclear
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extinction became more contested, typical extinction scenarios were prepared for, so new
environmental extinction scenarios ought to be justified with empirics from the status quo.

C) Negatives and T. This resolution will have tons of Topicality issues. The Neg will most
likely be able to garner violations from any term in the resolution which presents a challenge to
Aff debaters. Aff debaters should think about embedding their own affirmative cases with
offensive theory. Negatives could possibly violate the offensive theory that Affs lay out in the
constructive structurally offsetting Negative advantages on the T debate. Offensive theory for
the Aff can speak to anything from specifying which types of Neg counterplans are unfair to
limiting the type of ground resource extraction that the Neg can access. Having embedded theory
in the constructive will allow debaters to combat negatives reading a lot of theory in the 1NC by
garnering new offensive theory violations in the 1AR.

Affirmative Positions

Beyond interpretational issues remains the substance of the topical debate: whether
developing countries should choose to protect their environment rather than extract resources.

Util AC. The most stock approach to this resolution on the Aff will be arguments that
trace the route of all bad impacts back to environmental degradation in an effort to argue
environmental protection must be prioritized over resource extraction. For these affirmatives to
be topical however, this Aff case will need to speak to a few justificatory steps. First, any
affirmative case that wants to win off of environmental destruction being bad must win
inherency evidence and reasoning why there is a current crisis in the status quo that can be
solved. Second, for this scenario to be topical, the Aff must show that a source of environmental
degradation conflicts with resource extraction. The big question for the Aff is whether the Aff
has to prove resource extraction always upsets the environment or just sometimes. Util
affirmatives would be more strategic if they defined a particular form of environmental
protection that is uniquely beneficial. This will allow the Aff to wield highly specific evidence
about an environmental disaster resulting directly from resource extraction to strategically
prevent the Neg from garnering benefits from resource extraction.
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As the topic expands, there will be a myriad of different util plans that affirmatives run.
Affirmative debaters should stay open-minded about the plan they run and should feel free to
explore different types of positions. This topic lends itself to very interesting ground and has
few limits so debaters should feel comfortable pushing their research limits to try to find a
position no one on the circuit has heard. At the TOC, some of the best cases are plans that are
new positions that other people have not heard before so are ill-prepared for. This means one
thought debaters should have in their head when researching for the plan-util debate is how
predictable their plan is, and if there are ways to make the plan more strategic.

On the contention level, Aff cases should focus on rigorous impact scenarios explaining
that environmental degradation may reach the point of no return so there exists a status-quo
obligation to deprioritize resource extraction. Evidence that speaks to this question will
definitely make these cases more strategic. Debaters running this case need to be prepared to
compare impacts of environmental degradation to the multi-billion dollar benefits derived from
resource extraction. Comparison may come in the form of weighing impacts but alternatively,
and more strategically, ought to come from an interpretation of what impacts are most important
under util, IE what truly makes us most happy. Such a framework move can help affirmatives
when wading between arguments in the 1AR.

Deontology AC. This affirmative position will argue the principle of preserving the
environment for people to be treated as ends in themselves deontologically justifies developing
states prioritizing environmental protection over resource extraction. This AC will most likely
have Kantian based framework, but could also be combined with cosmopolitan-esque arguments
to justify unique obligations between preserving land and humanitys unconditional end status.
The framework for this case must begin with an interpretation of what type of reason is sufficient
to justify why developing countries should do something. Practical reason surely could be used
as a meta-ethical warrant for why the standard must be deontological. The Aff would then need
to provide links between deontology and practical reason. From there, this Aff could argue that
the state has unique obligations as a political actor, and that global obligations create particular
cosmopolitan duties. These arguments are not necessary for this framework to function, but
could add critical strategic value in preempting likely Neg self-interest frameworks.
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Once the Aff justifies a deontological standard, there exists a plethora of substantive
contention level arguments that the Aff can explore as to why environmental protection ought to
be prioritized above resource degradation. Affs can argue that the environment is the source in
which humanitys existence lies, so is the ground for people to actualize practical reason. This
would likely provide moral obligations for the government to protect the environment as a basis
for its constituents ability to reason and be valued as ends. An alternative form of offense to a
deontology standard on this topic can be found through deontic criticism of self-interest, and
resulting prohibition of resource extraction.

International Contracts AC. A third type of affirmative position will be an AC about
international contracts that developing countries agree to speaking in favor of prioritizing
environmental protection over resource extraction. UN agreements as well as multiple
International Environmental Agreements (IEA) would be the source of sufficient Aff ground.
Interestingly though, this Aff need not take the framework of a typical legal-contract affirmative.

There are two main routes of constructing a strategic contract-affirmative on this topic.
Both lend themselves to different types of debate as one will embrace a legal (or possibly
skeptical) form of obligation, and the other will most likely be utilitarian and resemble a plan-
like Aff. Both have unique strategic upshots. The legal contracts standard will trace reasons
why developing countries have legal obligation to follow contractual agreements. These
arguments can be derived from the nature of states identity as legal actors, or morally from the
nature of following promises and agreements. This Aff can justify a framework of following
international contracts by simply adopting a standard of following international contracts. This
standard can appeal to states having the utmost obligation to follow international contracts from
multiple normative perspectives beyond legal issues. For example, the affirmative can push the
terrible political impacts that states experience from not following international contracts. A
standard justifying international law from a utilitarian or ends-based perspective can allow this
AC to be run in plan-like fashion.

The contention level consists of reading a few international contracts that developing
countries agree to which speak in favor of prioritizing policies of environmental protection. A
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more strategic contention level argument in my eyes would explore the specific agreements that
developing countries have in the status quo and why those international agreements are
necessary to procure long-term prosperity in the region. Lots of topic literature about developing
countries speaks to the multilateral conditions imposed on countries from environmental
degradation. Harms from the environment transcend boundaries, so if the cause of
environmental damage is in one country, it may affect others around it. This provides countries
with reasons to adopt agreements through international contracts with other countries to
prioritize the protection of the environment. For this reason, international contract ACs are
extremely topical and interestingly substantive on this resolution.


Realism NC. The most obvious negative position is a realism Neg. The Neg justifies a
standard of self-interest to logically argue that developing countries should prioritize resource
extraction. This Neg would be strategic because it could probably be very short, and would
likely clash with the Affs standard very well.

Realism Negs can be framed as amoral, so would allow negatives to possibly employ
skepticism against Aff standards. Beyond that, however, realism will likely conflict with most
affirmatives that describe universal or external obligations on states to prioritize the
environment. Realism explains that states act in self-interest so are not concerned with global
problems.

Contention level arguments will be related to the nature of the resolution. Simply,
resource extraction benefits self-interest more than environmental protection. The Neg can
explain that the principles of resource extraction align strongly with those of realism, so states
should not prioritize environmental protection. Realism argues that states should be allowed to
do whatever they want in their borders, and so strongly justifies developing countries extracting
resources within their sovereign boundaries. But, negatives may also want to have impact
scenarios that demonstrate the benefits to self-interest from empirical resource extraction
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scenarios to combat affirmative arguments of environmental harm. Note that to prevent a normal
util debate, this realism NC ought to be constructed in a more philosophical lens.

Resource Extraction CP. A different negative approach to the resolution will be a type
of counter plan that specifies a scenario of resource extraction that is justified in a policy-making
context. The way this NC becomes strategic is not necessarily based in its end-based impacts, but
rather on advantage-solving structure. Thus, the most strategic counterplan on this topic is one
that extracts natural resources to solve environmental problems, and then additionally accrues
other benefits. There are overall strategic questions of whether the Neg is burdened to show that
the CP has additional advantage beyond environmental solution. Can the Neg win by merely
proving that resource extraction is necessary for and solves environmental protection? I think
negatives certainly may want to make this claim.

Kritique of Developing Countries. Another strategic negative position that will most
likely garner strong violations every round is a criticism of the affirmatives focus on developing
countries. When affirming, debaters are tied to the rhetoric of the resolution. The term
Developing Countries historically attaches itself to the recognition of an inferior class of people
so has colonially oppressive and racist content latent within it. As such, negative debaters will
likely be able to garner criticism related to the dehumanizing discursive effect of labeling people
and countries as developing.

This K is strategic in a few different ways, starting from the standard it should function
under. The standard of the K could be a standard for judging appropriate discourse. The Neg
would begin by explaining the normative importance of discourse. Then, they would derive a
specific framework for analyzing discourse as appropriate or not. This framework would explain
why the rhetoric that the Aff embraces is discursively oppressive and harmful, so ought to be
voted down. In this way, the K would inherently function pre-fiat, so before the post-fiat
arguments of the affirmative. Thus, on a structural level, a Neg K run on the Aff about their
harmful discourse would allow the Neg to strategically function on a level higher than the AC.

Good luck in the coming months!
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About Michael Fried

Michael Fried attended and competed for University School of Nova Southeastern
University and graduated in May, 2012. He competed in LD Debate throughout his entire four
years of high school. He qualified to the Tournament of Champions three times, reaching
Semifinals as a Junior and Octos as a Senior. He won Apple Valley, the Crestian Classic, the
Florida State Championship (twice), the Dowling Invitational, and The Dowling and Harvard
Round Robins. In addition, he was a finalist at the Greenhill Invitational and reached late
outrounds at the Glenbrooks, Emory, Blake, Valley, Harvard, and the Bronx Invitational. In total
he amassed 14 TOC bids. This past year, he coached the 5th ever Freshman to qualify to the
Tournament of Champions and a student to the Finals of the Emory Tournament. Michael is
currently a sophomore at UC Berkeley.

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Introduction

The 2014 Jan/Feb topic is exciting to me not only because of its content, but also due to
the way its worded. It would be hard to say that the NFL has always worded its topics in the
most efficacious manner, but this topic is an example of a comparative topic done well. The
resolutions use of should reduces the viability of what are essentially frameworks for
individual moral guidance being applied to state action. In cases where debaters do successfully
establish such a framework as being applicable to states (i.e. Kantianism), they cannot simply
hide behind the definition of ought as a moral obligation instead, they have to explain why
individualistic moral concerns are applicable to state action in the international arena.
Additionally, the concluding phrase of when the two are in conflict goes a long way towards
clarifying the issue of what exactly it means to prioritize one policy concern over another when
theyre not in conflict. In the vein of my usual topic analyses, Ill first discuss various
interpretational issues on the resolution that I think will be prevalently debated. Then, Ill make a
few suggestions for possible affirmative and negative positions. As always, Id like to remind
everyone that this topic analysis is meant to get you thinking strategically about the topic, and
you should certainly not take anything said here as law.

Interpretational Issues

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Should as an evaluative term. One of the most immediately recognizable differences
between this topic and the sort that were used to is a change in the evaluative term.
Understandably, this variation may perturb some of you. After all, ought seems rather more
normative than should the commonly espoused definition of ought in debate is that it
indicates a moral obligation, and the first definition of should in the dictionary is almost
identical, meaning indicative of an obligation/duty/correctness. Its my opinion that this change
is not nearly as severe or as damning as it may initially appear. First of all, while its true that
should textually opens the debate up to supposedly non-moral obligations, its hard to imagine
a framework of obligations that is not rooted in morality at some level. Even claims about
contractual or legal obligations are still ultimately reducible to moral claims at some level, given
that theyre attempting to answer the question of what the best course of action for an agent is.
Secondly, the nature of the topic is such that the vast majority of frameworks are going to be
utilitarian anyway, and use of should instead of ought in no way decreases the legitimacy of
those frameworks.

I do, however, think that there is potential for developing a relatively strong distinction
between ought and should in a way thats advantageous for the framework debate. One
problem that debaters run into a lot on policymaking topics like this one is moral frameworks
that are usually based in guiding the actions of individuals (see: Kantianism). While a good
utilitarian framework should already be making arguments that, when extended, would take out
the assumptions of a deontological position, it can still sometimes be difficult to spell out the full
set of distinctions between the textual justifications for either framework. Here, I think that the
distinction between ought and should can be spun into one regarding the foundational
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justifications for a framework, which can then be used to exclude frameworks of a variety other
than your own. The difference Im arguing for is this: ought claims are rooted in the truth of
some moral statement, which has to do with what constitutes the good. Should claims,
however, are grounded in an agents procedural duties or obligations. An example should clarify
things: imagine that the United States is party to some international treaty which says that the
signatory countries will not engage in horizontal fracking, a very controversial method of oil and
natural gas extraction. Even if the opposing debater demonstrates that utilitarianism is true and
that horizontal fracking is a utilitarian good, under this linguistic interpretation, we could still
clearly say that the US should not engage in the practice. What are the justifications for this sort
of interpretation? The first is the departure from community norms. It may be tempting to look at
the dictionary definitions of either term and conclude that theyre roughly the same, and
denotatively speaking thats entirely true. However, there seems to be a clear argument to be
made that a departure from communal norms must be intentional, and that dogmatically
grounding questions of policy in moral terms, even in the face of a different evaluative phrase, is
problematic. The second justification, and one that speaks to the content of the distinction Im
talking about, is grounded in the denotations of either word. When comparing the set of all
possible agential obligations to the set of all possible agential moral obligations, it seems clear
that the subset indicated by ought represents a distinctly stronger claim. After all, its easy to
imagine that an agent could have conflicting obligations stemming from a number of different
foundations. If ought is used to indicate the highest-priority obligation an agent has, it seems
reasonable to say that should indicates obligations of a lower echelon. Again, the distinction
Im drawing here is not a purely textual one it makes reference to communal norms and to
debate in general. There are also, I think, a number of other possible justifications for this
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distinction, not to mention a number of other possible distinctions that could be drawn. And as I
said at the beginning of this section, its entirely possible to simply substitute ought in the place
of should and continue as usual, though that does not mean that such debaters shouldnt be
ready for people to challenge them on this interpretational issue.

Developing vs. non-developing countries. There is not a universally agreed upon
definition of what exactly constitutes a developing (or less-developed) country, but there are
abstract guidelines that have been drawn out into something resembling a communal standard.
Essentially, a developing country is one with a lower standard of living, a less highly-developed
industrial base, and a lower ranking on the Human Development Index, which makes reference
to life-expectancy, education, literacy, and income indices. I imagine that there may be some
disputes over this term at the margin of the topic, i.e. if a debater is trying to specify a country
that could more credibly be classified as newly industrialized. However, the meat of the utility
of this word in the topic is going to come from being deployed against affirmative cases that
dont specify an agent. Now, at first glance, this may not seem to be too grave of a sin after all,
if environmental protection should be prioritized over resource extraction in general, then surely
that would ring true for both developed and developing countries. The problem is that the vast
majority of these positions are going to have utilitarian frameworks, which makes them
incredibly vulnerable to link-turns that are also not agent-specific. An example: an affirmative
reads a utilitarian framework, and offense that explains how certain kinds of resource extraction
pollute the environment and make long-term residence there impossible. This is a fine argument
so long as the affirmative is nuancing the utilitarian framework in terms of a developing country,
or of developing countries in general. However, if the aff isnt doing that, then it becomes
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astonishingly easy for the negative to read arguments about, for instance, the importance of
resource extraction in developing countries for certain multinational corporations, followed by an
explanation of how those corporations longevity is key to the US economy. If these arguments
are true, and especially if the negative is reading some nuclear war or economic collapse impact
(they are), then a general utilitarian framework would clearly indicate a negative ballot. The
solution is to add nuance to the framework, specifying that a state should act in its own utilitarian
interests rather than engaging in a worldwide aggregation of impacts.


The first affirmative position I want to suggest is what I consider to be the most viable
utilitarian position. To clarify: this position functions regardless of the nature of the utilitarian
framework. Even if its true that we should simply aggregate utilitarian goods across individuals
(which is to say that the framework is not specific to an individual country), this argument still
seems to clearly outweigh. The first premise of the argument is a clarification of how
utilitarianism functions relative to concerns of foreign policy. While it may be difficult to
aggregate utilitarian goods in a concrete, calculated manner, it seems clear that devastating
impacts like global warming or extinction are of some concern to state actors. There are a
number of possible justifications for why these sorts of existential risks are the most important,
but I think the one Ive suggested here is a good starting point.

The gist of the argument is that environmental risks in developing countries hold a
utilitarian weight that is undeniable to the rest of the world. Even if its true that resource
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extraction in developing countries is important for U.S./Western multinational corporations,
environmental destruction at certain points on the Earth are so devastating that they are of
concern to the global community at large. There are a couple of warrants for this claim. The first
is that, due to the nature of environmental regulation (or lack thereof) in developing countries,
those countries are necessarily predisposed to becoming environmental hotspots. Especially in
places where governmental structures are minimal and mineral rights are either auctioned off to
the highest bidder or are simply non-existent, there is a severely inflated chance of especially
severe environmental impacts. The second reason is that the severity of environmental damage
increases exponentially as time goes on. Given some environmental impact, i.e. global warming,
there is clearly a brink of some sort. With that in mind, compounding series of natural resource
extractions necessarily advances us closer to that brink, assuming that the link evidence is good.
As such, the fact that there is little regulation and an incentive for environmental exploitation
does not just indicate that developing countries are likely to be areas of environmental concerns,
it also means that those are the places where a devastating environmental catastrophe is likely to
occur.

The thing to stress about this position, and something that I think is going to emerge as a
theme in good affirmative positions on this topic, is that its dependent on the cyclical nature of
its impacts. As developing nations are exploited further and further, the environmental
degradation and reduction in standard of living that its inhabitants experience necessarily keeps
that country from moving past the developing stage. This lack of forward progress just makes
those countries an even more attractive target for exploitation, since it leads to a collective global
feeling of those countries being worth writing off.
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This notion allows us to create a second affirmative position. Utilizing the prioritization
of environmental protection in order to functionally stifle neo-colonial interests in developing
countries is a strong way to win an affirmative ballot. While its true that this position doesnt
find value in environmental protection per se, it uses the guidelines of environmental protection
as a justification for minimizing the exploitation of a countrys resources and inhabitants. There
are a number of potential frameworks under which this position would function. The first is the
more nuanced understanding of utilitarianism that I specified above, which explains that what a
nation should do is contextually determined by an amalgamation of its own interests. Second,
and in my opinion more strategically, the affirmative could develop a framework structured
around the promotion of justifiable international norms and/or promoting the flourishing global
community. The criticism of the first-world/third-world dichotomy inherent in this sort of
framework could come from a number of places, e.g. a discussion of the problems of global
capitalism, the way in which neo-colonial ideas of spreading norms like democracy promotion
destroy local cultures, etc. The point is that, for a debater making this argument, there needs to
be at least one well-developed justification for the problematic nature of the global trend of
collectively exploited less well-off countries.

Negative Positions

The negative ground on this topic is not nearly as exciting as its affirmative counterpart,
but that seems fitting given the negative-skewed nature of most debate topics (and rounds).
There are, I think, a couple of potentially defensible arguments to be made on the negative. I
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distinguish these from arguments that I dont find particularly defensible, i.e. arguments that
claim that the system of neo-colonialism inherent in the resolutional conflict is in fact good for
developing countries. While Im sure that these sorts of arguments will be made, and there could
conceivably be well-justified forms of them, it just seems overwhelmingly true that such a
system is necessarily exploitative of at least a segment of the worlds population.

With this in mind, I think that the majority of logically defensible arguments have to do
with the global political and economic implications of the worlds developing countries no
longer allowing resource extraction within their borders. It is certainly true that the state of the
US economy has relevance to the state of the global economy, and it seems reasonable to say that
resource extraction companies form a significant conglomerate of the US economy. More than
that, while it is true that the US gets much of its oil from domestic sources, it seems nave to
suggest that the complete elimination of oil and natural gas flowing in from other countries (most
of which could arguably be classified as developing) would not have a significant effect on the
US economy.

About Brian Hodge

Brian Hodge attended and competed for Cypress Falls High School and graduated in June
2012. He competed in Lincoln Douglas debate for 4 years, achieving success on both the
regional and national levels. He qualified for the TFA State Tournament four times, and reached
elimination rounds his junior and senior years. In addition, he received bids to the Tournament of
Champions his sophomore and junior years, fully qualifying his senior year with a total of five
career bids. He was the champion of the Houston Memorial tournament, a finalist at the St.
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Mark's Invitational, and a quarterfinalist at the Berkeley Invitational. He is currently a
sophomore at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is studying Mechanical Engineering.

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Introduction

Before breaking down this topic, it is important to note the type of question that the
resolution is asking. This topic, like the previous Lincoln-Douglas topic, discusses a comparative
issue. That fact should not be forgotten, so Ill say it again. This topic discusses a comparative
issue. Instead of just the merits of environmental protection, you should be discussing
environmental protection ONLY when it comes into conflict with resource extraction. That
means that protecting the environment in general doesnt matter, nor does resource extraction.
ONLY when the two come into conflict does the topic exist. Im only emphasizing this very
simple idea because the last topic exhibited major problems with understanding comparative
topics as indeed comparative. Debaters seemed to frequently forget that were only discussing
the two different topics when theyre in conflict, which in fact makes debate possible. So this
topic evaluates situations when environmental protection prevents resource extraction or when
resource extraction damages the environment. This is extremely important on this topic because
a lot of the relevant literature is about ways that the two can avoid being in conflict or at least
minimize the situations where economic development and resource extraction are in conflict.
This area of analysis is probably the most interesting (at least for me) but it doesnt seem topical
because of the comparative nature of the topic.

Definitions/Basics

Developing countries is certainly a term of art, and a dangerous one at that. Some
organizations such as the World Bank define a developing country as a country with a Gross
National Income per capita below $11,905. That cutoff, as of 2013, includes 150
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countries/territories under the definition; including China, Brazil, and Mexico.
1
This clear line
between developing and developed nations is certainly arbitrary, but allows us to distinguish
between types of countries. The source of the list seems to generate a different set of countries,
but at least developing countries creates a brightline. For reference, the US has a Gross
National Income per capita of near US $50,000. I say that developing countries is a dangerous
term because there are plenty of authors out there who would criticize the term developing
countries as a way to describe a country since it implies that those countries have not yet
reached the ideal of a country and instead are merely on their way to meeting western standards.
This argument is charged by the fact that the majority of countries would be classified as
developing. If this is something that interests you, a bit of research will open up a lot of
arguments for you.

Should prioritize is a term I spoke about earlier; it is similar to the ought to value
above that you may have experienced before and indicates a preference of one option over the
other, not a blanket refusal to do one option. Should does not mean is so you can draw a
source of normativity from defining should.

When the two are in conflict is the term that I spoke of in the introduction. There is an
interesting relationship between the term should prioritize and when the two are in conflict
as it requires both sides to directly relate environmental protection and resource extraction in a
debate that can only be won through direct weighing. This also seems to be an area where a good
topicality interpretation could get you pretty far.

This coupling also becomes interesting since it is unclear if it requires short term or long
term in conflict. For example, one could argue that countries ought to prioritize resource
extraction because we might find a new resource that solves all of our environmental problems.
In the short term, this would be prioritizing resource extraction but in the long term it would be
acting for environmental protection because the whole purpose of the resource extraction was for
environmental protection.

1
http://www.isi-web.org/component/content/article/5-root/root/577-developing2012
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The actor in the resolution is clearly developing countries which means that any other
countrys preferences are non-topical. While we, in the United States, might think the
environment is the most important thing, other countries dont put the same emphasis as we do.


The easiest and most obvious affirmative argument would be a utilitarian one that asserts
that environmental protection must always be the top priority because global warming (or some
other environmental impact) will kill us. There are obvious and common impacts of global
warming indicating that in a certain number of years (depending on which card you have) the
Earth will no longer be compatible with human life. For strength of argumentation, you could
include reasons why prioritizing environmental protection above resource extraction would
actually decrease the probability of global warming destroying us all. Attempting environmental
protection and prioritizing it has a higher probability of preventing climate change than pushing
the environment to the side. If someone found great cards saying that attempting environmental
protection hurts the environment, s/he could win some good debates. However, the
environmentalism movement is not old enough for a significant amount of research to be
available so this might be tough to work with.

This approach relies on looking at utility maximization in the short term rather the long
term, and your utilitarian ethic should specify that, or at least weigh why your preferred
timeframe is actually preferable. There are good economic arguments from the perspective of
developing nations saying that resource extraction would better maximize the utility of the
citizens even if the pollution would increase (this will be described later).

Other affirmative arguments that could lean more left include those that would argue that
developing nations need to have a better relationship with nature for some hippy reason. I think a
lot of creativity will be good on this topic since theres a lot of good neg ground and less
literature for the affirmative. There are probably countless silly plans, but those are obviously
silly. As usual, international law might go one way or the other on this topic so those contracts
could be compared. So go forth and read!
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Negative Positions

There are a fair number of interesting negative arguments on the topic. Its unclear
exactly where negative ground is but it seems that if the affirmative has to show a prioritization
then the negative could just show weak prioritization in the other direction. So the Neg could
show that both should be valued equally or that resource extraction should be preferred to
environmental protection. Ill leave you to develop your own topic permissibility and
presumption arguments that would allow you to win the ballot with this method.

There are a few economically-focused arguments that would work easily for the negative.
The first is that environmental protection and all of the benefits that come along with it are often
described as luxury goods. We in developed nations can only care about protecting the
environment because we can afford to care about it. Some countries have countless people
struggling to feed themselves while we care about having cleaner air so we can better observe the
stars. With the degree of developed infrastructure in the United States, we have the ability to
prioritize the quality of the environment. This is empirically confirmed as well; many studies
have found that people in less developed nations value the environment less. Personally, I
think this might be culture based since some cultures will place a premium on the environment
because of their histories, while others might be less connected to the environment.

There are some counter-arguments to this position. For instance, after a certain level of
development has been achieved because of resource extraction, countries can then afford to care
about the environment. In his commentary The environment as a luxury good or too poor to be
green, J. Martnez-Alier writes that:

If in the rich countries one perceives increasing environmental awareness, this might be because wealth goes together with increasing deple-ion of resources and pollution of the
environment (a situation I attempt to capture with the phrase "the effluents of affluence"). However, mainstream environmental and
resource economics (in the Barnett and Morse, and Krutilla tradition), together with other technological optimists such as Hirsch, and recent
researchers on weak sustainability (such as Pearce and Atkinson) would believe it is easy to decrease pollution and to
substitute for natural resources; they believe that increasing wealth is good for the
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environment in the sense that it allows correction of the negative environmental impacts of
commodity production. Then we are led towards a postmaterialist explanation of the environmentalism of the rich.
2

Its unclear whose ground this would fall under because prioritizing resource extraction
with the goal of environmental protection could be considered prioritizing environmental
protection. Since the resolution is phrased with developing countries as the actor, you can
argue that countries should prefer resource extraction until they stop being developing countries,
after which they can care about environmental protection, which would mutually exclusive with
any affirmative. Uou could potentially get away with a position arguing that environmentalism is
a luxury good and that nations should attempt to develop as much as possible then care about the
environment.

Such a position would require some reason that negating allowed countries to develop
more. This is easy to find in economic papers. Many authors argue two parts of the argument
(and answer it-so cut those cards for when youre affirming). The two parts of the argument are
(a) resource extraction is economically good for developing countries and (b) environmental
protection hurts countries economically. For (a) you can find many different types of arguments,
one class of these is that the only economic edge that developing countries have is their
resources; if they can sell those resources to more wealthy nations which can in turn use those
resources to make things like cell phones and other luxury goods, then both countries benefit and
the developing country makes more money. This would then be supported by arguments that this
economic stimulation would lead to further development of a country. For (b), I again suggest
you go out and read some economics articles. One such argument you might find is that
prioritizing environmental protection prevents domestic companies from competing from
international companies. Walter and Ugelo in Environmental Policies in Developing Countries
in Ambio discuss one such argument (and provide many answers in the following paragraphs):

Fundamentally lower environmental preferences on the demand side, combined with greater or unused
assimilative capacity in the developing countries should confer certain economic advantages on them.
First, pollution control expenditures (to the extent that they are not subsidized by

2
http://is.muni.cz/el/1423/jaro2013/HEN581/um/Martinez-Alier_Ecological_economics.pdf
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governments) tend to be passed forward to product prices or backward to returns
on productive factors, thus making pollution-intensive productions less profitable
and less attractive in the marketplace. By having fewer pollution-control costs to
pass along, suppliers of internationally traded products in developing countries
should be able to achieve a competitive advantage over their industrial-country
rivals in certain product lines. New pollutive investment projects in the advanced
countries that are blocked or delayed for environmental reasons suggest themselves
for establishment in the developing countries. Both would tend to shift the
international allocation of production from developed to developing countries, and
from high-pollution to low-pollution areas, having the dual effect of promoting
industrial development in the poor countries and using more efficiently available
global environmental resources.
3

Positions arguing that economic development is good have a very clear response: reasons
economic development is bad. There are plenty of arguments here, from basic link and impact
turns about the harms of economic development to more critical arguments about the dangers of
economic development. If you have access to your teams policy backfiles, you might look fo a
DeDev argument to support this idea.

From another perspective, one could examine arguments about environmental
colonialism. These come in many forms but all seem to criticize our western notion of
environmentalism. It is tough to prove that our western mentality about environmentalism is the
right way to handle it for other countries because of the economic viability that is absent in
these countries. Were forcing our western norms on less developed nations, which is easy to
argue as being unfair. This seems to also address the is/ought fallacy arguments since it criticizes
the making of the resolution into an ought statement rather than merely describing the
preferences of people in different parts of the world. I wont go into this in depth, but I think it
could be an easy argument to make.

3
http://www.jstor.org/stable/4312437
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Also an interesting argument (probably not topical but will still be commonly used)
pertains to Payments for Environmental Services (PES). These are basically rich developed
nations paying less developed nations to be more environmentally friendly. Economically this
makes sense and solves the luxury good problem because rich countries are basically buying
their desired good of a clean environment from other countries. Some studies differ on if PES
works, but its certainly interesting to examine. It may be hard to make PES topical as the
developed nations giving the money are not the actor of the resolution. Also PES reduces the
number of times that resource extraction and environmental protection would come into conflict,
so probably not topical for another reason. In your research you will certainly encounter authors
discussing this.

Conclusion

In summary, I think that this topic could be very interesting, though it is unlikely that
debaters will get into the really interesting economic arguments within the resolution. This
makes me a bit sad. I think it will be hard to affirm on this topic, but the one common affirmative
argument that I look into is probably fairly strong if you can prove util good. This topic can teach
debaters a lot about a very important and controversial issue so I implore you to do the research
and run some out-of-the-box arguments.

Good luck!

About Paige MacKenzie

Paige MacKenzie attended and competed at the College Preparatory School in California.
She competed in Lincoln-Douglas throughout her four year career. She competed at the
Tournament of Champions in her Junior and Senior years and reached the Semifinals of the
NDCA Championship in her Senior year. She was also a quarterfinalist at the Glenbrooks and St.
Marks tournaments and reached eliminations rounds in almost all tournaments that she attended.
She received top 15 speaker awards at NDCA (2nd), Stanford, the Barkley Forum, Glenbrooks,
!"#$% '()*+,$, -+ .)$/0 1)%20(3$0 4)(560- 789:

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. :9
Alta and Berkeley. Paige is currently a Sophomore at the University of Chicago and coaches for
her alma matter.

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Introduction

I cant remember the last time an LD resolution used the word should, but if you love
debates that center on empirical research and policy-esque style arguments, youre going to
have a great time with this topic. Thats not to say that there isnt room for philosophical debates,
though, because there certainly is, as I will discuss later.

On this topic, the way that you define the terms of the resolution will be very important
because affirmatives have a wide array of options when it comes to interpreting the resolution.
Im going to spend a little bit of time providing a starting point for your definitional research, but
if you expect to make it into deep elimination rounds at tournaments, topicality research will be
incredibly important.

Key Terms

What constitutes a developing country is not black and white, which means that
topicality could become a big issue on this topic, depending on how the affirmative chooses to
frame their arguments.

The United Nations attempts to create a distinction between developed and developing countries,

There is no established convention for the designation of "developed" and "developing"
countries or areas in the United Nations system. In common practice, Japan in Asia,
Canada and the United States in northern America, Australia and New Zealand in
Oceania, and Europe are considered "developed" regions or areas. In international trade
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statistics, the Southern African Customs Union is also treated as a developed region and
Israel as a developed country; countries emerging from the former Yugoslavia are
treated as developing countries; and countries of eastern Europe and of the
Commonwealth of Independent States (code 172) in Europe are not included under
either developed or developing regions.
1

The International Statistical Institute gives a more specific definition,

Developing countries are defined according to their Gross National Income (GNI) per
capita per year. Countries with a GNI of US $11,905 and less are defined as developing
(Specified by the World Bank, 2012).
2

[]
3

Countries that are slightly over the amount of US $11,905 will be considered a
developing country for the year 2014 and their situation will be reviewed for 2015.

Regardless of how you approach this resolution, it will be very important for you to have a
solid understanding of what constitutes a developing country.

The Oxford Dictionary defines should as,

1
Composition of macro geographical (continental) regions, geographical sub-regions, and
selected economic and other groupings,
http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/m49/m49regin.htm#ftnc
2
http://www.isi-web.org/component/content/article/5-root/root/81-developing, Developing
Countries
3
Ellipses included because the list of countries considered developing countries is placed in
between the two paragraphs. You can find the list/full text of the article "#$#% http://www.isi-
web.org/component/content/article/5-root/root/81-developing

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used to indicate obligation, duty, or correctness, typically when criticizing someones
actions
4

Some affirmatives will probably argue that should does not indicate any kind of moral
duty, but merely a practical obligation, in an attempt to avoid philosophical discussions. That
being said, there is certainly plenty of room to argue that the obligation implied via should
could very well be a moral obligation. If you are on the affirmative, be prepared for these
topicality debates because they will certainly arise in at least a few of the debates that you have.

The Glossary of Environment Statistics defines environmental protection,

Environmental protection refers to any activity to maintain or restore the quality of
environmental media through preventing the emission of pollutants or reducing the
presence of polluting substances in environmental media. It may consist of:

(a) changes in characteristics of goods and services,
(b) changes in consumption patterns,
(c) changes in production techniques,
(d) treatment or disposal of residuals in separate environmental protection facilities,
(e) recycling, and
(f) prevention of degradation of the landscape and ecosystems.
5

The specificity of this definition is very important because, come time for the Tournament of
Champions, its very possible that affirmatives will specify prioritizing environmental protection
over resource extraction when they conflict in specific areas such as recycling, etc.

Resource extraction is exactly what it sounds like: any activity that withdraws resources
from nature. There are a variety of methods in which resources can be extracted, which means

4
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/should
5
Environmental Protection, https://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=836

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that the negative potentially has a significant amount of counterplan ground. As the negative, it
will be your job to research different methods of resource extraction and attempt to find solutions
that minimize environmental damage while increasing benefits.

When in conflict is the final phrase in the resolution, but a very important one. The
negative does not have to defend that countries completely ignore environmental protection
because of the word prioritize. The affirmative must establish that environmental protection
directly conflicts with resource extraction or else the negative will be able to circumvent the
affirmatives impacts.

With that, lets take a look at some of the arguments that both sides can make.


The ground that the affirmative has on this topic is nothing short of insane. From
philosophical argumentation to specifying developing countries and methods of environmental
protection, researching this topic will be quite the task.

In developing countries, environmental protection is a necessity, Christian Uhlig elaborates,

At the same time, some modern civilization critics should be aware that people in the
southern hemisphere have by no means always lived and worked in harmony with nature
and the environment throughout the course of history. In spite of some examples of
economic systems which have been well adapted to the natural conditions, many
autochthonous, traditional economic systems have been responsible for considerable
damage to the environment over thousands of years. Deforestation, karst development,
soil erosion, flooding or the extinction of species all bear witness to some lasting effects
of ancient civilizations. However, it cannot be denied that the catching up approach to
development which involved the modern standard-of-living model of European-
American civilization and the methods of production linked to it has considerably
accelerated the degree of exploitation and, inevitably, destruction of the environment by
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human beings. Population growth combined with a rise in production and consumption
lead to a more extensive use of land, to greater exploitation of mineral resources and to
the expansion of industry, which in turn add to the pollution of air, water and the soil. We
are witness to an increasing destruction of forests, karst development of mountain
regions, the spread of deserts, the over-exploitation or over-grazing of land with the
resulting decline in soil fertility and increased erosion. The increasing use of chemicals in
industry and agriculture as well as the effects of urbanization are now making the lack of
precautionary measures for soil conservation and waste disposal all too obvious. These
are just a few of the problem areas, which are currently most pressing. A recent addition
to this list is the problem of the additional pollution caused by the dumping of toxic waste
by industrialized countries which, having failed to resolve their own waste disposal
problems, are now offloading them on to the countries of the Third World, thereby
burdening the latter with even greater environmental pollution and the related costs.
6

As this evidence indicates, the environmental situation in developing countries is dire. This
kind of evidence is necessary for the affirmative because it establishes why developing countries
need to prioritize environmental protection.

One direction that the affirmative can take is to argue that, as a whole, developing countries
should prioritize environmental protection over resource extraction because the environmental
devastation not only affects that developing country, but the entire world. Resource extraction
can also have a number of other negative impacts. For example, in the Democratic Republic of
Congo and Sudan, the profits gained from resource extraction are not used for social services;
rather, theyre used to fuel violence within that country.

Alternatively, the affirmative could choose to specify a developing country and make
arguments about why that country specifically needs to prioritize environmental protection over
resource extraction. If this is the route you choose to take, it is important that you have good

6
Environmental Protection and Economic Policy Decisions in Developing Countries, Christian
Uhlig, Ruhr University, Intereconomics, March/April, 1992,
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02926180#page-1
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reasons for why you chose that country. Simply picking a random developing country isnt very
strategic because the negative could very easily argue that you arent fixing the larger impacts,
which outweigh whatever country-specific impacts you garner.

Negative Positions

For a stock negative, one approach that you can take is to defend the positive impacts of
resource extraction and argue that they outweigh any of the negative effects produced. One of the
positive effects that resource extraction has on developing countries is that it helps eliminate
poverty, Alejandro Lopez-Feldman, et al., elaborates,

Our findings highlight the importance of income from natural resource extraction in
alleviating poverty and income inequality in rural Mexico. Results show that the
number of poor individuals increases 4.2% and inequality increases 2.4% when natural
resource income is not taken into consideration. Inequality in the distribution of natural
resource income is relatively high. Nevertheless, an unequally distributed income
source may favor the poor. For example, welfare transfers are usually unequally
distributed (most households do not receive them), but they are directed
disproportionately at poor households. This is the case for natural resource income in
all of our samples. A 10% increase in income from natural resources, other things being
equal, reduces the Gini coefficient of total income inequality by 0.2% in Mexico. In the
South-Southeast region and in Frontera Corozal, a 10% increase in natural resource
income reduces the Gini coefficient by 0.36% and 0.11%, respectively.
7

The impacts of reducing poverty in developing countries vary, but these kinds of arguments
could be a link into arguments about reducing violence and conflict in these countries. For these
arguments to be most effective, you should pair them with arguments about why the ways in
which resources are extracted are not as devastating as the affirmative will frame them to be.

7
Evidence from Rural Mexico and a Lacandona Rainforest Community by Alejandro Lpez-
Feldman, Jorge Mora and J. Edward Taylor, November 2006

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Another way that the negative can increase the strength of these kind of arguments is to pair
them with a counterplan. For the counterplan to be competitive, you will still have to defend
prioritization of resource extraction over environmental protection, but its possible to defend
alternate measures of resource extraction that avoid some of the negative harms that the
affirmative will talk about. These kinds of arguments will require you to invest time into
researching differing methods and having a solid understanding of how those methods works to
the point that you can explain why they are feasible methods for developing countries to
implement.
Conclusion

Regardless of the way you approach this topic, research will be of the upmost
importance. Even if your plan is to approach the topic from a philosophical standpoint, having an
understanding of the empirical nature of the topic will only help strengthen your arguments.

Good luck!

About Josh Roberts

Josh debated for four years at Northland Christian School in Houston, Texas. He was the
champion of The Bronx Round Robin, The Victory Briefs Tournament, The NDCA
Championships, The Iowa Round Robin, Grapevine and the National Forensics Tournament.
Josh was a finalist at Apple Valley and TFA State. He finished 3rd at The Glenbrooks, Emory,
Bronx and The Harvard Round Robin. Josh was recognized as first speaker at Greenhill, The
Bronx Round Robin, The Greenhill Round Robin, St. Marks, The Iowa Round Robin and
Grapevine. In addition to auto-qualifying to the 2011 TOC by reaching the octofinals as a junior,
Josh has earned 11 bids to the TOC. He also reached the octofinals again as a senior. A 3-time
participant at The MBA Round Robin, Josh became the only sophomore in the history of the
tournament to place in the Top 5 when he finished 4th in 2009.
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Introduction

In recent years, the green/ecology movement has been slowly gaining support. From the
tragic vandalism of the Iowa State Fair butter cow to threats towards BP during the after math of
the gulf oil spill, many individuals seem polarized by the issue of environmental protection.
While this topic offers some very interesting opportunities to debate the legitimacy of climate
change, I believe the larger issue that should be addressed is the critical philosophical
perspective of human centered resource consumption and the ethics of protecting Mother Nature.
In this topic analysis, I will cover topic wording, framing issues, affirmative ideas, negative
ideas, and concluding notes and advice.

Topic wording

Since many of the other topic analyses discuss most of the generic terms in depth, I
believe it would be redundant to redefine these terms so I am going to focus on two important
phrases.

Developing countries: When evaluating this phrase as a term of art, it is commonly interpreted
as a country with a low level of material well-being. This allows for negative debaters in
particular to force the affirmative to advocate that generally poorer countries should invest
money on mostly green options. However, one must be vigilant with terms such as this, which
can be interpreted in their vaguest form. For example, affirmatives can advocate that no country
is ever in a solidified state of complete development. Therefore, affirmatives can claim that any
country should prioritize environmental protection as long as they still aim for growth.

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Many philosophers would argue that the term developing is biased towards those
countries who do not meet the western conception of developed. Gustavo Esteva
1
writes in
The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power that development has
connoted at least one thing: to escape from the undignified condition called underdevelopment.
Negatives could potentially use this idea as a criticism against the topic because of the Western,
neo-liberal natural of this wording.

Should: This is the first topic that I can recall that does not use an evaluative phrase that includes
ought, morality, or justice in some form or another. The American Heritage Dictionary of the
English Language defines should as, Used to express obligation or duty. Thus, I would argue
as a debater that obligations are inherently grounded in an ethical proposition. This argument
also would give debaters the ability to justify ethical frameworks that require morality or justice
as a base line. This term also opens up the door for policy type arguments, such as plans.
The word should also could have a similar function in rounds as the word ought. Joshua
Green
2
comments on the two words by arguing, What about ought and should? These
words are more or less equally comfortable in the mouths of deontologists and consequentialists,
and, as we would expect, not so bad as rights and duties, but a bit more dangerous than
good and bad. Therefore, many debaters could argue that the two words are synonymous.

Topic Framing

There are several issues that need to be addressed while debating this topic. For the
affirmative, I believe it would be advantageous to flesh out the root cause of environmental
problems (i.e. anthropocentricism) and combat that philosophical idea. This also allows for
affirmatives to specifically claim that a policy action would solve the negative implications of

1
Esteva - (Nexican activist, "uepiofessionalizeu intellectual" anu founuei of the 0niveisiuau ue la Tieiia in the Nexican city of 0axaca (uustavo, "The Bevelopment Bictionaiy A uuiue
to Knowleuge as Powei", eu by Wolfgang Sachs, p. 7)
2
}oshua Baviu uieene, Assistant Piofessoi of Psychology at Baivaiu 0niveisity. "The Teiiible, Boiiible, No uoou, veiy bau Tiuth About Noiality anu What to uo About It,"
Bisseitation piesenteu to Piinceton 0niveisityj

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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 86
climate change. Negatives should focus on the term developing because it will prescribe terms
to limit the affirmative. This could lead to an interesting Topicality debate.

Affirmative Case Ideas

Coming from a policy background, I will focus on two Kritik-like case ideas and a
stock idea. The three case positions I will be covering are an anthropocentricism K aff, a
capitalism K aff, and a warming aff.
The Kritik of anthropocentricism is one of my favorite arguments. The general idea is
that human-centered thinking and philosophy lead to ecocide and harm to the ontology of all
beings (including animals/plants/etc.). By reducing the environment to just a resource to fulfill
human ends, we devalue what gave us life and supports our existence. By recognizing our place
in existence, we could come to recognize the value of all of nature and so on. This form of deep
ecology seems rather radical, but is extremely strategic. In order to frame this in a debate round,
I think it is best for the Aff to argue that first, anthropocentricism is the root cause of all
environmental harm. Richard Sivil from the University of Natal writes:

the environmental crisis can be directly linked to anthropocentric views of the
world. The perception that value is located in, and emanates from, humanity has
resulted in understanding human life as an ultimate value, superior to all other
beingsThe abuses facing the natural environment as a result of the energy crisis and
the food demand are clearly manifestations of anthropocentric views that treat the
environment as a resource and instrument for human ends. The pollution and
destruction of the non-human natural world is deemed acceptable
S

The Aff would then argue that in order to protect the environment, we must reject
anthropocentricism, which will end up being the criterion in many scenarios. In order to affirm,
the contention level should justify why resource extraction is inherently anthropocentric and

3
(Richaiu Sivil stuuieu at the 0niveisity of Buiban Westville, anu at the 0niveisity of Natal, Buiban. Be has been lectuiing philosophy since 1996. "Why we Neeu a New Ethic foi the
Enviionment", !"#$"%&# ()%*$&+) 2(7): 1uS - 116 (2uu1))
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 84
therefore, the cause of ontological and environmental harm to all. This link is fairly easy to
make. Sivil writes again:

The abuses facing the natural environment as a result of the energy crisis and the food
demand are clearly manifestations of anthropocentric views that treat the environment
as a resource and instrument for human ends.

4

Much like the last case example, I believe a criticism of the capitalist nature of resource
extraction can be useful. Often, the search and extraction of resources is motivated by the desire
to increase profit rather than fulfill needs of citizens. Even the focus on the economy could be a
link to the harms of capitalism. Therefore, the prioritization of resource extraction would lead to
the harms of a capitalistic society. Potential harms include human rights abuses, dehumanization,
and even environmental degradation.

Istvan Meszaros argues:

The fact that the rapacious exploitation of the human and material resources of our
planet for the benefit of a few capitalist countries happens to be a non-generalizable
conditionInstead, the universal viability of emulating the development of the
'advanced capitalist' countries is predicated
S

This exploitation caused by prioritizing resource extraction can be solved by rejecting capitalism
and, therefore, rejecting capitalism could be a viable criterion for an Aff debater.

The last position that I will discuss is a global warming affirmative. This case can be
extremely strategic if debaters use quality evidence and if the case is well thought through. This
case would interpret the role of developing countries as acting sustainably while still extracting
resources in order to survive. In other words, this affirmative doesnt claim that all resource

4
Ibiu
S
Istvan Neszaios, Bungaiian Naixist philosophei anu Piofessoi Emeiitus at 0. Sussex. "Beyonu Capital: Towaiu a Theoiy of Tiansition." p. xv)
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 89
extraction is bad, rather that we should safely extract resources so that we can protect the
environment. David Lertzman and Harrie Vredenburg argue that,

It has been argued that business has a moral responsibility to ensure that its activities
are ecologically sustainable (Desjardins, 1998). Desjardins has proposed that the
"moral minimum" which constrains the impacts of economic activity should be
extended to ecosystems. He argues that all markets operate within constraints, the
most obvious being those imposed by the biophysical limits described in the laws of
natural science.

"

Therefore, affirmatives could still co-opt lots of negative offenses while still being topical. I
think that most stock debates will come down to this sort of case, but it is obviously extremely
strategic.

Negative Case Ideas

Negating on this topic will be interesting because of the phrasing of developing
countries, as mentioned previously. Therefore, I offer three negative positions;
economy/poverty Neg, resource war Neg, and a critique of the word developing.

The most logical argument for the Neg is the impact of the economy and how poverty
will be affected. The negative should focus on the how infeasible green policies for developing
countries and how they could harm the economy of these countries. Negatives could also point
out that most studies involving environmental protection are taken from wealthy countries who
can afford to be green compared to poorer countries who cannot. The result of economic collapse
could have several negative impacts including war and complete destruction of the environment.

"
Lertzman, David A., and Harrie Vredenburg. "Indigenous Peoples, Resource Extraction and Sustainable Development: An Ethical Approach." Journal of Business Ethics 56.3 (2005): 239-54.
Print.

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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 87
Resource wars are extremely common in the status quo. In fact, lack of resources has
been linked to many armed conflicts across the globe. Thus, resource extraction should always
be prioritized over environmental protection in order to prevent conflict and deaths around the
world. Thomas Homer-Dixon argues that lack of resources led to the Rwandan genocide. He
writes,

Several exacting and penetrating studies have now shown conclusively that cropland
scarcity in Rwanda strongly affected rural grievances that were exploited by radical
Hutus in the lead-up to the 1994 genocide.

Furthermore, this violence and resource war could escalate and become into a larger
conflict that could harm people in developing countries. While the environmental crisis may kill
thousands in several decades, resource wars kill people daily and often have a larger impact.

My last negative strategy is the criticism of the term developing. This argument was
hinted at earlier in the article and I believe it would be strategic to have a PIC in your arsenal to
respond to Affs that seem confusing and vague. This argument is that the term developing
creates a stigma against those who are in countries that are underdeveloped. This
discrimination against third-world countries is extremely neo-liberal and nationalist especially
for the United States. Gustavo Esteva writes again:

Throughout the century, the meanings associated with urban development and colonial
development concurred with many others to transform the word 'development', step by
step, into one with contours that are about as precise as those of an amoebaNo matter
the context in which it is used. or the precise connotation that the person using it wants to
give it, the expression becomes qualified and coloured by meanings perhaps unwanted.
"

Therefore, even the use of the word could have potential harms in round, allowing for many
critical arguments that the negative could make in round.

"
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Conclusion

I am really looking forward to judging rounds on this topic and seeing how the arguments
develop. I think on this topic, it is strategic for debaters who arent the best at debating
utilitarianism to prepare a critical position to run against cases that have large impacts. As
always, I recommend that debaters should read current news surrounding the topic so that they
are better educated with recent issues. I wish yall the best of luck with this topic and I hope my
opinion has been insightful!

About Jack Ave

Jack Ave attended Okoboji High School (IA) and graduated in 2013. He competed on the
local and national circuit in Lincoln-Douglas debate and advanced to elimination rounds his
senior year at national tournaments such as Harvard, Blake, Dowling, Iowa Caucus, Valley, and
Omaha Westside along with receiving numerous speaking awards. He was a three time national
qualifier and his senior year, was the West Iowa District Champion. Jack was the first from his
school to attend the Tournament of Champions. Jack attends the University of Northern Iowa
and is majoring in Political Science and Political Communications.

Frameworks
Champion Briefs
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Preserving Land Framework

The first potential framework affirmative debaters can run is centered on the principle of
preserving land as a virtue in and of itself. Affirmatives will argue that environmental protection
embraces an environmental ethic, so must be prioritized above resource extraction. This
affirmative will justify a normative framework for land preservation, and as such provide reason
to affirm. Land Preservation proponents argue no one is inherently entitled to destroy land,
despite its arbitrary location within boundaries. This affirmative would problematize historical
land degradation by arguing that land is intrinsically valuable.

The framework would begin by defining environmental protection as preserving
conditions for successful land preservation and growth. Such a definition entitles the Aff to
assume solvency for environmental protection. Note, smart affirmatives will spike out of
negative disadvantages to environmental degradation by arguing that the resolution automatically
grants the Aff world takes actions to assure the best environment possible. From here the Aff
will introduce a standard to explain why developing countries should prioritize environmental
protection.

Affs can explain morally land is intrinsically valuable. No one is entitled to destroy land
because that privileges certain persons over others. Those who get to use land for their own
benefit unequally reap profit from something no one is naturally entitled to. Conversely,
environmental protection privileges equality; and as such, land is a normatively valuable finite
entity that countries ought to preserve. Thus, the Aff can introduce a standard of Preserving land.

There are multiple distinct sources of justification and warrants for this standard. The first
and most stock is a utilitarian justification that preserving land is good because it somehow
solves for an extinction scenariojustifying extinction as a framework warrant is a powerful
move in this affirmative case. Extinction in the AC framework will allow Affs to hedge this AC
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 34
against Neg DisAds and Counterplans. A second type of justification would be deontic, that
preserving land is universally morally obligatory because it respects equality over humanitys
claims to land. Hence, this affirmative case could appeal to utilitarianism and deontology as
justifications for the standard, without possibly justifying either theory because of the
independently normative status of valuing land. A third and normatively independent standard
warrant would be that valuing land is obligatory because land is a finite entity that can run out.
Naturally all citizens are entitled to land, so leaders must act to preserve land over their own self-
interest. A fourth form of justification would be temporal; temporally land is for all people,
future generations are entitled to the same land claims as present generation; so, countries must
preserve the environment to treat future generations fairly.

From such a standard, Affs will argue in their contention level that preserving the
environment is vital to preserving land. This contention can easily begin with the first argument
that the resolution definitionally affirms because if land is valuable then we ought to prioritize
the environment. But, important warrants for the contention level will go beyond just the
wording of the resolution. The best warrants for this contention level will be that environmental
protection efforts empirically increase land and lead to the long to preservation of a country.
Likewise, arguments about resource extraction harming the environment and decreasing land
would affirm as well.

Environmental Cosmopolitanism Framework

A radically distinct AC and most likely the truest argument on the topic is a
Cosmopolitan centered affirmative case. This framework will argue that the resolution questions
the global obligations developing countries have, and that a cosmopolitan ethic obliges countries
to prioritize international environmental protection above resource extraction. The strategic
upshot of a cosmopolitan case would be that it undermines the majority of Neg ground, and
seems to push the topic literature bias towards the affirmative.

A framework for this position would need to begin with a rigorous interpretation of the
phrase developing countries. Mainly, this AC will explain that the phrase developing countries
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 34
is 1) plural, so is a question of multiple states; and 2) is referential to all states in the international
arena. Such a definition of developing countries will allow the Aff to easily justify their standard
as relates to the global obligations of states in the international arena. As such, affirmatives
desirous of running a cosmopolitan AC will need to argue that the resolution is a question of
global obligations, and that global obligations are the best source for deriving normative
decisions for the pluralistic actor developing countries in the resolution.

There are multiple ways this particular frameworks standard can be justified. The most
traditional way to justify cosmopolitanism is by exploring cosmopolitan theorists like Martha
Nussbaum who argue the makeup of the international world and global order implies duties on
all states to come together and act for the greater interests of the community. Affs can find a
plethora of distinct political theorists that justify cosmopolitanism and throw them in this
affirmative case. But, a more strategic approach to justifying this type of AC standard is to
explain that a self-interest based framework is normatively bad, and so should not be acted upon.
The strategic purpose of this type of arguement is preemptive. Most negative positions will
justify resource extraction from the lens of increasing self-interest; as such, cosmopolitan cases
should preemptively dejustify these negative arguments in the AC framework by criticizing
acting from self-interest or realism.

The contention level for this form of affirmative case would simply be arguments about
why environmental protection is best for all states in the global community, and as such
developing countries must prioritize environmental protection over resource extraction. The
trans-border nature of environmental problems demonstrates the only way to definitively quell
environmental degradation is through universal cooperation. Further, resource extraction
undermines efforts for states to cooperate effectively, and empirically allows for environmental
problems to harm states in different areas of the globes. With these arguments, this contention
level should definitely have the strongest link back to a cosmopolitan standard in the round.

Protecting Boundaries Framework

An alternative affirmative case that I can see being successful on the Jan/Feb topic is a
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 30
case that interprets the resolutional conflict as between two bordering developing nations. The
conflict between the two states would be over the legitimacy of one states attempt to infringe the
boundaries of another in an effort to acquire more resources. This affirmative would interpret
environmental protection as protecting land, and resource extraction as encroaching bordering
lands for resources. The upshot of this affirmative case is that it can take two distinct directions,
both of which strategically advantage the Aff. The Aff can justify private property related
reasons to promote environmental protection, as well as criticisms of capitalism in the global
arena to affirm.

The unique interpretation of this case would be embedded within the definitions of both
developing countries and environmental protection. This affirmative would explain why the
phrase developing countries, when combined with the phrase when the two conflict, means the
resolution is a question of how two developing countries should resolve a particular dilemma
over environment and resources. The aff would further explain that environmental protection
can be interpreted as protection of land, or literally the environment a country autonomously
resides over. At this point, the affirmative would explain their burden is to prove countries
should prioritize protecting their environment when in conflict with another developing country,
rather than promote resource extraction. It ought to be noted, this affirmative likely ought to
justify an interpretation of resource extraction as well; most likely, the best definition for the
grand strategy of this case would be a definition of resource extraction that implies that the
process of extracting resource violates the sovereign territories of another state.

After definitions, this framework could take two directions. The affirmative can justify a
standard of respecting private property. Private property is a very straightforward concept that
debaters can use deontology and social-contract based warrants to justify as a value criterion.
But, a more interesting, and possibly strategic way to craft this affirmative case is as a critique of
capitalism and post-colonial efforts of states to try and dominate one another. As such,
affirmatives will be best helped by including arguments in the value criterion part of their
framework that trace the source of all global problems or conflicts to capitalism in and of itself.

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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 31
The contention level for this form of affirmative case will be massive as it can include a
variety of arguments. First, the Aff can argue that the Neg violates private property because it
logically entails procuring resources from other states. However, affirmatives must be prepared
to handle arguments that say private property negates because resource extraction is a form of
collecting private property. This is why I would urge debaters to run this case in a more critical
fashion. To do this, debaters will want to dig in on why environmental protection is the key to
preventing states from using resource extraction to boost their status in the global capitalist
order. More importantly, this affirmative case can make arguments about how resource
extraction is not normatively valuable; for instance, affirmatives can make arguments that money
is meaningless. By embedding inherent criticisms of capitalism throughout the affirmative case,
Negs that bite into potential violations or links of capitalism will be forced to engage with a
plethora of preemptive capitalism bad arguments from the framework making the 1NC infinitely
more difficult.
Amrmative
Evidence
Champion Briefs
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Developing countries cant and wont monitor their emissions
international backlash and low tech.

"The Global Climate Change Regime." Council on Foreign Relations. 19 Jun 2013. Web. 6 Dec
2013.

The barriers to improving emissions monitoring in developing countries are threefold. First,
many such countries lack the domestic capacity to monitor their own emissions, which
makes international monitoring even more difficult. Existing emissions estimates are
generally extrapolations based on energy use, and even large developing countries such as
China and India, for example, do not know their total emissions output. This uncertainty
isexacerbated in countries with significant emissions from deforestation because the
technical means to precisely measure such emissions do not yet exist. Second, even if
developing countries are able to monitor their emissions, many are wary that reporting
emissions would open them to pressure to cap those emissions--something they have
strongly resisted. Third, countries such as China publically state that concessions for an
internationally verifiable monitoring system are a direct infringement on their national
sovereignty. Despite these barriers, an agreement that focuses on emissions monitoring might be
easier to implement than an arrangement based on binding emissions reductions.

The Council on Foreign Relations is an American nonprofit, nonpartisan membership
organization, publisher, and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international
affairs.
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 98
Rich countries havent given the developing countries the cash
needed.

2013.

Additionally, the climate regime does not adequately address the sources of financing
needed to help developing countries cope with climate change. While the meeting in
Copenhagen witnessed political progress, including pledges by industrialized countries
[pledged] to provide $100 billion by 2020 to developing countries, and the Green Climate
Fund was put into place at Cancun, concrete funding streams have yet to materialize. While the
COP-17 attempted to clarify how the Green Climate Fund would operate and disperse
funds, little firm monetary support was allocated to the mechanism. To date, the total
disbursed funds for climate change initiatives, both within and outside of the UNFCCC,
add up to only $2.1 billion.

affairs.
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There is no enforcement mechanism.

2013.

Enforcement, meanwhile, is essentially nonexistent. Countries that fail to meet their Kyoto
targets are legally required to subtract that shortfall (plus a 30 percent penalty) from their
total allowed emissions in the next phase of the protocol. In practice, though, this is
meaningless, given that future allowed emissions have not yet been negotiated. If the Kyoto
Protocol penalty rules are observed--something still in question--countries could simply
negotiate new caps that are inflated by an amount that offsets the penalty or just formally
withdraw from the accord as Canada did in December 2011.

affairs.
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Developing governments focus on resources harms international
mining companies.

McKern, Bruce and Dunning, John H. Transnational Corporations and the Exploitation of
Natural Resources. The United Nations Library on Transnational Corporations, Volume
10. 1993. Print.

No lengthy discussion is required to clarify the attitude of the non-integrated multinational
mining company towards the establishment of local mineral processing plants. In the absence of
such plants, the company has the liberty of selling its produce in the international market to
the customer of its choice. Once local processing is established, the government is bound to
circumscribe the companys freedom by demanding that the mineral be sold to the local
processing industry. Economies of scale would restrict the number of processing ventures in
each mineral-exporting country. Apart from being exposed to a greater degree of government
direction, therefore, the reduction in the number of potential customers would weaken the
companys bargaining position. For these reasons, the unintegrated mining company too, can
be expected to oppose efforts to establish local mineral processing in the mineral-endowed
developing country.
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Foreign economic investment will happen with focus on resources.

Reed, Darryl. Extraction Industries in Developing Countries. Journal of Business Ethics, Vol.
39, No. 3. September 2002. Web. 7 December 2013.
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/25074839>.

From the perspective of TNCs liberalizing reforms are obviously very attractive. They imply
reduced barriers to entry, decreased risk and new investment opportunities, both through
green field activities and mergers and acquisitions (especially as countries privatize state
enterprises). Indications of the impact of economic liberalization are perhaps most evident in
resource sectors such as mining. Since the mid 1980's there has not only been an increase in
investments in this sector in developing countries, but a significant shift from developed
countries to developing countries, most notably towards Latin America (Otto, 1998). Major
trade agreements such as APEC have the liberalization of the mining industry as a high priority
objective. For their part, Asian countries have recently been re-regulating the mining
industry in an effort to attract foreign capital (Naito et al., 1998). African countries too have
been liberalizing their mining policies since the 1980s, in large part due to direct pressures
from international financial institutions. By 1995, some 35 African countries had amended their
mining regulations to make them more attractive to foreign investors (African Agenda, 1997). As
a result of such changes, between 1991 and 1997, exploration investments expanded 6 times
in Latin America, quadrupled in the Pacific region, and doubled in Africa (Drillbits and
Tailings, 1998).

Darryl Reed is Assistant Professor in the Division of Social Science and Coordinator of the
Business & Society Program at York University.
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Developing countries are hurt the worst by environmental issues.

Singer, Peter. "Will the Polluters Pay for Climate Change?." Utilitarianism.net. Project
Syndicate. Web. Dec 6 2013. <http://www.utilitarianism.net/singer/by/200608--.htm>.
Overwhelmingly, the dead will be those who lack the resources to adapt, to find
alternative sources of food, and who do not have access to health care. Even in rich
countries, it usually isnt the rich who die in natural disasters. When Hurricane Katrina hit New
Orleans, those who died were the poor in low-lying areas who lacked cars to escape. If this is
true in a country like the US, with a reasonably efficient infrastructure and the resources to help
its citizens in times of crisis, it is even more evident when disasters strike developing
countries, because their governments lack the resources needed, and because, when it
comes to foreign assistance, rich nations still do not count all human lives equally.
According to United Nations figures, in 2002 per capita emissions of greenhouse gases in the US
were 16 times higher than in India, 60 times higher than in Bangladesh, and more than 200 times
higher than in Ethiopia, Mali, or Chad. Other developed nations with emissions close to those of
the US include Australia, Canada, and Luxembourg. Russia, Germany, Britain, Italy, France, and
Spain all have levels between a half and a quarter that of the US. This is still significantly above
the world average, and more than 50 times that of the poorest nations in which people will die
from global warming.

Peter Singer is a professor of philosophy at Princeton University. He is one of the most famous
modern philosophers in America.
!""# %&'()&*('+ ),- .'/(*&'0-') 12'3"-4 5678

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 9:
The polluter should pay for the impacts of the pollution.

Singer, Peter. "Will the Polluters Pay for Climate Change?." Utilitarianism.net. Project
Syndicate. Web. Dec 6 2013. <http://www.utilitarianism.net/singer/by/200608--.htm>.

If a polluter harms others, those who are harmed normally have a legal remedy. For
example, if a factory leaks toxic chemicals into a river that I use to irrigate my farm, killing
my crops, I can sue the factory owner. If the rich nations pollute the atmosphere with
carbon dioxide, causing my crops to fail because of changing rainfall patterns, or my fields
are inundated by a rise in the sea level, shouldnt I also be able to sue?

Peter Singer is a professor of philosophy at Princeton University. He is one of the most famous
philosophers in America

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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 96
There are many competing interests when it comes to environmental
policy in developing countries.

Zerner, Charles (editor). People, Plants, & Justice: The Politics of Nature Conservation.
Columbia University Press. 1999. Web. 7 December 2013.
<http://class.guilford.edu/psci/kdell/virtual_office_of_kyle_d._dell/ENVS_101_Introduct
ion_to_Environmental_Studies_files/Neumann%20land.pdf>.

To say that resources (or the environment) in the Tropics are contested and negotiated by
competing constituencies is hardly original. But environment politics has become a
battleground of a quite particular, and complex, sort. On the one side is the nature of
environmental problems themselves, often global or regional in character, which transgress
national borders (they may not be, in any simple sense, place specific). In the same way, these
environmental crises and problems are constituted as parts of global discourses or epistemic
communities (Haas 1990), often typically in moral, technocratic/scientific, and managerial
languages (Buttel and Taylor 1992). On the other side is an enlarged panoply of actors who
engage in environmental management, regulation, and governance. The gradual opening and
flourishing of civil society in parts of Africa, Latin America, and the former socialist bloc has
contributed to the proliferation of all manner of local green movements and non-governmental
organizations (NGOs)to a thickening of civil society, as Jonathan Fox (1994) puts it.
However, these community-based and grassroots initiatives are not environmental in any
simple way since they are often driven by poverty and justice concerns, human and political
rights, customary culture and indigenous identity, and so on. Neither are they solely local
environmentalisms since they typically invoke transnational environmentalism and its armory
of institutions, whether it be the world of international NGOs (World Wildlife Fund or
Greenpeace), international green networks and advocacy groups [Rainforest Action Network
(RAN)], or the efforts of newly greened multilateral legislative bodies and institutions [the
Biodiversity Convention, the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) of the World Bank, or the
World Trade Organization (WTO), for example]. Somewhere in the middle stands something
called the state, or national, policy making.
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 97
It is often difficult to identify the indigenous peoples of a region
where resources are being extracted.


A further problem with the implementation of distributive justice involves determining who is a
legitimate resident of a given area and thus entitled to share benefits. Questionable claims of
residency may surface in circumstances where the benefits distributed are substantial, e.g.,
in the case of funds generated via hunting fees and tourism revenues under Zimbabwes
CAMPFIRE program (Metcalfe 1994). The notion of indegeneity is sometimes employed as a
guideline to help prioritize recipients, but this concept often raises as many problems as it solves.
As Laird et al. note, the concept of indigenous rights is especially fraught in many of the
areas richest in biodiversity, notably forest areas with complex settlement histories and
patterns of resource stewardship in force. The definition of residence and/or the claim of
indigenous identity can also be difficult to establish wherever patterns of economic
migration take certain community members out of the locality on a seasonal or interannual
basis (compare Gieles-Vernick 1999). One solution promoted by Laird et al. is to avoid defining
the term indigenous too narrowly. For example, The Amazonian concept of undisturbed
autochthonous groups makes little sense in West Africa where most forest areas have a long and
complex history of settlement and re-settlement (Laid et al., p. 000; Slaters description of the
23 million inhabitants of Amazonia problematizes the use of the ternm indigenous in even that
setting, howeversee chapter 3). Thus, at a minimum, any claim to economic benefits based
on residential or indigenous status must account for historical and geographical
demographic changes if it is to be applied justly.
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Global warming causes global resource wars.

Klare, Michael, The Coming Resource Wars, Alternet. 10 March 2006. Web. 7 December
2013. <http://www.alternet.org/environment/33243>.

It's official: the era of resource wars is upon us. In a major London address, British
Defense Secretary John Reid warned that global climate change and dwindling
natural resources are combining to increase the likelihood of violent conflict over
land, water and energy. Climate change, he indicated, "will make scarce resources, clean
water, viable agricultural land even scarcer" -- and this will "make the emergence of
violent conflict more rather than less likely." Although not unprecedented, Reid's prediction
of an upsurge in resource conflict is significant both because of his senior rank and the
vehemence of his remarks. "The blunt truth is that the lack of water and agricultural
land is a significant contributory factor to the tragic conflict we see unfolding in Darfur,"
he declared. "We should see this as a warning sign." Resource conflicts of this type are most
likely to arise in the developing world, Reid indicated, but the more advanced and affluent
countries are not likely to be spared the damaging and destabilizing effects of global climate
change. With sea levels rising, water and energy becoming increasingly scarce and prime
agricultural lands turning into deserts, internecine warfare over access to vital resources will
become a global phenomenon. Reid's speech, delivered at the prestigious Chatham House in
London (Britain's equivalent of the Council on Foreign Relations), is but the most recent
expression of a growing trend in strategic circles to view environmental and resource effects --
rather than political orientation and ideology -- as the most potent source of armed conflict in the
decades to come. With the world population rising, global consumption rates soaring, energy
supplies rapidly disappearing and climate change eradicating valuable farmland, the stage is
being set for persistent and worldwide struggles over vital resources. Religious and political
strife will not disappear in this scenario, but rather will be channeled into contests over
valuable sources of water, food and energy. Prior to Reid's address, the most significant
expression of this outlook was a report prepared for the U.S. Department of Defense by a
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California-based consulting firm in October 2003. Entitled "An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario
and Its Implications for United States National Security," the report warned that global climate
change is more likely to result in sudden, cataclysmic environmental events than a
gradual (and therefore manageable) rise in average temperatures. Such events could include
a substantial increase in global sea levels, intense storms and hurricanes and
continent-wide "dust bowl" effects. This would trigger pitched battles between the
survivors of these effects for access to food, water, habitable land and energy supplies.
"Violence and disruption stemming from the stresses created by abrupt changes in
the climate pose a different type of threat to national security than we are
accustomed to today, the 2003 report noted. "Military confrontation may be triggered by a
desperate need for natural resources such as energy, food and water rather than by conflicts over
ideology, religion or national honor.

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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. ;:
Without environmental protection, climate change can cause
massive war of resources, which could escalate into large
conflict.

Klare, Michael, The Coming Resource Wars, Alternet. 10 March 2006. Web. 7 December
2013. <http://www.alternet.org/environment/33243>.

Environmental perils may soon dominate the world security agenda. This shift is
due in part to the growing weight of evidence pointing to a significant human role in
altering the planet's basic climate systems. Recent studies showing the rapid shrinkage of
the polar ice caps, the accelerated melting of North American glaciers, the increased frequency
of severe hurricanes and a number of other such effects all suggest that dramatic and potentially
harmful changes to the global climate have begun to occur. More importantly, they conclude that
human behavior -- most importantly, the burning of fossil fuels in factories, power plants, and
motor vehicles -- is the most likely cause of these changes. This assessment may not have yet
penetrated the White House and other bastions of head-in-the-sand thinking, but it is clearly
gaining ground among scientists and thoughtful analysts around the world. For the most part,
public discussion of global climate change has tended to describe its effects as an environmental
problem -- as a threat to safe water, arable soil, temperate forests, certain species and so on. And,
of course, climate change is a potent threat to the environment; in fact, the greatest threat
imaginable. But viewing climate change as an environmental problem fails to do justice to the
magnitude of the peril it poses. As Reid's speech and the 2003 Pentagon study make clear, the
greatest danger posed by global climate change is not the degradation of ecosystems per se, but
rather the disintegration of entire human societies, producing wholesale starvation, mass
migrations and recurring conflict over resources. "As famine, disease, and weather-related
disasters strike due to abrupt climate change," the Pentagon report notes, "many
countries' needs will exceed their carrying capacity" -- that is, their ability to provide the
minimum requirements for human survival. This "will create a sense of desperation,
which is likely to lead to offensive aggression" against countries with a greater stock
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of vital resources. "Imagine eastern European countries, struggling to feed their
populations with a falling supply of food, water, and energy, eyeing Russia, whose
population is already in decline, for access to its grain, minerals, and energy
supply." Similar scenarios will be replicated all across the planet, as those without the
means to survival invade or migrate to those with greater abundance -- producing endless
struggles between resource "haves" and "have-nots." It is this prospect, more than
anything, that worries John Reid. In particular, he expressed concern over the inadequate
capacity of poor and unstable countries to cope with the effects of climate change,
and the resulting risk of state collapse, civil war and mass migration. "More than 300
million people in Africa currently lack access to safe water," he observed, and "climate change
will worsen this dire situation" -- provoking more wars like Darfur. And even if these social
disasters will occur primarily in the developing world, the wealthier countries will also be caught
up in them, whether by participating in peacekeeping and humanitarian aid operations, by
fending off unwanted migrants or by fighting for access to overseas supplies of food, oil, and
minerals. When reading of these nightmarish scenarios, it is easy to conjure up images of
desperate, starving people killing one another with knives, staves and clubs -- as was certainly
often the case in the past, and could easily prove to be so again. But these scenarios also
envision the use of more deadly weapons. "In this world of warring states," the 2003
Pentagon report predicted, "nuclear arms proliferation is inevitable." As oil and
natural gas disappears, more and more countries will rely on nuclear power to meet
their energy needs -- and this "will accelerate nuclear proliferation as countries
develop enrichment and reprocessing capabilities to ensure their national
security." Although speculative, these reports make one thing clear: when thinking
about the calamitous effects of global climate change, we must emphasize its social
and political consequences as much as its purely environmental effects. Drought,
flooding and storms can kill us, and surely will -- but so will wars among the survivors
of these catastrophes over what remains of food, water and shelter. As Reid's
comments indicate, no society, however affluent, will escape involvement in these forms
of conflict.
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Even a small rise in global temperature would lead to mass
starvation despite CO2 fertilizationthe result is extinction.

Strom, Robert. Hot House: Global Climate Change and the Human Condition. 2007.
Web. 7 December 2013.
<http://books.google.com/books?id=XkIZ10p18wEC&printsec=frontcover&sourc
e=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0>.

In developing nations the impact will be much more severe. It is here that the impact of
global warming on crops and domestic animals will be most felt. In general, the
world's most crucial staple food crops could fall by as much as one-third because of
resistance to flowering and setting of seeds due to rising temperatures. Crop
ecologists believe that many crops grown in the tropics are near, or at, their thermal
limits. Already research in the Philippines has linked higher night-time temperatures to
a reduction in rice yield. It is estimated that for rice, wheat, and corn, the grain
yields are likely to decline by 10% for every local 1 C increase in temperature.
With a decreasing availability of food, malnutrition will become more frequent
accompanied by damage to the immune system. This will result in a greater
susceptibility to spreading diseases. For an extreme rise in global temperature (> 6 'C), it is
likely that worldwide crop failures will lead to mass starvation, and political and
economic chaos with all their ramifications for civilization.

Robert Strom is a Professor Emeritus of planetary sciences in the Department of Planetary
Sciences at the University of Arizona, studied climate change for 15 years, and is the former
Director of the Space Imagery Center, a NASA Regional Planetary Image Facility.
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Deforestation has drastic global consequences.

Allen, Julia C. and Barnes, Douglas F. The Causes of Deforestation in Developing Countries.
Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 75, No. 2. June 1985. Web. 7
December 2013. <www.jstor.org/stable/2562560>.

Most recently, in early 1981 the Forest Resources Division of the U.N. Food and Agricultural
Organization (FAO) made available the results of an inventory of tropical forest area in
Africa, Asia, and Latin America (FAO/UNEP 1982a, 1982b, 1982c). These estimates, which
synthesize unpublished information but are not a new forest inventory, suggest that
deforestation, until recently confined to Africa and Asia, is now a significant and increasing
trend also in Latin America. Figure 1 shows the average annual rate of deforestation of all
developing countries from 1976-80 as reported in FAO/UNEP (1982a, 1982b, 1982c). Apart
from a group of small countries with anomalously high rates, deforestation appears to be
progressing most rapidly in countries with forest areas near the median (note log scale).
These reports of the impacts of deforestation and estimates of trends in developing countries'
forest areas have raised concern about diminishing forests (Myers 1982). Recent projections of
current deforestation trends to the year 2000 accentuate the severity of the problem.
Projections in the Global 2000 report (Barney 1980, 117-20) indicate that if current trends
continue, between 1958 and 2000 world forest area will decrease by one-third. Most of this
deforestation will occur in the developing countries, where forests are projected to decline at
3-6 percent annually in some nations, and even faster in others. Based on the FAO/UNEP
study, projections by the World Bank suggest that as a consequence of deforestation, wood fuel
supplies will be inadequate to meet demand long before the year 2000 in many nations
(Spears 1980; World Bank 1980b, 125). To meet world demand for fuelwood at the turn of the
century would necessitate the planting of more than 50 million hectares of trees just for
fuelwood; this represents a five-fold increase in the world's current rate of tree planting for all
uses (World Bank 1980c, 39). Taken together, these reports indicate that deforestation is a
phenomenon with potentially serious consequences. The severity of the deforestation problem
depends upon the width of the error bands around projections of future conditions. There are two
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potential sources of error in projections of deforestation trends: errors in estimated present rates
of deforestation and errors of omission of mitigating circumstances that could counterbalance
present trends. The latter include factors that augment resources (Clawson 1981; Simon 1982)
and the ability of natural systems to recover following disturbance (Castle1982; Uhl 1982; West,
Shugart, and Botkin 1981).

Julia C. Allen works at the Departments of Geography and Environmental Studies at the
University of California, Santa Barbara. Douglas F. Barnes works for the World Bank in
Washington, DC.
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Developing countries are the most heavily affected by global
warming based on GDP.

"A Bad Climate For Development." The Economist. 17 September 2009. Web. 6 Dec. 2013.
<http://www.economist.com/node/14447171>.

Less often realised, though, is that global warming does far more damage to poor countries
than they do to the climate. In a report in 2006 Nicholas (now Lord) Stern calculated that a 2C
rise in global temperature cost about 1% of world GDP. But the World Bank, in its new World
Development Report*, now says the cost to Africa will be more like 4% of GDP and to India,
5%. Even if environmental costs were distributed equally to every person on earth,
developing countries would still bear 80% of the burden (because they account for 80% of
world population). As it is, they bear an even greater share, though their citizens' carbon
footprints are much smaller (see chart 2).

The Economist is one of the most prestigious publications on public policy and economics. Its
readership targets real economists and policy makers. It does not include author names on its
articles.
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Developing countries are more vulnerable to climate change
multiple reasons.


The poor are more vulnerable than the rich for several reasons. Flimsy housing, poor
health and inadequate health care mean that natural disasters of all kinds hurt them more.
When Hurricane Mitch swept through Honduras in 1998, for example, poor households lost 15-
20% of their assets but the rich lost only 3%. Global warming aggravates that. It also
increases the chances of catching the life-threatening diseases that are more prevalent in
poorer countries. In many places cities have been built just above a so-called malaria
line, above which malaria-bearing mosquitoes cannot survive (Nairobi is one example).
Warmer weather allows the bugs to move into previously unaffected altitudes, spreading a
disease that is already the biggest killer in Africa. By 2030 climate change may expose 90m
more people to malaria in Africa alone. Similarly, meningitis outbreaks in Africa are
strongly correlated with drought. Both are likely to increase. Diarrhoea is forecast to rise 5%
by 2020 in poor countries because of climate change. Dengue fever has been expanding its
range: its incidence doubled in parts of the Americas between 1995-97 and 2005-07. On one
estimate, 60% of the world's population will be exposed to the disease by 2070.

articles.

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No resources without an environment in developing countries they
control food production, which is a key internal link to
economic growth. Lack of environmental protections means
disaster.


In India the gains from the Green Revolution are already shrinking because of local
pollution, global warming and waning resistance to pests and disease. A study for the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology forecast that yields of the main Indian crops would
decline by a further 4.5-9% over the next 30 years because of climate change. A recent
assessment based on a large number of studies of what might happen in the long run if
carbon continues to be pumped into the atmosphere found that world farm production
could fall by 16% by the 2080s, and possibly by as much as 21% in developing countries.
Although the timescale makes such figures no more than educated guesses, there is not much
doubt that climate change is undermining the gains from intensive farming in developing
countriesat the very time when population growth and greater wealth mean the world
will need to double food production over the next three or four decades. By 2050 the world
will have to feed 2 billion to 3 billion more people and cope with the changing (water-hungry)
diets of a richer population. Even without climate change, farm productivity would have to rise
by 1% a year, which is a lot. With climate change, the rise will have to be 1.8%, says the bank. If
these myriad problems have a silver lining, it is that they give developing countries as big
an interest in mitigating the impact of climate change as rich ones. As the World Bank says,
climate-change policy is no longer a simple choice between growth and ecological well-
being.

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articles.
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The polluter-pays principle solves for environmental harms.

Luppi, Barbara, and Shruti Rajagopalan. "Environmental Protection for Developing Countries:
The Polluter-Does-Not-Pay Principle." Legal Studies Research Paper Series Research
Paper. 2009. Web. 7 December 2013. <ssrn.com/abstract=1339063 >.

The implementation of the polluter-pays principle by sovereign states has enjoyed
different incarnations in national legal systems over time (Finn, 1975). In some situations,
the polluter-pays principle is implemented by state governments through direct regulation
that creates economic incentives, leading the polluter to bear the cost of the environmental
harm caused by its activity. Typically this is done through regulation that imposes direct
environmental liability on the polluting agents. In the context of environmental liability, in the
last few decades international and national environmental liability laws have been
invariably based on strict liability (Commission of the European Communities, 1993).4 The
proponents of the strict liability rule also focus on cost internalization, which requires that the
social cost of an activity be charged to the polluter. This is consistent with the economic
rationale of the polluter-pays principle, which mandates the cost-internalization principle
(Bergkamp, 2001). The economic rationale for this is that strict liability is a preferable rule
in situations of unilateral care and where only the injurer can take effective precautions to
prevent the harm. Further, while both strict liability and negligence rules induce the
injurer to take the optimal amount of care, the advantage of strict liability in
environmental cases is that only the harm must be observable. The level of care is irrelevant
and therefore need not be established in a court of law, thereby reducing evidentiary
requirements. The other reason for the increasing use of strict liability in environment
protection, especially in an age where all governments are trying to curb industrial
pollution, is that in a market setting, negligence may prove inefficient compared to strict
liability, inasmuch as it does not create adequate incentives to reduce activity levels and to
invest in research and development of new cleaner technologies. Furthermore, residual
damages caused by partially-controlled polluting activities would not be reflected in the price of
commodities, resulting in resource misallocation (Krier and Stewart, 1978). Under the
negligence rule, in those industries there could therefore be excessive entry of firms, with a
resulting increase of the probability of pollution and/or environmental damage (Polinsky,
1980).
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Environmental protection is key to keeping a stable economy.

Porter, Charlene. "Environmental Care Creates Economic Growth. U.S. Department of State. 1
August 2013. Web. 7 December 2013.
<http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/article/2013/08/20130801279915.html>

Washington Environmental protection is good for the economy and creates jobs,
according to decades of national experience. The United States new top environmental
officer says those facts should end the nations decades-long debate on a false choice
the assertion that environmental protections inhibit economic growth.
Delivering her first major speech since being sworn into the position, Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy said many policies implemented in the past have
produced a cleaner, more prosperous nation.
Today, the truth we need to embrace is that cutting carbon pollution will spark business
innovation, will grow jobs, and will strengthen the economy, McCarthy said, while speaking
at Harvard University in Massachusetts.
She cited the stricter fuel-economy standards set for auto manufacturing by the Obama
administration in 2011. Car makers responded by increasing mileage-per-gallon in new vehicles
and lowering their carbon emissions. The result was a product more attractive to consumers,
McCarthy said, and a boost in U.S. auto sales.
The auto industry was on "the brink of collapse" four years ago, McCarthy said, but now
the Center for Automotive Research, an independent research organization, predicts the
industry will add 35,000 jobs in 2013. She added that the Wall Street Journal said the
industry "is emerging as an export powerhouse, with more than 1 million cars and light
trucks exported from U.S. auto plants.
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Environmental protection can save lives and help the economy.

Porter, Charlene. "Environmental Care Creates Economic Growth. U.S. Department of State. 1
August 2013. Web. 7 December 2013.
<http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/article/2013/08/20130801279915.html>

Emissions of common air pollutants have dropped almost 70 percent since 1970, when the
EPA was created. National economic growth exceeded 200 percent over the same period. A
steadily growing population drove ever more vehicle miles through those decades,
McCarthy said. So, the bad things went down while the good things went up.
Further analysis has shown that cleaner air achieved through stronger regulation prevents
hundreds of thousands of premature deaths and millions of cases of respiratory illness.
While national and state environmental policies have been key to achieving these health
improvements, McCarthy called on a wider coalition of business and community leaders,
activists, scholars and scientists to step up to the 21st-century challenge of climate change
and help the nation achieve a cleaner and more prosperous future.
Reducing emissions from carbon-based fuels and from electricity-generating plants is a
hallmark of the strategy President Obama announced in June. The plan also calls for U.S.
leadership in helping other countries already facing adverse consequences of climate
change.

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Stopping resource extraction can stop deforestation.


The recent controversy over deforestation serves to bring the forestry sector and forestry policy
under closer scrutiny. In the past ten years, both the funding and the range of forestry policy
options have expanded significantly. Developing countries in cooperation with donor agencies
have developed programs responsive to international pressures (such as for the preservation of
unique forest ecosystems), national priorities (such as revenue from wood exports or expanded
domestic agricultural production), and to local demand for wood energy, poles, and other forest
products (Barnes and Allen 1982; Hammer 1983; Skutsch 1983). But the results of these efforts
have been mixed. Forest reserves suffer from illegal cutting and grazing; forest plantations are
hampered by lack of knowledge regarding soil conditions, rainfall requirements, and appropriate
species. In spite of these difficulties, beneficial programs have been implemented. Examples
include community woodlots for woodfuels and other forest products, tree plantations along
roadsides, canal banks and other locations, smallholder tree farms to provide feedstock for
electricity generation, tree seedling distribution, and other activities. The ultimate outcome of
deforestation depends on these programs, which in turn require proper site selection, careful
species choice, adequate forestry extension services, and local and international commitments to
reforestation.

Washington, DC.
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Extraction, specifically oil booms, can be devastating for
development.

Diamond, Lawrence, and Jack Moschbacher. "Petroleum to the People." Hoover.org. Web. 6
Dec 2013.
<http://media.hoover.org/sites/default/files/documents/diamond_mosbacher_latest3.pdf>.

Oil booms poison the prospects for development in poor countries. The surge of easy
money fuels inflation, fans waste and massive corruption, distorts exchange rates,
undermines the competitiveness of traditional export sectors such as agriculture, and preempts
the growth of manufacturing. Moreover, as oil prices fluctuate on world markets, oil-rich
countries can suddenly become cash poor when booms go bust (since poor countries rarely
save any of these revenue windfalls). Oil booms are also bad news for democracy and the rule of
law. In fact, not a single developing country that derives the bulk of its export earnings from oil
and gas is a democracy. Rather than fostering an entrepreneurial middle class, oil wealth, when
controlled by the government, stifles the emergence of an independent business class and swells
the power of the state vis--vis civil society.

Larry Diamond is a leading contemporary scholar in the field of democracy studies. He is a
professor of Sociology and Political Science at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the
Hoover Institution, a conservative policy think tank

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African development will be atrocious will create authoritarianism
if they tap their oil reserves.

Dec 2013.

In Africa, then, where one-party dominance or outright authoritarian rule prevails, as in
Ethiopia, Gambia, Tanzania, and Uganda, oil wealth will further entrench it. And where
democracy is struggling to sink roots -- as in Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Senegal, and Sierra
Leone -- it could easily overwhelm weak state institutions. Even Ghana, the most liberal and
stable democracy in West Africa, could fall victim to the problem of oil revenues. The country
now exports fewer than 100,000 barrels a day, but that figure is estimated to soar to as much as
half a million barrels by 2015. If used wisely, this influx of capital has the potential to fund
pathbreaking improvements in physical infrastructure and human well-being. But if state
officials, enabled by the absence of meaningful institutions of transparency and
accountability, manage to divert the oil revenues to themselves, then the new wealth will
serve only to further consolidate the power and inflate the personal fortunes of the ruling elites.
There is no reason to expect that newly rich oil producers in Africa will meet a fate much
different from that of Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, and Sudan, all of which rank in
the worst fifth of all countries in terms of bribery and corruption.


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Literally no oil state in Africa has avoided an increase into
corruption after tapping into oil. Its democratic backsliding.

Dec 2013.

Although several countries in Africa have made great strides in improving governance over the
past decade, no continent has more obviously displayed the sad drama of the resource curse:
Africas oil-rich states have become strikingly more corrupt than their resource-poor
neighbors. According to the Worldwide Governance Indicators, compiled annually by the World
Bank, Africas current oil exporters rank in the bottom quintile globally in their relative
ability to control corruption, formulate and implement effective policies, regulate private-
sector development, and enforce the rule of law. Conversely, Africas future exporters
currently well outpace the regional average in these percentile rankings. Unless a new approach
is tried, oil will drag the future exporters down to the miserable governance levels of the
current exporters. To date, no African country has been able to keep oil money from being
largely usurped and misused by the powerful. Every one of the 12 current oil exporters
currently falls into the bottom half of the UNs Human Development Index. According to the
World Bank, more than a tenth of all children born in oil-rich African countries die before the
age of five, double the global average. If Africa is the worst-governed continent in the world,
its oil states are the worst of the worst.


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Sustainable African extraction requires a power-to-the-people
system that has not yet been established.

Dec 2013.

Unless, that is, [if] African governments embrace a radical policy approach: handing [hand] a
large share of the new revenues directly to the people as taxable income. The influx of funds
from new oil discoveries will be so large that if properly managed, it could catapult developing
countries into genuine economic and social development. By taking control of these
revenues out of the hands of the political elite and restoring the link between citizens and
their public officials, this oil to cash strategy offers the best hope for tomorrows oil-rich
African nations to avoid the fate that has befallen so many of yesterdays.


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Resource curse is real six reasons.

Frankel, Jeffrey A. 2010. The Natural Resource Curse: A Survey. John F. Kennedy School of
Government, Harvard University. 2010. Web. 7 December 2013.
<www.hks.harvard.edu/m-rcbg/heep/papers/FrankelHEEPDP21.pdf >.

How could abundance of hydrocarbon deposits, or other mineral and agricultural products,
be a curse? What would be the mechanism for this counter-intuitive relationship? Broadly
speaking, there are at least six lines of argument. First, prices of such commodities could be
subject to secular decline on world markets. Second, natural resources could be dead-end
sectors in another sense: they may crowd out manufacturing, and [manufacturing] the latter
sector might be the one to offer dynamic benefits and spillovers that are good for growth. (It
does not sound implausible that industrialization could be the essence of economic
development.) Third, the volatility of world prices of energy and other mineral and agricultural
commodities, which is known to be especially high, could be problematic. Fourth, countries
where physical command of oil deposits or other resources by the government or a hereditary
elite automatically confers wealth on the holders may be less likely to develop the
institutions, such as rule of law and decentralization of decision-making, that are conducive to
economic development than in countries where moderate taxation of a thriving market economy
is the only way to finance the government. Fifth such countries could have a proclivity for
armed conflict, which is inimical to economic growth. Sixth swings in commodity prices
could engender excessive macroeconomic instability, via the real exchange rate and
government spending, imposing unnecessary costs. We consider each of these topics.

Jeffrey Frankel is James W. Harpel Professor of Capital Formation and Growth at Harvard
Universitys Kennedy School of Government. He directs the program in International Finance
and Macroeconomics at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he is also on the
Business Cycle Dating Committee, which officially declares recessions.
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Biotic resource extraction can lead to over-extraction and decreased
yield. Fishing as a case study.

Naylor, Rosamond L., Goldburg, Rebecca J., et al. Effect of Aquaculture on World Fish
Supplies. Nature, Vol. 405. June, 2000. Web. 7 December 2013.
<http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v405/n6790/full/4051017a0.html>.

Capture fisheries as a whole have plateaued at around 85-95 Mt (million metric tonnes, or
megatonnes) per year
8
. Moreover, there has been a gradual shift in wild fish capture from
large and valuable carnivorous species to smaller, less valuable species that feed at lower
trophic levels. Although catch rates for some species have not declines during the 1990s, most
ocean fisheries stocks are now recognized as over or fully fished. Aquaculture production,
meanwhile, has surged, particularly during the past 10-15 years. Farmed fish supplies totaled 29
Mt in 1997, compared with 10 Mt a decade ago. Such growth helps to explain current
patterns in ocean fish capture; between 1986 and 1997, 4 of the top 5, and 8 of the top 20
capture species were used in feed production for the aquaculture and livestock industries.
These speciesanchoveta, Chilean jack mackerel, Atlantic herring, chub mackerel, Japanese
anchovy, round sardinella, Atlantic mackerel and European anchovyare all palegic fishes.

The authors are affiliated with Stanford Universitys Institute for International Studies,
Environmental Defense, The Aquaculture Departments Southeast Asian Fisheries Development
Center in the Philippines, the Department of Systems Ecology at Stockholm University, the
Beijer Institute, The Institute of Aquaculture at the University of Stirling, the World Wildlife
Find, and the Department of Zoology at Oregon State University.
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Resource extraction always creates environmental harms.


The nature of REIs necessarily involves alterations to the environment and various forms
of displacement of local populations. With respect to the environment, resource extraction
industries can have wide-ranging (adverse) effects. Primary among these are: 1) the
degradation of ecosystems through processes of extraction, refining and transportation, e.g.,
oil spills, cyanide spills, acid mine drainage, etc.; 2) degradation of the environment
through the use of products of these industries such as oil, e.g., smog, ozone depletion; 3)
changes in ecosystems, viz., flooding, deforestation, desertification and; 4) the loss of
biodiversity. While such negative impact occurs in both developed and developing countries,
the latter tend to be more vulnerable due to a variety of factors that may differ when firms
operate in these different contexts. Such factors include regulations in effect covering
extraction and refining processes (e.g., extraction methods, reclamation standards, etc.), the
ability and will of governments to enforce such regulations, the ability of local
communities to participate in decision-making, other pressures on firms (e.g., boycotts,
negative publicity, etc.), etc. Not infrequently, for example, it is the case that firms cause
environmental damage through methods that are perfectly legal in the host (developing) country
in which they are operating, but which would be illegal in their home (developed) country.


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Resource extraction causes socio-political harms.


Such adverse environmental impact and the economic effects noted above can (individually and
in concert) lead to adverse social and cultural effects on local communities. In the social realm,
the direct and indirect effects of resource extraction industries may include such problems as
increased health problems, the break-up of local communities (through forced removal,
degradation of traditional livelihood opportunities, etc.), increased ethnic and racial tension (as
populations move to and from resource extraction sites), etc. - as attested to by the papers in this
issue by Idahosa and, Boele, Fabig and Wheeler. Indigenous groups and ethnic minorities tend
to suffer disproportionately from such effects (Clarke and Cook Clarke, 1999). In the realm of
culture, adverse effects can occur at either of two levels. At one level, as business has become
increasingly global (especially in its marketing strategies), there has been a general trend for
Western culture to commercialize and displace local cultures in developing countries (e.g.,
fashion, music, cinema, literature, language, etc.). While REIs may contribute to this broader
phenomenon, their activities are even more likely to contribute to another trend. This is the
absorption of indigenous groups and other ethnic minorities into a national or dominant
culture within the country (involving the loss of language, traditional lifestyles, systems of
meaning, etc.) (Project Underground, 2000a).


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River water quality goes down with economic development.

Shafik, Nemat. Economic Development and Environmental Quality: An Econometric
Analysis. Oxford Economic Papers. 1994. Web. 7 December 2013.
<www.jstor.org/stable/2663498>

The two measures of river quality tend to worsen with rising per capita income. Dissolved
oxygen seems to be linear with a negative slope implying a tendency for worsening river
quality with economic growth. Growing effluent pollution associated with industrialization
may play a role in reducing dissolved oxygen at higher incomes. In the case of fecal coliform,
the cubic model fits the best implying that fecal content of rivers worsens, then improves, and
then deteriorates again at very high income levels. The initial worsening of fecal content,
which occurs up to a per capita income level of about $1,375, is probably associated with
growing urbanization and consequent pressures on sanitation. The improvement results when
urban sanitation services are introduced. The increase in fecal coliform at high income levels,
which begins at an income level of $11,400, is more difficult to explain. The cubic shape of fecal
content is not an artifact of the functional form. The increase in fecal pollution which occurs at
incomes above $11,500 per capita is based on 38 observations from seven rivers in three
countries (Australia, Japan, and the United States). This cubic relationship held even after some
extremely high observations of fecal content from the Yodo river in Japan were dropped from
the sample. The increased fecal coliform may reflect improvements in water supply systems
where people no longer depend directly on rivers for water and therefore may be less concerned
about river water quality. Some sample bias may exist for both measures of water quality
because only the most polluted rivers may be monitored in high income countries. Because of
these caveats, the results for river water quality must be treated with caution.
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Economic development fails to decrease carbon emission levels.

Shafik, Nemat. Economic Development and Environmental Quality: An Econometric
Analysis. Oxford Economic Papers. 1994. Web. 7 December 2013.
<www.jstor.org/stable/2663498>.

Carbon emissions per capita, like solid waste, do not improve with rising incomes because
widespread awareness of the problem of climate change is relatively recent and because the costs
are born externally. The log linear specification has virtually all the explanatory power, although
the quadratic cubic terms are also significant. The turning point on the quadratic specification
occurs at an income level that is well outside the sample range of per capita income.' The
explanation for the exponential increase in carbon emissions per capita with rising incomes
is that it is a classic free rider problem. There are no major local costs associated with carbon
emissions all the costs in terms of climate change are borne by the rest of the world-and the
local benefits in the near term are small in most cases. Technology has not helped, evidenced by
the insignificant time trend, because no significant incentives to reduce carbon emissions
exist. It is interesting to note that carbon emissions per unit of capital stock have declined over
time as countries have moved to cleaner burning fuels and technologies. But this movement to
cleaner fuels has been motivated largely by concerns about local, not global, pollutants (see
Diwan and Shafik 1992, for an analysis).
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In Nigeria, oil drilling has led to negative utilitarian impacts.


Standing at the margin of the margin, Ogoniland (like Chiapas in Mexico) appears to be a
socioeconomic paradox (figures 1-1, 1-2). Home to six oil fields, half of Nigerias oil
refineries, the countrys only fertilizer plant, a large petrochemical plant, Ogoniland is
wracked by unthinkable misery and deprivation. During the first oil boom, Ogonilands fifty-
six wells accounted for almost 15 percent of Nigerian oil production
1
and in the past three
decades an estimated $30 billion in petroleum revenues have flowed from this Lilliputian
territory; it was, as local opinion had it, Nigerias Kuwait. Yet, according to a governmental
commission, Oloibiri, where the first oil was pumped in 1958, has no single kilometer of all-
season road and remains one of the most backward areas in the country (Furro 1992:282).
Few Ogoni households have electricity, there is one doctor per 100,000 people, child
mortality rates are the highest in the nation, unemployment is 85 percent, 80 percent of the
population is illiterate, and close to half of Ogoni youth have left the region in search of
work. In Furros survey of two minority oil-producing communities, over 80 percent of
respondents felt that economic conditions had deteriorated since the onset of oil
production, and over two-thirds believed that there had been no progress in local development
since 1960. No wonder that the systematic reduction in federal allocations and the lack of
concern by the Rivers government was, for Oganiland, part of a long history of the politics of
minority suffocation (Ikporukpo 1996:171).
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Oil spills in Nigeria have had horrible ecological consequences for
locals.


If Ogoniland failed to see the material benefits of oil, what it did experience was an ecological
disasterwhat the European Parliament has called an environmental nightmare. The heart of
the ecological harm stems from oil spillseither from the pipelines that crisscross Oganiland
(often passing directly through villages) or from blowouts at the wellheadsand gas flaring.
As regards the latter, a staggering 76 percent of natural gas in the oil-producing areas is
flared (compared to 0.6 percent in the United States). As a visiting environmentalist noted in
1993 in the delta, some children have never known a dark night even though they have no
electricity (Village Voice, November 21, 1995:21). Burning twenty-four hours per day at
temperatures of 13-14,000 degrees Celsius, Nigerian natural gas produces 35 million tons of
CO
2
and 12 million tons of methane, more than the rest of the world (and rendering Nigeria
probably the biggest single cause of global warming). The oil spillage record is even worse,
According to Claude Ake, there are roughly 300 spills per year in the delta, and in the 1970s
alone the spillage was four times greater than the much-publicized Exxon Valdez spill in
Alaska. In one year alone, almost 700,000 barrels were spilled, according to a government
commission. The Ogoni are typically seen as a distinct ethnic group, consisting of three
subgroups and six clans. Their population of roughly 50,000 people is distributed among 111
villages dotted over 404 square miles of creeks, waterways, and tropical forest in the northeast
fringes of the Niger Delta. Located administratively in Rivers State, a Louisiana-like territory of
some 50,000 square kilometers, Oganiland is one of the most heavily populated zones in all of
Africa. Indeed the most densely settled areas of Oganilandover 1,500 persons per square
kilometersare the sites of the largest wells. Its customary productive base was provided by
fishing and agricultural pursuits until the discovery of petroleum, including the huge Bomu field,
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immediately prior to independence. Part of an enormously complex regional ethnic mosaic, the
Ogoni were drawn into internecine conflicts within the delta regionlargely as a consequence of
the slave trade and its aftermathin the period prior to arrival of colonial forces at Kono in
1901. The Ogoni resisted the British until 1908 (Naanen 1995) but therafter were left to stagnate
as part of the Opopo Division within Calabar Province. As Ogoniland was gradually
incorporated during the 1930s, the clamor for a separate political division grew at the hands of
the first pan-Ogoni organization, the Ogoni Central Union, which bore fruit with the
establishment of the Ogoni Native Authority in 1947. In 1951, however, the authority was
forcibly integrated into the Eastern Region. Experiencing tremendous neglect and discrimination,
integration raised longstanding fears among the Ogoni of Igbo domination. Politically
marginalized and economically neglected, the delta minorities feared the growing secessionist
rhetoric of the Igbo and consequently led an ill-fated secession of their own in February 1966.
Isaac Boro, Sam Owonaro, and Nottingham Dick declared an illegal Delta Peoples republic but
were crushed and were subsequently, in a trial that is only too reminiscent of the Ogoni tribunal
in 1995, condemned to death for treason. Nonetheless, Ogoni antipathy to what they saw as a
sort of internal colonialism at the hands of the Igbo, continued in their support for the federal
forces during the civil war. While Yakubo Gowon did indeed finally establish a Rivers Sate in
1967which compensated in some measure for enormous Ogoni losses during the warthe
new state recapitulated in microcosm the larger national question. The new Rivers State was
multiethnic but presided over by the locally dominant Ijaw, for whom the minorities felt little but
contempt.

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Resource extraction unequally harms individuals based on social
class and geographic location.

Johnston, Barbara Rose. "Human Rights and the Environment." Human Ecology. 1995. Web. 7
December 2013. <link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01191645>

Vulnerability to the changes in the biophysical realm is a factor of social relations: human
action and a history of social inequity leaves some people more vulnerable than others (Wisner,
1993). In spite of international and national structures establishing inalienable rights for all
this differential experience is often a result of government induced and/or sanctioned
action: powerless groups and their rights to land, resources, health, environmental
protection and thus, their future, are expendable in the name of national security, national
energy, and national debt. It is this sociocultural context of selective exposure to hazardous and
degraded environmental settings that constitutes a form of human environmental rights abuse. At
one level, human environmental rights abuse occurs because people happen to be living in
the wrong place. Beneath their homes lie economic or strategic mineral resources. Their
lives are spent in the "empty, open spaces" far from densely populated regions, and thus become
the logical place for military exercises, weapons testing, the storage or disposal of hazardous
wastes. They live on the frontier, in the peripheral regions, and on the borders between
"political nations" and find themselves caught in the middle during times of war or civil
unrest. Their isolation attracts those who are seeking economic, political, and environmental
alternatives. For these and many more reasons, resident peoples become displaced, alienated
from their traditional holdings, and experience increasing difficulty in maintaining individual,
household, and community health (cf. Cultural Survival, 1993; Burger, 1987, 1990).
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When nations prioritize resource extraction, human environmental
rights abuses occur because of the prioritization of national
interests over individuals.


At another level, human environmental rights abuse occurs because people are in the way
of progress and "national" needs supersede individual and community concerns. Thus,
people find themselves forcibly relocated while governments and industry build dams,
expand export-oriented intensive agriculture, develop international tourist facilities, and set
aside "wilderness" to save the biocommons and attract foreign ecotourist dollars (The
Ecologist, 1993; Johnston, 1994). Still, at another level, human environmental rights abuse
occurs because it is socially, culturally, and legally acceptable to protect the health of some
people, while knowingly placing other humans at risk. Thus, women and children, racial,
ethnic, and other powerless groups experience a contradictory application of occupational
health and safety regulations, and of environmental protection measures. The state may
disregard its own laws in the name of national security or economic interests. Environmental
and occupational health and safety policies may vary greatly between "home" and foreign
manufacturing locales. Information about hazardous materials may be available in one
setting to some people, and purposefully withheld from others (Bullard, 1993, 1994;
Goldman, 1991; Johnston and Dawson, 1994; Johnston and Button, 1994; Szasz, 1994).
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Policy makers justify hazardous actions by distancing themselves
from the people who are harmed.


The process of legitimacy, that is, making immoral actions socially palatable and legally
defensible, involves physical and cultural mechanisms used to create, maintain, and widen
the distance between those who decide courses of action, and those who live with the adverse
consequences. These mechanisms include the physical distancing of decision makers from the
reality of their decisions, employment of frameworks and analytical methods that intellectually
distance decision makers from the reality of consequence, and embedding abusive action within
a broader ethnocentric discourse. Perhaps the most common mechanism used to distance
decision makers from the consequence of their decisions is the siting of hazardous actions
and endeavors in "peripheral" regions populated by "marginal" people (the "not in my
back yard" approach to decision making) (Bullard, 1993, 1994; Szasz, 1994). Peripheral
regions can be a matter of actual geographic distance, or "cultural" distance, that is, areas
populated by less powerful groups.
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Scientific research is used to distance policy makers from the
negative effects their policies have on the environment.


Conceptual distancing mechanisms involve the use of scientific methods to define, analyze,
prioritize, and assess the costs and benefits of various actions. Forcing the complex nature
of human environmental crises into a scientific framework implies a series of compromises.
Western culture, the culture of science, exists in fragmented spaces and places in the mind, spirit,
and material world. Problems are framed in tightly defined, bounded terms that suggest
logical, linear solutions, strategies and methods used to achieve scientific objectivity, and
presumably a verifiable version of truth .The pursuit of objectivity hinges on our ability to
practice the fine art of distancing: distancing ourselves from reality to the point that we can
observe, isolate, and distill facets of the human experience without losing our grasp of reality.
Both the act of distancing and the fragmentation of complex reality into discrete analytical
units carry analytical risks: both deny the true nature of humanity, human experience,
human problems, human needs. Reality is messy, complex, and organizationally
entrenched.

In this highly compartmentalized world, environment as a concept no longer represents a natural
system of which humans are a part. It is a commodity controlled and manipulated by global
market forces. Regional economies and cultures have been replaced by the "global village"
where resource extraction, production, and consumption at the local level are highly
fragmented and at the international level tightly controlled by a relatively small group of
national, multinational, and corporate entities (The Ecologist, 1993; Sachs, 1993). This
centralization of authority and capital:( 1) serves to devalue the meaning, power, and the
integrity of the community over its own immediate environment(;2 ) suggests that
environmental integrity is in large part dependent upon the decisions and actions of the
state, multilateral in situations, and/or multinational industry rather than the local
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community and; (3) increases the distance between making the decision and experiencing
the consequence.
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Population growth (development) empirically leads to deforestation.


The results shown in Table 5 indicate that an increase in population is associated with a loss
of forest area. The coefficients relating population change to forest area change (b, = -.005, -
.008 for Samples 1 and 2, respectively) are negative and significant at the .10 and .05 levels,
respectively. The negative coefficients in the regression (b and beta) and the negative correlation
coefficients (r) mean that developing countries with high rates of population growth also
have higher-than-average rates of deforestation. In addition, the coefficient for the sample of
Asian and African countries is stronger than for the total sample, suggesting that in Latin
America population growth may not be as important a factor in deforestation as it is in Asian and
African countries. Population growth in connection with expansion of arable land has been
regarded as one of the contributors to deforestation. However, the coefficient for change in
arable land (b2 = .140, -.220 for Samples 1 and 2, respectively), although negative, is not
significant. The lack of a direct relationship in the multivariate analysis between deforestation
and agricultural expansion (i.e., b2 is not significant in Table 5) can be explained through an
examination of the bivariate correlations between change in crop-land, forest area, and
population (see Table 6). Changes in forest area and arable land are negatively correlated
for both samples (r = -.212, - .380), and both simple correlations are stronger than are the
multivariate coefficients, probably because forests are being replaced by agriculture.
Changes in cropland and population are positively and quite strongly correlated (r = .352, .580).
The bivariate correlation coefficients in Table 6 indicate that population growth is related to
agricultural expansion, which in turn is related to forest loss. This relationship does not show
up in the multivariate analysis because controlling for population suppresses the negative
correlation between cropland and change in forest area. We conclude that both population
growth and change in arable land are associated with deforestation. The patterns also are
much stronger in Asia and Africa than in Latin America.
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Washington, DC.

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Extraction trades off with public goods kills growth.

Collier, Paul. "The political economy of Natural resources." Social Research. Web. 6 Dec. 2013.
<http://users.ox.ac.uk/~econpco/research/pdfs/PoliticalEconomyofNaturalResources-
SocialResearchArticle.pdf>.

Too Little Investment in National Public Goods. Natural assets are one form of national
public good. The above argument not only induces the government to plunder these natural
assets in order to invest in group-specific and private capital, but to underinvest in other forms
of national public good. The plunder of natural assets can be accelerated by means of
international borrowing against the natural assets as collateral. More generally, spending
ministers will ally to oppose the national public good of saving. Profligate spending ministers
and a weak minister of finance thus give rise to a common-pool problem. This leads to an
upward bias in public spending claims, a tilt of the government spending profile from the
future toward the present, and thus not enough saving for future generations. When the
financial return on the common asset is higher than that on private assets voracious natural
resource depletion can not merely waste the natural assets but reduce overall growth.

Paul Collier, CBE is Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of
Government, and Director for the Centre for the Study of African Economies at The University
of Oxford and Fellow of St Antony's College.

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Developing countries more likely to use violence, but this violence
props up an unequal exchange and allows rich countries to
appear unaccountable.

Downey, Liam, Eric Bonds, and Katherine Clark. "Natural Resource Extraction, Armed
Violence, and Environmental Degradation." Organization & Environment. 2010. Web. 6
Dec. 2013. <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3169238/>.

Third, this article helps demonstrate that much of the armed violence associated with natural
resource extraction is carried out by developing nation governments, mercenaries, and
rebels. It also offers a theoretical argument for why developing nations are likely to use armed
violence to achieve their resource extraction goals even when doing so promotes ecological
unequal exchange and the continued domination of these nations by core nations.
19
Thus,
this article (a) provides a rationale for why developing nation governments sometimes use
armed violence to achieve resource extraction goals that contradict their long term
interests and (b) suggests that core nations and corporations are able to distance themselves
from many violent actions that benefit them, actions that they might otherwise have to take
themselves. The ability of core nations and corporations to distance themselves from
extraction-related violence is potentially important because it likely allows these nations
and corporations to divert blame for this violence (and the human rights abuses associated
with it) away from themselves and to present their control over natural resources as the
legitimate product of a just and rational world market. As a result, extraction-related
armed violence carried out by developing nations may often help to legitimate core nations,
core nation corporations, international trade and finance institutions, and the global economic
order by stigmatizing developing nations and disassociating core nations, core nation and the
institutions they control from the violent underpinnings of the global extractive
industrycorporations, and the institutions they control from the violent underpinnings of the
global extractive industry.

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Liam Downey is an Associate Professor of Sociology, Faculty Associate in the Institute of
Behavioral Science, and Faculty Associate in the Environmental Studies Program. He studies the
role that elite-controlled organizations, institutions, and networks play in harming people,
societies, and the environment, focusing in particular on elite-controlled policy planning
networks, armed violence organized by the state, commodity chain power, and international
trade and finance institutions such as the World Bank and the World Trade Organization.
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Studies have found a correlation between oil extraction and
authoritarianism in the Middle East.

Frankel, Jeffrey A. 2010. The Natural Resource Curse: A Survey. John F. Kennedy School of
Government, Harvard University. 2010. Web. 7 December 2013.
<www.hks.harvard.edu/m-rcbg/heep/papers/FrankelHEEPDP21.pdf >.

Mahdavy (1970) was apparently the first to suggestfollowed by Luciani (1987), Vandewalle
(1998) and many others -- that Middle Eastern governments access to rents, in the form of
oil revenue, may have freed them from the need for taxation of their peoples, and that this in
turn freed them from the need for democracy. The need for tax revenue is believed to require
democracy under the theory no taxation without representation. Huntington (1991)
generalized the principle beyond Middle Eastern oil producers to states with natural resources in
other parts of the developing world. Statistical studies across large cross-sections of countries
followed. Ross (2001) finds that economic dependence on oil and mineral is correlated with
authoritarian government. So do Barro (2000), Wantchekon (2002), Jenson and Wantchekon
(2004), and Ross (2006). Smith (2004, 2007), Ulfelder (2007) and others generally find that
authoritarian regimes have lasted longer in countries with oil wealth.

Jeffrey Frankel is James W. Harpel, Professor of Capital Formation and Growth at Harvard
Universitys Kennedy School of Government. He directs the program in International Finance
and Macroeconomics at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he is also on the
Business Cycle Dating Committee, which officially declares recessions.
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Resource extraction leads to financial instability.

Gylfason, Thorvaldur. Natural Resources, Education, and Economic Development. European
Economic Review. 2001. Web. 7 December 2013.
<www.hi.is/~gylfason/pdf/eea2000k.pdf >.

First, natural resource abundance often results in an overvaluation of the national currency.
This is a symptom of the Dutch disease: A natural resource boom and the associated surge in
raw-material exports drive up the real exchange rate (or real wages), thus hurting other
exports (Corden, 1984). Moreover, recurrent booms and busts tend to increase exchange rate
volatility (Gylfason et al., 1999; Herbertsson et al., 1999). Sometimes this is enough to reduce
total exports. Sometimes it just skews the composition of exports away from high-tech and
other manufacturing and service exports that are particularly conducive to economic growth. In
either case, economic growth is likely to slow down because exports and, generally, openness to
all kinds of trade with the rest of the world are good for growth (Frankel and Romer, 1999).

Thorvaldur Gylfason is on the faculty of economics and business administration at the University
of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland.

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Focus on resources is inversely correlated with education levels.


Fourth, nations that are confident that their natural resources are their most important
asset may inadvertently and perhaps even deliberately! neglect the development of their
human resources, by devoting inadequate attention and expenditure to education. Their natural
wealth may blind them to the need for educating their children. Therefore, it is perhaps no
coincidence that school enrollment at all levels tends to be inversely related to natural
resource abundance, as measured by the share of the labor force engaged in primary
production, across countries (Gylfason et al., 1999(. For example, the OPEC countries send
57 percent of their youngsters to secondary school compared with 64 percent for the world
as a whole and they spend less than 4 percent of their GNP on education on average
compared with almost 5 percent for the world as a whole (the figures refer to 1997). Blessed
by an unusually rich and reliable rent stream, Botswana is an exception: Its expenditure on
education relative to income continues to be among the largest in the world.


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Focus on resource extraction stops social class movement.


Education is good for growth, as Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Alfred Marshall knew.
Listen, for example, to Marshall (1920, p. 176):

There is no extravagance more prejudicial to growth of national wealth than that wasteful
negligence which allows genius that happens to be born of lowly parentage to expend itself in
lowly work. No change would conduce so much to a rapid increase of material wealth as an
improvement in our schools, and especially those of the middle grades, provided it be
combined with an extensive system of scholarships, which will enable the clever son of a
working man to rise gradually from school to school till he has the best theoretical and practical
education which the age can give.
Natural resources bring risks. One is that too many people become locked in low-skill
intensive natural-resource-based industries, including agriculture, and thus fail through no
fault of their own to advance their own or their childrens education and earning power.
Another risk is that the authorities and other inhabitants of resource-rich countries become
overconfident and therefore tend to underrate or overlook the need for good economic
policies as well as for good education. In other words, nations that believe that natural capital is
their most important asset may develop a false sense of security and become negligent about
the accumulation of human capital. Indeed, resource-rich nations can live well of their natural
resources over extended periods, even with poor economic policies and a week commitment to
education. Awash in easy cash, they may find that education does not pay. Nations without
natural resources have a smaller margin for error, and are less likely to make this
mistake.

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Focus on resource extraction creates an economic cycle that only
causes more harm to the environment.

Reardon, Thomas and Vosti, Stephen A. Links Between Rural Poverty and the Environment in
Developing Countries; Asset Categories and Investment Poverty World Development,
1995. Web. 7 December 2013. <ideas.repec.org/a/eee/wdevel/v23y1995i9p1495-
1506.html >.

This greater reliance on livelihood activities based on use of the commons and on open-access
lands has often led observers to blame the poor for overgrazing and overforesting open access
lands. Livestock indeed are important to the poor, but the poor household usually cannot
afford to own many animals. For example, the poorest tercile of households owns far fewer
animals per household than do richer households in West Africa; see Christensen (1989). Thus
individual poor households put less pressure on semiarid pasturelands than do individual
rich households. The conventional argument is thus turned on its head: as absolute importance
of livestock holding increases with household income, and as incomes rise in rural areas, we
should expect households to invest in more livestock and place greater pressure on the
commons. Analogously, reducing poverty in tropical forest areas such as the Amazon may
induce technical change (e.g., adoption of chainsaws) in forest conversion even among small
farmers, thus increasing deforestation rates.
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The environmental consequences of resource usage harm the poor
who cannot keep up.

1506.html >.

Boserup (1965) outlines a number of technology and investment paths to agricultural
intensification that farmers follow in the wake of increased land constraints and demand for land
- conditions that result from population growth, increased demand for agricultural products, or
reduced transportation costs (Boserup, 1965; Pingali et&., 1987). Two broad paths can be
distilled from Boserups framework: a labor-led intensification path where farmers merely
add labor to the production process on given land, allowing them to crop more densely, and
weed and harvest more intensively; a capital-led intensification path where farmers
augment their labor with variable and capital inputs, in particular fertilizer, organic matter,
and capital that facilitates land improvement. Boserup identifies the second path as having
higher land productivity than the former. Similarly, Matlon and Spencer (1984) note that the
capital-led path is more sustainable and productive in fragile, resource-poor areas as the
fertility-enhancing input use helps the farmer to avoid exhausting the soil during intensification
and the capital (land improvements) help avoid erosion and runoff. By contrast, in much of the
African tropics for example, the labor-led path to intensification is unsustainable, and leads to
land degradation and stagnation of land productivity. In situations such as the tropical
highlands where demographic pressure and degradation are severe, farm households that follow
only the labor-led path are in for long-run ecological disaster and further immizeration (Matlon
and Adesina, 1992; Cleaver and Schreiber, 1994). Hence, in situations of fragile and
degrading environments and land constraints, thus lack of opportunity to extensify, households
too investment-poor to make the requisite investments for the capital-led intensification
path will find themselves both increasing the rate of degradation and vulnerable to its
productivity consequences.
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Resource extraction in Rwanda leads to a vicious cycle of poverty.

1506.html >.

In Rwanda there is intense pressure on the land, and the poor depend on micro plots to
survive, and have few animals. There is very skewed distribution of nonfarm income. Where
the land-poor are also poor in off-farm capital, they can make few soil conservation
investments because of lack of cash for materials and labor hire. Those with cash crops such
as coffee or with nonfarm income have both the incentive (reliance on little land) and the cash to
make conservation investments. Moreover, the poor practice labor-led intensification (see
section 3), and lack the means to buy fertilizer or mulch, and own few animals to generate
manure. Limits to yield increases are reached early in such a system, and the soil can be
exhausted from lack of amendments such as fertilizer. This gives rise to a vicious circle of
poverty, labor-led intensification, degradation, and more poverty (Clay et al., 1995).
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The nature of certain pharmacological extraction methods means
that justice may not be distributive.


A closely related problem growing out of recent advances in genetic and cell culture
technologies is that of actually determining site of origin. The production processes into
which the extraction of plant specimens feeds no longer depend on the use of bulk quantities of
material, as Parry demonstrates in her brilliant chapter, they may rely on the constituent parts
of the original specimens, which are broken up and recombined over and over again until
the essence of the source material is effectively lost. Alternatively, the key commodity is not
the physical specimen at all, but the information contained in its genetic makeup, which
scientists employ in efforts to synthesize useful compounds. Indeed, Parry argues that in some
cases, prospecting for marketable biological and genetic compounds can now be done more
profitable within existing collections than in the relatively inaccessible and uncontrolled natural
settings where the specimens originated. These developments have made tracing biological and
genetic materials up and down the production chain next to impossible, and frequently render the
question of distributive justice moot. The practice of re-mining existing collections suggests
that any leverage people in the areas of origin of key compounds might have had over
decisions regarding the sharing of economic benefits may have been lost long ago.
Furthermore, long delays in developing commercial uses for particular compounds break
the connection many activists and developers have sought to establish between
conservation and development, and undermine the efficacy of distributive benefits
mechanisms in producing desired environmental outcomes altogether.
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While seeking resources, countries assert their domination. This is
the root cause of human right abuses.


The abuse of human environmental rights obviously occurs within a cultural, as well as
political economic and biophysical context. Human environmental rights violations often
occur as a result of efforts to gain control of land, labor, and resources of politically land/or
geographically peripheral peoples. The cultural context involves a process of social
construction, where marginal peoples are seen to be biologically, culturally, and socially
inferior, providing the justification for state domination.
This process, what George Appell (1992) terms psychosocial hegemony, utilizes a discourse of
debasement (the "dirty" native, sexually promiscuous/drunken/criminal native) that serves to
dehumanize (they are subhuman: savage, primitive, backward, ignorant, lazy people that "live
like animals"). The pervasiveness of this discourse in the every day language, media, school
curriculum materials, and in the views and policies of external agents (teachers, agricultural
and fishery extension agents, shopkeepers, and so forth) eventually destroys the self-esteem
and sense of worth of peripheral populations and removes their motivation to control their
destiny. This discourse of debasement is universal in form and content - it is an integral
component in the evolution of human rights abuse.
The "discourse of dominance" take several forms in state efforts to justify taking land,
labor, and resources. The poverty label, constructed by ignoring, belittling or claiming as
nonexistent the existing subsistence-based economies, provides the rationale for "economic
development" efforts. Ignoring or belittling the importance of subsistence or barter-based
economies also allows the inference that surrounding lands are unoccupied, empty, or are
wilderness areas that can be claimed and used by the state. Legally, state control over
peripheral population territory and resources is supported by Western notions of property
rights: the contention that resources held in common do not in face constitute "actual
property rights" (Berge, 1994; The Ecologist, 1993).
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Resource extraction is aggressive exploitation that links to
capitalism.

Webber, Jeffery R. "Indigenous Struggle: Ecology and Capitalist Resource Extraction in
Equador." Global Research. 13 July 2010. Web. 06 Dec. 2013.
<http://www.globalresearch.ca/indigenous-struggle-ecology-and-capitalist-resource-
extraction-in-ecuador>.

Indigenous peoples have long been arguing for a sustainable development model that
would break with the extractive model we have today. Ill speak, for example, of the South,
and Central-South Amazonian region. In these regions the indigenous peoples are struggling for
conservation a type of conservation that will utilize natural resources only in order to survive,
in order to live with dignity. This is quite distinct from overexploitation. The exploitation of
natural resources under the current model whether by transnational corporations or state
companies is an aggressive exploitation. In one day, for business purposes, they want to
extract millions and millions of dollars worth of natural resources in order to accumulate
capital. We have argued, however, that the accumulation of capital doesnt serve our needs.
Why would we want to accumulate capital? Its been a complete failure. In Ecuador,
agricultural production, communitarian agriculture production, has been one of the principal axes
of our well being, because these agricultural producers meet the food needs of those living in the
cities. But investment is moving out of agriculture and going toward natural resource
extraction. There is also a lack of investment in tourism, but weve seen from the example of
Costa Rica that investment in tourism is one possible alternative. Weve argued that
communitarian, ecological, responsible, and sustainable tourism is one possible alternative.
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Ecological degradation is a result of capitalism, so extraction
ultimately just entrenches the domination of the already rich
country.

Clark, Brett, and John Bellamy Foster. "Ecological Imperialism and the Global Metabolic Rift :
Unequal Exchange and the Guano/Nitrates Trade." International Journal of Comparative
Sociology. 2009. Web. 7 December 2013. <cos.sagepub.com/content/50/3-
4/311.full.pdf >

Although Marxist theory cannot be said to have approached the issue of ecological imperialism
systematically in the past, Marxs own analysis provided the analytical basis for such a
treatment, due to his simultaneous concern with economic expansion, imperialism, and
ecological exploitation. Nonetheless, ecological problems are complex, especially as they
emerge under capitalism.

Ecological degradation is influenced by the structure and dynamics
of the world capitalist system, arising from the fact that a single world economy is divided
into numerous nation-states, competing with each other both directly and via their
corporations. The global economy is divided hierarchically, with nations occupying
fundamentally different positions in the international division of labor and in a world-
system of dominance and dependency (Frank, 1967; Wallerstein, 1974). To further complicate
matters, the extraction, processing, and consumption of raw materials an inevitable part
of any mode of production entails constant interactions with dynamic, integrated natural
processes and cycles (Bunker and Ciccantell, 2005). In this, earthly conditions are
transformed, potentially creating various forms of ecological degradation. The exact
ramifications, of course, will be determined by the particulars of any situation. Transfers in
economic values are shadowed in complex ways by real material- ecological flows that
transform ecological relations between town and country, and between nations, especially the
core and periphery (Bunker, 1984; Burkett, 1999; Hornborg, 2003).

Control of such economic
and material flows is central to the forces of competition and the accumulation of capital, and
generates social and environmental inequalities throughout the global economy both within and
between nations. Stephen Bunker (1984, 1985) highlighted how the extraction and export of
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natural resources from peripheral countries involved the vertical flow of not only economic
value, but also value in terms of energy and matter, to more developed countries. These
trade arrangements, influenced by the dynamics of the global economy and positions
within the world-system, negatively affected and undermined the socio-ecological
conditions in the extractive countries. Recent scholarship on ecologically unequal exchange
has drawn on Bunkers seminal work, as well as the theory of unequal exchange (Emmanuel,
1972), in order to demonstrate the disproportionate (and undercompensated) transfer of matter
and energy from the periphery to the core, and the exploitation of environmental space within the
periphery for intensive production and waste disposal (Frey, 1994; Hornborg, 2003; Rice, 2007).
The environmental footprint of economically advanced nations involves appropriation of
land, resources, and labor in lesser-developed countries, increasing the environmental
degradation in the latter for the benefit of the former (Hornborg, 1998, 2001; Jorgenson,
2006).

Brett Clark is assistant professor of sociology and sustainability studies at the University of Utah.
His research focuses on the political economy of global environmental change and the
philosophy, history, and sociology of science. He teaches courses in the Department of
Sociology, Environmental Humanities Graduate Program, and the Environmental and
Sustainability Studies program.
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The global economic system robs third world countries blind when
it comes to resource extraction prioritizing resources
dooms the developing countries from the start.

Clark, Brett, and John Bellamy Foster. "Ecological Imperialism and the Global Metabolic Rift :
Unequal Exchange and the Guano/Nitrates Trade."International Journal of Comparative
Sociology.

The economic development of capitalism has always carried with it social and ecological
degradation an ecological curse. Moreover, ecological imperialism has meant that the worst
forms of ecological destruction, in terms of pillage of resources and the disruption of
sustainable relations to the earth, fall on the periphery rather than the center. Ecological
imperialism allows imperial countries to carry out an environmental overdraft that draws
on the natural resources of periphery countries. As the material conditions of development
are destroyed, Third World countries are more and more caught in the debt trap that
characterizes extractive economies. The principles of conservation that were imposed partly by
business in the developed countries, in order to rationalize their resource use up to a point, were
never applied to the same extent in the Third World, where imperialism nakedly imposed an
after me the deluge philosophy. The guano and nitrates trade during the mid to late 19th
century highlights the unequal exchange and degradation associated with the ecological
contradictions of Britain and other dominant countries in the global economy. In fact, it is rather
misleading to dignify with the word trade what was clearly robbery of ecological and
economic resources on a very high order, rooted in one of the most exploitative labor
processes in history and backed up by war and imperialism. The result for Peru and Chile
(and also Bolivia which lost its nitrates in the War of the Pacific) was not development, but
rather, as explained by critics from Maritegui in the 1920s to Frank in the 1960s, constituted the
development of underdevelopment (Frank, 1967; Maritegui, 1971).

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Sustainability Studies program
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Rapid extraction can cement existing power relations and can
subjugate different peoples.

Collier, Paul. "The political economy of Natural resources." Social Research. Web. 6 Dec. 2013.
<http://users.ox.ac.uk/~econpco/research/pdfs/PoliticalEconomyofNaturalResources-
SocialResearchArticle.pdf>.

Too Rapid Extraction: If the society is divided and power is unstable, then whichever
group is currently in power has an interest in converting as many natural assets as possible
into irreversible specific capital that favors itself. For example, the ethnic group in power
might locate infrastructure in its own geographic area. If the ruling group is sufficiently
small, the most attractive form of asset acquisition might indeed not even be public goods but
might be private wealth held in irreversible form by means of capital flight. Incumbent
governments then have an incentive to incur excessive social costs of extraction, such as by
agreeing to overgenerous deals to extraction companies, or to ignore social costs incurred
in the region of extraction if it is inhabited by nonfavored groups. For example, ministers in
the transitional government in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) knew that they only
had around three years in office. During this period many contracts were signed with resource
extraction companies conceding very generous terms in return for signature bonuses that cashed
in the value of the natural assets to the society. By 2006 royalty payments to the treasury of the
DRC were generating only $86,000 per year despite several hundred million dollars of
commodity exports.
Paul Collier, CBE is Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of
Government, and Director for the Centre for the Study of African Economies at The University
of Oxford and Fellow of St Antony's College.

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Developing countries are threatened into resource extraction.


Developing nations, of course, have very different interests than do core nations. They also
have much less power than do core nations. As a result, in developing nations, the decision to
use violence or the threat of violence in order to protect resource extraction activities is
likely to be strongly shaped by structural constraints imposed on them by wealthy
governments, corporations, and international institutions. For example, structural adjustment
programs imposed on developing nations by the World Bank and IMF often force
developing nations to maintain high levels of raw material exports (Bello et al., 1999); and in
cases where mining projects require political risk insurance, developing nations are sometimes
forced to agree that they will pay out potentially large insurance claims if mining activities are
disrupted in any way (Moody, 2005, 2007). Developing nations high levels of debt and their
resulting dependence on wealthy nations, the World Bank, the IMF, and corporate foreign
investment also force developing nation governments to worry about how these
organizations and states evaluate their activities. As a result, developing nation
governments may feel that regardless of their own motives and interests, they have to use
all means necessary to protect resource extraction activities so as to meet their debt
obligations, ensure continued foreign investment, and minimize conflict with more powerful
nations and institutions.

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Resource extraction is historically associated with violence.


Turning to Table 2, we see that armed violence is associated with the extraction of most of
the critical minerals examined in this study. For example, for these critical minerals, violent
actions against protestors have occurred in South Africa, Malaysia, China, Brazil, Tibet,
Sierra Leone, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea.
11
Mercenaries and military personnel
have provided mine security for these minerals in Sierra Leone and Indonesia, and the
mining of these minerals has occurred under repressive regimes in the Soviet Union, Russia,
South Africa, Inner Mongolia, Tibet, China, Brazil, Gabon, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea,
Myanmar, the Philippines, India, and Mexico, and has involved the repression of indigenous
or colonized people in Inner Mongolia, Tibet, Brazil, Papua New Guinea, and Indonesia. In
addition, the extraction of these minerals has involved the forced removal of people from
their homes in South Africa, Brazil, Sierra Leone, and Kenya; the use of prison labor or
forced labor in the Soviet Union and Myanmar; and the use of other forms of armed violence,
including threatened arrests, solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, rapes, and killings, in
Russia, Malaysia, Brazil, China, Kenya, and Indonesia. These findings provide strong support
for our argument that the extraction of critical natural resources is often, though by no
means always, associated with armed violence (especially when we recall that it was nearly
impossible for us to ascertain whether armed violence is associated with indium and vanadium
mining). However, in presenting these findings in table form, we only provide readers with a
partial understanding of the violent context within which the mining of critical minerals
sometimes occurs. Moreover, the evidence presented in Table 2 does not allow us to evaluate
any of our theoretical claims about why mining is likely to lead to violence.

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Developing countries perceive it as a rich countries problem they
want it to be an issue of fairness.


Second, poor countries see a climate-change deal in fundamentally different terms. For
rich countries the problem is environmental: greenhouse gases are accumulating in the
atmosphere and must be cut, preferably using the sort of binding targets recommended by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. For developing countries the problem is one of
fairness and history: rich countries are responsible for two-thirds of the carbon put into the
atmosphere since 1850; to cut emissions in absolute terms now would perpetuate an unjust
pattern. Poor countries therefore think emissions per head, not absolute emissions, should
be the standard. Moreover, targets set at national level have little effect in poor countries where
public administration works badly. So rich and poor also disagree about the conditions attached
to any money for mitigating or adapting to climate change. The rich see this as a sort of aid,
designed for specific projects with measurable targets, requiring strict conditions. Poorer
countries see the cash as no-strings compensation for a problem that is not of their making.
The Economist is one of the most prestigious publications on public policy and economicts. Its
articles.

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Resource extraction can lead to government corruption.


Second, natural-resource-rich economies seem especially prone to socially damaging rent-
seeking behavior on the part of producers. This can take many forms. For example, the
government may be tempted to offer tariff protection to domestic producers, among other
privileges. Rent seeking may also breed corruption in business and government, thereby
distorting the allocation of resources and reducing both economic efficiency and social
equity. Empirical evidence suggests that import protection and corruption both tend to impede
economic growth (Bardham, 1997). Third, natural resource abundance may imbue people with
a false sense of security and lead governments to lose sight of the need for good and growth-
friendly economic management, including free trade, bureaucratic efficiency, and institutional
quality (Sachs and Warner, 1999). Incentives to create wealth tend to become too blunted by the
ability to extract wealth from the soul or the sea. Rich parents sometimes spoil their kids.
Mother Nature is no exception.


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Developed countries use developing countries for cheap resources at
the cost of the environment.

European Commission "Resource Efficiency." May 2011. Web. 8 Dec. 2013.
<http://ec.europa.eu/environment/integration/research/newsalert/pdf/26si.pdf>.

The report argues that richer nations, such as in Europe, will have to substantially decrease
their use of resources, to allow people in poorer countries better access to resources to
improve their quality of life. Most resources are extracted from developing nations, where
working conditions are often poor and environmental deterioration is remarkable. For
example, in 2005, nearly half (48 per cent) of global resources were extracted from Asia, which
is home to over half of the worlds population.
Global demand for raw materials and products has significantly driven international trade over
the last 50 years. Of all the major regions in the world, Europe has the highest net imports of
natural resources, equivalent to almost 3 tonnes for every person in Europe each year.
Consumption patterns vary widely across the world. On average, a North American
consumes 90 kg of resources per day, Europeans consume 45 kg each a day, in Asia, each person
consumes 14 kg a day and Africans consume 10 kg a day each. Improvements in the efficient
use of resources have occurred, but economic growth has outstripped these gains and
resource extraction and use continue to rise globally. It is not possible for natural resources
to continue to be used at the same rate as in the past. Many non-renewable resources, such
as oil, are estimated to be close to their peak levels of extraction and shortages are driving
up prices.
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The African diamond industry has been taken over by non-state
actors.

Orugon, Paul. Blood Diamonds and Africas Armed Conflicts in the PostCold War Era.
World Affairs. 2004. Web. 7 December 2013. <www.jstor.org/stable/20672689>.

To be sure, there are several hundred non-state actors and less prominent political
dignitaries who have participated in and profited handsomely from the trafficking of blood
diamonds and the fomenting of regional insecurities that characteristically is associated with
rebel militias and adversarial neighboring political administrations. They also were persistent
violators of the UN Security Council's sanctions and embargoes against the trafficking of
blood diamonds and weapons-running operations. The global trade of rough diamonds, also
referred to as "rough," "uncut," or "unpolished" gemstones, indeed is a trade in luxury goods.
Diamond gemstones command high value added significance in the world trade. The diamond
industry remains an elitist and oligarchic based cartel in which a few key players control
capitalization and economies of scale. In many ways, it is a self-regulated industry, and De
Beers continues to control more than 60 percent of the trade in rough diamonds. The key players
are relatively few, and the profit margins are extremely high. It is no surprise that worldwide,
precious gemstones and finished-polished diamonds still generate an aura of mystique, a
statement of elegance, and timeless treasure. In romantic terms, diamonds are not only priceless
but also symbolic of love, fidelity, and age less beauty. Most of the polished diamonds are sold
in high-income and hard currency countries and regions such as the United States, Western
Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, Taiwan, and the Middle East, as well as other affluent
societies. Rough diamonds, however, largely are extracted or mined in several African
countries, including South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Democratic
Republic of Congo.

Paul Orugon is an associate professor of politics at Lake Forest College in Illinois.
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Resource extraction in Africa allows militias to commit acts of
violence.

Orugon, Paul. Blood Diamonds and Africas Armed Conflicts in the PostCold War Era.
World Affairs. 2004. Web. 7 December 2013. <www.jstor.org/stable/20672689>.

The control over diamond-mining areas has constituted the decisive factor in an explanation
of why different rebel militia have been able to fund, sustain, and intensify their level of
impunity and economic violence in the war decimated African countries. Indeed, although it is
still true that diamonds are forever and are a woman's best friend, in modern sub-Saharan
African, blood diamonds, or "hot stones" in particular, have become the indispensable
economic lifeline and best friends of the rampaging, rouge rebels and looting bandits. An
important factor that has made diamonds so critical with regard to the proliferation of armed
conflict deals with the fact that diamonds by nature are relatively small in size, portable, and
relatively easy to conceal, making them less susceptible to detection. Also, small parcels of
rough diamonds can fetch several millions of dollars on the world diamond market. Major
diamond trading cities such as Antwerp, London, Tel Aviv, Geneva, New York, Bombay, and so
on have perfected their craft, and dealers and polishers have become ingeniously adept at
transforming unpolished diamonds into finished, magnificent masterpieces. Because diamonds
still command high prices, these economic resources conveniently are used as financial
payment for transactions involving the illicit trafficking of guns and other war-related
supplies. Official banking tends to be minimized as much as possible by the rebel militias. In
order to cover up their criminal transactions, they prefer the bartering of rough diamonds for
arms and other types of military equipment as much as possible.
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Fear of nationalization means resource extraction firms will try to
stop economic development.


Explanations for the failure of the ISI strategy and, more specifically the limited role of REIs in
playing a more dynamic role in development, are complex and contested (Banuri,1991; Ascher,
1999). What is clear, however, is the general attitude and approach that REIs took in the face of
efforts by developing countries to introduce greater control over their resources. Typically such
companies have operated in ways - often morally questionable ways - that were clearly
designed to frustrate the development plans of developing countries. The reason why is
relatively simple to understand. A key component of traditional development strategies has
been to exert control over one's natural resources and to force foreign companies involved in
the extraction (and processing) to pay more dearly (so that more investments could be made in
"human resources" and industrial development). To this a number of standard practices were
implemented, e.g., nationalizing reserves, increasing taxes, requiring further stages of
processing to be done in the host country, limiting equity participation in joint ventures, etc.
Such measures are resisted by corporations because they increase costs and eat into their
profits.

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Resource extraction harms democratically elected governments.


Historically, REIs have acted in ways that have had adverse effects on political development.
Perhaps, the most blatant cases involve the direct support by firms for the overthrow of
legitimate governments (which typically occurs after such governments have asserted their
sovereignty over their natural resources). One clear example of this involves the decision by the
government of Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran to nationalize the holdings of British Petroleum
1951. In response to this move, BP was first able to win assurances from the other major oil
companies that they would not buy oil from Iran, a strategy that placed tremendous economic
pressure on the Mossadegh government to reconsider its policy. When this did not have
the desired effect, the British government - joined by the U.S. government (which had been
reluctant to take any action, in part due to its own interests in breaking up the British monopoly
in Iran) - was persuaded to intervene in the matter. The result was strong support for a coup in
1953 that led to the overthrow of Mossadegh, the return of the Shah and the (re-)entry of
foreign oil companies into Iran (Sampson, 1984). A similar case involves the democratically
elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973, which fell victim to a CIA backed
coup in 1973 after nationalizing foreign copper holdings, of which the U.S. companies
Anaconda and Kennecott had the largest stake (Kaufman, 1988). In both these instances,
industry actors found sympathetic ears within their home governments in their efforts to
promote their economic interests over the will of the people of the countries in question.


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The resource extraction industry re-entrenches authoritarian
regimes.


While these are the most overt cases of corporate activity undermining political development, it
could be argued that decisions by corporations to operate in countries without democratic
governments are equally as damaging, if not as dramatic. At issue here is the degree to which
the operations of corporations serve to prop up non-democratic regimes and inhibit the
emergence of democratic governance (and respect for basic civil and political rights). While
corporations and their home governments often justify TNC operations in non-democratic
countries as being in the best interests of local people (e.g., by providing employment) and
providing leverage for reforms (the strategy of "constructive engagement"), there are obvious
examples where such justifications do not seem appropriate (e.g., Mobutu's Zaire). Even in
instances where such claims might appear to have been more credible (e.g., South Africa in the
1980s), they were frequently not supported by local populations (e.g., the ANC attributes a
large part of its success in bringing apartheid to an end to the economic pressure put on the white
South African government form grassroots pressures and foreign governments) (Mandela, 1993).
Such situations continue to exist today. While the case of Myanmar (Burma) has probably
received the most publicity, there are many other cases where the operation of resource
extraction industries support the continuation of non-democratic governments rather than
lead to democratic reforms, most notably perhaps, the oil producing gulf states of Saudi
Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, etc. (For their part, most Western powers have shown little interest in
promoting democratic reform and have largely ignored reports of human rights abuses in such
countries unless it appears to be in their strategic or economic interests to take them up.).

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International agreements are key to success of environmental
protections developing countries cant solve on their own.

Batabyal, Amitrajeet A., "The Effects of Collusion and Limited Liability on the Design of
International Environmental Agreements for Developing Countries" Economic Research
Institute Study Papers. 1998. Web. 7 December 2013.
<http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1149&context=eri>.

With the passage of time, it has increasingly been recognized that environmental protection is
an international issue. As noted by Bernauer (1995) (p. 354), the scope and significance of this
issue have been amply demonstrated by the events of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio. At this
Summit, it became clear that if the Northern countries of the world wanted . . . the
environment to be secured for future generations, [then they would] have to radically assist
the South in choosing a different road to development than the one they [had] currently
[been] travelling on. (Rogers, 1993; p. 27). Indeed, to combat the twin evils of poverty and
environmental degradation, developing countries (LDCs) have demanded the transfer of
resources and technology from developed countries. In such a con- tentious setting, the
success or failure to protect the environment will depend crucially on the ability of
international institutions to craft effective international environmental agreements (1%~).
Given this, a key question becomes How can international institutions, which necessarily
respect the principle of state sovereignty, contribute to the solution of difficult global problems?
(Keohane et al., 1993; p. 6). This is the central question that I propose to analyze in this paper.

Batabyal is Arthur J Gosnell Professor of Economics at Rochester Institute of Technology in
Rochester New York. He received his PhD in 1984 at the University of California, Berkeley.
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Transparency initiatives are a good first step, but they cant solve
the corruption.

Dec 2013.

These initiatives are vital to promoting good governance in resource-rich developing
countries, and they should be extended to the new oil producers. But transparency initiatives
alone are not nearly adequate to the task. Resource flows are complex, with countless steps
in the process from the time oil is discovered, extracted from the ground, and sold on the
international market to when it is transferred as revenue to government accounts and spent by
officials. Efforts to expose how revenues are accrued and dispersed have not worked as well
as expected because, as the scholar Todd Moss has written, they only shed light on one link
in the long chain from oil in the ground to development outcomes. Although transparency is
an integral piece of any countrys pursuit of effective and honest governance, transparency
alone fails to reverse the underlying incentives afflicting oil-rich countries.

Hoover Institution, a conservative policy think tank.
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Tariffs in developed countries destroy the economic benefits of
resource extraction.

10. 1993. Print.

The tariff structure in industrialized importing nations is frequently biased against mineral
processing in developing exporting countries. Thus, effective tariffs on the processing value
added may be quite high. The importing nations motivation for creating such a bias has
various grounds. These probably include the colonial desire to maintain the economic
dependence of the exporting country by creating hindrances to its economic diversification.
Another ground to the bias would be a wish to protect the processing installations at home
along with the employment they create. In both objectives there is likely to be a commonality of
interests between the home country and the multinational extractive firm. The firm would
therefore be unwilling to influence its home government to remove the bias even if it had the
opportunity to do so and the removal would be to its own long-run advantage. Maintenance of
the skewed tariff structure provides the companies with strong argument for their reluctance to
relocate.
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The nature of developing governments deters economic benefits of
resource extraction.

10. 1993. Print.

The companies feeling of exposure to political risks when investing in developing
countries is probably a major factor inhibiting decisions to relocate mineral processing. The
fear that the host country government might increase taxation, nationalize without adequate
compensation or otherwise fail to honour the agreement it has signed with the multinational
company, creates a desire to minimize the resources at stake. The mine location is geologically
given, and necessitates the companys presence in the developing country. In mineral processing,
on the other hand, where a choice of alternative locations is available, the companys desire to
avoid the political risk, whether warranted by reality or not, would usually be expressed by a
higher rate of return requirement from the project located in the mineral endowed developing
country. A related factor at a more general level is the multinational firms unfamiliarity with the
social and economic environment of the developing country. The cost of obtaining, and the
mental barrier to absorbing, the relevant information is a factor which inhibits the companys
relocation decisions. Thus, in a wish to reduce its involvements in economically and socially
unfamiliar surroundings, the company may take location decisions in favour of the
industrialized importing country, even though more and better information would have
warranted the opposite choice.
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Reliance on resources strips the planet because of perceived human
needs; we must acknowledge the value of nature.

Dalile, Boushra. Environmental Ethics Between Anthropocentrism and Ecocentrism.
Swinburne University of Technology, Psychology and Statistical Sciences. Web. 7
December 2013.
<http://www.academia.edu/1476524/Environmental_Ethics_Between_Anthropocentrism
_and_Ecocentrism>.

According to the inelastic principles of both anthropocentrism and ecocentrism, the ability to
make environmental decisions to satisfy both positions is difficult. Quite candidly, nature and
humanity are devastated when anthropocentrism is practiced; and the conversion to
ecocentrism overnight is impossible especially in the developed societies because of their
heavy reliance on resources and generation of waste (Wapner & Matthew 2009, p. 212).
Deep ecologists platform claims that justification is made upon people only when their
intervention in the natural wildlife is vital to human needs, i.e. for survival not for luxury
(MacKinnon 2007, p. 339). According to George Sessions and Arne Naesss (coiner of the term
Deep Ecology in Naess 1973) basic principles of deep ecology, they encircle anthropocentrism
and ecocentrism by acknowledge[s]ing [the] intrinsic value in all natures beings and
allowing consuming species to benefit from what the environment offers to fulfill vital
needs. For instance, interfering with the environment to build a golf course or a house patio is
unethical because they are hardly essential for survival, not to mention the alteration caused to
Earth and vegetation (MacKinnon 2007, p. 339).
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Protecting the environment is crucial. We dont have time to spare
because the effects may become irreversible.


Environmental degradation in itself is not a new facet of human survival. The rise and fall
of many past societies can be explained in part by the ability to modify the immediate
environment and subsequent inability to prevent escalating environmental degradation. In
the past, when faced with deteriorating environmental conditions adaptive success was
dependent upon time: time to develop biological responses. Or, more typically, time to develop
behavioral responses to identify changing environmental conditions and causality, to search out
or devise new strategies, and to incorporate new strategies at the level of the population.
Today, time is a scarce commodity. The rapid pace of change in population, way of life, and
environment has caused a redefinition of the notion of environmental constraint - from the
biophysical parameters of nature to the biodegenerative products of humanity. Humans no
longer have the luxury of time to adjust to changing conditions. Nor do we have the
physical space to absorb and sustain environmentally or socially induced migration.
Humanity is struggling to survive in the face of growing deserts, decreasing forests, declining
fisheries, poisoned food/water/air, and climatic extremes and weather events that continue to
intensify: floods, droughts, hurricanes. Many of today's environmental crises lack tangibility-
it is difficult to see them, to define them, to understand their origins, and to understand their
consequences. These crises are rarely confined to an immediate locale - radiation knows no
boundaries. In many places of the world information about environmental crises is withheld
from those who experience the adverse consequences. And, environment crises are not
experienced equally.
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Businesses have a moral obligation to be ecologically sustainable.

Lertzman, David A., and Harrie Vredenburg. "Indigenous Peoples, Resource Extraction and
Sustainable Development: An Ethical Approach." Journal of Business Ethics. 2005. Web.
7 December 2013. <www.jstor.org/stable/25123429>.

It has been argued that business has a moral responsibility to ensure that its activities are
ecologically sustainable (Desjardins, 1998). Desjardins has proposed that the "moral
minimum" which constrains the impacts of economic activity should be extended to
ecosystems. He argues that all markets operate within constraints, the most obvious being
those imposed by the biophysical limits described in the laws of natural science. The
classical model of corporate social responsibility (CSR) includes legal constraints and the neo-
classical model incorporates moral limits. The sustainable development approach includes
biophysical constraints. While business is free to pursue profits, the "rules of the game
must be changed to include the obligation to leave natural ecosystems no worse off in the
process." (p. 831) In order to address the global quandary of population growth, poverty
and environmental destruction, Desjardins advocates a shift from unrestricted material
growth to the concept of development. This conceptual evolution from a growth based ethic
to qualitative economics is discussed below.
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By prioritizing resource extraction, we view the Earth as an
instrument for human ends in which we can abuse; this is the
root cause of the environmental crisis.

Sivil, Richard. Why We Need A New Ethic For The Environment. 2000. Web. 7 December
2013. <http://www.crvp.org/book/Series02/II-7/chapter_vii.htm>.

Three most significant and pressing factors contributing to the environmental
crisis are the ever increasing human population, the energy crisis, and the abuse and
pollution of the earths natural systems. These and other factors contributing to the
environmental crisis can be directly linked to anthropocentric views of the world. The
perception that value is located in, and emanates from, humanity has resulted in
understanding human life as an ultimate value, superior to all other beings. This has
driven innovators in medicine and technology to ever improve our medical and
material conditions, in an attempt to preserve human life, resulting in more people
being born and living longer. In achieving this aim, they have indirectly contributed to
increasing the human population. Perceptions of superiority, coupled with developing
technologies have resulted in a social outlook that generally does not rest content
with the basic necessities of life. Demands for more medical and social aid, more
entertainment and more comfort translate into demands for improved standards of
living. Increasing population numbers, together with the material demands of modern
society, place ever increasing demands on energy supplies. While wanting a better life is
not a bad thing, given the population explosion the current energy crisis is inevitable,
which brings a whole host of environmental implications in tow. This is not to say that every
improvement in the standard of living is necessarily wasteful of energy or polluting to the planet,
but rather it is the cumulative effect of these improvements that is damaging to the environment.
The abuses facing the natural environment as a result of the energy crisis and the
food demand are clearly manifestations of anthropocentric views that treat the
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. ;<<
environment as a resource and instrument for human ends. The pollution and
destruction of the non-human natural world is deemed acceptable, provided that it
does not interfere with other human beings.

Richard Sivil studied at the University of Durban Westville, and at the University of Natal,
Durban. He has been lecturing philosophy since 1996. His primary interest lies in the field of
Ethics, Evnironmental Philosophy, Buddhist Philosophy and Quantum Physics

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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. ;<=
A focus on the developing countries helping the environment is
misguided this is a global issue.


Indeed, the nature of ecological imperialism is continually to worsen ecological conditions
globally. Capital in the late 20th and early 21st century is running up against ecological
barriers at a biospheric level; ones that cannot be so easily displaced, as was the case
previously, through the spatial fix of geographical expansion and global labor and resource
exploitation. Ecological imperialism the growth of the center of the system at
unsustainable rates, through the more thoroughgoing ecological degradation of the periphery
is now generating a planetary-scale set of ecological contradictions, imperiling the entire
biosphere as we know it. Only a social solution that addresses the rift in ecological relations
on a planetary scale and their relation to global structures of imperialism and inequality
offers any genuine hope that these contradictions can be transcended. More than ever the
world needs what the early socialists thinkers, including Marx, called for: the rational
organization of the human metabolism with nature by a society (or societies) of freely associated
producers, in order to establish a social metabolic order not predicated on capital accumulation
and the degradation of the earth.
Sustainability Studies program.
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. ;<=
Poor countries cannot just wave a magic wand to create
environmental protections, they need funding.


In principle that shift should make a climate-change deal in Copenhagen more likely, by
increasing the number of countries that want an agreement. But two big problems remain. First,
the poor countries want large amounts of money. To keep global warming down to an
increase of 2C, the World Bank calculates, would cost $140 billion to $675 billion a year in
developing countriesdwarfing the $8 billion a year now flowing to them for climate-
change mitigation. The $75 billion cost of adapting to global warming (as opposed to trying
to stop it) similarly overwhelms the $1 billion a year available to them.

articles.
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. ;<=
The amount of natural resources in developing countries has a
negative relationship with economic development.


In most countries that are rich in oil, minerals, and other natural resources, economic
growth over the long haul tends to be slower than in other countries that are less well
endowed. For example, in Nigeria, with all its oil wealth, Gross National Product per capita
today is no higher than at independence in 1960. Nigeria is not alone. From 1965 to 1998, per
capita GNP growth in Iran and Venezuela was on average--1 percent per year,--2 percent in
Libya,--3 percent in Iraq and Kuwait, and --6 percent in Qatar (1970-1995), to mention six other
OPEC countries (World Bank, 2000). For OPEC as a whole, GNP per capita decreased by 1.3
percent per year on average during 1965-1998 compared with 2.2 percent average per
capita growth in all lower- and middle-income countries. King Faisal of Saudi Arabia (1964-
1975) would hardly have been surprised; he said (quoted from an interview with his oil minister,
Shaikh Yamani): In one generation we went from riding camels to riding Cadillacs. The way we
are wasting money, I fear the next generation will be riding camels again. These examples seem
to reflect a consistent pattern. Of 65 countries that can be classified as natural-resource rich,
only four managed to attain both (a) long-term investment exceeding 25 percent of Gross
Domestic Product on average from 1970 to 1998, equal to that of various successful industrial
countries lacking raw materials, and (b) per capita GNP growth exceeding 4 percent per year on
average over the same period. These four countries are Botswana, Indonesia, Malaysia, and
Thailand. The three Asian countries achieved this success by diversifying their economies and by
industrializing; Botswana, rich in diamonds, without doing so. In East Asia, the countries with
few raw materials (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan) have done even better
than the resource-rich ones (Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand).

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Developing countries need to focus on the environment, advanced
countries will be fine either way.

Bjorn Lomborg,Adapting to Climate Change, Copenhagen Consensus Center. August 2009.
Web. 7 December 2013.
<http://fixtheclimate.com/uploads/tx_templavoila/AdaptingToClimateChange.pdf>.

The important effects are on agriculture and tourism, where nations will lose, on average,
about 0.5% of GDP from each sector. But much of this damage will be avoided by people
choosing for themselves to adapt to a change in their environment. Farmers will choose
plants that thrive in heat. New houses will be designed to deal with warmer temperatures. Simple
economic models, often quoted in the media, show that unconstrained global warming would
cost a substantial 2% of GDP in the rich world by the end of the century. But this fails to
acknowledge that people will change their behavior when the environment changes. Taking
adaptation into account, rich countries will adapt to the negative consequences of global
warming and exploit the positive changes, creating a total positive effect of global warming
worth about 0.1% of GDP. Poor countries will be hit harder,however. Adaptation will
reduce the climate change-related losses from 5% of GDP to slightly less than 3% but this
is still a significant impact. The real challenge of global warming, therefore, lies in tackling
its impact on the Third World. Here, more needs to be done, above and beyond the adaptation
that will happen naturally. Importantly, the new research shows that adaptation would achieve
a lot more than cuts in carbon emissions. Reducing emissions to a level that does not
extinguish economic growth could avert $3 trillion worth of damage, whereas adaptation could
prevent around $8 trillion worth of damage . For every dollar spent on adaptation, we would
achieve about $1.70 worth of positive changes for the planet. The economic case for focusing
more on adaptation is clear. The crucial next step is to ensure that economic arguments
become a stronger part of our political debate about how to address global warming.

Lomborg is director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center think-tank, author of Cool It and
Skeptical Environmentalist, and an adjunct-professor at Copenhagen.
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Aquaculture waste creates a cycle that destroys biotic natural
resources.


Untreated wastewater laden with untreaten feed and fish faeces may contribute to nutrient
pollution near coastal ponds and cages
61,62
. Pollution problems are most severe in shallow or
confined water bodies
63
;

they also tend to be serious in regions where intensive aquaculture
systems are concentrated. In many such areas, sedimentation of food particles and faecal
pellets under and around fish pens and cages negatively affects the biogeochemistry of benthic
communities
64
. Moreover, nitrogen wastes (for example, ammonia and nitrite) that exceed the
assimilative capacity of receiving waters lead to deterioration in water quality that is toxic to
fish and shrimp
65
. Problems of effluent discharge from aquaculture have been widely discussed,
but management options for altering nitrogen biogeochemistry are based mostly on controlling
the intensity of fish production in monoculture and polyculture systems
65
. Aquaculturists have a
stake in regulating nutrient pollution, because poor water quality and high stocking densities
often promote outbreaks of pathogen and subsequent declines in farm productivity.


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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. ;=:
Aquaculture harms native biodiversity.


In some cases, aquaculture affects stocks of wild and farmed fish through biological
pollution. Atlantic salmonthe dominant salmon species farmedfrequently escape from net
pens. As much as 40% of Atlantic salmon caught by fishermen in areas of the North Atlantic
Ocean are of farmed origin
51
. In the North Pacific Ocean, over 255,000 Atlantic salmon have
reportedly escaped since the early 1980s and are caught by fishing vessels from Washington to
Alaska
52
. Increasing evidence suggests that farm escapes may hybridize with and alter the
genetic makeup of wild populations of Atlantic salmon which are genetically adapted to their
natal spawning grounds
53
. Such genetic alterations could exacerbate the decline in many
locally endangered populations of wild Atlantic salmon
53-55
. Movement of stocks for aquaculture
purposes can also increase the risk of spreading pathogens. The relationships between farmed
and wild fish and disease transfer are complex and often difficult to disentangle. In Europe,
however, serious epidemics of furunculosis and Gyrodactylus salaris in stocks of Atlantic
salmon have been linked to movements of fish for aquaculture and restocking
56
. Since the early
1990s, Whitespot and Yellowhead viruses have caused catastrophic, multimillion-dollar
crop losses in shrimp farms across Asia. Both pathogens have recently appeared in the farmed
and wild shrimp populations in the United States
Oka
and the Whitespot virus has been reported
in several countries in Central and South America (T. Flegel, personal communication; D.V.
Lightner, personal communication). The Whitespot virus has caused high mortalities in Texas
shrimp farms and may cause mortality of wild crustaceans (Joint Subcommittee on
Aquaculture Virus Working Group, personal communication). The virus is thought to have been
introduced into a Texas shrimp farm by release into nearby coastal waters of untreated wastes
from plants processing imported Asian tiger shrimp
60
, and by shipping of contaminated white
shrimp Litopenaeus vannamei larvae throughout the Americas (T. Flegel. Personal
communication).
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. ;=;

Negative
Evidence
Champion Briefs
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. =?@
Studies of environmental degradation must take sociology into
account.

Ehrhardt-Martinez, Karen. Social Determinants of Deforestation in Developing Countries: A
Cross-National Study Oxford University Press. 1998. Web. 7 December 2013.

As a measure of human impact on the natural environment, deforestation is a question of both
sociological and theoretical import. While human ecologists have often pondered the effects of
the environment on social organization, only recently have sociologists considered the impact of
societies on the natural environment. Deforestation, as a specific subject of study, is particularly
salient to sociological research, given that the felling of trees largely results from human
activities. Despite its importance, most empirical studies to date (principally by geographers,
demographers, and economists) have been essentially atheoretical. The lack of theoretical
grounding retards the accumulation of knowledge by reducing the generalizability and
explanatory power of research findings. Nevertheless, selected theories of social change have
been suggested. Environmental degradation and deforestation in particular have been
hypothesized to result primarily from three sources of change: population growth,
modernization, and dependent development. Although all three have been hypothesized to
increase deforestation, this article uncovers hidden complexities in their relationships that yield
unanticipated outcomes. As a measure of modernization, for example, urbanization is shown to
have a curvilinear effect on the rate of deforestation, resulting in lower rates of deforestation at
the highest levels of urbanization. Two previously unexplored measures, sectoral inequality and
change in tertiary education, are also shown to reduce the rate of deforestation.

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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. =?>
There may not be a direct correlation between development and
environmental degradation.

Ehrhardt-Martinez, Karen. Social Determinants of Deforestation in Developing Countries: A
Cross-National Study Oxford University Press. 1998. Web. 7 December 2013.

Compounding these discussions are socioenvironmental studies that suggest that the
relationship between modernization and environmental change may not be linear. In a
theoretical discussion on the determinants of carbon dioxide emissions, for example, Crenshaw
and Jenkins (1996) hypothesize that per capita emissions increase from low to intermediate
levels of development but decline at relatively high levels of development. This curvilinear
relationship is the result of the increased energy efficiency related to economic complexity
and competition. The relationship between development and deforestation may be equally
complex, because low to intermediate levels of development seem to be characterized by
high rates of deforestation as countries rely on forests for a wider variety of products (including
charcoal), while countries at higher levels of development use wood alternatives, more
efficient production technologies, and stricter forest management practices resulting in lower
rates of deforestation. Moreover, the shift from a heavily industrial economy to one with a
greater reliance on services, a progression characteristic of more "modern" nations, also relieves
some of the demand for forest resources. Sussman, Green, and Sussman (1994) document the
early stages of this social phenomenon in their case study of deforestation in Madagascar. Given
these findings, this article posits that the rate of deforestation will increase from low to
intermediate levels of urbanization but decline at relatively high levels of urbanization (all
else remaining constant).
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. =??
Natural gas doesnt solve the Co2 problem other countries, the
market, and methane leaks make the switch to Co2 benign.

Natural gas prices drive CO2 emissions to 20-year low. Associated Press, 16 Aug 2012 Web. 7
December 2013.
<http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2012/08/natural_gas_prices_drive_co2_e.html>.

Coal and energy use are still growing rapidly in other countries, particularly
China, and CO2 levels globally are rising, not falling. Moreover, changes in the
marketplace a boom in the economy, a fall in coal prices, a rise in natural gas could
stall or even reverse the shift. For example, U.S. emissions fell in 2008 and 2009, then rose
in 2010 before falling again last year. Also, while natural gas burns cleaner than coal, it still
emits some CO2. And drilling has its own environmental consequences, which are not
yet fully understood. "Natural gas is not a long-term solution to the CO2 problem,"
Pielke warned. The International Energy Agency said the U.S. has cut carbon dioxide emissions
more than any other country over the last six years. Total U.S. carbon emissions from energy
consumption peaked at about 6 billion metric tons in 2007. Projections for this year are around
5.2 billion, and the 1990 figure was about 5 billion. China's emissions were estimated to be
about 9 billion tons in 2011, accounting for about 29 percent of the global total. The
U.S. accounted for approximately 16 percent. Mann called it "ironic" that the shift from coal to
gas has helped bring the U.S. closer to meeting some of the greenhouse gas targets in the 1997
Kyoto treaty on global warming, which the United States never ratified. On the other hand,
leaks of methane from natural gas wells could be pushing the U.S. over the Kyoto
target for that gas.
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. =?@
Economic growth solves environmental degradation in the
developing worldcreates incentives for more efficient use
of natural resources.

James K. Glassman. The Earth Time Johannesburg Summit Moving on from "Sustainablity".
American Enterprise Institute. Web. 7 December 2013.
<http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.14186,filter.all/pub_detail.asp>.

Let me offer a prescription for sustainable development that begins with a simple and powerful
idea--an idea which, unfortunately, will often be at odds with what delegates, journalists and
other observers hear in Johannesburg. The idea is that economic growth leads to levels of
wealth and income that, in turn, inevitably produce societies that are cleaner, healthier
and more stable and that use global resources more efficiently. It is an idea that has been
validated in academic studies and by centuries of history an idea that is especially important at
this time and in this place. Since developing nations will improve their environments as
they grow richer, the major thrust of a global conferences like Johannesburg should be
to help them grow richer not to place restrictions upon them (and on other
countries) that will ultimately thwart their growth. The idea of economic growth
stands opposed to the idea of impending scarcity a notion that is gaining currency again
today, just as it did more than 200 years ago with the writings of the Rev. Thomas Malthus and
30 years ago with the success of The Club of Rome's book, Limits to Growth. Malthusianism is a
repudiated concept that will not die. It creeps on.

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Environmental degradation poses the largest threat to developing
countries.

Najam, Adil, Saleemul Huq, Youba Sokona. Climate Negotiations beyond Kyoto: Developing
Countries Concerns and Interests. Climate Policy. 2003. Web. 7 December 2013.
<climate-talks.net/2006.../Najam-CliPol%20Climate%20and%20SD.pdf >.

On the second issues, the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC; see especially Working Group II report) has suggested that even if the Kyoto
Protocol is implemented in full, the impacts of global climate change will start being felt
within the next few decades and that the most vulnerable communities and countries are those
which are already the poorest and least able to adapt to these changes. This is because the
impact of climatic events is not only a function of the intensity of the event but of the resilience
of communities, the poorest communities tend also to be the least able to adapt (Downing et al.,
1996). The Threat is especially pressing for the least developed countries and the small
island developing states (SIDS), where any economic development they may be able to
achieve in the next few decades is in real danger of literally being swept away due to human
induced climate change. In the past, climatic hazards such as floods, cyclones and droughts may
have been attributable to nature alone; in the future they are likely to have a component that is
human induced. More importantly, it is also clear that the past contribution of these countries to
the climate change problem is miniscule. In this regards, much is made of the fact that emissions
from developing countries is growing with their development and that somewhere in the next
two decades the total emissions from all currently developing countries would equal the
total emissions from all currently industrialized countries. Although stylized, this is factually
correct. However, it needs also to be noted even in such a scenario the vast bulk of the global
population would still be living in developing countries, and each individual in the north
would still be emitting far more proportionally than their individual counterparts in the south. In
essence, the citizens of the north will continue to remain disproportionately responsible for
global emissions will into the future, despite whatever growth in emissions might happen in the
south over the next few decades. The result is that those who have been least responsible for
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. =?@
creating the crisis are, and are likely to remain, most at risk by its ravages (Rayner and Malone,
1998; Banuri and Sagar, 1999).

Adil Najam is affiliated with the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and
Sustainable Development Policy Institute in Islamabad, Pakistan. Saleemul Huq is affiliated with
the International Institute for Environment and Development, London, UK and the Bangladesh
Centre for Advanced Studies in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Youba Sokona is affiliated with the ENDA
Environment et Developpement du Tiers Monde in Dhaka, Senegal.

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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. =?@
Attempts to curb environmental destruction globally would cost
developing countries more than developed countries.


Finally, and flowing directly from the above, is the concern that the so-called flexibility
mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol have turned it into a global carbon trade regime that could
distract from the original mandate of the UNFCCCi.e. the stabilization of atmospheric
greenhouse concentrations. Significant problems with the Kyoto regimeincluding the issue of
low hanging fruit (whereby, the flexibility mechanisms will allow northern countries to
buy off the easiest reductions from the south leaving the developing countries saddled
with more difficult and more costly reductions which they will have to make themselves at a
later date); trades in hot air (implying that Kyoto targets can be met with very minimal real
emission collapse that had accompanied the economic and political collapse of the former Soviet
bloc); the exclusion of poorer countries and marginal groups, and the inadequacy of the
Kyoto targetshave long been known and highlighted (see, for example, Malakoff, 1997;
Najam and Page, 1998; Sokona et al., 1998; Agarwal et al., 1999; Banuri and Sagar, 1999;
Mayer 1999; Banuri and Gupta, 2000; Muler, 2002a). These lingering concerns were tempered
by the belief that despite all the holes in it the Protocol will need to be somehow addressed, and
soon. Moreover, the concessions made in the last two COPs (especially on the issue of sinks)
and the absence of the worlds largest carbon emitter from the regime have made an
already inadequate agreement all the more inadequate (Najam, 2001).

!"#$ &'( ")*+,-)./)012 3/4,1510+-) 621+.7 81)'9/: ;<=>

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. =?<
Addressing climate change is creating more problems than its
solving.

ONeill, Saffron Fear wont do it: Promoting positive engagement with climate change through
visual and iconic representations. 7 January 2009. Web .7 December 2013.
<http://scx.sagepub.com/content/early/2009/01/07/1075547008329201.full.pdf+html>.

The continued use of fear messages can lead to one of two psychological functions. The first
is to control the external danger, the second to control the internal fear (Moser & Dilling,
2004). If the external dangerin this case, the impacts of climate changecannot be
controlled (or is not perceived to be controllable), then !"#!$!#%&'( *!'' &++,-.+ +/ 0/"+1/'
+2, !"+,1"&' 3,&14 52,(, !"+,1"&' 3,&1 0/"+1/'(6 (%02 &( !((%, #,"!&' &"# &.&+276 0&"
1,.1,(,"+ 8&11!,1( +/ -,&"!"93%' ,"9&9,-,"+ . Lorenzoni et al. (2007) divide the barriers to
engagement with climate change, into two types, individuallevel and social-level barriers. Of
particular consequence for this discussion of fear appeals are the barriers acting
individually to inhibit engagement with climate change. These include uncertainty and
skepticism, an externalization of responsibility and blame or stating other issues as more
immediate and pressing, and fatalism or a drop in the ocean feeling. All are
maladaptations; that is, they lead to an individual controlling his or her internal fear by no
longer interacting with the climate change issue, but the action does not decrease the
individuals exposure to climate risk. Repeated exposure to fearful representations of
climate change may indeed even provoke a counterintuitive reaction, for example, causing
the message to become laughable. Ereaut and Segnit (2006, pp. 14-15) recognized this in their
report investigating public climate discourses in the United Kingdom. They named one of the
apparent public discourses as settlerdom. The settlerdom discourse rejects and mocks an
alarmist discourse. Those invoking the settlerdom discourse do so by invoking a feeling of
common sense in their audience, not through expert discourse or debate. The authors find the
discourse is constructed in terms of the sane majority against the doom mongers or the
global warming brigade. Also mentioned by Ereaut and Segnit is a small but potentially
!"#$ &'( ")*+,-)./)012 3/4,1510+-) 621+.7 81)'9/: ;<=>

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. =?=
important discourse defined as British comic nihilism, or bugger it and open another bottle.
The discourse was characterized by a whimsical and unserious nature and a happy refusal
to engage in the debate.

Saffron carries out interdisciplinary research at the nexus of climate science, policy and society.
Her research explores risk perception, risk communication and public engagement with climate
change; and the implications of these areas for public policy. She was awarded the 2011 UK
Scopus Young Researcher Award for Social Science, awarded by Elsevier and the UK/US
Fulbright Commission. The prize is awarded to early-career researchers, based on citation data
and jury assessment.
!"#$ "&'()*'+,- +. /01 2)-3405 6789

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 8:6
Developing countries cannot secure the environment without a
stable middle class nearly impossible without securing
economic growth; they need resources first.

Desai, Uday. "Environment, Economic Growth, and Government in Developing Countries."
1998. Web. 6 Dec. 2013. <http://www.sunypress.edu/pdf/53866.pdf>.

Paehlke believes that the future success of environmentalism depends on a reasonable
level of security and comfort for the majority in society" (198929). The basis of
environmental activism in industrial countries has been the economically secure, college
educated middle class. A study of the Green party in Germany found that Green voters have
tended to be under thirty-five years old, highly educated, new middle class (salaried white collar
or profes- sional), urban or university town residents (Frankland and Schoonmaker l992:2-3).
Some Westem environmentalists suggest that the highly educated, economically secure, white-
collar, middle-class individuals are the postmaterialist vanguard for a new society
(Milbrath 1984). For these writers the future of environmentalism and the fate of the global
ecology depend upon the transition to a truly post-industrial era (Paehlke 198919). Broad-
based popular support for the protection of the global environment is possible only in a
society well beyond industrialism (Paehlke 198929). Only post- (or advanced) industrial
societies, in this view, could create the postmaterialist majorities necessary to protect the global.

U. B. Desai is an Indian academician who was appointed as first Director, Indian Institute of
Technology Hyderabad in 2009

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No link between resource extraction and conflict.

Fearon, JD. "Primary Commodity Exports and Civil War." Journal of Conflict Resolution. 2005.
Web. 7 December 2013. <jcr.sagepub.com/content/49/4/483.abstract >

Four main conclusions emerge from the preceding analysis. First, the empirical association
between primary commodity exports and civil war outbreak is neither strong nor robust,
even using Collier and Hoefflers (2002a, 2002b) civil war codings and model specifications.
Second, insofar as there is some association, this is due in part to the inclusion of fuel
exports in the primary commodity measure, which are more robustly related to conflict
onset. Third, it seems unlikely that oil exports (or cash crops) predict higher civil war risk
because oil provides better financing opportunities for would-be rebels. It seems more likely
that high oil exports indicate a weaker state given the level of per capita income and
possibly a greater prize for state or secessionist capture, both of which might favor civil
war. Similar considerations may apply for nonfuel commodity exports. Fourth, there is direct
evidence that oil exporters have less reliable and competent states given their income levels and
weaker evidence that this is true on average for exporters of other primary commodities.

James D. Fearon PhD and BA is the Theodore and Francis Geballe Professor of Political Science
and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Stanford University
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 8:9
International monitoring can solve oil money exploitation.

Fearon, JD. "Primary Commodity Exports and Civil War." Journal of Conflict Resolution. 2005.
Web. 7 December 2013. <jcr.sagepub.com/content/49/4/483.abstract >

Oil exporters do seem to have been more disposed to civil war onset, but it is not yet
clear what the most important mechanisms are. If, as argued here, oil proxies for weak
state administrative capabilities at a given level of income, or if oil makes for trouble
by raising the prize value of state or regional control, then policies to involve inter-
national institutions in the monitoring and management of weak states oil revenues
could help break the link. International monitoring and influence on the
distribution of oil revenues might reduce the payoffs for an extractive, exploitative
strategy of state capture and control, while increasing politicians incentives to
compete on the basis of service and infrastructure provision. For example, the World
Bank has recently attempted to negotiate monitoring and management
arrangements as a condition for supporting pipeline development in southern Chad.
Outside experts are skeptical that this specific deal will work, but the general idea seems
worth pursuing based on the empirical findings about oil and conflict. For weak
states that already export large amounts of oil, the IMF, World Bank, or a new
international institution could offer a standardized external monitoring and
management service that the state could publicly commit to. If a weak-state oil pro-
ducer holds elections, the existence of such an option could inspire or drive
candidates to compete for voter support by declaring a willingness to commit to the
international package.

James D. Fearon PhD and BA is the Theodore and Francis Geballe Professor of Political Science
and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Stanford University.
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Small-scale mining decreases the gender gap in employment.

Hilson, Gavin. Small-Scale Mining And Its Socio-Economic Impact In Developing Countries
Natural Resources Forum. 2002. Web. 7 December 2013.
<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1477-8947.00002/abstract>.

Small-scale mining provides numerous opportunities for women in developing countries. It
is estimated that women could account for as much as one third of the sector, including
informal activities (between 3.5 and 4 million), with possibilities of another 1.5 to 2 million
being involved indirectly. Though the extent of female participation in small-scale mining
activities varies from country to country, in several instances, women play a more prominent
role than men in the industry. For example, it is estimated that women represent 75% of small-
scale mining workers in Guinea; 50% in Madagascar, Mali and Zimbabwe; and 40% in Bolivia.
In Ghana, 75% of the traders of mined salt are women, and female participation in gold panning
and extraction techniques is widespread (UN, 1996). In fact, as Labonne (1996) explains,
women work in almost all aspects of the operation especially panning, carrying, washing,
and sorting of ore, and have done so for generations.

Gavin Hilson is a member of the Environmental Policy & Management Group (EMPMG),
Imperial College Centre for Environmental Technology (ICCET), Royal School of Mines,
London.
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Small-scale mining is the key to alleviating poverty in developing
countries.


Small-scale mining plays a pivotal role in alleviating poverty in many rural regions of the
developing world, primarily because it is viable in remote areas with minimal infrastructure
where other industries could not function. Operations are low-tech, and because most do not
require technical staff, the industry employs the least educated and the poor. Today, an estimated
30 million people depend on the incomes generated, directly and indirectly, by small-scale
mining (ILO, 1999). An exact figure of the workforce is nearly impossible to ascertain, however,
because of rampant illegal mining activity, much of which is unaccounted for. Many (e.g. Borla,
1996; Bugnosen et al, 1999) are in general agreement that small-scale mining employs some six
million men and women worldwide, although a recent report, Social and Labour Issues in
Small-Scale Mines (ILO, 1999), suggests that between 11.5 and 13 million are employed in
the industry. Perhaps the biggest stimulus to participation in small-scale mining activity is the
lure of quick enrichment and the financial and social independence that comes with it (Astorga
and Duran, 1994). Wages are comparatively higher than employment in construction or
agriculture, making work in this sector financially appealing. Further, small-scale mining
provides employment for many retrenched workers from large-scale mines, which in turn
has increased income levels, raised living standards, and minimized rural-urban drift (Al-
Hassan, 1997). The provision of employment has also helped lower crime and suicide rates.

London.
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 8:;
There are alternatives to dirty resource extraction that can be
effective.

European Commission. "Resource Efficiency." May 2011. Web. 8 Dec. 2013.

Humanity is demanding ever greater economic productivity at a time when natural
resources, the input that feeds this productivity, are dwindling. To reduce pressure on key
assets, such as water, minerals, fuel and land, we must use less of them, and we need to
increase the efficiency and productivity of resources that we do use, to achieve more output
per input. Put simply, we must do more with less. This thematic issue reports on research which
helps guide the way to a more resource efficient society. Developing this society will require
large-scale and widespread changes to how the economy functions. However, scientific,
economic and social research can play an important role in reaching this goal, by
determining current levels of consumption, measuring levels of efficiency, and developing
new, more efficient technologies and processes. Furthermore, it can analyse different policy
options and help us understand their impact on behaviour and perceptions of resource use.
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Studies prove that resource extraction can be environmentally
friendly.

European Commission. "Resource Efficiency." May 2011. Web. 8 Dec. 2013.

The worldwide transformation from a predominantly agricultural society to an industrial
regime has rapidly increased our use of resources, such as fossil fuels, metals and timber,
especially in the second half of the 20th century. Newly industrialised and developing
countries are playing an increasing role. The study constructed three scenarios of resource
extraction for the year 2050. In the business-as-usual scenario, industrial countries
maintain the same rate of resource use per capita whilst developing countries catch up.
Under this scenario, annual global resource extraction could triple, as would average per
capita emissions to 3.2 tons CO2 per capita, compared to the year 2000. Under a moderate
contraction and convergence scenario, industrial countries reduce their rate of resource use
by a factor of two, while developing countries catch up to these reduced rates. Compared to
2000, this could produce an increase in annual resource extraction of 40 per cent and an
increase in average per capita emissions of nearly 50 per cent (1.6. tons CO2 per capita).
Under a tough contraction and convergence scenario, the consumption levels of resources in
2050 are the same as levels in 2000. It requires industrial countries to reduce their rate of
resource use by a factor of 3 to 5 and developing countries by 10-20 per cent. This could
decrease per capita emissions of CO2 by 40 per cent.
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 8:;
Finding and extracting resources leads to long-term economic
growth empirics prove.

Michaels, Guy. "Natural Resource Abundance Can Boost Economic Development: Evidence."
Royal Economic Society. Mar. 2011. Web. 08 Dec. 2013.
<http://www.res.org.uk/details/mediabrief/1452903/Natural-Resource-Abundance-Can-
Boost-Economic-Development-Evidence.html>.

These findings suggest that a rich endowment of natural resources can promote long-term
local growth. If oil-rich areas elsewhere in the world have failed to develop, the failures are
probably due to political rather than economic mechanisms, notably the absence of
institutions to prevent politicians from embezzling or squandering the oil windfalls.
Distinguishing the effect of oil abundance from factors that affect general economic
development such as technology and institutions is a difficult challenge in most settings.
As a result, an examination of the long term effects of resource abundance has often proved
elusive. To shed light on this problem, Michaels examines a century of development in an
area where the natural endowment of oil has by now been systematically mapped the
American South. This area is particularly interesting, since it remained largely agricultural and
poor for a long time compared with the North of the United States, and the role of oil in its
development has not been well understood. In this study, Michaels finds that oil-rich counties
in the American South were very similar to other counties in the region in 1890 (before oil
was discovered in that part of the world), suggesting that differences in subsequent
development between oil-rich and oil-poor counties were due to the discovery and
extraction of oil. After oil was discovered, wages (and income) in the oil-rich counties grew
more rapidly, and remained higher throughout the twentieth century. These higher wages
attracted many people to the oil-rich counties, raising their population by at least 50%.
This larger population was employed not only in oil extraction Michaels finds that oil-rich
counties also had a larger manufacturing sector and even a larger agricultural sector. This finding
may come as a surprise since it is not immediately obvious why oil abundance should give a
productivity advantage to firms that engage in activities far removed from oil extraction.
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 8:7
Lack of restrictions on resource extraction is key to solve
overpopulation.

Tupy, Martin. Prosperity and World Population Growth. CATO Institute. 10 January 2013.
Web. 7 December 2013. <http://www.cato.org/blog/prosperity-world-population-
growth>.

The relationship is a powerful one. Fertility rates are more than twice as high in
countries with low levels of economic freedom and rule of law compared with
countries that have high levels of those measures. Formal analysis of the data indicates that
these differences are not merely random." The link between these institutions and
fertility partly reflects the impact of economic growth-by encouraging economic
growth, these institutions indirectly affect fertility. But there also is evidence that these
growth-enhancing institutions affect fertility for other reasons. Many developing
countries have poorly specified or poorly enforced property rights. When fuel wood
and fodder are not owned and formal laws of possession do not govern their harvest
and use, people do not hear the full cost of their consumption. They have an
incentive to appropriate resources at the fastest rate possible, often leading to
excessive harvest. This condition is generally labeled the "tragedy of the commons." What
better way to capture open-access resources than to have as many gatherers as
possible? Higher fertility is a way to do this. Theodore Panayotou (1994, 151) observes
that "most contributions by children consist of capturing and appropriating open-access natural
resources such as water, fodder, pastures, fish, fuel wood, and other forest products, and clearing
open-access land for cultivation,"This, he continues, makes "the number of children the decisive
instrument in the hands of the household: The household's share of open-access property
depends on the number of hands it employs to convert open- access resources into
private property." Yet this could "become devastating for the resource, the
community, and eventually the individual household."
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 8:8
Mineral extraction aids the GNP of developing countries.

Natural Resources. The United Nations Library on Transnational Corporations, 1993.
Web. 7 December 2013. <books.google.com/books?isbn=0415085438>.

On other issues, the company and government outlooks appear to converge. In scrutinizing the
company view above, we brought out four circumstances in favour of locating the processing
ventures in the mineral-exporting countries. The validity of these remains when the problem is
regarded from the national governments point of view. To the extent that savings in
transport, absence of environmental restrictions or availability of cheap energy and labour
reduce the costs of metal smelting and refining, the competitiveness and profitability of such
ventures will improve. Their contributions to GNP and tax revenue, and hence their
attractiveness to the government will consequently be enhanced.
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 8:6
The economic benefits of resource extraction outweigh
environmental concerns.


The social benefit of non-existent or low levels of environmental levies could of course be
questioned. One might argue that the social advantage arising from increased profits in polluting
industries is nullified by the welfare loss from environmental deterioration. But then there are
strong reasons to believe that the welfare loss involved would be small. Numerous mines and
mineral processing plants in the Third World are located in uninhabited areas like jungles or
empty deserts, where the harm of pollution is insignificant. More generally, where there is a
trade-off between environmental quality and output, one would expect the willingness to
accept a deterioration of the former for a given rise in the latter to be higher in countries at low
levels of income. The social attractiveness of polluting industries would then be greater in
poor countries than in rich countries. This could explain the relative laxity in environmental
restrictions imposed upon industry in developing countries.
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 8:;
Focus on resource extraction leads to increased levels of Foreign
Direct Investment (FDI).


For a mineral-exporting developing country which supplements its national investment
resources with capital imports, there may be an advantage in emphasizing mineral processing
because foreign funds for such activities are easier to obtain. The background to this is the fact
that certain industrialized nations heavily dependent on minerals imports, are prepared to
provide public support to programmes which would assure their long-run mineral
supplies. France, Germany and Japan, for instance, subsidize their mining and metal processing
corporations foreign ventures with that objective in view. The foreign investors in mining,
keen to obtain the right to exploit and export the mineral may be amenable to accepting the
condition that their engagement also include local processing of the crude material, especially
in cases where they can expect subsidies from their home governments for the entire investment
package. The industrialized countries policies in pursuance of their own supply security
objectives, happen to be transformed in this case into an additional benefit from mining and
mineral processing, accruing to the developing nations which possess comparative advantages
as mineral suppliers. The developing countrys government ordinarily has no similar
leverage when trying to obtain foreign capital for other sectors. When comparing
investments in mineral processing on the one hand, and in such activities as agriculture and
manufacturing on the other, account must therefore be taken of the superior ability of the former
to attract foreign resources.
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 8:9

Africa can fight poverty with resource extraction and still protect
the environment.

Devarajan, Shanta. "How Africa Can Extract Big Benefits for Everyone from Natural
Resources." Guardian News and Media. 29 June 2011. Web. 06 Dec. 2013.
<http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/jun/29/africa-
extracting-benefits-from-natural-resources>.

As the Natural Resource Charter holds its third annual workshop at the University Oxford, in
the UK, this week, the combination of rising commodity prices and falling costs of
communication technology presents Africa with an unprecedented opportunity to reduce
poverty and fight corruption at the same time. The continent is experiencing a commodity
boom, and the bonanza is likely to continue prices are expected to stay high until 2015 at least.
It may even get larger through new discoveries. This causes a triple problem for the
region's governments. First, their currencies are appreciating, which leaves the other
sectors of the economy manufacturing, in particular unable to compete with imports.
Second, the risk of environmental damage associated with extracting natural resources is
growing. And third, the opportunities for corruption and waste are multiplying not just
in the granting of exploration and exploitation permits, but also in the use of the revenues
from resource extraction. Except for Botswana, the track record of Africa's mineral and
hydrocarbon exporters is sobering. While Africa's central banks are today better equipped to
deal with currency appreciation, and its civil society more alert to environmental hazards,
the institutions that control graft are not strong. They must be improved. However, this will
take time. Is there a shortcut to better accountability in the management of natural
resources? Yes, there is: direct transfers of resource dividends to citizens.
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 8:;
Lack of resources leads to war Several countries prove.

Goodman, Sherri W. Bad Tidings. January 2008. Web. 7 December 2013.
<http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=16528> .

?As for his assertion that water wars dont happen, Victor does not tell the whole story. While
no recent wars have been waged solely over water, scarcity of agricultural land and
competition for other resources were contributing factors to conflict and instability in
Rwanda and Darfur in the 1990s and in Ethiopia and Nigeria in the 1970s. Whether resource
scarcity will be the impetus for peaceful cooperation or a contributor to conflict in the
future remains to be seen. Regions that are already water-scarce, such as Kuwait, Jordan,
Israel, Rwanda, Somalia, Algeria and Kenya, may be forced to confront this choice as
climate change exacerbates their water scarcity. And nations critical to global stability are
expected to become water-scarce within several decades: Pakistan, South Africa, and large parts
of China and India.
Water wars are not just disputes over wells or even about water, per se. They are about
the consequences of a lack of waterconsequences that are already being felt. Conflicts
over access to vital resources are scattered throughout Africa. Darfur is the best recent
example of, as we note in our report, how existing marginal situations can be exacerbated
beyond the tipping point by climate-related factors. Here, drought led to competition for land
that has access to water. When combined with existing issues like population growth and
tribal, ethnic and religious disputes, the struggle for land turned violent. Is the Darfur
conflict a classic water war? Perhaps not. But has a lack of water played a critical role in
that tragedy? Absolutely.
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 8:;
Lack of resources leads to war Rwanda proves.

Homer-Dixon, Thomas. Straw Man In the Wind. 2 January 2008. Web. 7 December 2013.
<nationalinterest.org/article/straw-man-in-the-wind-1921>.

On the specifics of Rwanda, he is, in fact, decisively wrong: Several exacting and penetrating
studies have now shown conclusively that cropland scarcity in Rwanda strongly affected
rural grievances that were exploited by radical Hutus in the lead-up to the 1994 genocide.
And regarding Darfur, the case is by no means closed one way or the other. Were still waiting
for a close on-the-ground analysis of causation. But many reputable scholars have argued,
on the basis of substantial evidence, that a long-term decline in rainfall in the Darfur region
contributed to a breakdownwhich the Khartoum government exploited, to be sureof
traditional relations between nomads and pastoralists.
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 8::
Resource extraction has fueled the economy of developing countries
for years.

Reed, Darryl. Extraction Industries in Developing Countries. Journal of Bueiness Ethics, Vol.

Key organizational developments also took place during this period. In the oil industry for
example, by the early 1900s there was a shift away from small, single-stage, local firms to
large, vertically integrated corporations. Here, Standard Oil's dominance over the refining
process proved to be the key in facilitating vertical integration. In aluminum, Alcoa's patent
rights granted it a virtual monopoly over metal production and, on this basis, it was able to
integrate both backwards into raw material extraction and forwards into fabrication. The
development of vertically integrated, oligopolistic firms and the introduction of new
technology were closely intertwined as new technology laid the basis for increased
concentration (by allowing for economies of scale, geographic expansion of markets, etc.),
while integration and concentration helped to reduce the risk involved in introducing new and
expensive technology. Another key change was the development of national markets in the
major industrial economies. This change was facilitated in large part by the revolutions in
transportation, especially railroads. In principle, improvements in transportation could have
helped to increase competition by opening up regional markets to new players. In practice,
however, this was not the primary impact. Rather, improvements in transportation and the
development of national markets led to fewer, but larger firms, as firms increasingly had to
attain national size in order to compete. National markets also induced firms to seek out
control over reserves (and ancillary resources) in their home country. It became common for
firms to acquire rights to reserves that were in excess of the prospective needs for decades
into the future.
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 8:;
Resource extraction increases transnational communication and
helps state recognize national interests.

Reed, Darryl. Extraction Industries in Developing Countries. Journal of Bueiness Ethics, Vol.

While micro-economic logic was a necessary factor in inducing transnational activities,
pursuing transnational activities [through resource extraction] was generally facilitated by
political economy factors. While three major types of factors can be distinguished analytically,
in practice they overlap and are frequently inseparable. These include the identification of
national economic interest with the interests of domestic corporations, (geo-political)
strategic considerations and the exercise of political influence by corporations and corporate
leaders. National (economic) interest. The identification of national economic interests with
the interests of domestic corporations has a certain common sense appeal. This connection -
most famously expressed in the words of former GM president, Charles E. Wilson, "What
is good for the country is good for General Motors, and vice versa" is generally
unquestioned by corporate leaders. In the realm of domestic politics, some doubts do arise
among politicians, however. The reality of democratic politics, as reflected in the need for
compromise, generally means that in the domestic arena few governments are ever capable
of completely identifying national interest with business interests. In the international
realm, however, ambiguity about the relationship between corporate and national interest
usually disappears.
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 8:;
Science helps even resource competition for developing countries.

Wright, Gavin and Czelusta, Jesse. The Myth of the Resource Curse. The Challenge.
March/April 2004. Web. 7 December 2013.
<www.stanford.edu/~write/papers/Wright%20Res%20Curse.pdf >

The reader may accept this analysis as history and yet protest that it has little relevance for the
newer oil-producing nations of the world. How could such newcomers expect to contribute to
what is now an extremely advanced science-based world petroleum technology? In rebuttal,
consider the example of Norway, in which the first commercial discoveries of oil occurred only
in 1969. In many ways the Norwegian experience parallels that of California. Though not poor
by world standards, Norway in the 1960s was remote and structurally underdeveloped. Yet
in fairly short order, the country was able to reorient its traditional engineering skills from
shipbuilding to become a full partner in the adaptation of oil exploration and drilling
technologies to Norwegian conditions. Virtually from the start, negotiations with international oil
companies emphasized the transfer of competence and control to Norway (Anderson 1993, 96-
100). With the establishment of a state-owned company (Statoil) in 1973 and investment in
the training of petroleum engineers at the Norwegian Technical University and Rogaland
Regional College, recipient competence was transformed into participant competence,
making it possible to speak of an independent Norwegian oil industry. The Norwegian
industry became expert at producing deepwater drilling platforms. Initially designed to overcome
immediate production bottlenecks, the platforms came to be export goods, as they proved useful
for offshore drilling in other parts of the world. A distinctive approach to exploration developed
at the University of Oslos Department of Geology, focusing on the properties of different types
of sandstone as reservoir rock and the flow of water and oil in sediment basins, has come to be
known as the Norwegian school of thought regarding oil exploration. As a result of this
approach, forecasts of impending depletion have been repeatedly overturned and reserve
estimates adjusted. In effect, these advances in technology and in the infrastructure of
knowledge have extended the quantity of Norways petroleum reserves, and they have
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 8:7
allowed Norwegians to participate in the process as well-paid professionals, not just as
passive recipients of windfall economic rents.

Gavin Wright is the William Robertson Coe Professor of American Economic History at
Stanford University; Jesse Czelusta is a graduate student in economics at Stanford.
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 8:8
Research investments will stop rapid depletion of resources. U.S.
case study.


This discussion may convey the impression that the rise of U.S. mineral production was an
exercise in the rapid exhaustion of a non-renewable resource in a common-property setting.
Although elements of such a scenario were sometimes on display during periodic mineral
rushes, resource extraction in the United States was more fundamentally associated with
ongoing processes of learning, investment, technological progress, and cost reduction,
generating a manifold expansion rather than depletion of the nations resource base. A
prime illustration is the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Established in 1879, the USGS was the
most ambitious governmental science project of the nineteenth century. The agency was
successor to numerous state-sponsored surveys and to a number of more narrowly focused
federal efforts. It was highly responsive to the concerns of western mining interests, and the
practical value of its detailed mineral maps gave the USGS, in turn, a powerful constituency in
support of its scientific research. The early twentieth-century successes of the USGS in
petroleum were instrumental in transforming attitudes within the oil industry toward
trained geologists and applied geological science.


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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 8:6
In the United States, resource extraction aided economic
development.


In direct contrast to the notion of mineral deposits as a nonrenewable resource endowment in
fixed supply, new deposits were continually discovered, and production of nearly all major
minerals continued to rise well into the twentieth century for the country as a whole, if not
for every mining area considered separately. To be sure, this growth was to some extent a
function of the size of the country and its relatively unexplored condition prior to the westward
migration of the nineteenth century. But mineral discoveries were not mere by-products of
territorial expansion. Some of the most dramatic production growth occurred not in the Far
West but in older parts of the country: copper in Michigan, coal in Pennsylvania and Illinois,
oil in Pennsylvania and Indiana. Many other countries of the world were large, and (as we now
know) well endowed with minerals. But no other country exploited its geological potential to
the same extent. Using modern geological estimates, David and Wright (1997) show that the
U.S. share of the world mineral production in 1913 was far in excess of its share of world
reserves. Mineral development was thus an integral part of the broader process of national
economic development.

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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 9;<
Developing countries are lagging because they expected the US to
care.

Ball, Jeffery. "Climate Change Is Now in the Developing Worlds Hands." Slate. Web. 6 Dec.
2013.
<http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/energy_around_the_world/2013/11/w
arsaw_climate_talks_developing_countries_will_be_source_of_greenhouse_gas.html>

The Kyoto Protocol, named for the Japanese city in which it was drafted, obligated
industrialized countries that ratified it to cut their greenhouse gas emissions a collective 5 percent
by 2012. It didnt require developing countries to trim their emissions. The rationale was that
rich countries, which for decades had been responsible for the bulk of carbon emissions,
should take the first step. The United States didnt ratify the Kyoto accord, arguing in large
part that taking on an emissions-reduction burden would hurt its ability to compete in
global markets against China, which under Kyoto didnt have to cut its carbon output.

Jeffrey Ball is scholar-in-residence at Stanford. He was environment editor at the Wall Street
Journal.
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 9;:
Western countries believe that developing countries are the problem
and they hurt western nations they think Western
intervention is key.


For some environmentalists poor countries are the major culprits for global
environmental degradation. For them, poor countries with their burgeoning population of
poor and illiterate people are not only incapable of helping themselves but are even
beyond being truly helped by other nations" (Caldwell l990:l9). For these Westem
environmentalists, the poor countries show by their actions that they reject the social
restraints. Instead, these countries have found an expedient solution to their difficulties in
the export of surplus poor people, chie!y to the industrialized countries (Caldwell
1990119). From this perspective, one of the major problems is that there is no way under the
present disposition of national power and politics that nations may coerce one another into
environmentally prudent policies"(Caldwell 1990: 18). The idea of national sovereignty" has
become a problem for these environmentalists. They have even suggested that activities in one
country that are detrimental to the environment of neighboring countries constitute an
intemational security issue (Caldwell l990:l3). Presumably, such a situation would justify
the affected countries taking action to defend their national security by all necessary
means, including coercion and intervention. Not surprisingly, many in the poor countries see
the environment as an excuse for political intervention by the rich countries (Redclift and
Goodman l991:l7; also Cleary 1991). One difficulty in considering another nation's environ-
mental policies a national security issue is that few developed countries would agree to
intervention in their environments on the grounds of global necessity (Redclift and
Goodman 1991 :17). Indeed, a great many of the U.S. govemments objections to the Rio Earth
Summit agreements were grounded in unwillingness to agree to anything that even remotely
seemed to impinge on its sovereignty (Grubb et al. 1993; Newhouse 1992).
!"#$ &'()*+,- ./-0//( !1-+'(2 31(45/6 789:

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 9;<
Poor countries see the West as colonialist in their environmental
policies; the West sees poorer countries as dangerous.


Environmentalists in the West, especially in the United States, !nd the ecological
destruction in the poor countries alarming. They consider poor countries unwillingness to
give highest priority to environmental protection dangerous to the global environment. They !nd
the poor countries demand for monetary compensation for foregoing the use of their
environmental resources offensive. And they !nd their inability to make poor countries protect
their environment, for the present and future good of the world community, extremely
frustrating. Poor countries, on the other hand, often consider Westem environmentalism a
disguise for neocolonialism. They see it as a program to perpetuate existing inequities
between the rich and the poor, as a way to deny poor countries the opportunity to achieve
the wealth and good life that the West enjoys (Porter and Brown 1991 :l27-28).

Technology Hyderabad in 2009.
!"#$ &'()*+,- ./-0//( !1-+'(2 31(45/6 789:

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 9;<
Capitalism is good for the environment

Bast, Joseph. Eco-Sanity. Heartland Institute. 1994. Web. 7 December 2013.
<http://www.riudl.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Capitalism-Critique-Answers.doc>.

Without private ownership, it is difficult to protect wildlife, forests, or other
environmental resources, because no one directly benefits when the resource is
conserved or suffers a loss if the resource is mismanaged. When natural resources
are owned collectively (or by the government), each of us may use or manage the
resource very negligently, because we arent affected much by our careless
behavior. As a result, public ownership often leaves the environment dependent on
peoples charity of good instincts. These qualities are admirable, to be sure. But as the
passenger pigeon, buffalo, and African elephant show, we cant rely on admirable qualities
alone to protect rare or endangered animals.
!"#$ &'()*+,- ./-0//( !1-+'(2 31(45/6 789:

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 9;<
Its unreasonable to force poor people in developing countries to
adapt environmental policies.

Daily, Mises. "Environmental Protection Is a Consumption Good." The Ludwig Von Mises
Institute. 7 Sept. 2011. Web. 08 Dec. 2013. <http://mises.org/daily/5586/>.

The second problem with passing environmental legislation once you can afford to do so is
that many people still cannot. Environmental protection measures taxes on oil, land-use
restrictions, emissions standards, ethanol subsidies, etc. affect more than just the rich
people who advocate them. They raise the price of basic survival goods food, water, land
across the globe. The wealthy can deal with the higher prices; indeed as I've said many of
them may be happy to purchase perceived environmental improvement for a few bucks more at
the pump. The poor cannot. Many suffer and some die. Environmentalists want to protect
the environment because they have reached a point on their hierarchy of needs where a
healthy wood is the next highest good. There are no poor environmentalists. This is all well
and good until they attempt to force their preferences on others via legislation. In a market, the
rich are free to act upon their preferences and purchase goods others cannot afford. They
are also free to try to persuade poorer people that they should value luxury goods more
than basic goods. But can you imagine a law that forced every citizen to purchase a luxury
car? If those who valued the sight of roads full of beautiful cars lobbied to force everyone
to drive luxury cars it would be considered outrageous discrimination against the poor.
Why is environmental activism not seen in the same light?

!"#$ &'()*+,- ./-0//( !1-+'(2 31(45/6 789:

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 9;;
The word Developing creates a perception that creates an unfair
situation.

Sachs, Wolfgang. The Development Dictionary. Zed Books. 1992. Web. 7 December 2013.
<http://books.google.com/books?id=2bi_kf7QAq4C&lpg=PA10&ots=yZ04HxTwBm&d
q=%22Throughout%20the%20century%2C%20the%20meanings%20associated%20with
%20urban%20development%22&pg=PA10#v=onepage&q&f=false>.

Throughout the century, the meanings associated with urban development and colonial
development concurred with many others to transform the word 'development', step by
step, into one with contours that are about as precise as those of an amoeba. It is now a
mere algorithm whose significance depends on the context in which it is employed. It may
allude to a housing project, to the logical sequence of a thought, to the awakening of a child's
mind, to a chess game or to the budding of a teenager's breasts. But even though it lacks, on its
own, any precise denotation, it is firmly seated in popular and intellectual perception. And it
always appears as an evocation of a net of significances in which the person who uses it is
irremediably trapped. Development cannot delink itself from the words with which it was
formed - growth, evolution, maturation. Just the same, those who now use the word cannot free
themselves from a web of meanings that impart a specific blindness to their language, thought
and action. No matter the context in which it is used. or the precise connotation that the
person using it wants to give it, the expression becomes qualified and coloured by meanings
perhaps unwanted. The word always implies a favourable change, a step from the simple to
the complex, from the inferior to the superior, from worse to better. The word indicates that
one is doing well because one is advancing in the sense of a necessary, ineluctable, universal
law and toward a desirable goal. The word retains to this day the meaning given to it a century
ago by the creator of ecology, Haeckel: 'Development is, from this moment on, the magic word
with which we will solve all the mysteries that surround us or. at least. that which will guide us
toward their solution.' But for two-thirds of the people on earth, this positive meaning of the
word 'development' - profoundly rooted after two centuries of its social construction -is a
reminder of what they are not. It is a reminder of an undesirable, undignified condition. To
escape from it, they need to be enslaved to others' experiences and dreams.
!"#$ &'()*+,- ./-0//( !1-+'(2 31(45/6 789:

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 9;<
Portraying developing nations as a homogenous, poor entity disables
developed nations to compare their decision-making
calculus.

Sachs, Wolfgang. The Development Dictionary. Zed Books. 1992. Web. 7 December 2013.
<http://books.google.com/books?id=2bi_kf7QAq4C&lpg=PA10&ots=yZ04HxTwBm&d
q=%22Throughout%20the%20century%2C%20the%20meanings%20associated%20with
%20urban%20development%22&pg=PA10#v=onepage&q&f=false>.

Underdevelopment began, then, on January 20, 1949. On that day, two billion people became
underdeveloped. In a real sense, from that time on, they ceased being what they were, in all their
diversity, and were transmogrified into an inverted mirror of others' reality: a mirror that belittles
them and sends them off to the end of the queue, a mirror that defines their identity, which is
really that of a heterogeneous and diverse majority, simply in the terms of a homogenizing and
narrow minority. Truman was not the first to use the word. Wilfred Benson. a former member of
the Secretariat of the International Labour Organization, was probably the person who invented it
when he referred to the 'underdeveloped areas' while writing on the economic basis for peace in
1942.' But the expression found no further echo, neither with the public nor with the experts.
Two years later, Rosenstein-Rodan continued to speak of 'economically backward areas'. Arthur
Lewis, also in 1944, referred to the gap between the rich and the poor nations. Throughout the
decade, the expression [developing] appeared occasionally in technical books or United Nations
documents. But it only acquired relevance when Truman presented it as the emblem of his
own policy. In this context, it took on an unsuspected colonizing virulence. Since then,
development has connoted at least one thing: to escape from the undignified condition
called underdevelopment. When Nyerere proposed that development be the political
mobilization of a people for attaining their own objectives, conscious as he was that it was
madness to pursue the goals that others had set; when Rodolfo Stavenhagen proposes today
ethnodevelopment or development with self-confidence, conscious that we need to 'look within'
and 'search for one's own culture' instead of using borrowed and foreign views; when Jimoh
!"#$ &'()*+,- ./-0//( !1-+'(2 31(45/6 789:

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 9;8
Omo-Fadaka suggests a development from the bottom up, conscious that all strategies based on a
top-down design have failed to reach their explicitly stated objectives; when Orlando Fals Borda
and Anisur Rahman insist on participatory development, conscious of the exclusions made in the
name of development; when Jun Nishikawa proposes an 'other' development for Japan, conscious
that the current era is ending; when they and so many others qualify development and use the
word with caveats and restrictions as if they were walking in a minefield, they do not seem
to see the counter-productivity of their efforts. The minefield has already exploded. In order
for someone to conceive the possibility of escaping from a particular condition, it is
necessary first to feel that one has fallen into that condition. For those who make up two-
thirds of the world's population today, to think of development - of any kind of development -
requires first the perception of themselves as underdeveloped, with the whole burden of
connotations that this carries.
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 9;9
Environmental protection is a tool of consumerism used to fuel the
global capitalist economy.

Luke, Timothy W. "The (Un)Wise (Ab)use of Nature: Environmentalism as Globalized,"
Virginia Polytechnic Institute. 1997. Web. 7 December 2013.
<http://www.cddc.vt.edu/tim/tims/Tim528.PDF>.

Compared to so many other environmental organizations, The Nature Conservancy (TNC)
plainly is doing something immediate and significant to protect Nature--buying,
holding and guarding large swatches of comparatively undisturbed natural habitat.
Yet, it does this in accord with the consumeristic ground rules of the global
capitalist economy. Millions of acres, occupying many diverse ecosystems now are
being held in trust by the Nature Conservancy. This trust is being exercised not only
for future generations of people, but also for all of the new generations of the plants
and animals, fungi and insects, algae and microorganisms inhabiting these plots of land.
Beginning with the 60 acres in the Mianus River Gorge, this organization has protected by direct
acquisition and trust negotiations over 7.5 million acres of land in North America as well as
Central America, South America, and the Caribbean in over separate 10,000 protection actions.
In the past forty years, on pieces as small a quarter an acre to as large as hundreds of square
miles, the Nature Conservancy in the United States has arranged for the ongoing protection of an
area the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island.84 Given that so many ecological initiatives fail so
frequently, this string of successes cannot be entirely ignored. Nonetheless, one must admit
the Nature Conservancy's achievements are perhaps seriously flawed, even though
these flaws reveal much more about the consumption of public goods through a
private property system and free enterprise economy than they show about
environmentalism. Because of what has happened to Nature, how capital operates,
and where resources for change must be solicited, the Nature Conservancy does
what it does: consume land to be held "in trust: for Nature. As a result, the tenets
and tenor of the Conservancy's operations as "an environmentalist organization"
!"#$ &'()*+,- ./-0//( !1-+'(2 31(45/6 789:

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 9;7
are those of almost complete compliance, and not those of radical resistance to the
fast capitalist global economy.

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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 9;<
Resource endowed countries do not run out of natural resources.


Certainly we are not qualified to make pronouncements about geographical distribution of
minerals in the earths crust, much less within particular countries. But a cursory reading of the
geological literature on mineral stocks convinces us that most geologists would not be surprised
by the patterns we have described. DeVerle P. Harris, for example, notes in a survey article that
ore deposits of a specific kind, e.g., massive sulfide copper, are created from common
crustal material by earth processes that are characteristic of that deposit type.
Consequently, such deposits exhibit some common characteristics irrespective of where they
occur, e.g., in the African or North American continents. (1993, 1035) Among these
characteristics are deposit size, average grade, intradeposit grade variation, and depth to deposit.
Mapping the statistical properties of these distributions is now the object of sophisticated, large-
scale computer modeling, such as the Minerals Availability System (MAS) of the U.S. Bureau of
Mines. The broad picture that emerges from such investigations is that the underlying
elasticities of mineral supply are very high with respect to any number of physical and
economic margins. The more that is learned about the effects of deposit features on
discoverability, with the information gain that occurs from continued exploration within
regions, the more it is evident that the potential for expansion of the resource basethe
economically meaningful concept of mineral resource endowmentis vast if not unlimited.


!"#$ &'()*+,- ./-0//( !1-+'(2 31(45/6 789:

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 9;:
Peru is effectively utilizing its mineral resources.


Yet Peru appears to be on its way to reaching this potential. For instance, Roque
Benavides, chief executive of Compania de Minas Buenaventura, is forecasting that by 2008,
output will have climbed to 1.38 Mt [Million tons] for copper, 1.16 Mt for zinc, and 1.46 for
gold (ibid., 6; these figures represent increases relative to 2000 of 145, 28, and 11 percent,
respectively). A US$3.2 billion project began production at Antamina in 2001 and is expected to
yield 675 million pounds of copper over the first ten years (Peruvian Mining Convention
Highlights Mining Development and Importance, Mininf Engineering, December 2001). In
Yanococha, exploration efforts [by Minera Yanacocha, Latin Americas largest gold producer]
indicated major copper sulfide deposits under the gold depositsYanacocha may someday
become a major copper producer in addition to gold (ibid., 21). In May 2002, Barrick Gold
Corp. announced the discovery of an estimated 3.5 million ounces of gold at its Alta Chicama
property in southern Peru (Barrick Makes New Gold Discovery in Peru, Skillings Mining
Review, May 4, 2002, 8). Substantial investments in mineral processing facilities are also
under way (Peruvian Mining Convention, 21).


!"#$ "&'(')* +, -'. /0+'0+1* 23(4567 89:;

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. :<=
Developing countries only want to act when they see an economic
benefit.

2013.
arsaw_climate_talks_developing_countries_will_be_source_of_greenhouse_gas.html>

These two shifts are likely to define the worlds response to climate change for years to come.
Together, they mean the world is likely to address climate change only to the extent that
developing countries believe doing so will serve goals they see as more immediate and
important: providing new jobs, for instance, or cleaning up sooty air. Moves that happen to
curb carbon emissions as a side benefit of accomplishing other goals may not be enough to
avert dangerous effects from climate change. But the traditional alternativeshouting
from the rooftops that the rich world should act in the name of melting glaciersmay
amount to little more than hot air.This wasnt what diplomats expected in 1997, when they
inked what many hailed as a landmark agreement to combat climate change.

Journal.

!"#$ "&'(')* +, -'. /0+'0+1* 23(4567 89:;

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. :<=
Developed countries are abandoning their environmental policies
because of the economy.

2013.
arsaw_climate_talks_developing_countries_will_be_source_of_greenhouse_gas.html>.

"Further evidence that climate concerns arent driving energy decisions came earlier this month.
Australias new conservative government floated bills to repeal the countrys tax on carbon
emissions; it introduced an alternative carbon-reduction program, but many observers say that
alternative wont achieve the same degree of emission cuts. Days later, Japan, the home of
Kyoto, announced it was abandoning one of its key carbon commitments. Japanese leaders said
the country no longer would adhere to an earlier promise to cut its greenhouse gas
emissions 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Instead, the government announced a less
aggressive commitment that amounts to a 3 percent decrease in emissions over the same time
period. The political switch infuriated environmentalists but is a concession to economic
reality. In the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident, Japan has idled the nuclear plants
that were a carbon-free source of roughly one-third of the countrys electricity. Even as Japan
races to ramp up power from solar and wind, its firing up coal-fired power plants, boosting the
countrys emissions. The Japanese governments top spokesman told reporters in Tokyo earlier
this month that, particularly given his countrys post-Fukushima move away from nuclear power,
its earlier pledge to slash emissions 25 percent was totally unfounded and wasnt feasible.

Journal.

!"#$ "&'(')* +, -'. /0+'0+1* 23(4567 89:;

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. :<=
China isnt fixing it right now either; could be because of developed
countries backpedaling.

2013.

Japans announcement elicited righteous indignation from China. China, which as a developing
country was exempted from the Kyoto climate accords requirements, recently overtook the United
States as the worlds top carbon emitter. As result, it has come under increasing international
pressure to take on a carbon-reduction pledge. But Chinese climate negotiators at the Warsaw
conference made clear their government has no intention of doing so, particularly when
industrialized countries such as Japan are backpedaling.

Jeffrey Ball is scholar-in-residence at Stanford. He was environment editor at the Wall Street Journal.
!"#$ "&'(')* +, -'. /0+'0+1* 23(4567 89:;

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. :<=
Chinese emissions high now but may decrease.

2013.

"Chinas own emissions are soaringnot just because China has a population of 1.4 billion
people but also because China manufactures for the world. And yet there are signs that
Chinayes, China!may end up curbing its emissions more than any other country. It
has pledged to ramp up the proportion of electricity it generates from nuclear
and renewable energy. It has imposed relatively stringent fuel-efficiency requirements for cars.
Its rolling out a bevy of policies designed to curb pollution from coal-fired power plants.

Journal.
!"#$ "&'(')* +, -'. /0+'0+1* 23(4567 89:;

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. :<<
China will only change for economic reasons tangible reasons are
key.

2013.

Why? Not primarily to curb carbon dioxide emissions. China is beginning to move toward
a cleaner energy mix for reasons far more palpable than a colorless, odorless gas. The air in
Chinas major cities is often so dirty that it stings the eyes and sickens the lungs; thats a public-
health problem that could become a political threat to Beijings rulers. In addition, the push
toward cleaner energy sources is creating new jobs and new export industries for China
another tangible political benefit.

Journal.
!"#$ "&'(')* +, -'. /0+'0+1* 23(4567 89:;

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 899
Brazil is also changing for economic reasons.

2013.

China isnt the only developing country that may end up curbing its greenhouse gas emissions
for reasons other than climate concern. Brazil in recent years has markedly slowed
deforestation in the Amazona major contributor to overall greenhouse gas
concentrations, since trees consume carbon dioxide as they grow. In large part, that success is
due to cash payments made to farmers who refrain from cutting down trees. Some of that
cash comes from European governments and investors looking for cheap ways to satisfy
requirements that they fight climate change. Yet studies in Brazil suggest that slowing
deforestation brings economic benefits of its own. By focusing farmers attention on land
thats already cleared, rather than on clearing additional land, slowing deforestation tends
to increase agricultural output, and thus income, from land already being farmed, according
to some researchers.

Journal.
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 89:
Developing countries unwilling to protect the environment without
growth.


In addition, most of the poor countries, especially in Asia and Latin America, are now
urbanized and semi-industrialized economies with sizable middle classes. These middle
classes expect to achieve a relatively high material standard of living like their counterparts
in the rich industrial countries. They are oriented towards private consumer goods"
(Redclift and Goodman l99l:13) and are unlikely to be enlisted in the cause of environmental
protection at the expense of economic growth. The resistance of semi- industrialized countries,
such as Malaysia, India, and Brazil, preceding the UN Conference on the Human Environment at
Stockholm in 1972, to industrialized countries' focus on global environmental protection has
continued. Developing countries, especially their governments and economic elites, consider
environmental protection a luxury that can be considered only after the rising level of
economic growth is secured (Grubb et al. I993). Long and hard bargaining preceding the Earth
Summit in Rio focused on the developing countries insistence on linkage between
environmental protection and economic development. Poor countries demanded that the rich
countries provide them with increased aid to compensate for their increased costs and for
the adverse impact of environmental protection on their economic growth. The poor
countries also demanded that the rich ones transfer advanced environmentally friendly
technologies to them at low or no cost so that they can protect the environment without
reducing their economic growth rate. Many developing countries refused to reduce their
economic growth targets. China, for example, remains committed to doubling its gross national
product in twelve years at most (Newhouse l992:74).
!"#$ "&'(')* +, -'. /0+'0+1* 23(4567 89:;

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 898
Research shows that environmental quality rises with increased
income of a country. Therefore, the economy is key in order
to fight environmental problems.

Anderson, Terry L. You Have to Admit It's Getting Better: From Economic Prosperity to
Environmental Quality. Hoover Institute. 2004. Web. 7 December 2013.
<http://media.hoover.org/sites/default/files/documents/0817944826_xiii.pdf>.

The doomsayers contend that such growth will ultimately deplete natural resources
and destroy the environment, but Lomborg finds positive correlations between
economic growth and environmental quality. He correlates the World Banks
environmental sustainability index with gross domestic product per capita across
117 nations, concluding that higher income in general is correlated with higher
environmental sustainability (Lomborg 2001, 32). This idea is known as the
environmental Kuznets curve, based on Nobel laureate Simon Kuznetss earlier work on
patterns of economic growth. Measuring environmental quality (for example, air quality) on the
vertical axis and economic performance (for example, the gross domestic product, or GDP) on
the horizontal axis, the relationship displays a J-curve. At lower levels of income, environmental
quality can deteriorate as people trade environmental quality for economic growth. But as Bruce
Yandle, Maya Vijayaraghavan, and Madhusudan Bhattarai review in Chapter 3, all studies show
that the relationship between environmental quality and economic performance becomes positive
at higher levels of income because environmental quality is what economists call an income-
elastic good. In other words, if income rises 10 percent, the demand for environmental
quality rises more than 10 percent. Generally, the (annual) income level at which the
turning point occurs is between $4,000 and $8,000, with the demand for water quality turning
upward at lower levels of income than the income levels at which the demand for endangered
species preservation turns upward.
!"#$ "&'(')* +, -'. /0+'0+1* 23(4567 89:;

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 89<
A strong economy is key to promoting environmental protection.


If you live in grinding third-world poverty, you may want a cleaner stream in the village,
but you cannot afford to do anything about it while your children are malnourished. You may
want a low-emission heater for your hut, but since you have neither the money nor the electricity,
the fire pit will have to do for now. In a world of scarcity, there are tradeoffs. You cannot afford
precious time, energy and resources beautifying your landscape and protecting
"greenspaces" if you are fighting hunger and disease.

Environmental protection is a consumption good. Not only that, but it is further up on the
hierarchy of human needs than goods like food and shelter that ensure your family's survival. If a
forest was experiencing a natural, healthy fire and a child was trapped in it, even a
passionate environmentalist would not say, "Let it burn; the forest is more important than
my daughter's life." Few would disagree that this is a normal and necessary ordering of human
preferences.

Like all consumption goods, you cannot purchase more environmental protection until you
can afford it, and you cannot afford it without economic growth. Economic growth, not
legislation, is the key driver to improvements in environmental quality. There is a great deal
of mythology that suggests passing laws is the key to a healthy earth. Similar to the myth that
laws ended child labor in the United States, cause and effect have been reversed. Try banning
child labor in the third world. Not only will many people die, but enforcement will be nearly
impossible because so many people rely on it for survival. Try clamping down on pollution in
the third world, and, again, lives are at stake and enforcement is not realistic. Only when a
great majority of people can afford such laws and only when they are rich enough to spend
time thinking of the welfare of others or the earth do such policy changes occur.
!"#$ "&'(')* +, -'. /0+'0+1* 23(4567 89:;

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 89;
Environmental protection is impossible without a stable economy.


Everyone, including environmentalists, has needs more basic than a pristine environment.
We don't worry about the earth until our survival is secure. This is a natural ordering of
needs. Yet environmentalists, after meeting their own basic needs, want to force the poor to
reverse their preferences and put the earth before their own survival. I don't think most
environmentalists intend this, but it is the inevitable result of using the force of government
to enact protection measures. This is neither desirable nor effective in the long run.
You may be able to do great harm to many of the world's poor in exchange for some
government attempt at environmental improvement (more likely to result in special-interest
enrichment), but in the long run it is impossible to convince people to subjugate their
survival to the perceived needs of their ecosystem. The real promise for environmental
improvement is economic growth. Until people are wealthy enough to consider paying the
cost of a cleaner environment, the fight to force their choices is inhumane and ultimately
ineffective.
Environmentalists should seek the freedom that creates economic growth among the poor
so they can afford to care about the earth. They should peacefully persuade those who can
afford it to place a higher value on the environment relative to other nonessential goods.
Economic growth and persuasion, not legislation, will make a greener world.
!"#$ "&'(')* +, -'. /0+'0+1* 23(4567 89:;

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 89<
Economic growth causes rising living standards without sacrificing
the health of the environment.

Porritt, Jonathon. 'You can't look to solve problems using the mindset that created those
problems in the first place. U.K. Sustainable Development Commission. 2007. Print.

We still need economic development. We still have to enable people to improve
their quality of life and in the Third World to improve their material standard of
living. But we have to do it in ways that will not destroy the physical environment
and the prospects of future generations. The book I wrote last year, called Capitalism - As
If The World Mattered, looks at what it is that stops world and business leaders putting this
analysis into practice and implementing measures for a more sustainable economy. Politicians, I
think, are frightened at the prospect. It means they have to challenge some of the strong
messages about economic growth. If economic growth is good, then more economic growth is
deemed to be automatically better. I am encouraged now by the level of enthusiasm, the
sense that public attitudes are beginning to change. People understand that climate
change is going to mean a shift in the way we live. They are beginning to get this
message and are looking for clarity about what they can do to make the biggest
difference.

!"#$ "&'(')* +, -'. /0+'0+1* 23(4567 89:;

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 89<
Developing countries should focus on protection from the
environment rather than protection of the environment.


Moving to the second issue, capacity building, much like technology transfer, has been a
much abused term in the rhetoric of climate policy. Both north and south reiterate by rote the
importance of building capacity, yet neither has shown much willingness to invest
meaningfully in doing so (Banuri and Sagar, 1999). In introducing the twin concepts of
adaptive and mitigative capacity (by working groups II and III, respectively) the third
assessment of the IPCC (2001) has made a significant contribution to the policy discourse by
outlining what types of capacities are required, by whom, and when. The most pressing
challenge in this regard is to strengthen the social, economic, and technical resilience of the
poorest and most vulnerable against extreme climatic events. The priority must be on those
countries that are climatically most vulnerable as well as economically impoverished and
therefore unable to cope or adapt with sudden and significant climatically induced disasters.
This highlights the need to focus on issues of adaptation, especially in LDCs and SIDs
where the threat of climate change is more immediate and intense while the ability to adapt is
least developed (Huq and Sokona, 2001). As mentioned, COP-6 has already made a rather
symbolic gesture in this direction by setting up a set of voluntary funds. However, there
continues to be significant uncertainty about how much money will be available to these funds
and how it will be used (Huq, 2002). The next step must be to fund these initiatives and to set up
clear priorities for their use; depending on how large these funds are and how they use their
endowments, they could be an important step towards aligning the climate change regime
towards sustainable development.

!"#$ "&'(')* +, -'. /0+'0+1* 23(4567 89:;

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 89<
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There is no resource curse if its accompanied by domestic
investments. America is a prime example.


There is good reason to reject the notion that American industrialization should be somehow
discounted because it emerged from a setting of unique resource abundance: On closer
examination, the abundance of American mineral resources should not be seen as merely a
fortunate natural endowment. It is more appropriately understood as a form of collective
learning, a return on large-scale investments in exploration, transportation, geological
knowledge, and the technologies of mineral extraction, refining, and utilization. This case is set
out in detail by Paul David and Gavin Wright (1997) and may be briefly summarized here. For
one thing, the timing of increases in production of a range of minerals in the United States is
striking. Leadership or near-leadership in coal, lead, copper, iron ore, antimony, magnesite,
mercury, nickel, silver, and zinc all occurred between 1870 and 1910. Surely this
correspondence in timing cannot have been coincidental.

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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. :;>
Environmental protections have ignored minorities.

Bullard, Robert. "Poverty, Pollution And Environmental Racism: Strategies For Building
Healthy And Sustainable Communities." Environmental Justice Research Center. Web. 6
Dec 2013. <http://www.ejrc.cau.edu/PovpolEj.html>.

The United States is the dominant economic and military force in the world today. The
American economic engine has generated massive wealth, high standard of living, and
consumerism. This growth machine has also generated waste, pollution, and ecological
destruction. The U.S. has some of the best environmental laws in the world. However, in the
real world, all communities are not created equal. Environmental regulations have not
achieved uniform benefits across all segments of society. Some communities are routinely
poisoned while the government looks the other way. People of color around the world must
contend with dirty air and drinking water, and the location of noxious facilities such as
municipal landfills, incinerators, hazardous waste treatment, storage, and disposal facilities
owned by private industry, government, and even the military. These environmental
problems are exacerbated by racism. Environmental racism refers to environmental policy,
practice, or directive that differentially affects or disadvantages (whether intended or unintended)
individuals, groups, or communities based on race or color. Environmental racism is reinforced
by government, legal, economic, political, and military institutions. Environmental racism
combines with public policies and industry practices to provide benefits for the countries in the
North while shifting costs to countries in the South.

!"#$ &'()*+),(- ./-('*0 1*2 #'(340 56-78*9 :;<=

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. :<;
Small-scale mining has empirical benefits across cultures and
nations.


In Zaire, over 500,000 people work at small-scale diamond, gold and tin mines (Jennings,
1994), and in Ghana, an estimated 24,000 rural jobs have been created as a result of small-
scale gold mining alone (Amegbey et al., 1997). Similarly, certain countries in Asia and South
American have a disproportionately high percentage of their labour force engaged in
small-scale mining activities. In China, approximately three million people are engaged in
small-scale coal mines (ILO, 1999), and in the Philippines, at Mount Diwalwal n the Island of
Mindanao alone, as many as 100,000 small-scale miners are engaged in gold extraction and
processing activities (Hollaway, 1997). The importance of small-scale gold mining from an
employment perspective is best exemplified by Brazil, where, within the Amazonian region
alone, a human contingent of 500,000 relies on small-scale gold mining for economic
survival (Meech et al., 1998). In neighbouring Bolivia, at least 20,000 people are employed in
small-scale tin mining, Table 2 provides more specific employment for small-scale mining in
selected developing countries.

London.
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!"#$%&'( *+&,-. :<<
Blind environmental protection may lead to human rights abuses.


One of the strongest points to emerge from this collection of cases is the central role of the
community in maintaining and sustaining resource integrity, and the increasing alienation
of the community from local resources as a result of development (including conservation)
efforts. Efforts to protect a "healthy environment" may in some cases result in human
rights abuse, and depending upon subsequent social response, may ultimately fail to meet
original environmental integrity objectives. And conversely, responding to human rights needs
(including the right to development) while ignoring the environmental context infers temporary
intervention rather than substantive solution, and may serve to initiate or perpetuate a cycle of
human rights abuses. This conundrum leads all of the authors to argue for analyses that
consider the political, economic, and cultural factors shaping and at times distorting efforts
to respond to humane environmental crises.
In regards to solutions, authors argue that securing a healthy future relies on the ability of
citizens and communities to know the risks and dangers involved in industrial and
development activity, the right to request and receive environmental and community health
safeguards, the right to monitor conditions, the right to question the reasons for and
benefits from development, the right to say yes, and the right to say no.
Achieving these rights - resolving human environmental crises - requires the creation and
use of mechanisms that radically transform the structural arrangement of power at micro
and macro levels. That is: the employment of mechanisms that allow people living with the
problem to gain greater control in defining the nature of the crisis, devising equitable responses,
and prohibiting the reoccurrence. And, at the same time, employment of mechanisms that
allow institutions and organization that played a significant role in creating the problem to
acknowledge their culpability and (through their efforts to respond) to carry a greater share
of the burden for resolving the consequence.
!"#$ &'()*+),(- ./,01 2/-3.*4 5678

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 575
The hand of the free market is increasingly recognized as a myth,
consensus is that the market cant solve environmental
destruction.


Another reason for the increasing concern with environmental destruction in the poor
countries has been the heightened recognition that the earth's natural resources are !nite
and that the existence of modern industrial societies depends on the continuing availability
of these resources. There has been steadily growing recognition by all but a few true
believers in the magic of the market (Tucker 1982; Simon 1981, 1980; Beckerman 1974) that
earths resources and earth's ability to absorb pollution are already strained and that its
ability to sustain our materially rich lifestyles is in serious jeopardy. Therefore, it is now
widely conceded, especially in the industrial West, that the ea.rths natural resources must be
considered in a global context. They rnust be utilized in a carefully planned and rational
manner and must be protected from waste and overexploitation (Gamman 1994; Bennett and
Chaloupka 1993; Porter and Brown 1991).

!"#$ &'()*+),(- ./,01 2/-3.*4 5678

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 579
Neo-classical models of the economy have destroyed the
environment, modern standards of economic growth always
crowd out issues of ecological health.


This is perhaps the central issue in the global environment debate. The dominant model of
economic growth, based on neoclassical economics, does not consider the environment to be
relevant to economics or economic development. It assumes that there is not only an
in!nite supply of natural resources but also of sinks for disposing of the waste from
exploiting these resources provided that the free market is operating (Porter and Brown
l99l:27). In this view, the problems of raw materials exhaustion or pollution are minor
diversions; environmental pollution is an example of negative externality" and only a
matter of minor resource misallocation (Pearce I986: 15). The environment is in an
enduring con"ict with this model of growth (Schnaiberg and Gould 1994). Economic growth
requires exploitation of natural resources for expanding production of material goods and
dumping of the waste products of this production into the environment. The modern
treadmill of production inexorably degrades the environment (Schnaiberg and Gould l994:v).
In rich countries, mass production and consumption is a major cause of environmental
degradation and destruction of natural resources. In poor countries, the creation of value and
access to subsistence are typically linked to sacri!cing environmental quality for short-
term economic gain (Redclift and Goodman 1991 :5). Poverty and subsistence do not always
lead to environmental degradation. The poor often adopt sustainable use strategies, since their
continuing survival depends on such strategies. However, among the multitude of poor and for
most governments in poor countries, survival and reduction in poverty take precedence over
concem for the environment.

!"#$ &'()*+),(- ./,01 2/-3.*4 5678

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 578
Sustainable development is a myth.


While sustainable development has become the dominant framework in discussions on
global ecological preservation and intemational aid programs. questions about the wisdom of
tying preservation of global ecology to economics have continued (International Union for
Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources 1991; Wells, Brandon, and Hannah 1992; Pearce,
Markandya, and Barbier 1989; Goodman and Redclift 1991; Redclift 1987. 1989). Some
environmentalists have argued that economic growth is incom- patible with ecological
preservation. The connotation of sustainable growth is that you can have development that
is not detrimental to our environment, and that's where it becomes an oxymoron
(Robinson l994:4). These environmentalists fear that the new emphasis on human needs, . . .
means a loss of commitment to the primary objective of conserving biological diversity
(Fuller l994:2). They worry about the implicit threat that making everything economic"
poses to reverence for life" on the planet (Wright l994:3).Others suspect that the ready
adoption of sustainable development rhetoric implies a continuation of the present
development models and policies (Porter and Brown l99l:32).

!"#$ &'()*+),(- ./,01 2/-3.*4 5678

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 579
Polluter-pays fails and doesnt protect the environment. Market
solutions have mixed and often unpredictable results.


Many of those between the true believers in the magic of an unfettered market and those who
completely reject the market and the modern industrial order attribute the continuing
environmental degradation both to market failure and to state failure (Janicke 1990; Cairncross
1994). Many policy makers and academics, especially economists and political scientists, have
increasingly advocated use of the polluter pays principle through market mechanisms such
as green taxes and levies and tradeable pollution pennits, as effective ways of dealing with
market failure to protect the environment (Andersen 1994; Barde 1994; Baptist 1994; Mitnick
1980; Marcus 1982). While there have been relatively few empirical studies of the effectiveness
of these economic instruments (Andersen 1994; Hidefumi 1990; OECD 1989; Hudson, Lake,
and Grossman 1981) there is increasing evidence that such economic instruments in practice
produce more mixed results than economics textbooks predict (Andersen 1994; OECD 1989;
Majone 1989). Market-based instruments have serious limitations in protecting the environ-
ment in practice. Their effectiveness depends on the institutional setting, including national
policy style (Andersen 1994). The willingness and capacity of govemments in poor countries
to enforce environmental policies and regulations are often questionable. Comiption among
politicians as well as bureaucrats is widespread in many poor countries. Polluting industries
and businesses fend off and ignore environmental regulations by routinely bribing or
buying off govemment of!cials. Wang and Cribb in their chapters in this book provide
examples of the corrupt nexus between businessmen and politicians in Taiwan and Indo- nesia
respectively. In poor countries, there is often a general lack of scienti!c knowledge about
the environment in the very agencies that are entrusted with protecting it. These agencies
also often lack the professionalism, independence, and resources necessary to effectively
enforce the regulations. In addition, the centralized nature of environmental protection
agencies and policies reduce the govemments capacity to control pollution and protect the
!"#$ &'()*+),(- ./,01 2/-3.*4 5678

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 579
environment. Some environmentalists and scholars suggest that grass-roots community and
nongovernmental organizations provide a more effective altemative to govemment agencies in
protecting the environment and in using natural resources wisely (Reilly 1993; Ostrom 1990;
Ostrom, Schroder, and Wynne 1993).

!"#$ &'()*+),(- ./,01 2/-3.*4 5678

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 579
A focus on global environmental protection statutes wouldnt help
developing countries.


The abandonment of the equity principleparticularly in regards to the least developed
countries (LDCs) and in the context of the related principle of common but differentiated
responsibilityis of grave concern to the south. The regimes loss of interest in the principle
of equity and responsibility only encourages the abuse of the principle by its members. Indeed,
the essence of the equity-in-climate-policy argument was turned on its head by the US Congress
(Byrd-Hagel Resolution, 1997), which bemoaned the disparity of treatment between Annex I
Parties and Developing Countries in terms of emission requirements and demanded
equity of a different kind by resolving that the US Congress would not approve any agreement
that would mandate new commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the
Annex I Parties, unless the protocol or other agreement also mandates new specific scheduled
commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for Developing Country Parties within
the same compliance period. From this logic, the disparity between the average American who
emits just under 20 t of carbon dioxide per ear while the average Indian emits less than 1 t and
the average Chinese around 1.34 t, becomes unimportant while that between a US that is
required to reduce emissions and a China that is not becomes paramount. From a southern
perspective, as the desire for efficiency overwhelms both equity and responsibility, the
distinction between luxury and survival emissions is lost and any discussion of global
or generational fairness becomes all but mute (Agarwal and Narain, 191; Najam and Sagar,
1998).

!"#$ &'()*+),(- ./,01 2/-3.*4 5678

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 579
!"#$ &'()*+),(- ./,01 2/-3.*4 5678

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 579
Creating laws to protect the environment dont work in a vacuum.
They have to be assigned on a case-by-case basis.

Poesche, Jrgen S. "Punishment in Environmental Protection." Journal of Business Ethics. 1996.
Web. 7 December 2013. <link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2FBF00412048.pdf >.

Since the objective of environment, and watersheds are different making a differentiated
approach ecologically necessary. This means that because of the development of human
settlement and changing values, two originally equal sites may become unequal over time.
This is another example showing the dynamic nature of environmental protection. This
discussion shows that the environmental protection authorities (and the relevant law) has to
be adaptable in order to be flexible enough to be used in a dynamic context. At the same
time, the courts have to be careful not to give cause to allegations of partiality and favouritism. It
is very difficult to formulate more specific rules, because every case has to be viewed in
light of its own merits and circumstances. The previous discussion has shown that an agent is
defenceless if he/she undertakes major investments in order to satisfy the environmental
demands, but later on they turn out to be insufficient or even detrimental. This is especially
disturbing in cases when a government agency has either explicitly or implicitly forced the
agent to undertake the investment. In order to avoid or reduce the risk involved in
adopting novel technology for environmental purposes the agent should have some
guarantee to reimburse his/her costs.
!"#$ &'()*+),(- ./,01 2/-3.*4 5678

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 556
When dealing with environmental protection, forcing countries to
adhere to policies may have negative side effects.

Poesche, Jrgen S. "Punishment in Environmental Protection." Journal of Business Ethics. 1996.
Web. 7 December 2013. <link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2FBF00412048.pdf >.

Punishment and environmental protection have been the starting points for this paper on ethical
behaviour. It has been argued that a punishment is relative to the violator of a rule.
Additionally, it is difficult to determine that an act is ethically punishable because of
information problems in particular. The attempt to force other agents to act ethically may
result in unethical behaviour of side effects, defying the original goal because of lack of
information, etc. Collective punishment is not ruled out because of functional
considerations. From a practical standpoint, flexible punishment rules and laws are needed
in the field of environmental protection because of its dynamic nature and the diversity in
the recipient's characteristics, but care has to be taken to avoid a perception of partiality,
favouritism and inequality. At the same time, a flexible system is needed in order to be
viewed as a real threat from all members of our society.
!"#$ &'()*+),(- ./,01 2/-3.*4 5678

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 557
Western Environmental Policies hurt the people of developing
countries DDT ban proves.

Roberts, James. "How Western Environmental Policies Are Stunting Economic Growth in
Developing Countries." Heritage Foundation. Web. 6 Dec 2013.
<http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/01/how-western-environmental-policies-
are-stunting-economic-growth-in-developing-countries>

While the DDT ban continues to cause needless suffering, people in the developing world
now must bear additional burdens imposed by a variety of U.S. and European Union (EU)
environmental and trade policies. EU bans on forestry products and vegetable oils produced in
the tropics have endangered millions of private-sector jobs in developing countries. The U.S.
Lacey Act,[1] which outlaws trafficking in illegal wildlife, fish, and plants, is having a similar
effect. Misleading campaigns against genetically modified organisms (GMO) by green
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and European agricultural interest groups have put more
millions at a higher risk of starvation to protect a few wealthy U.S. and European agribusinesses.
Some of these efforts by green NGOs have been funded by the taxpayers through grants from the
EU and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). These sad consequences
starkly contrast with the fundamental assumptions and motives underlying the Wests
traditional policies on trade, development assistance, and environmental protection. The
pernicious effect of these policies and regulations on developing countries economic
freedom and growth is evident from their impact (real and potential) on trade and
investment flows, job creation, and changes in per capita income.

James M. Roberts is a Research Fellow For Economic Freedom and Growth at The Heritage
Foundation.
!"#$ &'()*+),(- ./,01 2/-3.*4 5678

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 555
Environmental protections are a mask they seek to limit the ability
for countries to develop.


Governments and large agribusinesses are increasingly using the environmentalist
movement and its policy arm of green NGOs to justify imposing protectionist non-tariff
barriers (NTBs) on developing country producers while skirting World Trade Organization
(WTO) rules. NTBs have become the primary vehicle for erecting trade barriers, which
hinder economic freedom and growth. This trend actually began innocently enough decades
ago, when Silent Spring, a book by Rachel Carson, led to an almost complete ban on the
pesticide DDT. DDT is the most effective pesticide to kill malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Carsons
analysis claimed to find serious dangers from using DDT claims later shown to be deeply
flawed. Nevertheless, the book became a foundational document in the creation myth of modern
environmentalism. Zealous environmentalists cajoled governments around the world first to
ban DDT and then to ban a series of other products and practices that activists linked to
environmental concerns.This included imposing green NTBs. Environmental activists and
monopoly-rent-seeking businesses have since become partners in lobbying governments for
statutes and regulations that have erected de facto NTBs. Public relations campaigns have
been used to demonize certain products or to insert discriminatory double standards into relevant
EU and U.S. laws and regulations. For example, EU and U.S. regulations arbitrarily
categorize certain agricultural production methods in developing countries as illegal or a
threat to biodiversity. This paper reviews some of these campaigns.

Foundation.

!"#$ &'()*+),(- ./,01 2/-3.*4 5678

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 559
Environmental legislation can be devastating if done incorrectly
usually by NGOS.


Left unchecked, U.S., EU, and World Bank environmental and trade policiesas well as
the opportunities for cronyism, corruption, and green protectionism that they provide
will inflict massive economic misery on some of the worlds poorest nations. Tens of millions
of Asian and African men and women rely on the jobs and economic growth provided by export
industries.The green NGOs campaign to restrict production of forestry products, palm oil,
GMOs, and other commodities in developing countries combined with U.S. and EU protectionist
measures block future job creation, higher living standards, and poverty reduction in the
very countries the NGOs claim to be protecting.

Foundation.

!"#$ &'()*+),(- ./,01 2/-3.*4 5678

!"#$%&'( *+&,-. 558
End green protection now its an issue of principles for the U.S.


The EU and the U.S. should stop green protectionism because it flouts decades of
beneficial work in expanding free trade around the world. The West should uphold the core
principle of economic freedom and poverty alleviation through free trade and investment
to encourage economic growth. Green protectionism that undermines economic growth in
developing countries is reprehensible. The WTO should define green protectionism as an
illegitimate (and actionable) intervention by governments in the marketplace.

Foundation.

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