[Pil-pc-oceania] Pil-pc-oceania Digest, Vol 14, Issue 11

[Rosemary Morrow]

It's not only intergenerational inequity., warmly   Rowe Morrow

Rich countries owe poor a huge environmental debt

The environmental damage caused to developing nations by the world's  
richest countries amounts to more than the entire third world debt of  
$1.8 trillion, according to the first systematic global analysis of  
the ecological damage imposed by rich countries.

The study found that there are huge disparities in the ecological  
footprint inflicted by rich and poor countries on the rest of the  
world because of differences in consumption. The authors say that the  
west's high living standards are maintained in part through the huge  
unrecognised ecological debts it has built up with developing countries.

"At least to some extent, the rich nations have developed at the  
expense of the poor and, in effect, there is a debt to the poor,"  
said Prof Richard Norgaard, an ecological economist at the University  
of California, Berkeley, who led the study. "That, perhaps, is one  
reason that they are poor. You don't see it until you do the kind of  
accounting that we do here."

Using data from the World Bank and the UN's Millennium Ecosystem  
Assessment, the researchers examined so-called "environmental  
externalities" or costs that are not included in the prices paid for  
goods but which cover ecological damage linked to their consumption.  
They focused on six areas: greenhouse gas emissions, ozone layer  
depletion, agriculture, deforestation, overfishing and converting  
mangrove swamps into shrimp farms.

The team calculated the costs of consumption in low, medium and high  
income countries, both within their borders and outside, from 1961 to  
2000. The team used UN definitions for countries in different income  
categories. Low income countries included Pakistan, Nigeria and  
Vietnam, and middle income nations included Brazil and China. Rich  
countries in the study included the UK, US and Japan.

Striking disparities

The magnitude of effects outside the home country was different for  
each category of consumption. For example, deforestation and  
agricultural intensification primarily affect the host country, while  
the impacts from climate change and ozone depletion show up the  
disparity between rich and poor most strikingly.

Greenhouse emissions from low-income countries have imposed $740  
billion of damage on rich countries, while in return rich countries  
have imposed $2.3 trillion of damage. This damage includes, for  
example, flooding from more severe storms as a result of climate change.

Likewise, CFC emissions from rich countries have inflicted between  
$25 billion and £57 billion of damage to the poorest countries.  
Increased ultraviolet levels from the ozone hole have led to higher  
healthcare costs from skin cancer and eye problems. The converse  
figure is between $0.58 and $1.3 billion.

The team publish their results today in Proceedings of the National  
Academy of Sciences.

"We know already that climate change is a huge injustice inflicted on  
the poor," said Dr Neil Adger at the Tyndall Centre for Climate  
Change Research in Norwich, who was not involved in the research,  
"This paper is actually the first systematic quantification to  
produce a map of that ecological debt. Not only for climate change  
but also for these other areas."

"This is an accounting tool that allows you to say how much the high- 
income world owes the low-income world for the environmental  
externalities we impose on them," he said.

The team confined its calculations to areas in which the costs of  
environmental damage, for example in terms of lost services from  
ecosystems, are well understood. That meant leaving out damage from  
excessive freshwater withdrawals, destruction of coral reefs,  
biodiversity loss, invasive species and war. So the researchers  
believe the figures represent a minimum estimate of the true cost.

"We think the measured impact is conservative. And given that it's  
conservative, the numbers are very striking," said co-author Dr Thara  
Srinivasan, who is also at Berkeley.

Source from the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/jan/ 
21/environmental.debt1


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