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How many people believe that the destruction of rainforests is the main
cause of the greenhouse effect? Or fear that the teeming billions of poor
in the Third World will undermine any efforts by the rich nations to put
the planet back on an even keel? An awful lot of people have almost come
to believe that it is the poor of the world who are destroying the planet’s
natural resources, rather than the rich. This pernicious myth is increasingly
angering environmentalists in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

A recent report* by Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain from the Centre for
Science and the Environment in New Delhi makes no bones about it: many Western
greens are engaged in ‘environmental colonialism’, visiting their own sins
on their poor neighbours.

Why is it that Western environmentalists worry so much about population
growth in poor countries when each new child born in North America or Europe
will consume 10 or 100 times as much of the world’s resources and contribute
many times as much pollution? A three-child American family is, in logic,
many more times as dangerous to the planet than an eight-(or even an eighty-)
child African family.

Often Western greens cite the ‘last straw’ principle. A powerful article
by Jeremy Leggett, director of science at Greenpeace, a couple of years
ago warned that China planned to increase its coal burning sixfold in the
next 40 years. He predicted that ‘China’s energy plans could provide the
final deadly puff of greenhouse gases’ to tip the world’s climates into
chaos. Unless a halt was called, China could be emitting three times as
much of the world’s greenhouse gases as the US does today.

It sounded scary. But the trouble with concentrating on the last straw
is that it ignores all the other straws. Take some of those off the camel’s
back and the ‘last straw’ is no problem. Even if China managed to meet its
unrealistically ambitious energy targets, it would still be producing less
carbon dioxide per head than most rich countries do today.

Take a look at the league tables of contributors to the greenhouse effect
produced by bodies such as the World Resources Institute in Washington,
an outfit heavily criticised by Agarwal. The US, assuredly, tops the list,
with the former Soviet Union next. But just behind in the top five and closing
fast come China, and India.

Only when you read the small print do you discover that while the average
American is responsible for between 4 and 5 tonnes of carbon per year, the
average Indian and Chinese weigh in with 0.4 and 0.6 tonnes respectively.
Loitering unnoticed in 13th and 20th places on a recent WRI list are Canada
and Australia. But if you reconstructed the table according to per capita
emissions, these nations would be second and third.

No wonder Agarwal accuses the WRI of ‘politically motivated mathematics’
and concludes that ‘the manner in which the global warming debate is being
carried out is only sharpening and deepening the North-South divide’.

He goes on: ‘India and China today account for more than one-third of
the world’s population. The question to be asked is whether we are consuming
one-third of the world’s resources or contributing one-third of the muck
and dirt in the atmosphere and the oceans. If not, then surely these nations
should be lauded for keeping the world in balance because of their parsimonious
consumption despite the Western rape and pillage of the world’s resources.’

Agarwal has produced his own analysis to demonstrate his point in a
manner which could become a new basis for a global treaty to halt the greenhouse
effect.

First, he points out that the planet has a considerable ability to absorb
the wastes we throw at it. The natural ‘sinks’ for carbon dioxide, the main
greenhouse gas, are the oceans and forests. These sinks absorb perhaps 50
per cent of all our emissions, turning it into timber and marine organisms.

He argues that this facility should be seen as a ‘global resource’ that
should be shared out equally among the world’s population. We might say
that every individual on the planet has an entitlement to emit through their
activities half a tonne of carbon, their share of the global sink.

Looked at this way, Americans emit more than six times their permitted
quota, whereas most Indians and Chinese are in credit. Instead of featuring
in the top five of global polluters, the world’s two largest nations disappear
off the chart altogether, to be replaced in the ‘filthy five’ by Canada
and Germany. ‘In fact,’ says Agarwal, by this measure ‘India can double
its total carbon dioxide emissions without threatening the world’s climate.’

The science of allocating the global sink in this way may be questionable,
as Agarwal admits. We cannot be sure exactly how big the sink is, still
less whether it will carry on being so amenable or will eventually ‘fill
up’. Also, as we chop down rainforests, we reduce the size of the sink.

But Agarwal’s approach, which has deeply angered some American environmentalists,
is undoubtedly more even-handed than crude league tables of emissions. It
certainly leads him to reject the popular green call for a global climate
convention that would begin by demanding that nations halt increases in
emissions of greenhouse gases, and then set targets for percentage reductions.

And it leads Agarwal to propose a method of controlling the world’s
emissions of greenhouse gases through market forces in a way that even George
Bush ought to approve of. Agarwal suggests that a global treaty to halt
the greenhouse effect could begin by allocating to nations ‘licences to
pollute’, based on their allocation of the global sink. Clearly the US would
be in trouble, whereas India would have spare licences. So what could be
more natural than that India could sell its spare licences to the US?

Agarwal suggests a licence fee of $15 to emit a tonne of carbon. On
that basis, India could sell its spare licences for a handy $8 billion a
year and China $11 billion, while the US would have to buy up $6 billion
worth. Excess emissions could be hit by punitive fines, both as a further
incentive to the polluting nations and to finance a Global Climate Protection
Fund, which could maintain the global sink by planting forests, and to help
develop cleaner technologies.

‘None of this,’ says Agarwal, ‘means that India should not regenerate
its environment, or that it should not be efficient in its use of electricity.’
But the Third World’s leaders must stand up for themselves when environmental
issues are discussed. At present, he says, ‘every element of the global
environmental agenda is being chosen by the Western world’. Western nations
‘are pushing a New International Ecological Order down the throats of a
hapless third world’. He, for one, is choked.

*Global Warning in an Unequal World: A case of environmental colonialism,
Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain, Centre for Science and the Environment,
807 Vishal Bhawan, 95 Nehru Place, New Delhi 110019, India.