Sustainable development is nonsense
Published by Ravikiran Rao November 20th, 2004 in EnvironmentLeon Louw is a libertarian from Africa, where state failure is the norm. He runs the Johannesburg-based Free Market Foundation and is the director of the Good Laws Project. He was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize along with his wife, Frances Kendall. These are previously unpublished excerpts from an impromptu interview with Sauvik Chakraverti when Leon was in Delhi to deliver the Julian L Simon lecture of Liberty Institute in 2002.
What is your central message to environmentalists in the developing world?
Environmentalists are enemies of the poor. What the poor and future generations need is maximum economic growth, maximum technology, and maximum utilization of resources, now. So we can a) alleviate human suffering, and b) leave a legacy of technology and wealth with which to deal with environmental problems that may happen in the future.
What is your view on ’sustainable development’?
It is nonsense. The world ’sustainable’ has no intelligible meaning. Sustainable for how long and for whom, we are never told. Development is sustainable. What is not is the absence of development. Without development, people will, in fact, starve and the environment will be destroyed. The most developed countries are the ones with the cleanest air, the cleanest rivers, the least human suffering, the best conservation of nature, and the least endangered species.
What is your reaction to sustainable development’s underlying premise - that there is a shortage of natural resources and that these will finish if markets are free?
Resources are increasingly plentiful. There are more resources of every description today than there have ever been before. The evidence of this is falling prices. Almost everything in the world is now falling in price, even though currencies have been inflated.
The real way to consider this issue is to look at how much time a human being has to work to buy, for example, a pound of potatoes. Absolutely every resource that human beings want is now cheaper. That is to say, you can get more of it with an hour of labour than ever before in history.
Furthermore, the earth’s surface contains enough resources to last for millions of years. Even if we do ever run out of resources on land, we’ve still got the ocean. Even if the oceans’ resources were to be exhausted in, say, five million years, we can harvest the asteroids.
You have described environmentalists as racists. Please explain:
When they talk about overpopulation, they - that is, the white elites of the First World - never call Holland, Monaco, Britain, or Liechtenstein overpopulated. In fact, the most densely populated continent is Europe. They speak of my continent, Africa, as overpopulated; yet it has the lowest density of population. Africa has too few people. What they want to do is limit the number of people of colour.
Even more conspicuously racist are ozone concerns. White people worry about ozone depletion because they do not want UV rays on their skin. On the other hand, dark people are immune to UV rays. Even white people who are slightly dark, like Italians, Greeks, Portuguese, Spaniards or South African whites, are immune to ozone depletion.
Is Africa going the libertarian way or is it keeping with the environmentalist agenda?
Unfortunately, Africa is as subject as India to the eco-imperialism of the West. Africa, therefore, signs all the international treaties and protocols that ban trade in its own wildlife. Yet Europe can farm and trade its wildlife, namely cattle, sheep, goats and pigs. This is imperialism of the absolutely worst kind.
In his writings, George Ayittey refers constantly to the ‘vampire states’ of Africa. Is there any libertarian upsurge against big government in Africa?
Africa, thanks to people like George Ayittey, has turned the corner. Most African countries are now moving towards market economies. Fifteen years ago, there was only one democracy in Africa — that is, Botswana. Now, most African countries are democracies.
Fifteen years ago, most African countries were in favour of socialism. Now most of them are liberalizing and privatizing. The reward for this has been that the continent is experiencing positive growth — about 3.5 per cent — for the first time since colonial times. Those African countries, which have made the most substantial moves toward market economies, are growing even faster: Botswana, Mauritius, and Uganda.
George Ayittey is absolutely right in saying that black oppressors took over when the white oppressors left. The absence of white oppressors does not mean the presence of liberty.
However, we are finally getting real liberation in Africa. Liberation from oppression, rather than just liberation from colonial exploitation. I am optimistic.
(More on Ayittey here. Yazad)
How is the new South Africa faring in terms of economic and political freedom?
The giant achievement, of course, is the liberation of black South Africa from apartheid, discrimination and humiliation. So this victory must not be trivialized.
Unfortunately, in many liberation struggles, those who take over the ‘liberated’ country often perpetuate far too much of what they have inherited. They keep the very institutions that caused oppression and discrimination in the first place. They should, instead, attempt to change the entire legislative system to one based on objective rules and minimal legislation. In South Africa, sadly, we do not see this.
At the same time, the absence of apartheid has created new opportunities and black South Africans have used these. In the informal, shadowy, underground economy, there has been an explosion of enterprise. Fortunately, they just ignore the government. In South Africa, ordinary people just pretend that the government is not there. They run their businesses, taxi services and so on without licenses and trade wherever they wish. In India, by contrast, people seem to take the government too seriously.
Why are legal reforms essential for developing countries?
One of the great transitions that have not taken place in the former colonies is the key element that has made developed countries prosper. This is the rule of law. We have identified a list of twenty-five jurisprudential components of what we call ‘good law’. They have nothing to do with ideology. Every lawyer agrees on the principles of good law. Most developing countries have failed to maintain these principles.
From your studies of regulatory systems, do you think they impose more costs than the benefits they provide?
Yes, this is almost always true. Certainly, since countries have introduced cost-benefit analysis for new laws, it is quite shocking to find how many new laws, that were taken for granted before, would not have been adopted.
In the real world, regulations have more costs and disadvantages than advantages. This is because regulation is subject to what political scientists call “goal substitution”, in which those implementing it have their own objectives and agenda. It is very rare indeed, in the real world, to find any regulation for which the advantages, properly calculated, outweigh the disadvantages.
How do you look at the impact of globalization, particularly from the perspective of the economic and political prospects of the poor?
Globalization is not new. The world was completely globalized up to the First World War, when capital, wealth and people could move freely across borders. Between the First and Second World Wars, borders closed for the first time in history. So what we now call globalization is a small modest shift towards what was commonplace and taken for granted by our grand parents. What they experienced as being normal, we now seem to think of as some new, scary concept.
What the poor want is maximum globalization. They want to be able to sell their products to everyone on earth. They also want to be able to buy from anyone who sells anything.
The opposition to globalization is completely inhumane. People who have seen real poverty cannot possibly support restrictions on trade. Globalization is, by far, the best hope for the world’s poor, and the quicker it happens and the more of it they get, the better.
Minor editing, title and links added by Yazad. Thanks also to Amol Hatwar who helped sort out an irritating formatting problem with MSWord
14 Responses to “Sustainable development is nonsense”
- 1 Trackback on Nov 26th, 2004 at 4:34 am
- 2 Trackback on Jul 17th, 2005 at 5:15 am
What a sad misguided man Mr. Louw is. His views on the environment and western politics today are as old fashioned and conservative as those of his western colleagues from 100 years ago. Let me first point out that continuous development is sustainable if the resources on which it depends continue to exist. Mr. Louw seems to forget this when he says sustainable development is western rhetoric. Lets say for example when oil runs out in the next 40 yrs, any economy which depends on oil for development is going to come crashing down and take all the people that depend on it with it. Sustainable development is a must, and should be a band wagon to jump on as soon as possible, if anybody wants to come out on top in the next 40-50 yrs, especially countries like India and those of Africa. Theres really nothing to say about Mr. Louws areguments becuase they are so ludicrous and ignorant that one can only hope he sees some light in the future, for the benefit of the african people. And just so Mr. Louw knows, the reason the western countries are so well developed is becuase they utilized thier resources beyond thier capacity and then had to become imperialists, like england once did and like the US is now doing - Now they are paying the price of thier miscalculation. They produce the most garbage, most pollution and have the most species extinct, the exact opposite of Mr. Louws statement. I think we could be better human beings by learning from the mistakes of the west and not making thier mistakes, especially when the most important areas our within our own countries - the tropics. To continue correcting Mr. louws erroneous statements, nobody is immune to ozone depeltion. If the Earth had no ozone layer, life would never have been able to exist, white black brown or yellow. To say that black people are immune is just plain stupid. Becuase they are not, and the crops and cattle on which they survive are even less immune, so the ozone depletion and global warming are real problems, that are faced by all human beings, nature you see is not racist. In conclusion I would ike to say that in opposition to the idea that environmnetalism is a western idea, i would say that it is an idea the west has borrowed form the east. And that libertarinism, or complete privatizationis is exactly what western economies would want, becuase that means more MNCs coming into the country and depleting it of its natural and fiscal resources, while the people continue to suffer the fates they did befor, but now also have to face depleting natural resources. Mr. louw is wrong and misguided, i only hope he learns the error of his ways before it is to late.
Janjri Jasani
India
Janjri: For an environmentalist, surely you must be concerned about spewing such garbage and spreading ideological pollution.
One thing I don’t understand: The Janjris of the world are obviously against MNCs, at the very least against a frenetic industrializing pace, then why are they so concerned about a reduction in fossil fuels - that can only serve to reduce the pace of industrialization no? I mean, unless they think that depeletion is a discrete step: one day we shall be consuming 100 million gallons, and the next day zero!
This itself should reveal the shallow and illogical nature of their ideological pollution.
Leon think s that there is only one path forward for development and that is the western model. Developing nations like India and China do not have many of the attributes (natural resources and land) which the western nations had. They also do not have access to slave labor like the US (slaves), USSR (the Gulag), Europe (the colonies) - but they do have access to a large population. In such a situation it does not make sense to invest in the same areas that the western nations did and to rather play to their strengths - which as I see it are the development of human resources.
We do no have to repeat the same mistakes that the west made and can leap-frog ahead to what the west is investing in now rathar than what they invested in in the 70s. India did not need to invest resources in ancient CDMA cell phone technology like the US did and instead leaped ahead to GSM which the US is now developing at great expense. Similarly India and China need not go down the fossil fuel path that the west chose (which they are now paying for in blood) and instead develop a Hydrogen Economy whih China is already doing. Why repeat the mistakes which other nations have made and try to force tehm on your own economy when you can find alternatives ways to achieve development at a lower long-term cost?
Leon is also sorely mistake if he thinks environmentalists are anti-development. It is very much the opposite and very often the envionementalists are the drivers of innovation. To list a few of them which I personally have worked on:
- Lean Manufacturing - helping companies cut costs by developing systems that re-use waste and help them manitain small inventories of raw materials.
- Higher fuel economy - working with scientists and the car manufacturers (I work with GM and Ford) to develop more fuel efficient cars and also with the oil companies to develop better fuels.
- Information Exchange - using XML Web services to allow companies to apply for and receive permits online cutting down on paperwork and bureacracy.
How are any of these activities - anti-development - they help to stream line business processes and my company’s services are actively sought both by the private and the public sector and surprisingly I work for an environmental consulting firm. Surely we can’t be anti-market if Ford and GM want to hire us as well as BP and Shell?
Every major corporation in the west has an active environmental divisoin or hire environmental consultants to work for them. Accenture, Booz, Allen, Hamilton, SAIC, CSC, Beaing Point (formerly KPMG) - some of the biggest cosnulting firms in the world are involved in environmental conulting (I know because I am on contract with them on a lot of projects).
So its quite obvious to me that Leon has no idea what it is that environmentalists do or how mainstream they have become. Rather than work against industry, we for the most part work with them. Like Jnajri said, Leon is just quoting some decade old stereotypes without knowing that the world has changed around him and his view are just plain outdated.
I also dislike some of the more rabid environmentalists. I’m as much a lover of liberty as they come, but some key points made in the interview troubled me.
Unfortunately, the child who has menopause at the age of 13 in Bhopal, or the child who lost her father at Chernobyl will not concur. The environmental problems that we face are happening here and now and people on the left and the right recognize this. What they differ on, are the means to tackle them.
This did not occur accidentally. It was a result of scientists and environmentalists working together to put pressure on industry.
Development by itself does not contribute to a clean environment. Development coupled with liberty is what makes a difference.
The worst polluters of rivers and lakes are developing countries. The Bandra creek used to be a blue sea when I was a kid. It is now a black gutter. Civil society in India has not organized itself to put pressure on the polluters, chief among them being govt firms. Even in countries like Rumania and Ukraine, the biggest polluters are the large socialist industries. Liberty acts as a safety valve to check the abuse of the environment.
This suggestion is of course, bizarre. Read this.
His take on “eco-imperialism”, confuses domestic with wild animal trade. Calling people “racist” or “imperialist”, does not a meaningful debate make.
Six times seven, as an environmentalist, i am not anti-development, i am not anti-MNC i am just tryint to point out Leon like u seem to be misguided about the roles environmentalists play. If today India could move from being a fuel based economy and sustainable develop its industries, in 50 yrs time when an energy crisis is bound to come, we will not be faced with the problems of others. Secondly there are many MNCs, not all, but mnay who might oblige environmental laws in countries like the US and Canada, but are very willing to bend the rules in countries like Indonesia, India and China where development is everything, are you willing to sacrafice our natural resources to them? Next time you comment think about what you say, use smaller words and you might actually get across some real content rather than comfirming your ignorance of the subject.
janjiri wrongly presumes that ‘in 50 years an energy crisis is bound to come’. there is enough peat, flint, timber for charcoal and coal left in the world that we no longer use, because we no longer need it, and have moved on to better, claner and cheaper fuels. nowadays, you should carry coal to newcastle, because all mining has stopped there, although there is still a lot of coal left under the ground. you will, of course, not carry coal to newcastle today because people there use electricity and gas: no one uses coal. we no longer use whale oil, and whales are surviving happily not because of greenpeace, but because of rockefeller and the standard oil company, which supplied the market with an alternative, cheaper fuel. similarly, fuel cells for cars and homes are just around the corner, and maybe in 20 years the arabs will be sitting on oil which no one will want to buy. as julian simon said: ‘it is the human mind that is the ultimate resource’, because it get us all the resources of the earth. indeed, the word ‘natural resource’ is an oxymoron; because anything natural becomes a resource only after humans touch it, and it is no longer ‘natural’. do read up on the julian simon vs. paul ehrich bet on the scarcity of natural resources. it is this that disproves the ’scientific’ validity of ’sustainable development’: it shows that the ONLY way to sustain life is with liberty under the common law. what is unsustainable is poverty without property. in many african countries, like socialist tanzania, forest cover has almost been totally wiped out because charcoal is their only fuel, and there are no property rights to timberlands: julius nyrere’s socialism.
The energy crisis is not as a result of a scarcity of resources but as a result of our dependence on carbon based fuels and the resulting poluution that they cause. Nobody (including Lomborg) denies that pollution from carbon based fuels is a serious problem. It is not as much of a problem for the US because of their relatively low population esnity but in countries like India and China it will become a huge problem. Nobody is saying that we shoud not develop and prosper but we do not necessarily have to follow the same route as the west. As Sauvik pointed out we don’t use coal that much anymore, now just because it was the favorite fuel 50 yeas ago is not a reason for India and China to adopt it. The same applies to oil - we should look ahead and see where the west is headed and try to capitalize on that, not blindly follow them through all their mistakes.
The second reason is that most of the oils in the world in concentrated in a highly politically unstable part of the world. The US is going to spend over $80 billion in trying to stabilize just country (Iran is probably next), not to mention the thousands of lives lost. Why not invest that $80 billion in developing alternatives to oil. Once developed (I have no doubts that with an investment of that magnitude they will find a viable alternative), they can show the middle east the middle finger. This will simultaneously cut of the funds for terrorists and allow the middle east ot develop intellectutally instead of what we have now - a couple of uneducated fudamentalists who happen to be very rich - making them some of the most dangerous people in the world.
“Lets say for example when oil runs out in the next 40 yrs, any economy which depends on oil for development is going to come crashing down and take all the people that depend on it with it.”
We aren’t going to run out of oil. Instead, as oil becomes more scare, the price will increase, making alternatives more attactive.
I totally agree with Janjri!
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