Eco-imperialism - Criticism

Criticism

Because the idea of eco-imperialism denies the ethical validity of hundreds of international environmental groups, the term has come under significant criticism from activists around the world. Many of these groups concede that developing nations often oppose entangling environmental concerns with free trade. However, the foundations that support eco-imperialism are sometimes considered to be based on myths that have been propagated by Western media.

One of the proposed myths of eco-imperialism is that poor nations cannot afford the luxury of environmental protection. This notion is founded on the idea that the consequences of globalization for the environment are being disproportionately suffered by developing nations compared to industrialized nations. For instance, the export of waste to what is sometimes called the global South by the global North is a practice that has been occurring for years, and can partially explain the environmental degradation of many developing countries.

Deforestation is another concern for critics of the term eco-imperialism. While some consider a country’s timber resources to be theirs to extract, environmentalist groups see growing deforestation in the world to be a case of economic and environmental injustice. An increasing presence of timber companies from Western nations has been felt in the developing world, suggesting that wealth extracted from tropical timber is not going into the source country, but instead flowing into the industrialized world.

Another consideration against the idea of eco-imperialism is that environmental progress may be concurrent with social and economic progress. An eco-imperialist argument holds that environmental considerations fundamentally restrict economic growth. An argument exists that economic wellbeing is actually decreased with further environmental degradation, especially in situations in which the environment generates income such as canals and dams. In terms of social progress, some see environmental protection as a basic human right, and therefore abuses to the environment also count as human rights abuses. Embedded in this argument is the idea that indigenous people have sovereignty over their natural resources. This is seen by the international human rights community as an “emerging right”. Currently, some developing countries may not enjoy this right, with foreign companies extracting the natural resources.

Many critics argue that the problem is not the West’s imposition of its environmental agenda on the developing world, but instead the overconsumption by industrialized countries of the natural resources of the “South”. Export-based structural adjustment programs imposed by the World Bank and the IMF promote current consumption patterns, which some believe favor industrialized countries. While this assertion is under debate, there nonetheless exists the argument that environmental practices would be enhanced if the consumption needs of the North were curbed.

Most critics of the eco-imperialism argument will assert that environmental, social, and economic progress is intertwined. They concede that a one-size-fits-all environmental agenda is as ineffective as a one-size-fits-all economic agenda. However, there is malaise in the international community about the best way to approach these issues, with environmentalists weighing greatest importance on sustainability and those who fear eco-imperialism seeing economic growth as the greatest way to improve social, economic, and environmental well-being.

Environmentalists have also argued that many of the problems facing developed countries, such as climate change, also pose significant or even greater threats to developing countries and thus warrant a global response. They also point out that the some solutions to problems of global hunger, such as the growing of genetically modified crops, fail to address (and in some cases actually exacerbate) the more fundamental problems of poverty and environmental degradation that created hunger in the first place.