Fire, blood, and anguish. Many decades ago, Priestley conceptualised a variation of the anti-trinity, which, as of right now, accurately mirrors the debilitating realities of the status-quo. Whether it is the common occurrence of forest fires, scorching heat in the summer, or inescapable famine in the global south, nature is rightfully taking its revenge on humanity. Selfishness, self-preservation and unbridled greed is what continuously fuels our desire to prioritise economic growth, and it is one of the main engines that enshrine both global warming and economic inequality. Many critiques labour under the delusion that prioritising environmental sustainability means abandoning economic growth altogether, nevertheless, there are massive financial and political opportunities within protecting the environment: innovation, diplomacy, new industry and much more. This essay argues that developing countries - the deepest source of the environmental paradigm - should prioritise sustainability to pull themselves out of poverty and reverse global warming. If not, then the continuation of the status-quo could lead Priestley’s antitrinitarianism to fully materialise, and to avoid it, humanity must take action.
Why does prioritising economic growth ruin the environment?
There are several reasons. The first, perhaps the most intuitive, is the continuation of resource extraction. In 2022, 12,000km squared of the Peruvian Amazon was deforested - the equivalent to eight London cities. The vast majority of mining and deforestation occurs in developing countries like China, India, Brazil, Nigeria and Indonesia. It is not a coincidence. Since the dawn of the Western global order, the global north has partaken in extensive colonialism where high-income countries destroyed the pillars of stability in less developed nations. Colonialism often involved the deconstruction of the host country’s political system and the installation of the slave trade, which created a profit-producing system for the West. Consequently, when colonisers exited, post-colonial states often experienced a series of dictatorships and prominent levels of unemployment, and thus, governments would have no other option but to continue extracting natural resources to employ its population and stitch-up a bleeding economy. For Brazil and many others, mining for resources makes perfect sense. The physical extraction, transportation and exportation process employs hundreds of thousands, and due to low labour costs, it produces decent profit margins. Therefore, it comes as no surprise when nations in the global south extract resources for their economies – they intend to build infrastructure, provide a better standard of living, and ascend the global diplomatic ladder – economic development is still very much at the forefront of the agenda. It is clear that developing countries must rebuild their economies, and sadly one of the ways to do that is to extract natural resources.
Further, the prioritisation of economic growth results in governments taking short-cuts and reducing regulations on companies, which further propels the climate crisis. The Democratic Republic of Congo is a perfect instantiation of a government that reduces regulation to perpetuate profits. As the host of over 60% of the world’s cobalt reserves - a necessity for batteries in electric vehicles - the DRC’s primary economic engine is mining and exporting cobalt. Sadly, but somewhat unsurprisingly, 90% of the artisanal miners operate informally; they cut down large sections of forestry to reach the mines and mercury is often used in the extraction process, and consequently, these practices harm biodiversity. The crucial aspect of the DRC’s operations (alongside many other developing countries) is that the government facilitates the corruption. Bureaucrats reduce the number of laws and inspections on companies, which allows for an efficient, low-cost and high-profit system, which creates more attractive revenues. Perhaps one of the more tragic symptoms of capitalism is its ability to make humanity selfish and driven by short-term monetary incentives, and unsurprisingly, traditional GDP growth has come at the cost of nature.
The historical paradigm of developing countries is substantial. They are, of course, principally justified in rebuilding their economies – but is there a better solution than depleting natural resources? Could there be a way to massively reduce the development gap between the global north and south? Yes. Prioritising environmental sustainability can pull these nations out of the cycle of multidimensional poverty.
The Issue with growth
The current problem that developing nations face when prioritising their economies is inferiority. Perpetually trailing the Global North’s market dominance, developing nations continue to rotate in a Ferris-wheel of economic inequality. The problem of the current system manifests in two key respects. Firstly, there is the issue of boom-and-bust economies. In the initial stages of the 2000s, Venezuela exported oil which brought in huge profits and oil became the main engine to their economy; the GDP soared. When the global oil markets crashed in 2014, Venezuela faced detrimental ramifications as a result of their over-reliance on oil. It included hyperinflation, recession and food shortages. Although the country’s wealth surged in the short-term - the ‘boom’ - in the long-term, the trading and reliance of one resource ended up being consequential for Venezuela, and they went ‘bust.’ It proves that because of maximising their profits, Venezuela ended up in an even deeper state of instability than when they started. More importantly, as the world is being drenched of its blood, many nations which extract will inevitably run out of the resource that they are exploiting, and therefore by switching to newer income streams like environmental sustainability, it is actually saving many poorer countries from a fatal ‘bust’ in the future.
The second problem lies within low-paying jobs. Tragically, third-world nations often become trapped in supplying cheap labour to global markets, attracting corporations that prioritise cost over development. The state, desperate to attract foreign investment, will repress labour rights and shrink the minimal wage standards – they fear that higher costs will deter overseas corporations. The result? A perverse paradox. As a developing country’s low-skill manufacturing and exports grow, so does the entrenchment of its economic subservience. On the surface, the model creates jobs for thousands of workers, however low-paying jobs prevent long-term growth. Without higher wages and high-skill, domestic industry remains weak due to a lack of innovation and home-grown business, which results in a reliance on the West and global markets. Education, a key player of success, is also out of reach for workers who toil in subsistence-level jobs. Crucially it leads to a cycle of poverty amongst generations, where the youth continue in the path of low pay in manufacturing. Consequently, developing nations continue to be victims to low taxation revenues, poverty and reliance on the global north, which results in the dreaded curse of inferiority.
The Solution
Prioritising environmental sustainability provides a solution to problem of inequality. The question then becomes: what does it mean to facilitate radical sustainability? Crucially, it comes down to the diversification of the job market and redirecting money towards sustainability. There are two pillars to any mass-scale sustainability shift: renewable energy and protecting the environment.
The West already leads the market for renewable energy, however the road to its completion has barely been laid out. Solar and wind nano grids are very suitable for the developing world as they are small-scale community owned systems which can be used in cities and rural areas, reducing the dependence on fossil fuels as well as powering domestic space. Further, the cross-pollination of excess energy in households reduces the wasted energy because it is transferred to other houses in the neighbourhood via blockchain energy systems. Innovative and cheap solutions like these can very easily reduce the carbon footprint, and more importantly, it diversifies the job market. Namely, businesses can be set-up to provide these services, offering jobs in design, transport, marketing and construction – it strengthens a country’s domestic industry through competition and self-reliance.
The protection of the environment also plays a fundamental role in the pathway towards sustainability. For third-world nations, protection can generate innovative solutions and multiple income streams. First, perhaps the most important, is reforestation. For over two decades, countries like Brazil and Malaysia have been turning trees into income, and to reverse global warming, nations with large land masses need to reforest. Costa Rica uses UAV drones to replant trees in deforested areas through a programme called agroforestry. It is, unironically, one of the many mechanisms which corporations can use to propel carbon sequestration. The issue with reforestation is that corporations lack incentives to act due to insufficient profit margins. However, the prioritisation of environmental sustainability means that instead of subsidising coal and manufacturing industries, governments can redirect that money (from bonds and taxation) towards subsidising environmental technologies, especially those made by private companies because they drive up internal competition. For example, a method called phytoremediation was deployed in 1998 to aid the clean-up of Chernobyl, and since, it has been a valuable method for protecting nature. Phytoremediation is the process of using plants to absorb pollutants through natural processes. Especially in heavily polluted nations, the mass implementation of Phytodegradation and rhizofiltration – the deconstruction of organic pollutants like oil and decontamination of water – can help reverse the effects of human development on nature.
Perhaps the most substantial level to protecting the environment, whilst still generating economic output, is reducing the carbon footprint. Here, there lies a huge opportunity to balance out the import and export ratios for developing countries: importing EV’s. The reason Chinese companies like BYD and Geely have exploded in popularity lately is because of its rapid international reach – it hosts massive potential to help developing countries. There are two reasons. First, electric cars reduce greenhouse emissions. Shifting to EV’s will reduce the total transport emissions by over 60%, and more importantly, by purchasing eco-friendly products, society automatically becomes more aware about protecting the environment. Second, importing products on a mass-basis balances the import-export ratios in developing countries. An export surplus (from manufacturing goods and raw materials) leads to a reliance on foreign demand, as well as a neglect of domestic consumption. Increasing imports allows for better consumer product variety and improved diplomacy between respective trading countries, which exposes them to large political trade unions like ASEAN, BRICS, or the EU. China is particularly good at selling their EV’s and products in developing countries through processes like binarized trading agreements and loaning.
Therefore, prioritising environmental sustainability isn’t just a matter which solely prevents polar bears from falling over somewhere in Antarctica, but also it’s a rational strategy which creates new high-skilled jobs, opens up new markets, strengthens domestic industry, and overall it has the potential to pull developing nations out of the cycle of lower income.
Conclusion
We stand at a branched path in the human story, where the old vanguards of growth tremble beneath the weight of the world they have created. For over two hundred years, economic development has been the sovereign measure of success - the metronome to which policy, politics, and popularity have ticked by. Nevertheless, developing countries have long been incarcerated within the cycle of multidimensional poverty because of traditional economic priorities like manufacturing and resource extraction. This essay has argued that it is now an imperative that third-world nations prioritise environmental sustainability, not only to reduce the gap between the global north and south, but also as the only rational strategy left to prevent the complete environmental collapse.
The tyranny of development has perpetually stabbed wounds in the planet in which we inhabit. Humanity has, for far too long, committed a binarized perpetration by man, to nature. It is no longer a luxury to morph towards a future of environmental sustainability, but rather a necessity, and doing so would prevent the cataclysmic repeat of the hymn, phrase, and anthem- the fall of man.