Concerted Global Attack on Natural Resources Ricardo Cifuentes Villarroel (*)
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(En español)General Situation
Never have we seen, as now, so many organisations and international fora supposedly dedicated to the preservation of the environment, but never as now has the environment received predatory assaults at such high scale. This may be, in part, the consequence of having privileged agreement over denounce, rhetoric and literary exercises over a continuous practise of mobilising social forces to stop the ecological disaster and to promote a new relationship between the economic factory and world natural resources.
In the last decades, we observe the constant development of free market operations, through new expansion schemes of work and consumption, which are accompanied with extended predatory actions against the environment. These actions are managed by strong global corporate apparatuses, which surpass the power of national States, and that have no other concern than the obsessive growth of their profit rates. These corporate giants impose their policies through several supranational institutions, such as WTO, World Bank Group and IMF, which are continuously demanding less restrictive environmental policies in developing countries.
Another factor contributing to the exploitation of natural resources in the Third World is the present stagnation of global economy, affected by a vast recession with direct effects on profit rates. These circumstances have created unprecedented urgencies to control energy and biotic resources and raw materials. New agents are acting concertedly from within extremely big projects, supposedly productive, but contributing to accelerate the irreversible destruction of global resources. Such plans are accompanied by extended projects for the exploitation of national resources by the transnational corporate system, which are incorporated in the development plans of many Third World countries and presented by the official discourse as crucial for the economic "recovery".
The Effects of Globalisation
Globalisation is, ultimately, an immense restructuring of the systems created for the exploitation and distribution of the world product, with the negative effects of an equally immense growth in world poverty, the depletion of natural resources and an unprecedented fall in the quality of the global environment. Thus, the growth of the GNP is not longer an adequate indicator of progress, since it cannot equal globalisation to real development and well being. GNP high figures are running parallel to the growing figures of poverty and environmental destruction in Third World countries (including the so called "developing" and "emerging" nations).
The World Bank reports show the astonishing and continuously increasing inequality in the distribution of the world income. The concentration of wealth in the hands of a powerful minority hiding behind big transnational corporations (TNCs) is almost medieval in its social injustice. The corporate establishment, nonetheless, is thoroughly modern and extremely creative in its capacity to camouflage the extortion of governments as "trade agreements" and "structural adjustments", and the widespread corruption of public officials as "lobbying". What used to be the trademark of the armaments industrial complex is now an everyday practice in world trade relationships.
Global capitalism has implanted in Latin America a form of exploitation with a strong colonialist and anti-ecological accent. Structural reforms have sunken almost all projects of internal growth, weakening present and future possibilities for real development. It is no coincidence that environmental problems have flared up during this last period of expansion of the global capitalist economy. Parallel or substitute industrialisation has buried land reform to privilege exportation of products without added value, at the expense of high environmental damage, to satisfy European and North American needs.
However, the paradigm of globalisation operates without major obstacles because important agencies supporting its conception of open markets have taken form in the last decades and now conform a very efficient apparatus, with different capacities for planning and operating: supranational organisations such as the World Bank and the IMF; multinational organisations such as the World Trade Organisation; trade and banking associations; international trade agreements; pacts (such as G7 and Davos); regional and continental plans affecting America, Asia, Africa, etc.; and finally, "development" projects based on the philosophy of these organisations.
Let us review this hierarchy of institutions and plans:
The World Bank, the IMF and the "Structural Adjustments"
Third World countries, by definition, are immensely indebted states, carrying the heavy burden of sending periodically a gigantic tribute to the central powers: the money lenders. Latin America alone, in the last ten years, has paid 2.000 billions dollars in debt interests. The crises of the Latin American economies are essentially crises of their payment capacities. The World Bank and the IMF put pressure on governments to accept the Structural Adjustment Program, purportedly oriented to facilitate or reduce the debt. As expected, this program produces the exact opposite effect, since the numerous adjustments only increase the debt and accentuated exploitation and impoverishment.
Also, bankers promote more "open" trade relations (end of protectionist legislation and less environmental regulations), and demand priority for activities that produce cash for the prompt payment of the debt. This implies an accelerated introduction of destructive and intense methods of production, and profound alterations of the agricultural environment, affecting communities, traditional farming, native forests and sweet water ecosystems.
The redundancy of a debt impossible to pay and permanently increased by new loans and restatement of payment has been the driving force behind the launching of activities that have caused wide environmental destruction in Third World Countries. It is no a coincidence that such problems have flared up during this last period of expansion of the global capitalist economy.
World Trade Organisation
WTO is today the normative instrument for economic growth, that is, the accomplishment of the purposes of the main economic centres, particularly TNCs lobbying under its cover. This big scheme oriented to produce multinational agreements for the movement of capital, fixes the bases for large operations of structural modification, parallel to those promoted by the World Bank and the IMF.
These structural conditions weight heavily on the future destiny of the global environment. Third World countries, trapped between their debts and their incapacity to grow, are experiencing more pressure than ever to accept dangerous corporate pressures regarding access to national resources and deregulation of environmental policies. The imposition of "trade freedom" and "freedom for the movement of capitals" eliminates the already weak protectionist barriers of Third World countries, and seriously impairs their development. For example, WTO has negotiated an international agreement to eliminate taxes on forestry-based products and to weaken legislations protecting forestry resources. The aim is "to open" native forests to timber production, to avoid environmental control and to facilitate the introduction of foreign species, notably, fast growing pine and eucalyptus plantations.
More information: WTO
Movilizaciones a nivel mundial muestran fortalecimiento de la lucha contra la OMC Vía CampesinaThe Trilateral Commission, G7 (then, G8), the Davos Forum...
These instances, plus a cohort of commissions that unify the will of the great powers in the allotment of the world surplus, have become the "central command" in the management of global businesses, under the control of three major centres: USA, Japan and the European Union. Their decisions derive in recommendations and agendas mobilised through the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO and a whole range of regional alliances: NATO, ASEAN, OAS, OAU, etc.
As a strategic command in the management of supranational and multinational relationships, this group concentrates a big part of the responsibility for the unbound installation of the capitalistic system and its domination systems. Their internal and often conflicting relationships reformulate periodically the establishment of agreements always consistent with a central line of action that perceives Third World countries as a colonial area with resources to be distributed.
The animosity of vast sectors that have no trust in the benefits of globalisation, forces G8 to implement cosmetic strategies to be seen as a crusader "in the struggle against the poverty", and while the Group proclaims its opposition to the armaments race, the countries it represents invest heavily on invented security needs or in strategic wars to gain control of fuels (the Gulf, Kosovo, Afghanistan).
More information: The Trilateral Commission
G8 Information Centre
World Economic ForumCommercial treaties:
- North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
After seven years, this treaty between Mexico and the USA has reaffirmed the dependency of the Aztec country. Instead of a developing process, Mexico has suffered a profound structural involution and the deepening of the difference between extreme richness and extreme poverty poles. Its agriculture has been virtually crushed and the country has lost the food security it enjoyed previously. Large chains of American supermarkets dominate the distribution of goods, and American banking is now mastering an important part of the transactions. The "freedom for the movement of capitals" is now in pursuit of a few remains of Mexican nationalised economy: oil and electricity.
In due time, NAFTA will stimulate new incorporations, based upon the same philosophy of dependency, through Free Trade Agreements not only between Mexico and Chile but also Central America.The process will reach its peak with the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). These treaties should be considered instances of a Multilateral Investments Agreement, not yet signed, but already opening doors for corporate investment, privatisation processes, land counter-reform and a wide take over of regional resources.
More information: Secretariado del TLCAN
Public Citizen: NAFTA
Eucalyptus, Neoliberalism and NAFTA in Southeastern Mexico- Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)
The FTAA, still in the negotiation process, does not contain or provide for mechanisms to sustain a positive development of labour and environmental issues. Coinciding with its discussion, the Amazonian frontier has been opened, and countries are discussing the end of the "paternalistic" labour legislations and the acceptance of "flexibility in the workplace".
The FTAA is the culmination of a neo-liberal delirium opposed to sustainable development in the continent, and is gaining force through the Free Trade Agreement to be signed between Chile and the USA. Its disadvantages are particularly serious for a region whose exports (67% at least, and 70% in some countries) are raw materials. Also, the regional GNP participation of exports has grown from 10% in 1980 to 20% in 1995. It surpasses30% in Costa Rica, Panama, Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, Chile and Paraguay. (USA figures are in the order of the 10%).
So far we have examined the operation of large organisational and normative structures serving as stage backgrounds to gigantic operations that take advantage of the globalizing moment. In the form of regional "development" plans, they constitute the firm sustenance for the launching of concrete economic measures, investments and corporate tasks. Let us review some of these plans:
-- Plan Puebla-Panama
This plan has gradually taken formthrough the initiatives of the Mexican and the North American governments, soon followed by other adherents to the neo-liberal model in the region. It embodies two previous initiatives: the Mexican Development Plan of the Zedillo era and the Plan for the Biotic Middle American Corridor, supported by the World Bank, the Inter American Development Bank and other agencies, with the purpose of accelerating the intensive introduction of North American capitals to Mexico and Central America.
Plan Puebla-Panama now intends to gain control of Middle America with the development of a network of big inter oceanic corridors that will connect USA east coast with the Pacific Basin. These corridors, powered with the access to the extensive provision of energy resources of the region (gas, oil, electricity), will facilitate the building of an enormous infrastructure consisting of optic fibre networks and new roads, cities, ports, railroads and airports in a region that will soon become strategic to world trade. The Plan will affect continental Middle America and also the oceans and shorelines, with its big oil deposits, already targeted by big TNCs.
Such unbounded operation is being launched in a region that possesses a gigantic biogenetic bank, as well as 85% of the Mexican oil, vast hydric resources, large forests with a richness of precious woods, and wide extensions of land totally apt for agriculture. It is inhabited by a numerous population of peasants and indigenous people of the utmost cultural importance, with a strong and very special relation with the environment.
It is not difficult to envision the magnitude of the social and environmental conflicts that will arise with the avalanche of new business and companies transported by the corridors. The investing parties will demand unlimited access to natural resources, the eradication of traditional forms of production and the introduction of cheap labour and forced migrations policies. The first effects of the implementation of the Plan are already being felt in the region: co-ordinated operations to eradicate entire indigenous populations, burning of wide extensions of forests, building of strategic roads, etc. This effects will continue to increase, specially from 2005 onwards.
More information: Gobierno de México. Plan Puebla-Panamá
Pagina del BID sobre el Plan Puebla-Panamá
Inter American Development Bank - Mexico. Operational Strategy
Encuentro Mesoamericano contra el Plan Puebla Panamá
Plataforma de Solidaridad con Chiapas. Plan Puebla-Panamá
Página de Global Exchange sobre el PPP
El Plan Puebla Panamá Centro de Investigaciones Económicas y Políticas de Acción Comunitaria (CIEPAC)
Los Peligros del Plan Puebla Panamá Andrés Barreda Marín-- Plan Amazonia
The biggest extension of tropical forests, the oxygen-provider of the planet is the Amazon basin, with a surface comparable to the size of Bolivia, covering important parts of various South American countries (Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana and Suriname).An incredible variety of ecosystems are interlaced there, and multitudes of species and genetic resources can be found in the area. The Amazon river itself, with 6.000 tributaries, constitutes the biggest sweet water reserve in the world.
However, the combined rates of economic expansion (mining, agriculture, logging) stimulated by different "development plans", and the avid intervention of hundreds of corporations, can destroy the Brazilian jungle in fifty years. Only in the year 2000 a total of 20.000 square kilometres of forest disappeared.
When local governments began to open the zone, around 1991, transnational timber companies from Malaysia, Indonesia, Canada and China began to arrive in Guyana and Suriname. Logging activities in Guyana produce 200.000 cubic meters of wood per year and the Structural Adjustments Program has remained satisfied with the delivery of 7 million hectares to timber activities.
From 1996 onwards foreign companies have been taking possession of the Brazilian jungle. They have come from Malaysia, China, Japan, USA, Germany, Switzerland. In just two Brazilian states, Para and Amazonia, eight corporations have taken possession of jungles the size of Belize. Timber production has increased in the last years from 14% to a 83%. This accelerated devastation of the world largest natural forest is supposed to produce cash for the payment of the debt and to stimulate the "growth of the GNP".
More information: Amazon Watch
Development or Destruction? A Study of the Amazon Basin. Emily Furia-- Plan Colombia (Later called Andean Regional Initiative, ARI, to embody other countries in the area.)
Plan Colombia is a link in the chain that joins Plan Puebla-Panama with Plan Amazonia. The pretext has been the struggle against drug traffic, strategy that has an antecedent in Plan "Dignity", in Bolivia, that sent the military to eradicate the traditional coca plantations, originating a vast social convulsion still alive in areas of Cochabamba.
The Plan corresponds to the launching of a large operation to restructure USA-Latin America relations, in imperial terms, and reorganise the dominant presence of American businesses and power in the subcontinent. A regional co-ordination in charge of joint manoeuvres is already in operation in the area, generating a space, to the south of the "Central American corridor", mastered by the logic of the war, and involving other countries and governments in actions that though in the immediate present are set against the Colombian insurgent movement, later on may have other objectives within "the democratic clause" of the military agreements that Washington has been concocting in the continent.
The current phase of Plan Colombia corresponds to the most severe aspect of the "environmental conflict", that of a war against the peasant population of those zones. Decided to win a war that has been taking place for many years, the USA has chosen to start with an aggressive chemical defoliation of the area, with tremendous consequences, even in the long run.
More information: Plan Colombia (documentos):
"Plan Colombia ... Plan of Death". Linda Panetta
Colombia: De Vietnam al Amazonas
Campaña contra el Plan ColombiaWe end here these statements on the existence of a planned operation of extortion of resources that has the big powers as principal agents, some supranational organisations as facades, and national governments in open connivance with TNCs. The situations we have exposed are only a part of what is happening all over the world, like the deforestation in Equatorial Africa (Western Africa, Nigeria, Ghana and Ivory Coast) by European timber companies, or the violent irruption of TNCs and their war machinery in Central Asia.
All these situations possess a particular importance for those organisations from the civil society that are concerned with the increasing environmental conflicts. They have the urgent task of giving voice to a strong and well documented denounce easily accessible not exclusively to interested élites but fundamentally to the populations directly affected by these ecocidal global policies and who deserve, better than anyone, to be empowered with the possession of truly relevant information. It is of the greatest importance to foresee, in every case, the social and ecological potential effects of all these projects, plans and policies, and to give proper, extensive and opportune warning to all the stakeholders.
September 2002
(*) Ricardo Cifuentes is working for the Observatorio Latinoamericano de Conflictos Ambientales