Global Environmental Issues - Task part 2

     I cannot still define whether developing countries have the right to exploit forest as Europe and the U.S. did in the past. However, I dare say that developed countries do not have a right to tell them not to exploit forest because humanity would be suffered by destruction of nature regardless of what they did before. Nobody can say that a country could develop economy without industrialization, if the country is poor. Nobody can say that no one want to be well off. As least, developing countries are trying to escape from poverty. This is good news for developed countries as well. Otherwise developed countries have to feed the poor countries endlessly in aspect of humanitarian impulse as Hardin (2007) in Lifeboat Ethics criticizes the World Food Bank. Tobin mentions the criticism of aid for poor countries with this reason: “Poorer nations must accept responsibility for their own fate because outside efforts to help them only worsen the problem and lead to an unhealthy dependence” (p. 288).


     Although it does not mean that the developing countries are free from the responsibility of climate change which could lead humanity as a whole to be the end. If industrialized countries concern about environmental problems caused by industrializing countries, they should help the developing countries give priority to environmental matter rather than coercive action. The ways of help would be various. Tobin suggests alternatives to protest tropical forest such as certification programs, taxes. However, the most problem is, I think, that the developing countries are excluded from the decision making procedure. To make the industrializing countries understood and persuaded is the challenge for the rich countries in order to save the whole.

     I want to introduce a case of my country South Korea. South Korea was one of the poorest countries after ending Korea War in 1945. Now my country is one of the stabilized countries in economics and politics. In a news paper a few years ago, I read that South Korea is the first country which converted from an aid-receiving country to an aid country after World War Ⅱ. I believe that my country cannot develop without other country’s aid. In the environmental problem, it seems like the same situation with my country.

     The developing countries desperately need helps like my country before. The developed countries have lots of resources to sustain environment and preserve environment such as technology, monetary, human resources, and so on, while the developing countries do not have. The industrializing countries are expecting the developed country’s knowhow or consultants to manage environmental issue as well as economic issue. For instance, if a product produced by green energy would be given incentives to export to the developed countries, the developing countries are expected to spur to use clean energy instead of fossil fuel.

     If the Environmental Kuznets Curve is right, it is reasonable that the industrializing countries priority to economic development rather than environmental issue. Dasgupta, et al. (2002) states that “In the first stage of industrialization, pollution in the environmental Kuznets curve world grows rapidly because people are more interested in jobs and income than clean air and water, communities are too poor to pay for abatement, and environmental regulation is correspondingly weak” (p. 147). However, what we have to concern is how the environmental Kuznets curve could be lowered and flatten in the developing nation rather than expecting that the developing nations change their priority from environment to economics.

     I do not think that this is all about equity between industrialized and developing countries, but it is about how we can reduce climate change together. It means that the development nations should keep trying to eliminate pollutants from their own countries. Moreover, the developed countries should concern “environmental risks that are either newly discovered or generated by the use of new materials and technologies” (Dasgupata, Laplante, Wang and Wheeler, 2002, p. 162). If the rich countries do not effort to eliminate pollutants, how can the developing countries agree with the developed country's demands?