Opinion
- Editorial
Julian
Kenny:
Catalysing sustainable development?
The
media coverage of an energy conference a few months
ago revealed some truly remarkable fragments of
doublespeak. I am not sure whether the Minister
of Energy actually spoke the words of the headline
but when I read that the energy industry was "the
catalyst of development of the country" I had
to draw down from my chemistry of 55 years ago.
A catalyst in the English language has two meanings.
It is a substance that increases the rate of a chemical
reaction without itself undergoing any permanent
chemical change, or, a person or thing that precipitates
an event. Possibly the latter meaning was the intent,
although I would question that an extractive industry
based on a finite resource can ever lead to stable
orderly development of human societies.
The energy industry, most of it,
is involved in extracting fossil energy resources
and using it in a variety of ways, including burning
vast quantities to drive modern consumer economies
in the northern hemisphere, and incidentally causing
global warming and climate change. As it is consumed
it clearly cannot be a catalyst in the chemical
sense.
Logically therefore, not being a
person, it must be something that precipitates an
event. And exactly what is the thing? Foreign direct
investment! And what is the event? Growth of the
offshore economy. The important question is, however,
what are the benefits? Will Point Fortin get the
highway promised in 1962? Will the Toco Road be
restored? Will the Paria Main Road be paved? Will
new ghettoes arise? Will the ghettoes disappear?
Will 25 per cent of the population be lifted out
of dire poverty? Will the crime rate decline? Will
the brain drain be checked? Will the hills be reforested?
Will national planning resurface?
Amongst the doublespeak is the chanting
of the mantra, "sustainable development".
One cannot challenge any statement that sustainable
development is official policy. It is, as reflected
in the preamble to the Environmental Management
Act 2000.
But read it again. The preamble
states in its opening sentence that the Government
"is committed to developing a strategy for
sustainable development, being the balance of economic
growth with environmentally sound practices, in
order to enhance the quality of life and meet the
needs of present and future generations". Note
that the Government is only committed to developing
a strategy. This noble objective has been modified
now to mean a "balance between the requirements
of development and the need to preserve the sanctity
of the environment".
The
concept of resource sustainability is almost a century
old and has its roots in forestry and fisheries
science in the harvesting of these resources. Out
of these sciences arose the idea of maximum sustainable
yields, or MSY, of timber and fish resources, the
yields being such as not to cause collapse of the
resource, whether it is pine or cod.
The concept was further refined
to take into account variability of environmental
conditions over time. This was the optimal sustainable
yield or OSY. The thing to note is that these may
be calculated with a good degree of reliability
simply by determining basics such as growth rates
and population structure. The same general principles
may be applied to agricultural production and aquaculture.
But even with a century of scientific understanding
of the sustainability of renewable resources and
measures to sustain yields there have been noted
collapses of fisheries and forests.
Human societies, and economies,
are extremely varied and are complex products of
history, religion, culture, geography, geology,
science and technology. And the question that might
be asked is, can the concept or management system
of sustainable development be applied to all? Or
put another way, is each country to follow its own
path of economic development? The term sustainable
development can be a confusing one and it certainly
means different things to different persons. Each
word has more than one meaning.
Pending
the development of the sustainable development strategy
that may not be finalised even by 2020, the resource
that we are all supposed to accept is a finite one
and therefore a wasting asset, is being extracted
at rates that will deplete it within possibly less
than a generation, and make a significant contribution
to global warming and sea level rise. So what is
the doublespeak of "future generations"?
And the Prime Minister proudly states
that soon we will have become per capita the largest
consumer of electricity, a statement that logically
can be transposed to mean that we will have become,
per capita, the highest producer of carbon dioxide,
the major greenhouse gas contributing to climate
change. And we continue to hear concerns coming
from the same administration about global warming
and climate change, as if we have no part in the
process. The development that the minister spoke
of may be no more than the growth of a culture of
consumerism rather than sustainable development.
Trinidad
Express
Tuesday,
September 26th 2006
Copyright
©2006 Trinidad Express.
All rights reserved
