Message to UNCED, Earth Summit
Fidel Castro
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1992
Messrs. Heads of State or Government
Each of us attending this UNCED is aware of the significance of this meeting and the urgency of reaching decisions that will allow effective measures to defend the very survival of mankind.
The accelerated and spiralling deterioration of the environment is today possible the most serious long-term threat to mankind as a whole, and most especially to what is still called the Third World. . . .
Never in the history of mankind has such a generalized and destructive aggression taken place against all of the world’s vital systems. In the underdeveloped world, underdevelopment and poverty itself are the main factors that today have a multiplying effect on the pressure exerted on the environment. The over exploitation of arable or grazing land, improper agricultural practices, and the lack of financial and technical resources add to the harmful effect of adverse climates. In addition, the eagerness to obtain the greatest profit margin of natural resources and industrial capacities Bin the case of capitalist exploitation, national or multinational, in or outside the Third World—adds its serious destructive quota and adds additional ways of contamination and degradation to the environment.
In the developed world, there are lifestyles that encourage irrational consumption and encourage waste and destruction of nonrenewable resources. These lifestyles multiply the tensions and effects to local and world physical environments as unprecedented and previously unimaginable levels. . . .
If you examine the deterioration of the environment from a historical viewpoint you will see, generally speaking, that the greatest damage to the global ecosystem has been caused by the development patterns followed by the most industrialized countries. Meanwhile, the conditions of poverty in which the immense majority of the world’s population lives also severely affects the environment. . . . [but] it is absurd to demand the same degree of responsibility for the deterioration of the environment from a citizen with relatively high income, used to a consumer-oriented, developed country with wasteful ways, as from the poor inhabitant of any one of the more backward countries of the underdeveloped world. The poor man’s daily concern is to find — with increasing difficulty—ways of preventing his children from starving. . . .
In the Third World what is in danger first is not the quality of life, but life itself and the right to life. In environmental issues, the main concern in these countries has to be the availability of water, the lack of firewood, and the exhaustion of agricultural land. . . .
To act in favor of the conservation and improvement of the environment, then, unavoidably means to act against the causes that foster the degrading poverty displayed by the Third world as it approaches the 21st century. Without a doubt, this will require a series of social and economic changes, both on a national and international level. Such changes could begin with a just and lasting solution to the issue of foreign debt in the underdeveloped nations and with the redirection of available financial and monetary resources to these development plans. . . . From that perspective, the starting point of any negotiation on the environment and development must be the recognition of the ecological debt the industrialized nations have contracted. . . .
The member countries of the OECD represent barely 16 percent of the world population and 24 percent of the total world surface. Their economies contribute 72 percent of the global GNP and generate approximately 76 percent of the total world commerce, including 73 percent of exports of chemical products and almost the same percentage of imports of timber products. The OECD countries are also responsible for 45 percent of the world’s emission of carbon dioxide, 40 percent of the sulfur dioxide emissions, and 50 percent of the nitrogen oxide emissions. They produce 60 percent of the world’s industrial waste and generate 90 percent of the toxic waste. In 1984, the United States, the EEC, and Japan produced 86 percent of the world’s chlorofluorocarbons, whereas the Third world countries produced only 4.4 percent. . . .
From an historical standpoint, the developed countries have been the chief promoters and beneficiaries of deforestation in the [under]developed countries. It was due to the colonial regime, and later to the economic expansion of the major capitalist powers and the neocolonial exploitation of the natural resources of the Third World, that the indiscriminate felling of forests in vast areas of the world and the exploitation of timber took place. It turned these forest areas into agricultural land destined to be used for the production of food and raw materials to be exported to those industrialized countries.
If the phenomenon is analyzed from a broader perspective, the inevitable conclusion is that the ultimate responsibility for the accumulated deterioration of the environment in the Third World as a whole falls on the developed capitalist world. . . .
According to preliminary estimates, all underdeveloped countries would require no less than $40 billion extra per year to invest in programs aimed at achieving environment sustainability, based on 1990 level[s] of economic activity. This amount represents 25 percent of the total payments made by these countries to service their foreign debt during that year. . . . Nobody is denying the need for underdeveloped countries to work in designing their own strategies for socioeconomic development to ensure the sustained expansion of their productive capacity, cope with serious social problems, correct environmental problems of the past, and avoid a subsequent deterioration of the environment based on the available resources. It is evident, however, that foreign financing plays a major role. This is the first way to pay the ecological debt of the developed world.
Foreign financing for sustainable development cannot be the result of a redistribution of the already scarce financial resources that reach the underdeveloped countries, but a flow of new capital. Otherwise, the topic of the environment would only constitute a new condition imposed on the foreign aid. . .
In the past 20 years, the world has wasted over $13 billion on military expenses. Even in 1991, having overcome the Cold War and the threat of confrontation between the great powers, military spending reached almost $1 billion. There are the resources to finance these programs.
The success of this conference will be measured by the actions that result from it. We represent humanity, and that moral duty, that political obligation, that exceptional and historical responsibility, demands decisions, specific measures, and a commitment that can no longer be delayed.
Website Address: http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/castro/db/1992/19920614.html
Print Format: Fidel Castro - 'Message' to UNCED.docx
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