ON CURRENT trends, some experts say, humans could theoretically be the only species left on the planet within 50 to 100 years - - a grotesque danger that highlights the imminence of environmental collapse under the weight of unplanned human economic activity.
But while the domination of economy over ecology is reaching critical proportions, the world's top who connnue to pursue development and restructuring agendas with untold social and environmenta. consequences, seem purposely oblivious to the fact. This is especially true of the World bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Despite all the hype in the about 'development economics', , with countries of the economic South' are not much better off, and many positively worse off, than they were 30 years ago. cause of this deterioration to the debt crisis of the 1970s. when bloated bi petrodollars from soaring world oil prices, teamera dori banks sent eaus saries to the third world to offload their cash - at a price.
Worsened
The pay-back came in the 1980s, when economic conditions in the third world got serously worse economic policies of the World Bank, by actually produced less per head of the populaton than it nad ar the Desanning an impoverished continent became even poorer.
However while the poor countries were locked in a never-ending cycle of ballooning debt and impossible repay. ments, the banks shored up their finances by writing off failed loans, rescheduling debts and repairing their balance sheets. By the end of the decade, for the international banks the crisis was over.
Today from Amazonia to the Siberian forests, the seemingly unstoppable An Impoverished Third World becoming even poorer 5 Dec, 1992 No. 33 EQUARTE Rejecting a spiral of decline - campaigners demand cancellation of the debt encroachment of the world market continues to wreak environmental havoc. Beyond debt and economic destruction and the sharpening of the division between rich and poor, this market logic now threatens the possible elimination of the fundamental biological diversity ion which life itself depends.
secorums to susan beorge well known author of A Fate Worse than Debt I was never a fan of the ex-Soviet Union and the countries which called themselves 'socialist, but the fall of the Berlin wall nevertheless has a negative side. The end of the Cold War has put an end to what political scientists used to call the "systems" debate. Now there is only ne superpower and one system...
deanwhile Lawrence Summers, vio president of the World Bank, has bluntly Stated his view of the world economy and the environment, in comments made at the World Bank's annual meet. ing in Bangkok. He said: What can the West do to drive this process of reform (in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe) forward? Number one, it can spread the truth. The laws of (capitalist) economics, it is often forgotten, are like the laws of engineering -laws and they work everywhere' Evidence Summers staggering statement 1 nores the abundance of evidence whic shows that if the capitalist world economy continues to exploit the world's resources in the rapacious, unfettered way it does now, the tuture of the planet is threatened.
An important 1986 article by Paul Erlich and others calculated that human economic activity was then absorbing 40 per cent of the 'net photosynthetic product, that is the net capacity of the "The World Bank and the IMF found in the third world debt the perfect instrument to force integration of the indebted countries more tightly in the world capitalist economy" "50 species are being driven to extinction every day. At a conservative estimate, 20,000 are wiped out annually" carth to regenerate itself, leaving just 60 per cent for all other species.
They found that this kind of activity wasdoubling every 25 or 30 years, which means that in a quarter of a century we would be consuming 80 per cent of the net photosynthetic product, leaving 60 per cent for all other species. And soon after the figure would reach 100 per cent, leaving no other species with access to anything.
Contradictions
Unfortunately this is not the way the people who run the world's economy see it. They fail to grasp a series of obcontradictions which threaten the biosphere. • The contradiction between the open economy and the closed biosphere means there are not 'market signals' to tell us we are in danger. The price of logs from a tropical forest, for example, in no
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