Yves right here. Documentary producer Lynn Fries in the present day focuses on a side of accelerating progress in direction of the Jackpot which perversely will get comparatively little protection regardless of its clear significance: that of an increasing number of extinctions and potential/possible ecosystem collapse. But commentators appear if something extra resigned to biodiversity loss than they’re to dependancy to the car. Many do know that habitat destruction and balkanization of once-extended wild areas are the principle reason behind species die-offs, but nobody appears prepared to make a full-spectrum demand to scale back useful resource exploitation with a purpose to save the biosphere. So far as I can inform, the calls for focus both on iconic locations just like the Amazon or iconic species like wolves (who want massive territories).
This interview discusses a brand new examine, Exporting Extinction, by the Heart for Local weather Justice. It digs into the financial and political drivers, significantly earnings and wealth disparity between nations.
By Lynn Fries. Initially revealed at GPENewsdocs
Why governments additional coverage agendas that entrench and broaden extractive industries that drive biodiversity loss is revealed in Exporting Extinction, a report exposing structural drivers incentivizing this extractive agenda and constraining what states can do to deal with financial growth and ecological crises.
Lynn Fries: Good day and welcome. I’m Lynn Fries, producer of International Political Economic system, or GPEnewsdocs. In the present day’s phase is in regards to the report, Exporting Extinction, How the Worldwide Monetary System Constrains Biodiverse Futures. The report was revealed by the Local weather and Neighborhood Challenge, the Heart for Local weather Justice on the College of British Columbia, and the Third World Community.
Extra particularly, in the present day’s phase options clips* from the webinar launch of that report. As per the webinar title, the main focus of dialogue was on < quote>: Putting the Biodiversity Disaster within the International Economic system, From Extraction and Extinction to Vibrant Futures.
By the use of a glimpse into what was an prolonged dialogue, three clips are featured. The primary clip supplies introductory feedback and context on the Exporting Extinction report and its significance in revealing the worldwide political financial system of the biodiversity disaster. The second clip digs into the report itself with a presentation by its lead researcher. The third clip supplies additional perspective on why governments within the international south have routinely failed to realize biodiversity targets and what will be accomplished about it. We go now to our featured clips.
Thea Riofrancos: So I feel the very first thing to say, as we as advocates and students and activists focus our consideration on the local weather disaster is how deeply associated the local weather and biodiversity crises are. And one of many causes that they’re associated is that their root causes are the identical.
They each concern from unsustainable ranges of useful resource extraction, whether or not that’s industrial scale agriculture, mining <or> oil, fuel and coal extraction in addition to unsustainable land use patterns and deforestation. So these are the underlying causes of each the local weather disaster and the biodiversity disaster which themselves work together and exacerbate each other.
However this raises the important thing query: What causes unsustainable ranges of extraction and unsustainable land use patterns? I feel a brief and simple and broadly right reply is international capitalism and an unequal world system.
These are right solutions to that query however I feel, you already know, as I inform my college students, like, let’s be extra particular. Like what’s it about international capitalism and about an unequal world order that drives unsustainable patterns of land use and actually scary ranges of biodiversity loss?
And so what this report does and what I feel is so essential about it’s that it digs into what we’d name the worldwide political financial system of biodiversity loss. As a result of it seems that it’s monetary mechanisms, it’s commerce mechanisms, it’s the financial system that basically do put particularly international South governments in positions of adopting unsustainable patterns of extraction and unsustainable growth fashions.
Jess Dempsey: In order Thea mentioned, this analysis report actually takes on a severe query that I feel lots of you on this room are all for and actively engaged in. Why do a long time of selections and targets to deal with ecological degradation and biodiversity loss fail?
The world’s foremost specialists on biodiversity and ecosystem change gathered across the IPCC of biodiversity, the lesser identified IPBES, concluded in 2019 that it’s because biodiversity efforts haven’t actually tackled underlying or root drivers of biodiversity loss.
As researchers and analysts, we have to sharpen our understanding of these root drivers. And as Thea already gestured to, we have to do that with some specificity. So, the right way to examine these sort of root drivers? There are numerous, some ways.
Our method for this examine started from the science that reveals, as additionally Thea mentioned, biodiversity loss is attributable to extraction together with from mining, oil and fuel, forestry, and industrial agriculture. These are the direct drivers.
In an try to essentially get at these root causes with extra specificity, we then requested what prevents international locations from stopping or altering the extraction that imperils biodiversity? Additionally a giant query.
And since so most of the prices and advantages from these extractive actions are erratically distributed in a formation, Latin American actions and students time period extractivism, we additionally needed to discover what holds this formation in place, once more with some specificity. So we made this manageable by drilling into understanding one sector identified to straight drive biodiversity loss in every of our case examine international locations.
I’m going to have a look at one key determine that basically summarizes our analysis findings. It’s, after all, an iceberg impressed by the late, nice Maria Mies. Above the waterline are these drivers of biodiversity loss, the extraction. Within the type of meso part there, we’ve got this stuff states are doing to help these direct drivers, that are substantial and completely contra biodiversity targets.
In all 5 of our case research, we see that governments proceed to approve, subsidize, and broaden the extractive developments that erode biodiversity. Now, clearly home political agendas play a job, together with elite and regulatory seize; clearly clarify a part of what perpetuates these ongoing choices.
However our analysis report reveals that governments are additionally structurally incentivized to keep up and broaden these sectors by the pressures of the worldwide monetary system to keep up make investments capability, earn international change and to adjust to worldwide monetary establishments that handle financial crises.
They do all of this partially as a result of to do in any other case would threat monetary stability inside a extremely unequal  worldwide political financial system by which many states already wrestle to pay for primary imports and providers.
Our examine outcomes are particular to the international locations we studied however it’s well-known that these dynamics have an effect on many international locations throughout the globe. Throughout the International South for many years students have described international South states as subordinate within the worldwide monetary system.
That’s, they’re structurally deprived dealing with ongoing financial instability and topic to fixed menace of capital flight, mortgage defaults and shocks primarily based on adjustments to commodity costs and financial coverage choices made distant elsewhere.
So our analysis actually reveals how this subordination generates robust incentives to broaden and deepen industries most in battle with nation’s environmental goals. These constructions and the unequal pressures they exert due to this fact signify a major underlying driver of biodiversity loss.
In conclusion, solely worldwide efforts to deal with these conflicting priorities undertaken within the spirit of solidarity and collective duty will be capable of remodel these constructions and make viable the trail in direction of ecological stability.
How we do that is one other query, however that’s a part of why we’re right here in the present day to start to debate.
Fadhel Kaboub: Congratulations on publishing this essential report. I’m going to go forward and straight construct on what’s been mentioned already. I’ll put it in a single key sentence after which I’ll unpack it.
A whole lot of the dialogue in the present day within the local weather area is about decarbonizing, decarbonize this and decarbonize that. And what I need to say is the next: We are able to’t decarbonize a system that hasn’t been structurally and economically decolonized but.
And what I imply by that, we’re speaking a couple of international financial structure from a International South perspective that was not designed by us, not designed for us. So it could’t be the identical financial structure that may ship justice or fairness or sustainability for us.
So this international financial structure, you possibly can consider it as 4 primary pillars. The primary one in all them is the worldwide monetary structure. That’s the World Financial institution and the IMF each designed throughout colonial instances, by the way in which.
Quantity two, you possibly can consider the foundations – two and three – the foundations of worldwide commerce and worldwide funding. And that’s primarily the WTO. And that’s actually the largest blind spot in loads of these conversations is in regards to the guidelines of worldwide commerce and funding in terms of extractivism and consequently, the lack of biodiversity.
After which lastly, it’s the worldwide taxation structure. And that course of has been within the arms of the OECD international locations for the longest time. Till final November, after we managed to get a vote within the U. N. to lastly transfer that right into a U. N. tax conference and that’s a course of that’s ongoing.
In order that’s a means of decolonizing the worldwide taxation system. We nonetheless have to wrestle to decolonize the worldwide commerce and funding structure and the worldwide monetary structure.
So the design of this method imposed a specific position on the International South. And that may be summarized in three main factors.
Primary, we’re imagined to be the place for affordable uncooked supplies. And that’s the place the extractivism is; low-cost uncooked supplies for the industrialized world.
Quantity two, we’re imagined to be the shoppers of commercial output from the International North and know-how from the International North.
And quantity three, and most significantly, we’re imagined to be the place the place out of date applied sciences, meeting line manufacturing that’s not wanted within the International North is outsourced to us below the label of growth and job creation and partnership and all of that.
And that’s actually, what locks us on the backside of the worldwide worth chain. And now I’ll offer you one key statistic about the place we’re by way of this extractive worldwide financial system.
If you happen to divide the world into International North and International South and internet out all international monetary transactions, commerce, investments, exports, imports, curiosity funds, debt reduction, local weather finance included, illicit monetary flows, every little thing, the online quantity is 2 trillion {dollars} transferring from the worldwide south to the worldwide north. That’s an annual quantity.
And that quantity has been accelerating over the previous few years. That’s, if we don’t change something in regards to the international financial structure, if we don’t decolonize it, that quantity will likely be 4 or 5, who is aware of, 10 trillion {dollars} a 12 months sooner or later. And that’s clearly unsustainable, has been unsustainable.
So the query now could be: How does this work on a rustic by nation foundation? And I’ll offer you a number of examples from the African continent simply to indicate you the extractive nature of the financial system and the way it impacts biodiversity specifically by way of the extractive business and agriculture specifically.
So you’ve three main structural deficiencies that sort of are below the floor as a result of all people’s targeted on the exterior debt because the seen sort of indicator of this extractivism.
Sure, exterior debt is extraordinarily essential, and lots of international locations within the International South are dealing with a major debt disaster as we communicate.
However it’s truly a symptom of deeper structural points that I can summarize in three factors.
Primary, it’s meals deficits. Imagine it or not, the African continent in the present day -which was once the breadbasket for the International North lower than 100 years in the past – in the present day Africa imports 85 p.c of its meals. Not by chance, by design.
It’s the design of the foundations of worldwide commerce that instantly, as quickly as African international locations began to realize independence, we began seeing heavy agricultural subsidies within the International North.
You’ve got the European Union Widespread Agricultural Coverage (CAP).
You’ve got heavy agricultural subsidies within the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, and the previous Soviet Union to prioritize the meals sovereignty within the International North.
That’s producing core crops – wheat, corn, rice, barley, and so forth – and to outsource the manufacturing of the money crops to the International South. That’s massive scale industrial manufacturing for money crops. That’s the idea of meals safety that was imposed on the International South on the time.
And that may be a key element of the lack of biodiversity. Not just because it’s industrial agriculture however as a result of the farmers within the International South needed to transfer away from producing their native crops, corresponding to wheat and corn and rice and so forth. As a result of it’s backed within the North and it’s cheaper to import. They usually couldn’t compete with that. So that they needed to produce money crops for exports.
And as quickly as you begin producing for exports, you must use non-native seeds to serve the style of your clients within the International North. And you must use extra fertilizers as a result of these seeds will not be acclimated to your soil, to your atmosphere. And you must use pesticides so no matter you’re producing can survive the journey all the way in which to a grocery store within the International North.
You try this for a number of a long time and also you simply burn the fertility of your soil. Your yields begin to go down and now you must double down on utilizing stronger seeds, stronger fertilizers and pesticides.
And that’s the ecological and financial devastation that we’ve got within the International South that must be reversed through strategic investments and meals sovereignty and agroecology and restructuring of the worldwide worldwide commerce guidelines that govern the meals system, for instance.
The second structural deficiency is power deficits. And imagine it or not, on the African continent, our largest exporter of oil, Nigeria, in the present day imports one hundred pc of its gasoline from worldwide markets. Angola imports 80 p.c of its gasoline from worldwide markets. And once more, that’s by design, not by chance.
And the devastation of the oil business in a rustic like Nigeria alone can merely, there aren’t any phrases to explain what’s occurring to the ecosystem, to individuals who can’t survive previous the age of 45 in Nigeria and past that.
Then lastly, the third structural deficiency is the truth that we’ve been compelled to concentrate on a sort of manufacturing that forces you to import the machine, import the intermediate elements to assemble with low price labor, import the gasoline to energy the factories and even import the packaging.
So you find yourself with the manufacturing base that exports low worth added content material and imports excessive worth added content material. So you possibly can double, triple, quadruple your exports. You’re at all times locked on the backside of the worth chain.
Now, right here’s the way it comes collectively. These three structural deficits – meals, power, and manufacturing – produce an annual structural deficit which lowers or weakens your forex relative to the greenback or to the euro which makes every little thing you import the subsequent morning dearer.
So in case you’re importing meals or gasoline or drugs, that instantly forces governments within the International South right into a defensive place utilizing band aids and utterly rewiring their very own financial coverage in opposition to biodiversity.
And right here’s the way it occurs. If you must face that weaker forex, you must do instantly two issues.
Primary, we subsidize meals and gasoline to guard probably the most susceptible. And that is a vital band support answer within the brief run, however it’s not sustainable in the long term.
Quantity two, we ask our central bankers to please stabilize the change charge. They try this by borrowing extra {dollars} and feeding the exterior debt.
And now as a result of you’ve exterior debt as a result of you’ve debt denominated in {dollars} to pay, you already know, each quarter primarily the one factor you must do instantly is totally rewire your financial system to prioritize any financial exercise that may earn you {dollars} so you possibly can pay the debt on time.
I’ll offer you one instance, Ethiopia. Ethiopia in the present day, the third largest supply of export revenues after Ethiopian Airways and after espresso – which is one other money crop – is minimize flowers for Valentine’s. One of many largest exporters of flowers Ethiopia in the present day, on the similar time, has 20 million people who find themselves depending on meals support from overseas.
That’s the largest misallocation of sources. And that’s a rustic that’s blessed with fertile soil and water sources from the Nile River and so forth. And Ethiopia isn’t distinctive.
All of our international locations are rewired, have rewired their economies to prioritize exports. Something that may generate revenues, and that’s the largest lack of biodiversity in a rustic like Ethiopia, in a rustic like Kenya, and, and past.
I’ll offer you a second instance. You rewire your financial system to advertise tourism. I imply, why not tourism? You’ve got tens of millions of individuals coming in, bringing {dollars}. You’ve got jobs created within the lodges and leisure business.
Besides whenever you don’t have meals sovereignty, whenever you don’t have power sovereignty and also you carry 5 million vacationers, you must feed them. So you must import extra meals that you just don’t have domestically. You must transport them, warmth and funky the lodge. So you must import extra gasoline that you just don’t have.
So it utterly drives you deeper into these structural traps which have colonial origins which were enforced by way of post-colonial methods and might solely be eradicated by strategic investments in three areas.
Primary, meals sovereignty and agroecology. And that may be accomplished in some instances on the nationwide degree and different instances must be regional South-South cooperation with International North cooperation. Why not?
Quantity two, strategic investments in renewable power sovereignty which is Africa’s largest potential. For instance, in line with the Worldwide Vitality Company report from final 12 months, Africa in the present day, with current know-how, can produce 1, 000 instances its power wants, 1, 000 instances.  And never only for Africa, however for the remainder of the world.
Quantity three, strategic investments in a distinct sort of industrialization that permits the International South to flee the underside of the worth chain.
And once more, none of that may occur nation by nation. It must occur through South-South cooperation, with South-North solidarity and cooperation as a result of we’re all on this structural. downside.  And we’re all destroying the ecosystem that’s the lifeblood of, of the financial system, of society, of every little thing we’re combating for.
In order that makes International South unity and solidarity not only a good, fluffy factor we are saying to one another in good conferences, however a geopolitical and financial crucial.
And that must be understood by not simply civil society and suppose tanks however on the highest degree of political determination making within the International South which suggests forming regional blocks which have complementarity of sources and capabilities.
And have sufficient of a geopolitical weight to power joint ventures, to power switch of know-how, which has been the principle obstacle for industrialization from the International North. And if the International North isn’t prepared, there are different choices in the present day, which is China.
China, for instance, has your entire worth chain of producing renewable power infrastructure. So, is there a chance for joint ventures, repositioning of the International South through the G77 plus China group with a purpose to change the steadiness of energy, change the geopolitical recreation with the International North as a result of on the finish of the day it is a query of energy.
Lynn Fries:  We’re going to have to depart it there. The Exporting Extinction report is accessible on the web sites of all of the respective publishers. In order that’s the Local weather and Neighborhood venture, the Heart for Local weather Justice at UBC i.e. College of British Columbia and the Third World Community.
A recap of all of the panelist displays and a hyperlink to the complete unedited webinar video is posted on the College of British Columbia web site at climatejustice.ubc. ca below the title: Putting the Biodiversity Disaster within the International Economic system.
Many due to the researchers, authors, and publishers of this report and all webinar panelists and thanks for becoming a member of us.
