Globalist Progress Demands Africa’s Decline

Neo-colonialism has gone green

The West is using climate change to hold the developing world back. AUSTIN WILLIAMS 26th April 2021

Neo-colonialism has gone green

ShareTopics POLITICSSCIENCE & TECHWORLD

‘One of my top priorities… is to champion global action for vulnerable countries on the frontline of climate change.’ So said the UK’s former business secretary and now COP26 president designate Alok Sharma ahead of last month’s ‘global summit on climate and development’.

Grand words, but behind them lies a murky reality. The ‘vulnerable’ countries of which Sharma speaks are poor sovereign states that have been screwed for decades by supra-national bodies, like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. And they are about to get screwed again by the same institutions, but this time in the name of saving the planet.

Back in the 1980s, global institutions, like the IMF, provided financial aid to developing countries on the condition that they changed their economic policies, reduced inflation, devalued their currencies, and so on. These so-called structural-adjustment programmes (SAP) imposed imperial-style diktats on the way that these heavily indebted countries were allowed to develop. They forced them to restrain internal demand, shift production according to the priorities of external markets and impose policies that would provide a handsome return to the aid-giver.

In recent years, global leaders and institutions have changed tack. They no longer tell subservient nations how they should develop. Instead, they nudge developing countries to consider whether they want to develop at all. In the name of the environment, they are encouraging developing countries to stay where they are, undisturbed by anything as alien as economic progress.

This is not a surprise. In Western circles, the idea of ‘development’ has long been portrayed as a bad thing. Writing in Open Democracy, the authors of ‘Development’ is Colonialism in Disguise argue: ‘The South emulates the North, captivated by its dazzling lifestyles in a seemingly unstoppable course that brings ever more social and environmental problems. Seven decades after the concept of “development” erupted on to the scene, the entire world is mired in “maldevelopment”.’RECOMMENDEDThe Green New Deal will impoverish AmericaJOEL KOTKIN

For miserablists like these, it is a straightforward narrative: the West has (mal)developed, therefore we have to stop the developing world from ‘making the same mistakes’. The authors ignore the continued immiseration visited on undeveloped countries. And they refuse to recognise their own colonial mindset, in which the development from which the West has benefited is to be denied to the world’s poorest and voiceless (who, by the way, seem to want development).

This antipathy towards development is writ large in the United Nations’s 2012 review of its 1992 action plan, originally formulated at the Earth Summit in Rio. The UN complained that, hitherto, ‘donors more often than not prioritised participation in so-called development-oriented projects and not sustainable-development governance’. Instead, the UN urged donor agencies to focus on the environment, sustainable development and climate change.

The UN and aid agencies effectively disregard the sovereignty, not to mention the desires, of those nations to which they lend money. And, in doing so, they thwart poor countries’ aspirations to develop. In the place of such aspirations, the green agenda inculcates a message of limits, and portrays development as a solely destructive process.

The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs is even encouraging underdeveloped nations to move beyond GDP as a measure of success. To do this, it is encouraging the use of the concept of ‘natural capital’ as a measure of a nation’s developmental status. This means that decrepit infrastructure and low productivity can be balanced against the amount of forest cover and carbon sinks a nation has. So Malawi may have no economy to speak of, but it has a magisterial coastline, unspoiled landscape, wildlife and ecosystems. All of these, the UN argues, must be factored into a nation’s economic accounts. In this way, the lunatic logic of environmentalism decides that the poorest non-developing countries are really very rich indeed.

RECOMMENDED The violent virtue-signalling of Western intervention BRENDAN O’NEILL

Elsewhere, the World Bank is pushing a Green Gross Domestic Product (GGDP) as a useful measure of economic growth with the environmental costs and services factored in. For example, a nation’s GGDP monetises biodiversity and encourages developing countries to become ‘stewards’ of their environment rather than spoiling it with factories, housing and other signs of development. In How To Avoid a Climate Disaster, Bill Gates even advocates ‘paying countries to maintain their forests’. This effectively means bribing countries to stand still in order to save the planet.

Western politicians and political bodies are now falling over themselves to be at the forefront of this neocolonial effort to lead the world’s fight against the ‘climate crisis’, and dictate the terms of ecologically responsible development to Malawi or sub-Saharan Africa. So, while the EU is about to issue a stringent package of revised climate and energy laws for a climate-neutral Europe by 2050, US president Joe Biden has stolen a march on it by convening an online global Leaders’ Climate Summit on Earth Day (22 April), at which 40 nations will draw up plans for the future.

Such is the coercive force of the West’s green agenda that even China is being brought into line. A Greenpeace activist in Beijing confirmed that ‘amid great geopolitical challenges… it is very important for the rest of the world to understand that at least on the issue of climate change the G2 [China and the US] are united again’. As far as the Western world is concerned, if climate change is the issue that can bring even China to heel, imagine what it can do to impoverished countries with no power, no reserves, and just trees.

Austin Williams is the author of the Academy of Ideas’ Letters on Liberty: Greens: The New Colonialists.

Picture by: Getty.

spiked is free, and it always will be, which is why we need your help. We don’t have a paywall, or bonus content for paying customers, because we want our arguments for freedom and democracy, against misanthropy and identity politics, to reach as many people as possible. Which is why we ask those of our readers who can afford it to chip in. One-off donations are hugely appreciated, but monthly donations are even better. They allow us to plan for the future and to grow. Even £5 a month is a huge help. It’s much cheaper than your average magazine subscription, and it ensures that spiked is free and open to all. To make either a monthly or a one-off donation, click here. Thank you for your support.DONATE NOW

To enquire about republishing spiked’s content, a right to reply or to request a correction, please contact the managing editor, Viv Regan.ShareTopicsPOLITICSSCIENCE & TECHWORLDTagsAFRICAASIACLIMATE CHANGECOLONIALISM AND EMPIREECONOMYENVIRONMENTFOREIGN POLICYUN

MOST POPULAR

SPIKED

POLITICS1Johnny Rotten is dead right about wokeness26th April 2021

FRANK FUREDI

POLITICS2If Isaac Newton can be cancelled, no one is safe27th April 2021

BRENDAN O’NEILL

WORLD3Je Suis Sarah26th April 2021

FRASER MYERS

POLITICS4Joe Biden and the twilight of the ‘fact-checkers’28th April 2021

SPIKED

BREXIT5The Remainers were wrong about literally everything30th April 2021

RECOMMENDED

JOEL KOTKIN

LONG-READSThe Green New Deal will impoverish America23rd April 2021

BRENDAN O’NEILL

POLITICS The violent virtue-signalling of Western intervention20th April 2021

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Other recent posts

Corona Virus May Never Have Existed But Kill Shots Do

Corona Virus May Never Have Existed But Kill Shots Do

Dr. Michael Yeadon: Why I Don’t Believe There Ever Was a COVID Virus "If I’m correct that there was no novel virus, what a genius move it was to pretend there was! Now they want you only to consider how this ‘killer virus’ got into the human population." Lioness of...

read more
Matt Hancock & Fauci, Two Mass Murderers on the Loose

Matt Hancock & Fauci, Two Mass Murderers on the Loose

FACT: Midazolam Matt Hancock turned Care Homes into Concentration Camps where the Elderly & Vulnerable were given Lethal Injections to create the illusion of a COVID Pandemic BY THE EXPOSÉ ON MARCH 22, 2023 Matt Hancock, the former UK Health Secretary who oversaw...

read more
Scots Keep Voting For Dictators to Enslave Them

Scots Keep Voting For Dictators to Enslave Them

The undemocratic tyranny of Net Zero By Doug Brodie Joel Smalley Mar 21 126 To: Sir Edward Mountain, Conservative MSP for the Highlands and Islands Cc: Members of the Scottish Government's committee on Net Zero, Energy and Transport, Mr Douglas Ross MSP, leader of the...

read more
Working Age Deaths Up 40% Since Death Shots Introduced

Working Age Deaths Up 40% Since Death Shots Introduced

Epidemic of Sudden Adult Deaths Finally Made News By Dr. Joseph Mercola Mercola.com March 20, 2023 Former BlackRock analyst and fund manager Edward Dowd is one of the brave few who have been trying to get the word out about dangers of COVID-19 shots. While I’ve...

read more
US Democrats Going Way of South American Failed States

US Democrats Going Way of South American Failed States

The Decline & Fall of the United States COMMENT: Hi Marty, Seems to me the Democrats are following the time honored practice South American governments have resorted to in recent years when one party displaces another in a national election. In Brasil, the current...

read more
HAARP Machine; Not so Secret, Destructive Weapon of War

HAARP Machine; Not so Secret, Destructive Weapon of War

NER: The US & EU try to hide their geoengineering activities but they can't hide their impact. These include sustained droughts & massive snowfalls & floods. They can drive hurricanes to where they want them & create earthquakes. The Japanese Fukushima...

read more