Perhaps the most common criticism targeted at conservationists and the environmental movement more generally is that it is anti-development. I find this frustrating, because from my experience, it’s exactly the opposite.
Most of the conservationists I know:
- Don’t want to ban new oil palm plantations. They recognise that oil palm is exceptionally high-yielding and so less land-hungry than other oil producing alternatives–and that it can also be an important crop in poverty alleviation. They just think plantations should be directed towards already degraded areas and not core forest.
- Don’t want to stop the development of infrastructure, like roads. Rather, they ask questions like “where can we put roads in a way that best serves rural development without also bisecting extremely biodiverse environments?”
- Aren’t against substantially increasing food production to meet growing food demands. But wonder, are there ways we can waste less food, and employ innovative techniques that make agriculture on existing farmland much more efficient?
- Aren’t against logging in tropical forests. But how can it be managed sustainably, legally, and in a way that both benefits local economies and ensures logged forests are kept standing after the chainsaws have gone silent?
- Don’t want to block rural coastal communities from fishing. But how can fishing still enable the recovery of stocks, both to sustain fish populations and future fishing?
Rather than “anti-development” then, maybe conservationists should be labelled as wanting “better development”.
Some exceptions…
Of course there are development projects that many conservationists would oppose. Sometimes, we do just have to say “no”. But this is usually because evidence and longer term thinking suggest one of two things. Either the “benefits” of a proposed development project are overblown. Or better alternatives with a lower environmental footprint exist.
A good example of the former is the 330-odd hydroelectric dams planned or under construction in the Amazon. Since most of these will be to provide energy for smelting aluminium, which provides relatively little local employment, the true value of such “developments” is highly questionable. What with the deforestation and river community meltdowns that they would trigger, they’re really not worthy of the name.
The obvious example of the latter–of there being better alternatives–is how we get our energy. Our energy needs are highly substitutable–it doesn’t much matter to a toaster whether the power making our breakfast comes from coal, wind or solar. But the ecological and environmental impact of different energy-generating projects is far from uniform.
This is true even among “green” energy sources. Wind and solar have arguably the lowest and most easily mitigable consequences. Hydropower can be relatively benign or completely devastating according to the geographical setting (dams + Amazon/Congo Basin or Mekong Delta = Uh Oh).
But it’s especially true for non-renewable energy sources like coal, gas and oil which come tacked with large environmental “externalities”. Things like pollution and climate change that aren’t internalised into the cost of their use.
So when environmentalists and conservationists are decried as “anti-development” for protesting against the creation of thousands of kilometres of new oil pipelines, or a particular dam project, or a new fracking site, again, is that really the case?
Ironically, isn’t it exactly the opposite? They’re not saying “no, that’s it, absolutely no more of this development malarkey, let’s all live in underground candlelit bunkers and eat cold beans”. It’s more of a “c’mon, we know there are better ways of getting energy, of building roads, of doing X, why don’t we invest in those?”
And sometimes there is no option but to hold corporate lobbyists to account and ask: “is this actually development ? Is it really?”
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