Globalisation damaging environment - experts

Globalisation is irreparably damaging the environment, threatening the future survival of mankind itself, Gulf Cooperation Council-based environmental experts warned.

"While the industrial revolution caused an imbalance in the environment, today's economic globalisation is taking this imbalance so far that it today poses a grave threat to man's very existence on this planet," asserted Dr Omar Abdulaziz, head of Research and Studies at the Environment and Protected Areas Authority (EPAA).

Added Dr Badruddin Abdul Rahim, an economic expert at Oman's Ministry of Finance: "The present generations should desist from investing in some projects and industrial areas and leave it to future generations, who will be better placed to understand environmental requirements from a more holistic - and economic - perspective, as suggested by other respected economists."

They were addressing delegates at a symposium organised by the EPAA recently. Abdul Aziz Al Midfa, Director General, attended.

Dr Abdulaziz said economic globalisation is today resulting in the destruction of the rainforests of South America while boring a hole through the ozone layer, subjecting the inhabitants of the planet to harmful ultra-violet radiation.

It is also causing global warming due to increased carbon dioxide emissions owing to the power and transport industries, thus melting the polar ice-caps and threatening low-lying coastal areas; irreparably damaging our marine resources through overfishing; contaminating the soil and groundwater resources owing to chemicals and artificial fertilisers used to boost crop output; precipitating acid rain; and increasing the incidence of hurricanes and other natural calamities.

"It is, further, straining our resources, while permitting good food to be trashed even as others elsewhere starve - and all this is due to there being no control over capitalism, and over the inexorable globalisation process," he lamented.

Painting a stark scenario, he warned the future might prove even more bleak since man continues to ignore the numerous signals being put out by a delicate eco-system in imbalance.

"In the 1980s, an independent European study found Germany had enough stores of chemical weapons to kill all of earth's inhabitants four times over - and that was 20 years ago, which means further 'progress' would doubtless have worsened the scenario even further today.

"Further, the U.S. still has some 6,000 nuclear warheads, and Russia another 5,500 - and even safely disposing of these poses a challenge to the global environment," he pointed out.

He, however, acknowledged globalisation is an economic tool whose short-term advantages for those wielding it - who use technology to control their captive markets - might prove difficult to give up.

Meanwhile, Dr Abdul Rahim observed the challenge for man today is to achieve continued economic growth through creating environment models and systems that keep generating natural resources in a self-sustaining manner.

"While the aim here would be to improve the overall standards of living, the trick would be to successfully bridge the gap between lack of resources and the cost of damage to the environment," he said.

He urged a balance between economic development and environmental requirements to make for a self-sustaining model that survives into the future.

Dr Abdul Rahim also felt that from an economic perspective, a company owner should be held responsible for the pollution his plant is creating, and should be made to pay a pollution tax commensurate with the environmental damage.

"But the fundamental issue here is the environmental problem itself has to be solved; a pollution tax is a deterrent, but does not solve the basic problem."

Meanwhile, Dr Shubbar Al Widae, head of environmental cultural awareness at the EPAA, offered a five-pronged strategy to tackle the issue.

Key suggestions included creating increased public consciousness about the issue; explaining the concept of environmental conservation; highlighting the dangers of environmental devastation, particularly from the historical perspective; and actively exploring the possibility of incorporating self-sustaining eco-systems within our daily work cycles.