In their report Global Warming in an Unequal World: A Case of Environmental Colonialism, Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain of the Centre for Science and the Environment launch a damning critique of WRI. They claim that World Resources 1990-91 is "designed to bolster both foreign and domestic policy interests of Western nations whose governments would like to convince domestic environmentalists that their nations are not alone to blame and cannot do much locally unless they rope in the hapless Third World".

The case put forward in the CSE report rests mainly on two arguments: first, that WRI have exaggerated emissions of CO2 from deforestation and methane from rice fields and livestock, compared to CO2 from fossil fuels (see main article); and second that the earth's ability to absorb greenhouse gases should not be apportioned among countries according to how much they pollute, but should be distributed equally around the world on a per capita basis. CSE thus point out that India, with 16.6 of the world's population in 1990, produced only six per cent of the carbon and 14.4 of the methane which is absorbed by natural sinks worldwide. The US, meanwhile, with only 4.73 per cent of the world's population, emits 26 per cent of the carbon dioxide and 20 per cent of the methane that is absorbed by sinks every year: "How can, therefore, India and other such countries be blamed even for a single kg of the filth that is accumulating in the atmosphere on a global scale and threatening the world's people with a climatic cataclysm?"

Using WRl's method of apportioning "net" emissions, since India produces 12 per cent of global methane emissions it is also responsible for 12 per cent of the methane that is actually accumulating in the atmosphere. But if the CSE per capita apportioning of sinks is used, India is shown not to be responsible for any of the methane accumulating in the atmosphere&emdash;in fact, according to CSE, Indians effectively subsidize the high emissions of other countries by not using up their full allowance of sinks.

Although Agarwal and Narain's method of apportioning the earth's sinks is conceptually attractive, their calculations of national contributions are still based upon WRI's single index method and the use of the airborne fraction. Many of the criticisms of WRI's methodology in the main article therefore also apply to CSE's approach. But regardless of this, the CSE analysis does demonstrate how sensitive the results of this kind of assessment are to basic assumptions and underlying values. WRI's league table of top polluters is altered considerably when the CSE method is used, and the net contribution to global warming of developing nations drops from 47 to 33 per cent.

Fear of the Future and Neglect of the Past

CSE are scathing about the emphasis WRI and other Western environmental groups put on controlling future increases in emissions in the Third World, while neglecting the true scale of the cuts that will be needed in the First World. For example, the conclusion which WRI draw from the low per capita emissions figures from India and China is not that citizens in India and China contribute very little to global warming: instead they are taken as an indication of "how much greenhouse gas emissions and global warming potential might grow if developing countries, in the process of development, significantly increase their per capita emissions." Yet no mention is made of projected increases in carbon dioxide emissions from the US. A report from the Congress Office of Technology Assessment predicts that, without new legislation, US carbon dioxide releases will increase by 50 per cent&emdash;a massive 614,00 tonnes of carbon&emdash;over the 25 years to 2015.

Taking the UN's projection for India's population in 2025 (a 70 per cent increase to 1,445 million), each Indian could have increased their average annual carbon emissions from 1987 levels by 3-and-a-half times and India's total carbon releases in 2025 would still be 55,000 tonnes less than those of the US ten years earlier. Similarly, China's per capita emissions could double by 2025 and yet the country's carbon emissions would be 150,000 tonnes less than those of the US in 2015.

The emphasis on hypothetical future emissions from the developing world, to the neglect of real past and present emissions from developed countries, is common among Western politicians and others who wish to avoid facing up to the changes which will have to be made in their own economies. As Agarwal and Narain rightly assert:

" . . . such statements, now commonplace in the West, [are] both irresponsible and highly partisan . . . literally amounting to blaming the victim. If anything the available figures show that the West must immediately put its own house in order."

Back...