Governments and corporations Essay

There was no question of ownership of oil, water and other resources freely available in the environment before governments and/or private companies claimed ownership of these resources with the pronouncement that they would process and distribute these resources fairly. Poverty is a result of unfair distribution of resources. Moreover, environmental degradation ensues when governments or corporations are too greedy for immediate profits to consider the environmental impact of their business decisions. Surely environmental degradation accompanies loss of life. On the other hand, sustainable development is defined as â€Å"development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs† (â€Å"Adaptation to Climate Change in the Context of Sustainable Development†). The United Nations Economic and Social Council reports the following as an illustration of the ill effects of unsustainable development: †¦[The] rate of agricultural production growth at the global level has been about 2. 3 per cent between 1970 and 1990 and thus has exceeded population growth so that per capita supplies of food have increased. However, wide regional disparities remain: the situation improved greatly in East Asia but worsened in sub-Saharan Africa. There still remain large numbers of under-nourished people in developing countries†¦ The relentless exploitation of the natural resource base to achieve an increased level of agricultural production has resulted in increased natural resource scarcity and environmental degradation (â€Å"Promoting Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development†). The following case of the Aral Sea sheds greater light on the fact of natural resources being exploited when governments and/or corporations refuse to consider the trade-off that the concept of sustainable development is built upon. Situated southwest of Kazakhstan, northwest of Uzbekistan, and east of the Caspian Sea, the Aral Sea is presently a salt lake. Until the 1970s, the Aral Sea was the world’s fourth largest lake, fed by the Syr Darya and Amu Darya rivers (â€Å"Aral Sea†). When the dictator Josef Stalin rose to power in 1941, and right up to his death in 1953, he desired to make the Soviet Union self-sufficient in cotton, which is used for both gunpowder and clothing. Hence, the successors of Stalin during the 1960s and 1970s allowed an unlimited amount of irrigation water to be tapped from both the Amu Darya in the south and the Syr Darya in the northeast – to quench the thirst of the cotton fields (â€Å"Dike Built To Revive Aral Sea; Soviet-Era Policies Turned World’s Third-Largest Lake into Saline Hazard†). According to environmentalists, cotton grown in a desert is sure to result in immense wastage of water. On the other hand, smaller quantities of water may be used to produce abundant food. Moreover, it has been claimed that the Uzbeks use a rather wasteful procedure to irrigate their cotton from the Amu Darya. Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the independence of its republics, the government of Uzbekistan has continued its old ruinous policy, as cotton happens to be the principle hard-currency earner for the landlocked republic in west central Asia. Hence, the world’s fourth largest lake that once supplied approximately fifty thousand tons of fish every year or one hundred pounds of fish per acre has lost a staggering ninety percent of its volume. And, this has happened in the past half century alone. Most of the fish in the Aral Sea have died because the water has turned too salty to be inhabitable (â€Å"Dike Built To Revive†). The Soviet policy of using unlimited water from the rivers that fed the Aral Sea has been referred to as a bad one because the successors of Stalin, and now Uzbekistan’s government, failed to take into consideration the science behind dried former sea beds. As though the death of fish is not a big deal, a dried former sea bed also spawns dust storms spreading salt, pesticides and fertilizers. This is exactly what happened in the case of the Aral Sea, as the area’s already fragile semi desert was ultimately damaged, turning its people into some of the unhealthiest on the planet. Here, anemia figures top ninety percent (â€Å"Dike Built To Revive†). Of course, the Aral Sea disaster is a typical illustration of governmental policies gone astray. Then there are corporations that refuse to consider that the natural environment is built on cause-and-effect relationships just like business management. In early September 2006, a toxic waste dumping scandal of truly globalized proportions came to light in the Ivory Coast. The Probo-Koala, a tanker chartered by the London-based shipping company, Tranfigura, set off from Amsterdam carrying four hundred metric tons of petrochemical waste to dump in Abidjan, the port city of the Ivory Coast (Vidal; â€Å"Ivory Coast Toxic Tanker Impounded by Estonia†). Tranfigura informed the Amsterdam Port Services that the waste was absolutely â€Å"conventional† (Vidal). However, it was later discovered that the waste contained hydrogen sulfide, which happens to be a poisonous gas, smelling as rotten eggs (â€Å"Ivory Coast Toxic Tanker†). At least ten people lost their lives in the weeks immediately following the incident in the Ivory Coast (Vidal). Moreover, seventy five thousand people sought medical treatment with complaints of nausea, nose bleeds, breathlessness, vomiting, diarrhea, skin damage, headaches, and swollen stomachs (Vidal; â€Å"Ivory Coast Toxic Tanker†). Undoubtedly, if the corporation responsible for sending toxic waste to the Ivory Coast had been conscientious to begin with, lives would have been saved. Even so, maximization of profits is the goal of all producers. Depending on the moralities of their owners and managers, they may or may not believe in the need to behave ethically. Unfortunately, many for-profit businesses around the globe are known to engage in unethical practices, which is the reason why the government must step in to regulate markets and the practices of various business ventures when it is believed that doing so would be of benefit to society. Governments have the right to charge corporations for the damages they inflict upon people and their environment. Then again, as the example of Aral Sea shows, even governments may fail to understand that the environment, like business, is built on cause and effect relationships. As expected, governments that make bad policies or wrong choices may only profit in the short run. In the long run, everyone must pay for faulty policies. Those who are subjected to such governments have to pay through the disastrous effects of bad policies on an immediate level. Their fault seems to be that they did not protest soon enough the bad policies of their governments. Regardless of whether they are able to do so, the fact remains that unbridled profit seeking behavior at the expense of the environment costs lives. Works Cited â€Å"Adaptation to Climate Change in the Context of Sustainable Development. † United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Division for Sustainable Development. 8 May 2009. . â€Å"Aral Sea. † The Columbia Encyclopedia. 6th edition. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. â€Å"Dike Built To Revive Aral Sea; Soviet-Era Policies Turned World’s Third-Largest Lake into Saline Hazard. † The Washington Times (1 Oct 2005), p. A08. â€Å"Ivory Coast Toxic Tanker Impounded by Estonia. † Environmental News Service. 28 Sep 2006. 8 May 2009. . â€Å"Promoting Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development. † United Nations Economic and Social Council. 11-28 Apr 1995. 8 May 2009. .