21st open letter to US President Donald Trump

Mon, 19 Jun 2017 09:32:47 +0000

By Donald Chanda

Mr. President, you are digging an environmental trench in which the first to fall in will be Americans

I want to bring to your attention the truth backed by trends and statistics which well, globally known, researcher has placed on record for the leaders of all nations to use as they make national decisions and contributions to the environmental challenges of our time. Jeffrey Sachs in his book, COMMON WEALTH; ECONOMICS FOR A CROWDED PLANET tells us that, “the twenty-first century will overturn many of our basic assumptions about economic life. The twentieth century saw the end of European dominance of global politics and economics. The twenty-first century will see an end of American dominance. New powers including China, India and Brazil will continue to grow an will make their voices increasingly heard on the world stage. Yet the changes will be even deeper than a rebalancing of economics and politics among different parts of the world.

The challenges of sustainable development-protecting the environment, stabilizing the world’s population, narrowing the gap between the rich and poor and ending extreme poverty will take center stage. Global cooperation will have to come to the fore. The very idea of competing nation states that scramble for markets, power and resources will become passé. The idea that the United States can bully or attack its way to security has proven to be misguided and self deafiting. The world has become much too crowded and dangerous for more “great games’ in the Middle East or anywhere else. The defining challenge of the twenty-first century will be to face the reality that humanity shares a common fate on a crowded planet. The common fate will require new forms of global cooperation, a fundamental point of blinding simplicity that many world leaders have yet to understand or embrace. For the past two hundred years, technology and demography have consistently run ahead of deep social understanding. Industrialization and science have created a pace of change unprecedented in human history.

In the last seventy-five years, most successful countries gradually came to understand that their own citizens shares common fate requiring the role of Government to ensure that every citizen has the chance and means (through public education, public health and basic infrastructure) to participate productively within society, and to curb society dangerous encroachments on the physical environment. The activist philosophy which holds that the self-organizing forces of a market economy should be guided by overarching principles of social justice and environmental stewardship has not yet been extended robustly to global society”.

Mr. President, the Bruntland Commission and report gave us a veritable concept of  sustainable development and from it, a global road map was born, which nations have travelled on together this far. From 1972, nations took on development policies that have followed the path that; the right to development must be fulfilled so as to equitably meet developmental and environmental needs of present and future generations. The earth summit of Rio-1992, made all nations take practical policies and actions for the preservation of mother earth with the fullest realization that the human being has used every means to convert the natural resources into wealth. Rio plus 20 of 2012, together with the conferences of parties (COPS) have continuously illuminated the global environmental challenges.

Mr. President, your environmental view of the world is totally at variance with the profound global view of global leadership, which is also backed by proven scientific facts. I take it that your view is distorted by the global affluence and those who ravel in it; the power of the American economy and its envisaged global dominance and some unguarded belief that the almost divine scientific solutions of our time and mother earth will always provide. You are riding a tide of a bizarre combination of stone-age emotions that the earth will always provide; medieval beliefs- that even without scientific planning and calculations life should continue like it was yesterday and that “ star wars” life will be a reality soon here on earth .

In the words of Professor Edward. Wilson who wrote the foreword o Jeffrey Sachs book,” as the large mass of data summarized in common wealth, with sobering clarity, we have arrived at a narrow window of opportunity. Humanity has consumed or transformed enough of earth’s irreplaceable resources to be in better shape than before. We are smart enough and now one hopes, well informed enough to achieve self-understanding as a unified species. If we choose sustainable development, we can secure our gains while averting disasters that appear increasingly imminent.

Almost all of the crises that afflict the world economy are ultimately environmental in origin ; they prominently include climate change, pollution, water shortage, defaunation, decline of arable soil, depletion of marine fisheries, tightening of petroleum sources, persistent pockets of severe poverty, the threat of pandemic and a dangerous disparity of resource appropriation within and between nations”.

Mr. President, your position o the environmental challenges of the world is actually digging a trench in the world in which the Americans will be the first victims. The reasons are simple:

• America is the biggest economy and the impact will be big on America. The US economy commands resources from the rest of the world through an “octopus” of multinational corporations. The change in climate and depletion, degradation and pollution of those resources in various parts of world will amputate the legs of the “octopus” multinationals. The result will be waning of the American opulence.
• Increasing rich-poor disparities will shoot-up in America. There is already a historically carried over disparity based on race. The two disparities will get to the proportions of an exploding political- economic, social bomb, first in the US before engulfing the rest of the world.

Before you came to political leadership, other Americans were very clear on the issues of the environment. Former Vice President Al Gore had this to say, “Commonwealth” explains the most basic economic reckoning that the world faces. Despite the rearguard opposition o some vested interests, policies to help the world’s poor and the global environment are in fact the very best economic bargains on the planet”.

Mr. President, it is not too late for you and the American administration to correct your policy-action and become part of the answer to the environmental challenges of world today.

Humanity needs to steer the course of global development collectively as a unified species in a sustainable way. Every resource comes from and wealth is made from mother earth. All the millions of dollars one may have come from the environmental activities of and on earth, because even we human beings are but part of the environment. The air we breathe is not confined to our houses, nations or continents, it circulates all around the earth, the water resources naturally reticulates across oceans, the forests support life on the ground and above, in short, the bio-diversity and its maintenance are key to how we survive as earthly creatures.

I wish to end my letter by quoting Jeffrey Sach again, who writing in 2008 was prophetic about the American position on the global environmental issues. He said, “it has not been easy to forge cooperation even within national boundaries. In the first century of industrialization, England and other early industrializing countries were characterized by harsh social conditions in which individuals and families were largely left to scramble in the new industrial age. Charles Dickens and Friedrich Engels left a lasting testimony to the harshness of the times. Gradually fitfully, the early industrializing societies began to understand that they could not simply leave their own poor to wallow in deprivation disease and hunger without courting crime, instability and disease for all. Gradually an with enormous political strife, social insurance and transfer schemes for the poor became tools of social insurance and transfer schemes for the poor became tools of social peace and prosperity during the period from roughly 1880 onward. Around half a century ago, many nations began to recognize that their air, water and land resources also had to be managed more intensively for the common good of their citizens in an industrial age. The poorest parts of town could not be the dumping ground of toxic waste without jeopardizing the rich neighborhoods as well. Heavy industry was despoiling the air and water. Industrial pollution in one region could be carried be winds, rains and rivers hundreds of miles downstream to destroy forests, lakes, wetlands and water reservoirs. The forging of nationwide commitments was hardest in societies like the United States which are divided by race, religion, ethnicity, class and native born versus immigrants. Social welfare systems proved to be most effective and popular in ethnically homogenous societies such as Scandinavia where people believes that their tax payment were “helping their own”. The United State, racially and ethnically the most divided of all the high-income countries is also the only high income country without national health insurance (Note- After throwing out Obama Care). Even within national boarders of divided societies, human beings have a hard time believing that they share responsibilities and fates with those across the income, religious and perhaps especially, racial divide”.