It takes genuine passion and sacrifice for a young person to decide on growing up too soon, forgoing the pleasures of being in the company of their peers, having fun and getting up to pranks as expected and being rightfully a youngster. Greta Thunberg and Vanessa Nakate in their wisdom feel that their future is at stake, courtesy of dramatic climate changes that is upon the earth. The weather patterns across the world are changing where countries that were once traditionally temperate are now experiencing subtropical or freak weather occurrences. The Maldives in the southeast of Asia has seen the sea level risen dramatically over the last few decades. These threats are real, thus how is an equitable resolution of climatic change feasible?
The current world economic order is not even by any standards. It has been in place as it currently is since the end of the second world war. The major economic levers such as the IMF, World Bank, UN, and its institutions were creations of the major victors namely the United States, France United Kingdom and to a lesser extent USSR (Russia and the former soviet republic). These institutions and the countries mentioned, dictate the direction in which global economy and politics move. The end of political colonialism starting in the sixties threw up new countries that were and are still novices to the game of the global world order. In a room where many are just attendees and not moderators of a conference, it is obvious that the attendees are at the mercy of the moderators. This is the scenario of the non-industrialised/developing countries reality, sharing a space with the major industrialised mostly western nations.
Before the environment debate supposedly gained prominence of some sort, many developing countries have had to deal with the vagaries of market forces as it affects the price of their exports. Mining of precious metals are in most instances governed by contracts influenced or forced by international capital that are mainly financial institutions in the major western countries. At the heart of the economies of most developing countries, the transformative element in their overall productive capacity is very minimal.
There have been instances where some countries tried very hard to restructure the equation. The consequences were not positive. Ghana and Nigeria after independence paid the high price of trying to spearhead a newly industrialised Africa, the experiments were nipped in the bud, through questionable coups. Those coups were questionable, as time has eventually revealed. However, so much socio-economic damage has been wrought on these countries, that evidently would have midwifed African industrialisation on its own terms. There is no doubt that global climate is being altered but statistics shows that the degradation of the planet is a gradual process which goes back to the beginning of the 20th century.
The emergence of China as the new industrial bride, it would seem has fast forwarded the climatic change debate. To those that are not naïve, politics is not too far from the horizon but at the same time the reality of the globe in peril shouldn’t be swept under the carpet. A prominent feature of the COP26 is that developing countries are being forced to swallow the bitter pills of cutting down emissions, which they hadn’t mostly emitted. Africa accounts for 2% of total global emissions and would have to make the most of the sacrifices of keeping the environment safer from pollution and pollutants, while potentially stalling its socio-economic growth. Nigeria and other oil producing countries are being slammed with severe restrictions regarding how much they can produce, with oil becoming an obsolete commodity in the next two decades.
While it has been resolved, to fixing and capping the production of economic resources, ahead of attaining ‘‘zero emission’’, the application of market forces will continue dictate prices of oil, gas, precious metals, and other commodities. Nigeria pushed for and seemed to have obtained some net zero emission target concessions until 2060. The availability of a conducive global environment that would allow Nigeria and other developing countries achieve this laudable aim is another ball game altogether.
The image of Greta Thunberg, Vanessa Nakate and the other young climate advocates presented through the media are purposefully choreographed. These activists represent the future, and their youthfulness signifies subtlety a degree of innocence. That can’t be ignored. However, while the global economic structures, which shuts out majority of countries in terms of how the rules of international trade apply are still intact, then the gains of making economic production adhere to sustainable standards falls flat or fizzles into thin air.
© Copyright, Olugbenga Adebanjo
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