Eric Mensah Kumeh
March 19, 2019
“Without each other and drastic action against inequality, we’ll have no common future to look forward to.”
Dear Youths of Developed Countries,
For a long time, my people, Sub-Saharan Africans–although all humans are born free and equal– were enslaved by your people. It took centuries of fighting and bloodshed for us to eventually have a shot at independence. But even in our independence, your people continue to use diverse Machiavellian tactics to keep us from being truly independent and discovering our potential.
Through neo- colonial pathways, your leaders have done everything possible to exploit our resources to primarily benefit themselves, at our expense. We remain poor even in our riches and this has become a reinforcer of the barriers that divide us: wealth, power, and race. They paint the picture that relentless pursuit of economic wealth, greed, is the best thing and that it should come before notions of equality and environmental stewardship. For many of your folks, our resource richness only exists to advance your interests. They will do everything and anything to exploit them, including killing our people who try to get in their way.
After exploiting us, they try to assuage their guilt by buying us with aid and loans which further deepen the boundaries between us. They call you, rich and economically developed countries, the global North; and us, poor underdeveloped countries, the global South. Some even call us shitholes. Irrespective of the names and boundaries, “the global” is warming and we’re all at risk. Indeed, climate change is a great equalizer and it will be for years to come.
Since the turn of the century, calls to address climate change have been intense, but they have not been heeded enough. The recent strikes against climate change by youths from around the world have particularly won my attention way more than the weeks leading up to the Paris Agreement or the global promulgation of the SDGs. Youths from almost every part of the world were in on it: global North or South, shithole or not. Although, the outputs might not be immediate, I see one. It has reinforced my conviction that we are in this together. Global North or South, our destinies are yoked together. So, thank you very much Greta Thunberg for inspiring all of us to action.
Let me repeat that climate change is a great equalizer. But it impacts are also a reminder that if we sow greed and protect inequalities we cannot and will not go unpunished. Call it karma if you like.
There is ample evidence that our unsustainable production and consumption lifestyle is a key driver of climate change. For centuries, leaders and businesses from the global North have taken pride in exploiting the Global South of its mineral and forest resources to build for themselves better lives to the detriment of the true resource owners. The benefits, mostly “economic development” are there to be seen and envied by all. But this economic development has come at a significant cost to the environment. Having destroyed most of their own ecosystems and carbon sinks, your leaders of the global North headed for the remaining natural ecosystems and carbon sinks of the global South to feed their high carbon-based lifestyles. For examples, look at how rich chocolate empires built by your leaders have extirpated forests of West Africa, and are now heading for the remaining forest of the Congo Basin. Similarly, demand for timber and meat decimated the Amazon, while oil palm wealth has come at a massive destruction of forests in Indonesia.
The piling environmental costs are beginning to blow up in our faces. Worse still, the inequities and inequalities associated with these production systems have caused structural disorientation in the global South. As a lasting legacy of colonialism and the scramble for our resources, most global South countries have been structurally stagnated and cannot see beyond primary production. For our efforts to feed your, and increasingly our own growing greed, we destroy the environment. Rich as you may be, your people compensate us with peanuts for our productive resources. As a result, in our quest to move towards economic liberation, we destroy more of the environment in what has now become a vicious cycle that only reinforces income inequality and drives climate change.
As long as this pathway remains, the global South will remain underdeveloped bottom feeders who will not make any significant contribution to climate action.
“As long as people in the global South remain poor, they will not be able to make significant contributions to the fight against climate change.”
We cannot address climate change if we do not place greater emphasis on addressing the underlying pressures of greed, poverty and inequality in our production systems. There are mostly two types of human needs: basic and moral needs. Your countries are called the global North because you have overcome your basic needs. Most of us in the global South are still unable to make ends meet and are without adequate access to food, shelter, health care and education. Until these needs are met, most people in the global South will not have a sense of urgency to truly attend to their moral needs, including fighting climate change. At least not at a scale that will matter. Let’s face it, dire as the impacts of climate change may be, people will not truly care about disappearing forests or draining peatlands when they cannot feed themselves. Do not get me wrong, paying lip service is different from caring enough to act.
If we truly want to address climate change, then I urge you to stand up to your leaders and put their relentless crave for more economic gains in check. Same for our joint relentless consumerism; the recent Global Resources Outlook 2019 shows that the material footprint per capita of the global North is 27 tons. This is 13 times more than most people in the global South. Again, this is not the time for blame games.
If we fail to demand these checks, we will be puncturing our own lungs. And like we are already seeing, this will only leave us gasping for air. It is true that our parents, mostly yours, have eaten sour grapes, but sadly, it is not only their teeth, but ours as well that are being set on edge. Our recent climate strikes are thus more than justified. But we need to do more.
A lot of us, youth of the global South, are fighting to liberate ourselves from the shackles of neo-colonialism and set ourselves on the path towards zero hunger and poverty. We are developing our competencies in good governance, demanding for transparency and accountability in resource extraction, and in some cases, insisting on the conservation of biodiversity hotspots. But that is only one side of the coin. Alone, we can only achieve so little because we are largely outmuscled by your folks. I trust therefore that you, youths of the global North, will cooperate with us in our struggle to break from the chains of neo-colonialism and the politics of exploitation, so that we can both freely, and in the spirit of cooperation, solidarity and innovation work towards our common future.
You can start by questioning investment decisions of your leaders in our resource rich countries where poor governance is pervasive. For example, the relentless accumulation of land by your leaders in countries like South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Equatorial Guinea. At the same time, boycotting products of companies who thrive of business-as-usual and deforestation driven commodities, including soy, cocoa, coffee and oil palm related products will challenge them to re-evaluate their methods and act more responsibly. Both pathways will reinforce our shared fight against inequality and climate change.
Let’s join hands and together, with the torch you have lighted, we can tackle climate change and look forward to our common future. Remember, the battle has only just begun. But our fight will be more meaningful if we can back it with some knockout punches that truly address the underlying causes of the problem.
With unwavering hope for our common future,
Eric Mensah Kumeh
Sustainable Development Goals addressed in this article
