Are Western-funded environmental NGOs such as Greenpeace operating in the Global South the moral arbiters of environmental issues affecting the poor and the marginalized? Are they the “global salvationists” giving succor to the “wretched of the earth”, promoting “sustainable development” in the face of predatory capitalists and their governmental supporters?
The agenda of the Western environmental NGOs operating in the developing countries is, in no uncertain terms, a left wing one. It demands radical changes in individual and social behavior opposed to the norms of modern industrial civilization, individualism, private property, profits and market competition. Such preferred changes are in keeping with the concept of “sustainable development”, a nebulous concept dreamed up by the luxury beliefs of privileged intellectuals of the developed West. It espouses the politically correct values that stand in opposition to the interests of economic development and the world’s poor in whose name the Western NGOs claim to speak.
Perhaps the clearest example of the perversions of “sustainable development” is the crisis last year in Sri Lanka’s agricultural sector. Encouraged by environmental NGOs such as Greenpeace, the government had rushed to introduce organic farming and imposed a nationwide ban on the importation and use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. It effectively ordered the country’s 2 million farmers to “go organic”.
The results were quick and horrific. Domestic rice production fell 20 percent in just the first six months. Long self-sufficient in rice production, the country was forced to import $450 million worth of rice and domestic prices surged by approximately 50 percent. The ban also devastated the nation’s tea crop, its primary export and source of foreign exchange.
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled to the Maldives… The president was the poster child of the World Economic Forum until the disaster happened and the WEF scrubbed him off its website.
The climate ideologues in charge of agricultural policy and “sustainable farming” in the developed countries such as Holland, the United Kingdom and New Zealand are busy emulating the horrific experiment that Sri Lanka underwent.
