The Guardian 23 July, 2008
Fidel Castro at Earth Summit:
Consumer societies responsible
for environmental destruction
The following is the complete text of Cuban President Fidel Castro’s speech at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro on June 12, 1992.
An important biological species is at risk of disappearing due to the rapid and progressive removal of its natural habitat: humankind.
We are becoming aware of this problem when it is almost too late to prevent it.
It is worth indicating that the main responsibility for the atrocious destruction of the environment lies with the consumer societies. They are the offsprings of the old colonial metropolises that also engendered the poverty and backwardness which are today the scourge of the great majority of humankind.
With only 20 percent of the world’s population, they consume two-thirds of all metals and three-fourths of the energy produced worldwide.
They have poisoned the oceans and the rivers. They have polluted the air. They have weakened and opened holes in the ozone layer and have saturated the atmosphere with gases that impair climatic conditions with the catastrophic effects we are beginning to suffer.
Forests disappear, deserts grow. Billions of tons of fertile soil are washed into the sea every year. Numerous species face extinction. Overpopulation and poverty lead to desperate efforts for survival, even at the expense of nature.
It is not possible to blame the Third World nations, yesterday’s colonies and today still despoiled and plundered by an unjust international economic order, for all this.
The solution cannot be to prevent the development of those who need it the most. The truth is that everything that contributes to underdevelopment and poverty constitutes a flagrant violation of the ecology. As a consequence, tens of millions of men, women and children die every year in the Third World, far more than in the two world wars.
The unequal terms of trade, protectionism and the foreign debt are also an assault on the ecological balance and facilitate the destruction of the environment.
A better distribution of the wealth and available technologies would be necessary to spare humanity such destruction throughout the planet. Less luxury and less waste in a few countries would mean less poverty and hunger in much of the world.
The transference to the Third World of the lifestyles and consumer habits ruin the environment should be avoided. Let human life be more rational. Let a just international economic order be implemented. Let science work toward a sustainable development without pollution. The ecological debt should be paid and not the foreign debt. Hunger should be done away with, and not humanity.
Now that the supposed threat of communism has disappeared and there is no more pretext to wage cold wars or continue the arms race and military spending, what then prevents the immediate use of those resources to foster development in the Third World and to avert the ecological destruction threatening the planet?
Let this be the end of selfishness and domination; the end of callousness, irresponsibility and deceit. Enough of insensitivity, irresponsibility and deceit. Tomorrow, it will be too late to do what should have been done a long time ago.