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10. Nature is a commodity: Marketing God’s creation
The rapid expansion of the worldwide market for bottled water is a good example of how a nature’s bounty has been appropriated for private profit. By 2004, global consumption of bottled water was growing faster than 10 percent a year, with substantial increases in sales volume on every continent. The highest rates were occurring in Asia and South America, with annual sales increases of 15 percent or more.[32] In 2010, the market is forecast to be US $75 billion, an increase of 30 percent over 2005. This translates into a consumption estimate of 159.2 billion liters, an increase of 32 percent since 2005.[33] Water, which once was free or nearly so, has now become a big business.
The (often illegal) decimation of forest resources is another example of how quick profits can be turned on God’s creation. Deforestation, mainly conversion of forests to agricultural land, continues at an alarmingly high rate—about 13 million hectares per year are being lost. Notably, deforestation in the tropics is responsible for fully 15 percent of global warming pollution. In places such as Brazil, Indonesia and Malaysia, tropical deforestation is “enterprise-driven”—carried out by businesses seeking to put land into commercial production for urban and export markets. The firms involved in clearing tropical forests are not attracted by the available timber (which they often burn or leave to rot, producing carbon emissions) but by the low cost of land that deforestation makes available. These economic enterprises include large cattle ranches, commercial soybean production, and oil palm plantations for processed foods and bio-diesel.[34]
The good news is that forest re-planting, landscape restoration and natural expansion of forests have significantly reduced the overall loss of forest area. The net change in forest area in the period 2000–2005 is estimated at 7.3 million hectares per year (an area about the size of Sierra Leone or Panama), which is significantly less than the 8.9 million hectares per year in the period 1990–2000.
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This positive development is largely due to a set of innovative policies proposed by Costa Rica and Papua New Guinea at the international climate negotiations in 2005. Called REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), it established an international fund that compensates developing countries if they reduce their carbon emissions from forest clearing. This is an affordable solution for reducing global warming pollution because the costs of such compensation are considerably lower than the current costs of reducing carbon emissions from industries, vehicles and power plants.[35] The positive impact of the REDD approach can be seen in Brazil, which had promised to cut its rate of deforestation by 80 percent by 2020 but in fact had already achieved a 67 percent reduction by 2010. Strikingly, this reduction in global warming pollution is comparable to the reductions that both the United States and the European Union have only pledged to achieve by 2020.[36]
The fish that the Lord placed in the world’s oceans have not escaped appropriation by commercial interests. The numbers of large ocean fish (salmon, tuna, etc.) have declined by 54 percent in the past 40 years due to the intense competition of commercial fishing.[37]
The latest scramble for nature’s resources is shaping up in the Arctic. As global warming melts the polar icecap and opens shipping lanes, corporations hungrily eye vast petroleum and mineral deposits located below the ice. According to the United States Energy Information Administration, that currently frozen area could hold 22 percent of the world’s undiscovered conventional oil and natural gas resources.[38] As countries and corporations begin to jockey for position, the rights of native Alaskans could be ignored. “This is our land,” states a liaison with the Alaska Inter-Tribal Council, an advocacy group representing the region’s indigenous peoples. “We aren’t happy with everyone trying to claim it.”
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