The Political Anatomy of "Sustainable Development"

Up until recently, the burden of the unification of the world had nearly exclusively to be carried by the peoples of the Southern hemisphere. Starting with the plague killing millions of Aztects and Mayas, right after the white man's arrival, passing the deportation of generations of blacks as slaves to America, down to the slums and favelas in today's mega-cities in the Third World. And those who have been saved from these kinds of consequences, often had to struggle with political dependence, economic disadvantage and cultural degradation. Whichever achievements have been brought to the last corner of the globe by the gradual integration of the world, they shrink into insignificance in the face of the bitter consequences which have come along with it. By comparison, the countries of the North were able to corner the gains of the unification of the world on their side. Notwithstanding financial drain or humiliating retreat at times, it is sufficiently obvious that the rise of the West has in part been fuelled by the riches drained from the South of the world seemed to have been governed by some kind of magnetic law according to which the advantages concentrate in the North and the disadvantages in the South.

Wolfgang Sachs:

The Political Anatomy of "Sustainable Development"

Wuppertal Paper no. 35 (May 1995)

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