RESEARCH REPORT Wealth imbalance seen as catalyst to catastrophe

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33577, 4 July 1974, Page 18

RESEARCH REPORT Wealth imbalance seen as catalyst to catastrophe

(From ALBERT CLACK, through N.Z.P.A.) BUENOS AIRES.

Ecologists who predict that the world will end with gradual dwindling of raw materials, and increasing famine and pollution, may be giving an optimistic view of how long mankind will last on earth.

Long before that, war on a catastrophic scale would wipe us out, unless there is a major review of how the world’s wealth is shared, according to a lengthy study by a group of Latin American scientists.

This is one of their findings in a study called “The Latin American World Model,” undertaken by Argentina’s Nariloche Foundation, a non-profit making, independent, scientific research organisation.

It was commissioned by the European Economic Market, and its deductions are backed by an awesome catalogue of computerised mathematics.

They calculate that continental conflicts are a greater threat to the world than pollution, starvation, or shrinking resources. The warning of destructive wars comes in an introduction to a progress report on the study, and its conclusions had already been checked, a spokesman’ said. "The obstacles to a harmonious development of mankind are not material — at least not in the foreseeable future — but sociopolitical, and they depend on the present distribution of power at international and national levels,” the report says. j

“This can be seen in the growing inequality between and within countries.

“If these tendencies persist," the report concludes ominously, “mankind will suffer a real catastrophe, long before any limitation in the eco-system becomes evi-i dent.” Challenge The report warns that the increasing pressure exerted by what it calls “the excluded masses” — those whose daily life is already a fight for any kind of happiness or even survival—would probably lead to the break-up of the international system through a series of conflicts on continental dimensions.

The report says that much of mankind already lives in conditions of misery, and it challenges studies made in industrialised countries which dwell on ecological doom.

“Hunger, illiteracy, premature death, lack of adequate housing — in other words, miserable living conditions — are the common destiny shared by the greater part of the population of developing countries,” it says. The report attacks studies by the advanced nations for concentrating on birth control, especially in developing countries.

The theory that population growth must be controlled, compulsorily, if necessary, to avoid world catastrophe, implied that so-called “natural barriers” to economic improvement allowed poor nations no hope of reaching the standards of living enjoyed by the advanced countries, the report claims.

It blames the environmental deterioration in the world today on “a culture whose practically only objective is the consumption of material goods to irrational levels.”

The industrialised countries of the present system, “look for solutions that do not affect the social organisation and system of values on which their privileged position is based,” it says. The report insists that, “the developing countries—victims of the present organisation of the world—are the only ones whose historical situation . moves them to formulate solutions that really take into account all possible degrees of freedom.” U.N. data

The study was based on several premises which were studied and linked with

i United Nations data. The researchers then used computers to establish multiple alternative roads to development, taking into consideration the present and probable future availability of resources and energy. From original hypotheses such as: no ecological conservation or reduction of consumption of natural resources can be effective until everyone has an acceptable living standard; and, corrective measures are not enough to end destructive, irrational, use of resources and environmental damage, the researchers drew their conclusions.

Probably the most important was that an equilibrium allowing rational use of Earth’s resources would be reached not by fear of an imminent technological disaster, but by mankind’s conception of the kind of society needed for the future.

The study concludes that iif its advice is followed there would be no danger of a critical shortage of mineral resources in the foreseeable future, especially if consumption were kept at the minimum to satisfy basic human needs.

On an optimistic note the study says the cost of exploiting natural resources would remain essentially constant—at least until man’s basic needs reached adequate levels. Energy cost would also remain virtually constant and would probably decrease in the short or medium term. Resources

But it warns that at the present unchecked rate of consumption, calculations show the total mineral resources still available in the ; Earth’s crust would only

meet man’s needs for the next 250 years. After the more accessible reserves were mined, costs would increase, it adds.

The findings of the study come during the United Nation’s World Population Year.

Prior to the World Population Conference, opening in Bucharest on August 19, the United Nations has produced figures showing that 30 per cent of the world’s people consume 80 per cent of its wealth.

The quotation, “history has shown that the birth rate only falls significantly when the standard of living rises significantly for the majority of the people,” carried in the United Nations preconference releases, would seem to back up the findings of the Latin American researchers.