Developing countries should prioritize environmental protection over resource extraction

Hello, wanting to run my ld arguments for debate. Good luck :) "Economic growth and environmental protection are not at odds. They're opposite sides of the same coin if you're looking at longer-term prosperity." Stated by Henry Paulson and affirming the resolution that "Developing countries should prioritize environmental protection over resource extraction when the two are in conflict." For this debate I will be offering the definitions of crucial terms needed for understanding points. Developing: starting to exist, experience, or possess. Prioritize: designate or treat something as more important than another Conflict : be incompatible or at variance; clash. The value is utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is defined by Oxford Dictionaries as the doctrine that actions are right if they are useful or for the benefit of a majority. When we look at environmental protection, we see that the people"s well-being is secured, and so the action of protecting the environment benefits society, or the majority. Utilitarianism should be the preferred value this round. First, it is trying to give benefits for society, which link very well into developing countries, as they are striving to become developed, or improve. With utilitarianism as the preferred value, developing countries, a majority, gets the benefits for society through environmental protection. Public health is the science of caring for the people of a community by giving them basic health care and health information, improving living conditions, etc. By protecting the environment, we are able to protect the world around us. This world is what we depend on to survive, and if we protect the world, we can protect the people. Hence, public health links into utilitarianism because public health keeps people healthy, which benefits society, the majority. Public health is of utmost importance because people and the environment are interdependent. When we prioritize environmental protection, we promote public health, which means that the well-being of society is secured, upholding utilitarianism. Contention 1: Future implications of resource extraction guide us to a harder future that can be avoided. Arno Behrens, "Human history has always been closely linked to the control, extraction and use of natural resources. Over the past decades, however, demand for natural resources has accelerated to the extent that it is now widely considered a serious threat to the well-functioning of economies and societies due to associated environmental problems such as climate change, biodiversity loss, desertification, and ecosystem degradation (IPCC, 2007; EPA Network, 2006; Stern Review, 2006; Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005; Wuppertal Institute, 2005; WWF, 2004; UNEP, 2002). The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Synthesis Report (2005, p. 16), for example, states that "over the past 50 years, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history, largely to meet rapidly growing demands for food, fresh water, fibre and fuel. This has resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss in the diversity of life on Earth." One of the key sustainability challenges for the coming decades will thus be to improve the management of natural resources in order to reduce current levels of anthropogenic environmental pressures." The Niger Delta in Nigeria region could experience a loss of 40% of its inhabitable terrain in the next thirty years as a result of extensive dam construction in the region. The carelessness of the oil industry has also precipitated this situation, which can perhaps be best encapsulated by a 1983 report issued by the NNPC, long before popular unrest surfaced: We witnessed the slow poisoning of the waters of this country and the destruction of vegetation and agricultural land by oil spills which occur during petroleum operations. But since the inception of the oil industry in Nigeria, more than twenty-five years ago, there has been no concerned and effective effort on the part of the government, let alone the oil operators, to control environmental problems associated with the industry'.[1] The amount of money earned does not justify poisoning water supplies and not protecting the environment. Contention 2: Focusing purely on resource extraction brings monopolization, an example would be blood diamonds. Experts claim that the illegal sale of blood diamonds has produced billions of dollars to fund civil wars and other conflicts in various African nations, including Sierra Leone (where conflict ended in 2002), Angola, Liberia, Ivory Coast and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Most of the time, the people behind these civil wars and rebellions oppose legitimate governments and desire control over the area's lucrative diamond industry. For example, in Sierra Leone a group known as the Revolutionary United Front killed, threatened, and even cut off the arms of people living and working in diamond villages until they were able to take control of the mines in the area. Then the group moved on to the next village to do more of the same, effectively terrorizing the entirety of Sierra Leone, to the point that many people fled their homes in fear. All in all, roughly 20,000 innocent people suffered bodily mutilation, 75,000 were killed and 2 million fled Sierra Leone altogether [source: PBS Online NewsHour]. According to National Geographic News, all of these conflicts combined have displaced millions and resulted in the deaths of more than 4 million people. The valuing of resource extraction brings monopolization domination (of a market or commodity) to the exclusion of others. In order to not have this monopolization occur there has to be regulations put in by the government to protect the environment. Due to inadequate planning and regulation, diamond mining has wreaked environmental havoc throughout Africa and other parts of the world. But damage to the environment is not the inevitable result of diamond mining " there are ways to mitigate the effects. A century of reckless diamond mining has taken a heavy toll on Angola"s environment. Irresponsible diamond mining has caused soil erosion, led to deforestation, and forced local populations to relocate. Angola"s diamond industry has been particularly careless in protecting rivers and streams from exploitation. Diamond miners have re-routed rivers and constructed dams to expose riverbeds for mining, with disastrous effects on fish and wildlife. Contention 3: The complication of environmental disaster vastly outweighs the benefits of resource extraction and countries with abundant resources don"t necessarily have success. Oil spills in countries can cost upwards of 40 billion dollars to repair or address and not only do they hurt the environment; they also take a huge chunk out of a developing countries pocket. The second point is that the resource curse, also known as the paradox of plenty, refers to the paradox that countries and regions with an abundance of natural resources, specifically point-source non-renewable resources like minerals and fuels, tend to have less economic growth and worse development outcomes than countries with fewer natural resources. This is hypothesized to happen for many different reasons, including a decline in the competitiveness of other economic sectors (caused by appreciation of the real exchange rate as resource revenues enter an economy, a phenomenon known as Dutch disease), volatility of revenues from the natural resource sector due to exposure to global commodity market swings, government mismanagement of resources, or weak, ineffectual, unstable or corrupt institutions (possibly due to the easily diverted actual or anticipated revenue stream from extractive activities). The idea that natural resources might be more an economic curse than a blessing began to emerge in the 1980s. In this light, the term resource curse thesis was first used by Richard Auty in 1993 to describe how countries rich in natural resources were unable to use that wealth to boost their economies and how, counter-intuitively, these countries had lower economic growth than countries without an abundance of natural resources.[1] Numerous studies, including one by Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Warner, have shown a link between natural resource abundance and poor economic growth.[2] The ambitions of the people and the government conflict, due to the large amount of resources and money a country's government amass for their own luxuries rather than for the people. Thus natural resources serve as a curse for the people, who then have a lower relative standard of living. With the money earned there could be more focus on protecting the environment and to share the ambitions of the people to limit amount of resources taken and to protect the country's well being as a whole.