A study affirms that the wealth of northern countries is due to the plundering of the south

The growth of “advanced economies” of the northern countries it depends on a net appropriation of resources and labor from the South, obtained through price differentials in international trade.

This is demonstrated by a study led by Jason Hickel, a researcher at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), in Spain, which has analyzed the environmental footprint to calculate the scale and value of the hoarding of resources in the South between 1990 and 2015.

The results, published by the journal Global Environmental Changeshow that, during 2015, the countries of the North appropriated, in net terms, 12,000 million tons of equivalent raw materials from the southmeaning that nearly half (43%) of the North’s annual material consumption is a net appropriation from the South.

The authors understand by net appropriation that these resources were not compensated in equivalent terms through trade.

Likewise, the ‘advanced’ countries of the North appropriated during 2015 822 million hectares of southern land (more than twice the size of India), as well as 21 exajoules of energy (equivalent to 3.4 billion barrels of oil) and 392 billion work hours.

If calculated in northern prices, the flight of resources and labor amounted to 10.8 billion dollars in 2015, “an economic amount sufficient to end extreme poverty 70 times”, according to the authors of the work.

This amount would rise to 242 billion dollars if the entire period studied is taken into account.

According to economic anthropologist Jason Hickel, the 822 million hectares of land used for the benefit of northern countries would be enough to provide food for 6 billion peopledepending on the productivity of the land and the diet.

It also ensures that the appropriate energy from developing countries would be enough to cover the annual energy needs of the construction of infrastructures that would guarantee the 6,500 million people of the global south the access to decent housing, public transport, health care, education, sanitation or communications.

“In other words, all of this productive capacity could be used to meet local human needs, but instead it goes to serve capital accumulation in the North,” Hickel denounces.

For developing countries in the north, this grabbing represents a huge profit, equivalent to a quarter of their GDP.

The study confirms that much of the ecological impact of resource use in the North is indeed shifted to the South: “the north benefits from the appropriated resources while the south suffers the damageHickel says.

The work also compared the international development aid received from rich countries with this appropriation of resources, and reveals that, for every dollar of aid they receive from the North, they lose an average of 30 dollars due to the plundering of donor countries.

“So that, the poorest countries are developing the richest countries, and not the other way around”, according to Hickel, who recalls that the study confirms that unequal exchange is a major driver of global inequality, uneven development and ecological collapse. (I)