October Topic Overview

Resolved: When in conflict, the United Nations should prioritize global poverty reduction over environmental protection. 

Background and Overview 

The United Nations has several programs aimed to combat both poverty and environmental protection. The UN’s “Millennium Project” aims to cut global poverty in half by the year 2015, and the “United Nations Environment Programme” seeks to enable nations to care for their environment. These two examples will probably be the most useful in round, since they are broad and all encompassing. Most programs aimed at reducing global poverty or protecting the environment will come through these. [1]    I

t will be useful for both sides to research ways in which the United Nations has attempted to reduce global poverty and protect the environment, as these examples will surely come up in round. While this topic does specify the United Nations and examples of United Nations projects will be used, I doubt that very many debates will focus on this actor. Rather, the debates will most likely focus on global poverty reduction versus environmental protection and why one should be valued over the other in a more general context.  

Please note that this topic specifies “when in conflict.” So it can be argued that the negative cannot say that the two do not conflict and thus both can be achieved. Negatives may choose to argue that their burden is to disprove the resolution and that they can do this by arguing that global poverty reduction and environmental protection do not conflict.  We discuss this approach below.  However, it may be best to avoid this line of argumentation altogether as affirmatives may be able to convince many judges that the wording of the resolution means that negatives must accept that there is a conflict.   Also note that the resolution specifies reducing “global” poverty. Thus, examples of the United Nations reducing poverty among a specific people or in a specific nation may not be relevant. The affirmative should focus on reducing poverty in general.  

Affirmative 

The affirmative definitely has the advantage of compassion on their side. Some debaters may argue that it is immoral to consider risking the lives of thousands to protect the environment, and the judge will be sympathetic to calls to help the poor instead of the environment because of that. The affirmative may choose to start their first speech by illustrating the horror and misery of poverty. Statistics detailing the most gruesome aspects of poverty will make it difficult for any judge to rationalize capping CO2 emissions over feeding a starving child.    

The affirmative can also argue that the effects of environmental degradation are not as immediate or as urgent as poverty related issues. We have plenty of time to deal with the environment, but not very much time at all to deal with people who are already dying of starvation and thirst. Large amounts of people are not going to be incredibly affected if we allow cars to run at a poor emissions quality for another two weeks, but thousands of people will die in two weeks if they are not fed. So, affirmatives can argue that if they come in conflict we should deal with the problem that is more urgent and life threatening. 

Affirmatives can also argue that reducing poverty will lessen the strain on the environment in the long term. This argument is based on the Kuznets Curve. When nations begin to develop, little concern is given to the environment.  Impoverished nations tend to have heavy deforestation, pollution from factories because of old technology, and overuse their natural resources. People in poverty also tend to have more children, exacerbating these problems.  Once nations attain a certain level of wealth they start looking beyond mere survival and place a greater weight on a clean environment.  At this point they become concerned with clean water, decreasing deforestation, and decreasing carbon dioxide emissions. What this means is that when nations are first developing there is a conflict between poverty reduction and environmental protection, but over the long term there is no conflict.  Because of this affirmatives can argue that poverty reduction will likely lead to increased environmental protection.  You can find empirical examples of this by searing for “environmental Kuznets Curve” on Google.  This document may be a good place to start: www.owlnet.rice.edu/~econ480/notes/20.doc   

Affirmatives can also argue that poverty is much easier to combat than environmental problems. Rarely does reducing global poverty cause very much political turmoil. Countries all over the world have realized and accepted the need to reduce poverty, and will support efforts to do so. Protecting the environment, on the other hand, is an issue that creates loud and angry political debates. Many countries do not or cannot meet the standards for environmental protection set up by the United Nations or by international agreements, and some simply ignore them. The affirmative can look to examples such as the G8 summit[2] that took place this past July, or the Kyoto Protocol[3] for examples of ineffective international agreements. An argument such as this would be easy to make, since it values supporting something that will, in all likelihood, create international harmony rather than international chaos.  

Next, affirmatives can argue that environmental protection policies enacted by the United Nations will represent eco-imperialism.  Eco-imperialism is a phrased coined by Paul Driessen, currently a senior policy advisor at the Congress for Racial Equality.  He argues that environmental policies often represent a forceful imposition of Western environmental views on developing countries that will serve to keep them in poverty.  For more on this view read his book Eco-Imperialism: Green Power and Black Death.   

Finally, affirmatives can argue that the resolution is true because of the United Nation’s mission.  The United Nations was founded in 1945 after WWII with the goal of stopping war between countries.  Affirmatives can argue that poverty and conflict are inextricably linked and that policies to tackle poverty in countries that are prone to conflict are essential to reduce the likelihood of war in developing countries.  

Negative 

Negatives definitely have the shorter end of the compassion stick. Affirmatives will make you out to be immoral and out of touch with the real effects of poverty and the people in it.  In order to combat this, you may choose to make it very clear from the beginning of the debate that you are not against all measures to reduce global poverty. You can actually say that you are a big fan of poverty reduction, and agree with the fact that poverty is a horrible thing. You can say that you are only against measures that conflict with protecting the environment. In any case, the other team should not be able to convince the judge that you are against helping those in poverty.  

Negative’s can also argue that the United Nations is likely to give foreign aid to combat poverty and then argue that this is ineffective and can even exacerbate the problem.  Aid to developing countries is often subject to corruption by recipients.  Aid is ineffective because of the appalling way in which many developing countries are governed.  When countries lack the transparency and accountability necessary to ensure that donations are used to help citizens, foreign aid often fails to reach its intended recipients.  Some political scientists have even found that aid leads to less transparency.  Knack and Brautigam, political scientists, measured the quality of governance in countries that are dependent on foreign aid and found “there is a robust statistical relationship between high aid levels in Africa and deteriorations in governance.”[4]  There is a rich literature on the failure of foreign aid that may be useful to you on the negative side if you win that the UN would prioritize global poverty reduction by giving development aid. 

In addition, just like the affirmative will be painting a picture of how horrible poverty is, negatives will need to use statistics and examples to illustrate the current state of the environment. Before you convince the judge to vote negative, you will need to convince him or her that the environment deserves concern.  One of the most effective arguments that the negative can make is that while a reduction in poverty would help those in poverty, protecting the environment helps the globe. The destruction of the environment means the end to all of us, rich or poor. The negative needs to make the case that, even though it seems immoral to sacrifice the well being of the poor for the environment, the environment sustains all of human life.  

The argument also needs to be made that the poor benefit from the improvement of the environment. Often, the poor in developing nations are the most effected by the worsening environment. You can argue that global warming has produced monsoon like rain in parts of Africa, while causing severe droughts in others. Both severely affect the ability to farm, and are ruining fertile farmland in the most impoverished of areas. The higher temperatures also favor the breeding of mosquitoes which carry dozens of diseases that, if contracted, are deadly in areas of high poverty that commonly have little to no access to medical treatment.  

You could also argue that harming the environment has larger international impacts than poverty. If one country is harming the environment, then it negatively affects the countries around them. Poverty within a country does not necessarily do that. Arguably, the fact that Ethiopia has a high level of poverty does not affect its bordering countries. But, if Ethiopian factories were giving off high levels of smog, that would effect the neighboring countries. Negatives can argue that because of its global reach the United Nations is in a unique position to address this problem.