Eco-imperialism is a term coined by Paul Driessen to refer to the forceful imposition of Western environmentalist views on developing countries. The degree to which this occurs is a topic of debate, as is whether such imposition would be ethically justifiable.
In his book Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death[1], Paul Driessen argues that like the European imperialists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, today's eco-imperialists keep developing countries destitute for the benefit of the developed world.
By advocating for the precautionary principle, corporate social responsibility and sustainable development, Driessen claims, environmental groups legitimize their demands on government but often engender poverty and death in the process. Driessen also asserts that environmentalists' demands can sometimes cause environmental degradation.
Driessen's arguments are similar to those of environmental critic
Bjørn
Lomborg.
Eco-imperialism may also be one of the reasons the United States did not sign the Kyoto Protocol. American politicians feared that if we were forced to cut back on production in order to reduce emissions and developing countries were not held to any emissions standards, then the U.S. economy would suffer dramatically because of it, and fall behind in the extremely competitive world economic market.
An example of this might involve the introduction of a foreign species when colonizing. Often times when foreign species are introduced they create havoc in the native ecosystem and lead to extinction of local species as a result of the intruder's strange presence in the niche, which essentially throws the food chain out of line. This happens for both plant and animal species and can greatly reduce overall species diversity in the area.Ecology, Cain, Bowman, & Hacker, 2008
Another example of this is when the colonizing country claims dominion over a natural resource. For example when European settlers first came to America and expanded westward, they totally depleted the buffalo population and took away from Native Americans quality of life in doing so. So there is definitely a social justice component to eco-imperialism.
Some commentators maintain that eco-imperialism has a racial dimension, and occurs when environmentalists place the well-being of the environment over the well-being of humans, particularly non-whites, living in developing countries. Roy Innis, chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality has argued that European Union restrictions on the use of the pesticide DDT to combat malaria are killing 'black babies’. Environmental historian Ramachandra Guha has accused 'authoritarian' biologists of valuing the protection of endangered species over the well-being of local people in India and other developing countries.
Environmentalists have also argued that many of the problems facing
developed countries, such as climate change,
also pose significant or even greater threats to developing countries and thus warrant a
global response. They also point out that the some solutions to
problems of global hunger, such as the growing of genetically
modified crops, fail to address (and in some cases actually
exacerbate) the more fundamental problems of poverty and environmental degradation
that created hunger in the
first place.
   | "Black Gold?" - Black Gold? | Mother Jones |
| | Brendon O'Neill, ''The greens want to do right, but they are so wrong'' - ‘The greens want to do right, but they are so wrong’ | spiked |
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