developing countries

Waste colonialism

September 24, 2025 By EarthWise 1 Comment

Plastic pollution is a pervasive environmental problem that manifests itself in multiple ways. Very little plastic is recycled; most of it ends up in landfills or is burned, both solutions having serious shortcomings. High-income countries – such as many in Europe, the United States, Japan, and Australia – facing increasingly strict regulations in disposing of waste, have long grappled with the problem.

One approach they have often pursued for dealing with plastic waste is to export the waste elsewhere, preferably to countries with weaker waste regulations. For over 20 years, China was the place to send plastic waste. In the 1980s-90s, China accepted trash from richer countries to salvage raw materials from it. This led to serious pollution, health risks, and illegal dumping. In 2018, China banned the import of plastic waste.

Since then, Western countries have sent their waste to other parts of Asia and Africa. These waste exports are often advertised as contributions to recycling, but mostly, it is just a charade that simply makes the waste someone else’s problem – namely less developed countries, often with inadequate waste management infrastructure.

This practice of developed nations consuming excessively and exporting their waste to less developed countries is known as waste colonialism. It is a modern incarnation of historical colonialism, where natural resources and labor were stripped from colonized regions.

Its inherent injustice aside, the practice does not solve any of the problems created by waste. It just moves them somewhere else.

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Waste Colonialism: A Brief History of Dumping Rich Countries’ Trash in the Global South

Photo, posted February 13, 2011, courtesy of Dan DeLuca via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Decreasing Forest Area Per Capita | Earth Wise

September 7, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Over the past 60 years, global forest area has decreased by 315,000 square miles, an area about twice the size of California. Combined with global population growth over that period, this has resulted in more than a 60% decline in global forest area per capita.

The continuous loss as well as degradation of forest affects the integrity of forest ecosystems and reduces their ability to generate and provide essential services and sustain biodiversity. It impacts the lives of at least 1.6 billion people worldwide – primarily in developing countries – who depend upon forests in multiple ways.

According to the new study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, forest losses have been occurring primarily in lower-income countries in the tropics while forest gains have occurred in higher-income countries in the mid-latitudes or extratropics.

More than half of the world’s forest losses were in Brazil, home to the Amazon rainforest. In the past 60 years, that country has had a net loss of 170,000 square miles of forest. While most high-income countries had net forest gains, Canada actually had a net loss of about 11,000 square miles of forest.

Economic growth has a stronger association with net forest gain than with net forest loss. Therefore, the study highlights the need to strengthen the support given to lower income countries, especially in the tropics, to help improve their capacity to minimize or curtail their forest losses. To help address this ongoing displacement of forest losses to lower income countries, higher-income nations need to reduce their dependence on imported tropic forest products.

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New study finds global forest area per capita has decreased by over 60%

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Saving Lives With Air Conditioning | Earth Wise

August 26, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

This summer, extreme heatwaves struck the United States, Europe, and Africa. Thousands of people died as a result. In July, the impact of extreme heat in places ill-prepared for it was evident. In the U.K., where air conditioning is uncommon, public transportation shut down, schools and offices closed, and hospitals cancelled non-emergency procedures.

Air conditioning, which we mostly take for granted in this country, is a life-saving tool during extreme heat waves. However, only about 8% of the 2.8 billion people living in the hottest – and often poorest – parts of the world have AC in their homes.

A new study at Harvard modeled the future demand for air conditioning as the number of days with extreme heat continues to increase across the globe. The researchers identified a massive gap between current AC capacity and what will be needed by 2050 to save lives, particularly in low-income and developing countries.

If the rate of greenhouse gas emissions continues on its present course, the study concluded that that at least 70% of the population in several countries will require air conditioning by 2050. The number will be even higher in equatorial countries like India and Indonesia. At this point, even if the goals of the Paris Climate Accords are met, an average of 40-50% of the population in many of the world’s warmest countries will still require AC.

The research looked at various scenarios. One in which emissions continue to increase leads to widespread need for air conditioning even in temperate countries. In Germany, 92% of the population would need it, and here in the U.S., 96% would need it.

Planning for future power systems must take into account the essential needs of a warming world.

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In a hotter world, air conditioning isn’t a luxury, it’s a lifesaver

Photo, posted July 24, 2021, courtesy of Phyxter Home Services via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Who Can Solve The Plastic Waste Problem? | Earth Wise

June 21, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Plastic packaging waste is a global problem. It collects in the oceans, breaks down into microplastics, which are consumed by fish and in turn by people who eat the fish. Only 14.5% of U.S. plastic waste is recycled. Most of it ends up in landfills, where is remains undegraded for hundreds of years.

A new international study explored the global patterns of plastic packaging waste. The study found that three countries – the U.S., Brazil, and China – are the top suppliers of waste. In terms of supply, the Americas generate 41% of the world’s production of plastic waste, Europe 24%, and Asia 21%.

That’s the plastics supply. As far as the consumers actually creating waste are concerned, the Americas represent 36% of the world’s packaging consumption, Asia 26%, and Europe 23%.

Packaging high-protein food such as meat, fish, and dairy is a major contributor to the waste problem. Plastic for this purpose is hard to replace and international exports exacerbate the problem, accounting for about 25% of plastic packaging waste.

International agreements typically focus on restrictions and fees on production. But that mostly creates strong incentives to simply relocate polluting activities to developing countries, which is a zero-sum game. There need to be incentives for consumers to reduce plastic use such as taxes on waste management, refunds on returning bottles, single-use plastic bans, and so on.

Who can solve the plastic waste problem? Everyone along the supply chain as well as the final consumers have to be part of the solution for reducing plastic waste.

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Producers and consumers must share burden of global plastic packaging waste

Photo, posted March 29, 2022, courtesy of Ivan Radic via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Out-Migration And Reforestation

November 4, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

A challenging global trend is that of deforestation in developing countries. But there are places where the opposite trend is happening. Nepal is one such place.

According to satellite imaging, in 1992 forest covered 26% of Nepal. As of 2016, that number was 45%.

To some extent, the forest regrowth was a result of policy changes from about three decades ago, when the government began removing management authority from bureaucrats and shifting it to local communities across the country. This local management helped to reduce illegal logging and many local villages undertook tree-planting campaigns.

But perhaps a bigger factor at play is human migration. In recent decades, millions of Nepalis have left the country to work in the Persian Gulf, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere. The out-migrants wire money home and meanwhile, families left behind rely less on forest products or abandon farmland, aiding reforestation. A 2018 study showed that the areas with the highest out-migration experience, on average, had the most forest recovery.

Globally, migration has important impacts on forests, but not always positive ones. In many countries, forests seem to recover as people leave rural areas to work elsewhere. El Salvador, for example, has seen a rebound of its forests as many of its rural residents move to cities or even to the United States. But in Guatemala and Nicaragua, the return of migrants bringing money they have earned overseas has led to an expansion of cattle ranching that has harmed forests.

The global relationship between migration and forests is a complicated one that depends on whether the migration is one-way or “circular” (meaning that the migrants eventually return) and how returning migrants make use of their earnings from abroad.

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Web Links

In Nepal, Out-Migration Is Helping Fuel a Forest Resurgence

Photo, posted September 30, 2018, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Geoengineering And Developing Countries

June 21, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

There are some mind-boggling schemes being discussed to mitigate the global warming caused by greenhouse gases. These include placing giant mirrors in orbit to reflect sunlight before it reaches Earth and launching millions of tons of sulfur into the stratosphere to simulate the effects of a major volcanic eruption.