My name is Jabril Muhammad, I am 14 years old and I have ...



How has Western countries’ use of natural resources affected the climate and environment in Africa? Did Western pollution contribute to this famine? If so, how?

My name is Jabril Muhammad, I am 14 years old and I have chosen to write about, “How has Western countries’ use of natural resources affected the climate and environment in Africa? Did Western pollution contribute to this famine? If so, how?

The natural resources of the Earth are critical to the survival and development of mankind. These resources range from fossil fuels and natural gases to metal ores and land. These resources are finite, once used up they are gone forever. Others, such as air, water, and wood, are renewable — although we generally rely on the Earth's natural systems to regrow, renew, and purify them for us.

During these modern times we may begin to notice that the distribution of world’s natural resources is not equal. How is it that the 10% of the world’s people use 80% of the world’s resources, and the other 90% plus must survive on the remaining 20% of the Earth’s resources.

You would think most important resources like food and water would be shared evenly amongst the world’s population but surprisingly its not. You’d think this, because food is everywhere and if not you can grow food almost anywhere. But Western countries have their hand in the African countries affair so they are limited in what they produce. This is why so many people go hungry. Developed countries use more than their share of resources.  For example, the average American uses 20 times the energy of a Costa Rican and 70 times of a Bangladeshi. Scientist’s say that there is enough water on the planet for everyone although most of it is salty or frozen. If there is enough water on the planet for everyone then why doesn’t everyone have some?

Ten million people die of hunger every year, and most of them are infants and children. As you can probably tell from the statistic above, food, like water, is also unequally distributed.  About 1 billion people don’t have enough calories to even walk around. If the whole world ate like an average American only 2.6 billion people could be fed. Government and private sector health experts now estimate that 65 percent of America’s adults are overweight and 31 percent of adults are obese.

50 % of all malnutrition-related deaths (4 million annually worldwide) occur in Africa.

There was much research and debate regarding global inequality in 2005 with two major reports published on the issue, both agreeing that global income inequality continues to increase. The reports state 'the richest 50 individuals in the world have a combined income greater than that of the poorest 416 million. The 2.5 billion people living on less than $2 a day – 40% of the world’s population – receive only 5% of global income, while 54% of global income goes to the richest 10% of the world’s population.'

I have already stated that the distribution of the Earth’s natural resources was unjust but you may ask, as if it was obvious, in whose favour is the distribution of the Earth’s resources. Well the distribution of resource only benefits the western civilization i.e. Europe and America.

Food and water are not the only resources unfairly distributed among the worlds population. Oil also is unfairly distributed among the world’s population.

You can see from these charts and diagrams that the western civilizations have the least oil through out the world. You may find this very strange considering Europe and the US use the most oil. Well now that you can see from the graph’s above that only a very small percentage of the worlds oil reserves naturally occur in Europe and America you may be wondering, if Europe and America have very little oil reserves yet they use the most where do they get it from? They steal it from Africa and the Middle East and I will give an example of this later on. The Middle East has the biggest percentage of the world’s oil reserves. African is the best quality oil so it is cheaper to refine. These are the reasons that western countries find excuses to go into these countries steal oil. These western civilizations are far too clever to just go in to these countries and take the resources by force, the only time they will do this when the make it look like they are doing something good. They go into the country cause civil wars or wars amongst nations, and while they are busy fighting he reaps the benefits; he is able to control the resources of another country and still look like the ‘good guy’. An example of this is when America was in Iraq looking for ‘weapons of mass destruction’ coincidentally there was no weapons of mass destruction and Iraq has one of the biggest oil reserves. They have over 112 billion barrels reserves. And isn’t it strange how they were in Iraq long after it was proven that they have no weapons of mass destruction. With these facts I will let you draw your own conclusions. But the same kind of thing happens on a regular basis in Africa, this is why they have such a hard time developing. Now that he has the resources what do they do, build school, help treat world hunger and poverty; no. It is used to get an edge on other nations by building weapons capable of taking out entire cities.

As this oil is burnt it releases carbon dioxide (a green house gas) which contributes to global warming. Now if this global warming process continues, Africa will be affected the worst by it.

This small temperature change will have a drastic effect on the environment in Africa, such as increased wildfires. Temperature rise will cause rapid decreases in crop yield in tropical regions, and long periods of drought. The 1984-85 famine in Ethiopia caused an estimated one million deaths and made millions more penniless. The crisis was focused in the northern highlands of the country where record low rainfalls were compounded by the effects of civil war and also by western pollution.

It is so unjust that these western civilizations are the main causes of global warming yet Africa is suffering the most, despite the fact that Africa has contributed so little to global warming.

The Bolivian president Evo Morales said that “Living better is always at someone else’s expense. Living better is at the expense of destroying the environment.” I totally agree with him. Western civilizations live large; they have large luxury houses; so they are always comfortable, they create and drive the largest most fuel consuming cars, and make many little appliances, gadgets and devices to make their lives easier, but at whose expense? Who suffers from these arrangements?

Evo Morales also said “The earth is our life. Nature is our home, our house.” Again I absolutely agree with him, but why is not being treated that way? Because of a few selfish nations that are more interested in their own personal gain. They would rather have money than preserve this wondrous, marvelous creation of god for their children.

The sooner these western countries realize and try to do something about the fact that their pollution is costing the rest of the world the better

By Jabril Muhammad

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