Our Mine-Sets
How the paradigms of the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ influence international affairs.

Whether development is sustainable or not depends largely on the paradigms under which society operates. A paradigm, in everyday language, is a mindset.

The paradigms under which environment and development issues have been dealt with over the pas several decades could, more appropriately, be called "Mine –Sets".

The first mine-set is that of the unlimited frontier: to mine the resources of this planted as though they were infinite and created solely for the benefit of mankind. Twenty years ago, the Stockholm Conference was convened to deal with the issues of resource destruction and pollution, issues that result directly from this first mine-set.

The second mine-set, reflecting the attitudes of some developed countries today is reflected in the aphorism "what’s mine is mine, what’s yours is up for grabs". Some of the deliberations of the Earth Summit at Rio were characterised by this way of thinking particularly by the powerful. Countries that have used up their own fossil energy resources and have emitted large quantities of carbon into the atmosphere  would now like to have the forest energy sources declared a "common heritage of mankind" and for all countries to immediately start sharing the burden of limiting their emissions. This mine-set leads to stark asymmetries in attitudes towards one’s own resources and those of others. Intellectual property, largely a resource of the North, can be protected; the wild gene-pool, largely a resource of the South, cannot.

The most worrying mine-set, the third, is the one that resorts to mining and bombing others when they might be in a position to restrict access to resources. Bio-technology can be charged for at usurious rates; while the price of petroleum must be kept as low as possible, if necessary by going to war. Laying mine fields so as to prevent others form exercising the same rights as claimed by oneself, is the frightening possibility of the future, not unlikely to ;underlie the themes of the next major Earth Summit, perhaps 20 years after Rio.

These three mine-sets are largely at the root of the dilemmas facing society today at the global level. It will take unusual leadership on the part of both developed and developing countries to evolve larger mind-sets that go beyond meeting narrowly conceived parochial interest s and see the survival and satisfaction of life on earth as the proper goal of development.


by Ashok Khosla

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