ns Frontieres (MSF) said in a statement on Monday, March 5, 2001. EnvironmentalOne area of the growing divide is the sacrifice of the environment for economic growth, especially in LDCs. The World Bank and the IMF's policy emphasis on expanding exports has been disastrous for the environment. As part of the standard structural adjustment package, the World Bank and the IMF encourage countries to expand their exports so they will have more hard currency (dollars, yen, marks) to pay off their foreign debts. But this has led countries to overexploit their natural resources. They are cutting down their forests, which contributes to the greenhouse effect. They are pumping chemicals onto their land to produce export crops such as coffee, tea, tobacco and cotton, thus poisoning their land and water. They are ripping minerals out of the ground at a frantic pace, endangering human lives and the environment in the process. They are overfishing coastal and international waters, which depletes a resource of the global commons. All of this destruction is aimed at one goal: ensuring that questionable debts can be repaid and the wealthy bankers can have more money to gamble with. The global coal industry and most of the world’s oil companies and electric utilities have sought to obfuscate, manipulate, spin, or crush past efforts to promote a renewable energy transition. But the science is now clear. Burning more and more carbon-based fuels into the future will produce a catastrophe. EconomicWe have seen economies grow, prosper, and fail throughout the world, but the global divide continues to expand. Now the richest 20 percent of the world's population receives 83% of the world's income, while the poorest 60% of the world's people receive just 5.6% of the world's income. The richest 20% of the world's population in northern industrial countries uses 70% of the world's energy, 75% of the world's metals, 85% of the world's wood, and 60% of th...
