Fareed Zakaria :
© IHT, July 24, 2001
Real Street Smarts for G-8 Protesters
by Fareed Zakaria(*)
NEW YORK The protesters deserve credit for highlighting the
problem. Pity they hate the solution.
The protesters in Genoa were correct about one very big thing:
They were in the right place. The great political issues of our times
are those surrounding globalization. And the meeting of the seven
richest countries in the world (sorry, Russia) symbolizes this
process. Young people today attach themselves to global issues
for a reason. Can you imagine tens of thousands of people
demonstrating against George W. Bush's faith-based initiative? Or
Tony Blair's plan to reform British railways?
The world is being reshaped by a synergy between technological
revolution and global capitalism. These twin forces have produced
a series of concerns - over environmentalism, bioethics,
pharmaceutical research, cultural preservation, the future of the
welfare system and state sovereignty itself - which are being
debated around the world. How we respond to them over the next
20 years will determine the kind of world we will live in for the
next 200.
The protesters are correct about another big thing. Globalization is
probably widening inequality around the world. I say probably
because inequality is a complicated phenomenon and all depends
on how you measure it. (Top 10 percent of the world's population
versus bottom 10, or top 20 versus bottom 20? The first shows a
rise; the second, a fall.)
A few other caveats: Inequality is rising but poverty is falling. In
other words, the poor are getting richer but the rich are getting
richer even faster. Still, one of today's stark realities is enduring
poverty and disease in large parts of the world.
The protesters are right to say that this is in some ways linked to
turbocharged capitalism - a system that rewards the talented and
by the same token leaves behind those less skilled or suitable.
It is a sad irony that many of the same people who highlight the
desperate condition of poor countries oppose the only realistic
solution for them: that they quickly and wholeheartedly embrace
the technological revolution of our times.
If there is a way for countries that seem mired at the bottom of the
heap to climb their way out, it is a technological jump-start. I don't
mean that sending computers to Sierra Leone will solve all their
problems.
The revolutions in science are taking place in three areas:
medicine, food and information. For a poor, disease-ridden
country to break its free fall, it must exploit all of them - and fast.
"It's unfortunate that the protesters have an anti-technology bias,"
says Mark Malloch Brown, the head of the United Nations
Development Program.
The UNDP recently issued an astonishing report on technology
and development. It urges poor countries to get over their phobias
about genetically modified foods. Mr. Malloch Brown argues that
genetically modified staples - rice, millet, cassava - have 50
percent higher yields, mature 30 to 50 days earlier, are much
richer in protein and resist disease, drought, pests and weeds.
"Not one person anywhere has died by eating genetically modified
food," he says. "On the other hand, malnutrition kills millions every
year."
Anti-technology phobias are mostly whipped up in the West and
then foisted on the poor.
Take DDT, the synthetic pesticide that kills mosquitoes. It was
one of the remarkable success stories of the 20th century:
eradicating malaria in dozens of countries by the mid-1960s.
Environmentalists stopped the use of DDT in the developed world
because of concerns about its side effects.
Fine, says the UNDP report, but 300 million people - and rising
fast - are still afflicted with malaria in tropical countries.
Twenty-three nations use DDT to fight malaria and are being
pressured to stop. This is absurd.
When poor countries have adapted technology to their needs, they
have done remarkably well. The "green revolution" of the 1960s,
which also involved several potentially dangerous new products
and techniques, halved malnutrition in Asia within a generation. By
fully exposing itself to the capital and technology of the First World
in the 1980s and 1990s, East Asia doubled its living standards, a
process that took the West more than 100 years. Today, the plight
of Africa may seem so much worse but the technologies in health,
food, information and communications are so much better.
"The protesters should reflect on the symbolism of Genoa," Mr.
Malloch Brown told me. "It's the birthplace of Christopher
Columbus, one of the greatest explorers in history. They could
either follow in the footsteps of Columbus, who showed that
embracing innovation and taking risks could have unimaginable
benefits. Or else they could just become the latest members of the
'flat earth society,' opposed to modern economics, modern techno
logy, modern science, modern life itself."
(*)The writer is editor of Newsweek International, to which
he contributed this comment.