Opinion Note: Alejandro D. Brown, ProYungas Foundation
Words, new words or concepts, come into effect, and then disappear… and in the meantime? I had never heard of wokism and much less written about it, but at 68 years old, here I am, trying to make sense of ideas from the presidential speech in Davos, at the World Economic Forum. This new concept, which obviously is not new, refers to a movement that invites us to stay “awake” to social inequalities, racism, and sexual discrimination, and why not, to the environmental situation (crisis?).
About wokism… Now?
In this context, the role of environmentalist or ecological ideology has been put on the table, as functional to the global capitalist situation and in this view, contrary to the “environmental health” of the planet. Speaking of wokism in environmental terms is putting environmental demands as a brake on the economic development of our countries. Using the environmental to halt, to dissuade, to frighten. What future awaits us? Hell on earth itself.
To some extent (and perhaps largely), in Argentina, the latest environmental laws have essentially been laws against productive development. The Forest Law was a law against the expansion of soy and livestock farming in the Northern region of the country. The Glaciers Law to the same extent was against open-pit mining and the Wetlands Law (without treatment and sanction yet), an attempt against real estate ventures in the Paraná Delta and to some extent against livestock advances in this area.
How much progress has been made in nature conservation within this legal framework?
I would say very little. They served to restrain, to some extent channel, but little to effectively protect.
Environmentalism, like other “progressive” currents, has been very efficient in promoting and imposing a global environmental agenda and even at a national level. However, this is not the sector that can bring solutions to the environmental problems posed, and that is where the confusion begins. Producers and the institutions that support them have developed a genuine and growing environmental awareness over the years, and we need them to reverse the processes of degradation and loss of productivity. At the same time, we must improve the conditions of nature protection and biodiversity in particular.
Therefore, it is important not to fall into false dichotomies; the environmental and the productive are two sides of the same coin, that of sustainable development. Production needs nature, but today also, nature needs production if we want to conserve it.
Argentina has great needs for economic growth, significant reduction of poverty, and improving employability conditions, especially in the Northern region and increasing foreign currency income. All this must be done while protecting the environment, which provides us with water availability, climate regulation, pollinators, pest control, and carbon sequestration, among many goods and services that nature gives us.
We are not a suicidal society, although sometimes we relax too much in different aspects and foster internal divisions too much, often with invented disagreements. The challenges are great, and we must face them together. Without sterile confrontations, with an environmental future that demands us to seek and work on reasonable solutions today and reminds us of the message in the song “Civilización” by Los Piojos: “God forgives, nature never does!”.
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