I affirm the resolution.

Resolved: Developing countries should prioritize environmental protection over

resource extraction when the two are in conflict. To clarify the round, Ill offer the following definitions and
analysis.
The Oxford English Dictionary states that should is used to indicate duty or correctness. Resource extraction is defined as any
activity that withdraws resources from nature. Environmental protection refers to any activity to restore or
preserve the quality of environmental media. Prioritize is defined as the action of placing one thing as more
important than another. A developing country is defined as a nation with a lower living standard and low
Human Development Index (HDI) relative to other countries, this is explicitly defined by the International
Monetary Funds list.
I value morality. Morality is the very fiber that makes us human. In order to recognize morality in its
entirety, we need to look to preserve the lives of all people. Thus, the value criterion is the preservation of
life. Protection of life is the best way to achieve morality because it guarantees equality. Eric Rakowski1
writes:
On one side, it presses toward the consequentialist view that individuals' status as moral equals requires that the number of
people kept alive be maximized. Only in this way, the thought runs, can we give due weight to the fundamental equality of
persons; to allow more deaths when we can ensure fewer is to treat some people as less
valuable than others.
As Rakowski states, to allow more deaths when we can ensure fewer goes against morality by breaching the
inherent equality of all humans. This breach of equality goes against any value system based on morality or
justice.
Observation 1: It is important to define what the action of affirming does. The key words in the resolution is
prioritisation and when in conflict. These terms tell us what affirming this resolution will do. First the term
when in conflict constrains this debate to types of resource extraction that do harm the environment. Next the
use of prioritisation tells us when a nation gives precedence to protecting the environment rather than
resource extraction we affirm. The metric to determine whether a country is prioritising environmental
protection is that they are use less productive methods of resource extraction for the sake of the environment
vice versa for the negative. This metric should be used when analysing the round.
Contention 1: Resource extraction harms the environment and the people.
A: Resource extraction causes pollution. AGN Kitula of Sokoine University states:
A.G.N. Kitula [Sokoine University of Agriculture, Morogoro, Tanzania], "The environmental and socio-economic impacts of mining on local
livelihoods in Tanzania: A case study of Geita District," Journal of Clear Production 14, 2005.

Environmental pollution is a major problem in the mining areas of Geita District. Continuous disposal of
mine wastes contributes to air and water contamination, which are detrimental to human
health, livestock and wildlife biodiversity, and have serious effects on the welfare of the mining communities,
especially groups of women and children.The health and safety of miners and thenearby communities are at risk from a
variety of factors, ranging from the inhalation of mercury fumes and dust, to water
contamination and poor safety procedures. Unprotected pits, for instance, during therainy seasons, form breeding grounds for disease vectors such as
mosquitoes and housefly e the agents that spread malaria and water borne diseases. Table 9 indicates some of the common diseases mentioned in the study
area. The dust pollution mainly originating from explosives in Nyakabale village has been reported by local people to increase the rate of female miscarriage
and air borne infections. Migration of young ladies into mining centers in search of non-existent jobs according to District medical officer has increased
prostitution and the spread of venereal diseases including HIV and AIDS in mining regions (Table 9).

The Blacksmith Institute highlights the problem and assert that:

The Blacksmith Institute. The Hidden Tragedy: Pollution in the Developing World.
http://www.blacksmithinstitute.org/files/FileUpload/files/Additional%20Reports/hidden.pdf. 2001.
Recent estimates, and these probably understate the true extent of the problem, indicate that significant environmental

health risks are

responsible for as much as one-fifth[20 %] of the total burden of disease in the developing world more
than the combined impacts of malnutrition and all other preventable risk factors and groups of diseases. Most at risk from environmental pollution are the 1.3
billion people in the developing countries of South East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa almost one quarter of the worlds population.

Taking and Saving Lives Columbia Law Review, Vol. 93, No. 5, (Jun., 1993). http://www.jstor.org/stable/1122960

Rejecting the importance of resource extraction and prioritizing environmental protection will rid ourselves
of these harms and stop these harms from getting worse.
B: Indigenous Communities:
Resource extraction harms indigenous peoples who live on resource-filled land. Liam Downey found that:
Liam Downey,Eric Bonds, and Katherine Clark, "Natural Resource Extraction, Armed Violence, and Environmental Degradation", Organic Environ.
2010 December, vol. 23(4):417-445.

Mining activities have also resulted in the forced removal of indigenous people from their homes
and the destruction of areas that hold religious and cultural significance to them. [First]] In addition, forced removal and
environmental degradation have resulted in economic hardship and loss of subsistence
livelihoods for indigenous people who live near the mine(Walton, 2001).
Downey continues:
Turning to Table 2, we see that

armed violence is associated with the extraction of most of the critical minerals examined in this study. For

example, for thesecritical minerals, violent actions against protestors have occurred in South Africa, Malaysia, China, Brazil, Tibet, Sierra Leone, Indonesia,
and Papua New Guinea. Mercenaries and military personnel have provided mine security for these minerals in Sierra Leone and Indonesia, and the mining of
these minerals has occurred under repressive regimes in the Soviet Union, Russia, South Africa, Inner Mongolia, Tibet, China, Brazil, Gabon, Indonesia,
Papua New Guinea, Myanmar, the Philippines, India, and Mexico, and has [many

countries have been] involved [in] the

repression of indigenous or colonized people. in Inner Mongolia, Tibet, Brazil, Papua New Guinea, and Indonesia. In addition,
The extraction of these minerals has involved the forced removal of people from their homes[,] in South Africa, Brazil, Sierra Leone, and
Kenya; the use of prison labor or forced labor in the Soviet Union and Myanmar; and the use of other forms of
armed violence, including threatened arrests, solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, rapes,
and killings, in Russia, Malaysia, Brazil, China, Kenya, and Indonesia.
The overall impact is that resource extraction creates a system in which the resources are more valued than
people who are seen as in the way.
C: Resource extraction leads to human rights abuses and civil war.
First, Resource extraction not only forces relocation of the indigenous, but normal citizens.
http://priceofoil.org/thepriceofoil/human-rights. The Price of Oil: Human Rights Violations. 2013.

There is an alarming record of human rights abuses by governments and corporations

associated with fossil fuel operations, resulting in appropriation of land, forced relocation, and
even the brutal and sometimes deadly suppression of critics. Scholars have examined the relationship between
corruption, authoritarian governments, governance, conflict, and extractive industries, and have found strong evidence for a

When governments suppress individuals violently, this leads to a harm of life. Second, governments use oil
wells to further oppress their people. The Price of Oil Organization continues:
[The] repression effect, which holds that resource wealth hurts democratization by enabling the government to better fund the apparatus of repression.

Dependence on oil is also associated with a higher risk of civil war. World Bank analyst Paul
Collier has demonstrated that countries that depend on resource exports run a risk of civil war
that is significantly greater than countries with no resource exports. This is attributable to a variety of factors,
including struggles among various factions for control of the resources and the grievances of groups impacted by poorly managed resource extraction.

Contention 2: Resource abundance does not lead to economic growth.

Empirical evidence is conclusive that natural resources have not helped the economies of developing
countries.
James A. Robinson [Harvard University Department of Government], Ragnar Torvik [Department of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and
Technology], Thierry Verdier [DELTA-ENS], "Political Foundations of the Resource Curse", Journal of Development Economics 79, 2006.
Scholars of the industrial revolution and economic historians traditionally emphasized the great benefits which natural resources endowed on a nation. Paradoxically
however, It

is now almost conventional wisdom that resources are a curse for currently developing

countries. This claim is supported both by some basic facts, for example, for OPEC (Organisation of Petroleum
Exporting Countries) as a whole GDP per capita on average decreased by 1.3% each year from 1965 to 1998
(Gylfason, 2001), and by cross- country empirical work (Sachs and Warner, 1995, 1999; Busby et al., 2004; Mehlum et al., 2006).
Moreover, numerous case studies of resource dependent economies have linked resource abundance to
poor development (Gelb, 1988; Karl, 1997; Ross, 1999, 2001).
Resource extraction hinders democracy
Gilles Carbonnier, Natascha Wagner, and Fritz Brugger, [The Graduate Institute of Geneva Center on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding], "Oil, Gas, and
Minerals: The Impact of Resource-Dependence and Governance on Sustainable Development", The Centre on Conflict, Development, and Peacebuilding Working Paper,
2011.
This is why research has come to stress the political dimension of the resource curse, looking in particular at the role of the state. The rentier state theory, for example,
holds that Mineral

rents reduce the necessity of the government to levy domestic taxes, rendering leaders
less accountable to citizens and more prone to rent-seeking, corruption and patronage politics (Mahdavy,
1970; Beblawi and Luciani, 1987; Clark, 2007; Yates, 1996; Karl, 1996). This has led to the finding that oil [resource exports]
hinders democracy (Ross, 2001) and that presidential democracies [developing countries] are more [less] likely to face a
resource curse than parliamentarian democracies (Andersen and Aslaksen, 2008).
Thus resource extraction does not necessarily lead to economic growth, but it will lead to a state not based on
domestic taxes that does not need to be accountable to citizens. This loss of accountability leads to an
expansion of human rights abuses for the sake of these resources, then these resources are used to continue
the cycle.
Contention 3: Environmental regulation foster technology and innovation based economies are more
effective at growing in the 21st century.
Stringent environmental regulations fosters technological advancements to go along with the regulations.
This new technology spurs new innovation and helps grow the technology industry in a country. According
to a study by
Environmental regulation and the export dynamics of energy technologies Valeria Costantini, Francesco Crespi Department of Economics, University of Roma
Tre 2007
In this paper we have tested an empirical model based on a gravity equation in order to provide evidence of the relevance of the Porter and van der Linde hypothesis.

Empirical results show that a more stringent environmental regulation provides a positive impulse for
increasing investments in advanced technological equipments, thus providing an indirect source of
comparative advantages at international level. Our findings clearly indicate that such a positive
impulse can be effectively exploited in terms of export performance depending on the level of technological capacity of
different innovative systems. Countries with stringent environmental standards have a greater export capacity
for those [these] environmental[ly]-friendly technologies that regulation induces to adopt.
This shift towards technology as a source of economic growth is new in the 20th and 21st century. The fact is
resource extraction was the method of development in the 18th and 19th centuries but with the growth of
new economies the most successful ones focus on innovation and technology. The key success story of this
was South Korea, which was one of the poorest countries in 1960 is now on par with the average country in
Europe. Their economy expanded thanks to the growth of their technology sector and exporting this
technology.
According to The Economist 2011
Your [Todays developing] economy[ies] comes to depend more on innovation and on learning from your own mistakes
than on improving on the successes of others. The South Korean model of 1960-2010 remains an example for developing
countries.
This new model of South Korea is called the knowledge-based economy and many economists believe it is
the new replacement to a resource extraction based development. According to economist
Regional innovation strategies in the knowledge-based economy Sam

Ock Park GeoJournal, Vol. 53, No. 1 (2001)

With the shift towards a knowledge-based economy in the 21st century, knowledge-based industry and
innovations are driving forces of economic growth, social development, and job creation.
This shift to a knowledge-based economy will allow for the prioritisation of environmental protection to
grow the economy. Resource extraction will not need to be prioritised anymore to generate economic growth
in developing countries.
Thus I affirm the resolution.
South Korea Information
Article from Princeton on South Korean Economy (2012 Produced for Princeton Economics Class)
South Korea's real gross domestic product expanded by an average of more than 8 percent per year,
from US$2.7 billion in 1962[38] to US$230 billion in 1989,[39] breaking the trillion dollar mark in 2007.
Nominal GDP per capita grew from $103.88 in 1962[40] to $5,438.24 in 1989,[41] reaching the $20,000
milestone in 2007. The manufacturing sector grew from 14.3 percent of the GNP in 1962 to 30.3 percent in
1987. Commodity trade volume rose from US$480 million in 1962 to a projected US$127.9 billion in 1990.
The ratio of domestic savings to GNP grew from 3.3 percent in 1962 to 35.8 percent in 1989.
The most significant factor in rapid industrialization was the adoption of an outward-looking strategy
in the early 1960s. This strategy was particularly well suited to that time because of South Korea's
poor natural resource endowment, low savings rate, and tiny domestic market. The strategy promoted
economic growth through labor-intensive manufactured exports, in which South Korea could develop
a competitive advantage. Government initiatives played an important role in this process by South
Koreas first leaders. The inflow of foreign capital was greatly encouraged to supplement the shortage of
domestic savings. These efforts enabled South Korea to achieve rapid growth in exports and subsequent
increases in income.
By emphasizing the industrial sector, Seoul's export-oriented development strategy left the rural sector
relatively underdeveloped. Except for mining, most industries were located in the urban areas of the
northwest and southeast. Heavy industries generally were located in the south of the country. Factories in
Seoul contributed over 25 percent of all manufacturing value-added in 1978; taken together with factories in
surrounding Gyeonggi Province, factories in the Seoul area produced 46 percent of all manufacturing that
year. Factories in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province employed 48 percent of the nation's 2.1 million factory
workers. Increasing income disparity between the industrial and agricultural sectors became a serious
problem by the 1970s and remained a problem, despite government efforts to raise farm income and improve
rural living standards.
Scholastic (Teachers Resource on South Korea by Donald Clark)
South Korea Natural Resources
South Korea is relatively poor in natural resources. Once heavily forested, it has been largely stripped of
trees, especially near urban areas. However, a program of reforestation is being carried out. The country's
sparse mineral resources include coal, tungsten, iron ore, molybdenum, limestone, and graphite.
Economic development was spurted