Current terminology to distinguish rich and poor countries is unfit for environmental science

I originally wrote this piece as a perspective/comment article for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, so it is fairly-well researched and written but has now been modified as a blog. After about 8 responses along the lines of “while we appreciate the importance of the topic and are sympathetic to the main arguments, we cannot publish it at this time” I decided to cut my losses and write as a blog post. This article will likely be refined as I read more about Ecologically Unequal Exchange.

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  Introduction
     To this day debate continues over which terminology should be applied to separate rich and poor countries in environmental sciences. Several versions have taken precedence – first and third world (second world largely omitted), developed and developing, global north or south, high-income and low-middle-income countries. However, these terms obscure the relationships between countries and relative responsibility for environmental decline and climate breakdown. I argue that terminology employed by Walter Rodney in 1972 – exploited and exploiter countries – is much more relevant for conservation and environmental sciences.
 
Existing terminology
     An important point to note, at the start of proceedings, is that – when dichotomised – these classification terms almost always result in the same groupings of countries. I.e. Bolivia is always in the opposite group to Germany regardless of how you choose to name the groups. There may be some variation, but in terms of the important actors in environmental decline, this is almost always true. Therefore, what really matters is picking names that capture the relations between the groups and their responsibility for global environmental decline and climate breakdown.
     First and third world: this terminology was initially used to separate the capitalist first world from the communist second world, with everyone else – particularly newly independent post-colonial states in Africa and Asia – in the third world[i]. While this terminology has largely fallen out of use following the demolition of the Soviet union and the violent overthrow of most of the other communist governments, it still fairly well represents the split between the countries causing environmental decline and those suffering from it.
     Global north and south: the current favourite term in most spheres of environmental science, this distinction is largely based on simple economic measures. I am not a fan of this terminology as it actively obscures the relations between the two groups and hides responsibility for environmental decline.
     Developed and developing, and high- and low-income: I consider these terms to be even worse than north and south, as rather than masking relations it implies a hierarchy of value between the two groups and seems to suggest that the poorer countries of the world are responsible for their own predicament.
     Majority world and minority: this terminology is fairly new (at least to me) and refers to where the global population resides. The majority of the global population is in the south/developing/low income world. However, to me the use of majority/minority implies political power, while the truth is the majority world is significantly less powerful on the global stage. While some from the ‘majority’ world may prefer this terminology as it counters the negative connotations of other existing terms[ii], I find it deceptive in relation to contributions to global environmental decline.
 
Reviving an alternative
     When discussing environmental decline, the ‘exploiter’ and ‘exploited’ dichotomy employed by Walter Rodney[iii] is perhaps the most apt. Exploiter countries – largely overlapping the previously discussed ‘first world’ countries – are those rich countries that bleed dry the exploited countries – mostly those previously colonised ‘third world’ nations. While abject colonialism has largely come to an end across the globe, the exploiter countries continue to drain the resources of the exploited through unequal exchange[iv],[v],[vi] and predatory debt structures[vii],[viii].
     Aside from the obvious and serious socioeconomic dimensions, the exploiter-exploited dichotomy has particular relevance even when focusing exclusively on environmental aspects. Exploiter countries have overwhelmingly decimated their own natural systems[ix] and increasingly drive environmental decline outside their borders. They are largely responsible for environmental decline in the exploited countries through commodity resource trade – hence displacing their own destruction[x],[xi] – in a process termed ‘ecologically unequal exchange’[xii],[xiii]. This was largely true historically[xiv] and is only increasing in the present. Exploiter countries also contribute disproportionately to global carbon emissions[xv] and resource overshoot[xvi] and hence have an oversized influence on global environmental decline and climate breakdown.
     Conversely, the exploited countries – who have contributed the least to global climate and environmental breakdown – are expected to be on the receiving end of the worst impacts and are the most vulnerable[xvii]. Because they have not already obliterated their natural landscapes – as many of the exploiter countries have – and due to economic imbalances, the exploited countries are also expected to bear the burden of global conservation and restoration programs[xviii]. If proposed green schemes are not delivered in ways that safeguard socio-economic development and human rights and dignity, this may constitute a new form of exploitation through ‘green colonialism’[xix].
     From an intra-national perspective it can often be said that the metropoles exploit the periphery, and hence the terminology also has use at the provincial level. In Indonesia for example, Java is a heavy exploiter of the other islands of the archipelago, notably Papua and Borneo[xx]. Similarly, in Brazil, the densely populated southern and coastal regions have historically been developed at the expense of the northern states and Amazonian region[xxi].
 
Further explanation
     For some countries it may not be immediately clear whether they should be designated as an exploiter or exploited. My home country of Australia, for example, is heavily exploited by outside actors through its resource extraction sectors[xxii],[xxiii]. However, Australia also exploits many other countries through its own private resource extraction companies – such as mining companies in New Guinea and Africa[xxiv] – and benefits from unequal exchange with poorer countries. Similarly, while some European nations may be exploited by their neighbours, i.e. Romania for timber products[xxv], their inclusion in the EU trading bloc means they ultimately contribute to and benefit from the exploitation of many poorer tropical nations.
​     China is a particularly interesting case – it drives substantial environmental destruction and degradation beyond their borders through resource trade practices[xxvi], however it largely promotes development of trading countries i.e. through financing of development projects and provision of below-market-rate loans; in contrast to the predatory practices of ‘high-income’ countries and financial institutions such as the IMF[xxvii],[xxviii] and also personally loses through unequal exchange. We might then use identify who gains from unequal exchange – or ecologically unequal exchange specifically – to delineate the exploiters from the exploited.
 
Fin
     A reasonable critique of the exploiter-exploited dichotomy is that it denies agency to the exploited. However, this outcome is a product of the user rather than the terminology itself, and at least in the sphere of global environmental degradation, it is more important that we outline the perpetrators than risk shaming the victims. I suggest that the dichotomy of exploiter and exploited is a much more appropriate distinction than any of the terms currently in wide use which only obscure relations between countries and responsibility for global environmental decline and climate breakdown.

References
[i] Silver, M. (2015). If You Shouldn’t Call It Third World, What Should You Call It? NPR.  https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/01/04/372684438/if-you-shouldnt-call-it-the-third-world-what-should-you-call-it
[ii] Shallwani, S. (2015). Why I use the term ‘Majority world’ instead of ‘developing countries’ or ‘Third world’. https://sadafshallwani.net/2015/08/04/majority-world/.
[iii] Rodney, W. (2018). How Europe underdeveloped Africa. Verso Books.
[iv] Hickel, J., Sullivan, D., & Zoomkawala, H. (2021). Plunder in the Post-Colonial Era: Quantifying Drain from the Global South Through Unequal Exchange, 1960–2018. New Political Economy, 26(6), 1030–1047. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2021.1899153
[v] Hickel, J., Dorninger, C., Wieland, H., & Suwandi, I. (2022). Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: Drain from the global South through unequal exchange, 1990–2015. Global Environmental Change, 73, 102467.
[vi] Hickel, J., Lemos, M.H. & Barbour, F. (2024). Unequal exchange of labour in the world economy. Nature Communications, 15, 6298.
[vii] Hayter, T. (1971). Aid as imperialism. Penguin, Harmondsworth, UK.
[viii] Payer, C. (1975). The debt trap: The international monetary fund and the third world (Vol. 376). NYU Press.
[ix] Venter, O., Sanderson, E. W., Magrach, A., Allan, J. R., Beher, J., Jones, K. R., ... & Watson, J. E. (2016). Sixteen years of change in the global terrestrial human footprint and implications for biodiversity conservation. Nature communications, 7(1), 12558.
[x] Hoang, N. T., & Kanemoto, K. (2021). Mapping the deforestation footprint of nations reveals growing threat to tropical forests. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 5(6), 845-853.
[xi] Sun, L., Zhou, W., Zhu, X., & Xia, X. (2023). Deforestation embodied in global trade: Integrating environmental extended input-output method and complex network analysis. Journal of Environmental Management, 325, 116479.
[xii] Bunker, S. G. (1988). Underdeveloping the Amazon: Extraction, unequal exchange, and the failure of the modern state. University of Chicago Press.
[xiii] Dorninger, C., Hornborg, A., Abson, D. J., Von Wehrden, H., Schaffartzik, A., Giljum, S., ... & Wieland, H. (2021). Global patterns of ecologically unequal exchange: Implications for sustainability in the 21st century. Ecological economics, 179, 106824.
[xiv] Grove, R. H. (1996). Green imperialism: colonial expansion, tropical island Edens and the origins of environmentalism, 1600-1860. Cambridge University Press.
[xv] Oswald, Y., Owen, A. & Steinberger, J.K. Large inequality in international and intranational energy footprints between income groups and across consumption categories. Nat Energy 5, 231–239 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-020-0579-8
[xvi] Fanning, A.L., O’Neill, D.W., Hickel, J. et al. The social shortfall and ecological overshoot of nations. Nat Sustain 5, 26–36 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00799-z
[xvii] Eckstein, D., Künzel, V., & Schäfer, L. (2021). The global climate risk index 2021. Bonn: Germanwatch.
[xviii] Schultz, B., Brockington, D., Coleman, E. A., Djenontin, I., Fischer, H. W., Fleischman, F., ... & Ramprasad, V. (2022). Recognizing the equity implications of restoration priority maps. Environmental research letters, 17(11), 114019.
[xix] Bryan, K. (2023). The looming land grab in Africa for carbon credits. Financial Times, https://www.ft.com/content/f9bead69-7401-44fe-8db9-1c4063ae958c.
[xx] Sloan, S., Campbell, M. J., Alamgir, M., Engert, J., Ishida, F. Y., Senn, N., ... & Laurance, W. F. (2019). Hidden challenges for conservation and development along the Trans-Papuan economic corridor. Environmental science & policy, 92, 98-106.
[xxi] Galeano, E. (1997). Open veins of Latin America: Five centuries of the pillage of a continent. nyu Press.
[xxii] Aulby, H. (2017). Undermining our democracy: Foreign corporate influence through the Australian mining lobby. The Australia Institute. https://australiainstitute.org.au/report/undermining-our-democracy-foreign-corporate-influence-through-the-australian-mining-lobby/
[xxiii] Ogge, M., Campbell, R. & Verstegan, P. (2024).  Australia’s great gas giveaway. The Australia Institute. https://australiainstitute.org.au/report/australias-great-gas-giveaway/
[xxiv] Fitzgibbon, W., Hamilton, M.M. & Schilis-Gallego, C. (2015). Australian mining companies linked to hundreds of deaths across Africa. The Centre for Public Integrity. https://publicintegrity.org/accountability/australian-mining-companies-linked-to-hundreds-of-deaths-across-africa/
[xxv] Reinhart, S., Kaiser, J. & Lehermayr, C. (2020). How timber smugglers are destroying Europe’s last primeval forests. voxeurop. https://voxeurop.eu/ro/how-timber-smugglers-are-destroying-europe-last-primeval-forests/
[xxvi] Sommer, J., Zhang, Y., & Shandra, J. (2023). Ecologically unequal exchange, repression, and forest loss: How China's demand for agricultural products impacts the natural environment. Environmental Development, 46, 100866.
[xxvii] Brautigam, D. & Rithmire, M. 2021. The Chinese ‘Debt Trap’ Is a Myth. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/02/china-debt-trap-diplomacy/617953/.
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