Sri Lanka Crisis Reveals the Dangers of Green Utopianism

The fertilizer ban was a major factor in the unrest

• Agriculture is an essential economic sector in Sri Lanka. Around 10% of the population works on farms, and 70% are directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture.
• Tea production is especially important, accounting for ten% of Sri Lanka's export revenue
• The country spent hundreds of millions of dollars a year importing synthetic fertilizers
• Rajapaksa promised to wean the country off of these fertilizers with a ten-year transition to organic farming
• He expedited his plan in April 2021
• Over 90% of farmers used chemical fertilizers before they were banned
• Rice production fell 20% and prices skyrocketed 50%

ESG is an attempt to move capital toward organizations that further a set of amorphous environmental and social justice goals instead of toward enterprises most likely to succeed and turn a profit

• Proponents of ESG have been pushing for government mandates requiring enterprises to disclose detailed information related to environmentalism and other social goals

Some environmentalists want to transform the global food system into an organic model

• Conventional farming is necessary to produce a sufficient amount of food to feed humanity and is better for the environment
• Natural fertilizers used in organic agriculture actually lead to more pollution than conventional synthetic products
• Fertilizers and pesticides also allow us to farm land more intensively, leading to ever-higher crop yields
• Global agricultural use has peaked and is now in decline
• So long as crop yields continue to increase, more and more land can be returned to natural ecosystems, which are far more biodiverse than any farm

 

https://fee.org/articles/sri-lanka-crisis-reveals-the-dangers-of-green-utopianism/