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The Netherlands fallacy refers to an error Paul R. Ehrlich and his co-authors claim others make in assuming that the environmental impacts of the Netherlands and other rich nations are contained within their national borders[1]. The nations with the largest footprints have the lowest within their borders.[2]
Environmentalists since the late 20th century have analyzed the environmental sink status and sink capacities of poor nations. As polluting industries migrate from rich to poor nations, the national ecological footprint of rich nations shrinks, whereas the international ecological footprint may increase or also decrease. The nature of the fallacy is to ignore increasing environmental damage in many developing nations and in international waters attributable to the imported goods or changes in the economy of such nations directly due to developed nations. Many rich nations choose to outsource resources which leads to less developed countries having less of an ecological footprint and less consumption due to exporting.[2]
Such an approach may lead to incorrect assertions such as the environmental impact of a particular developed country is reducing, when a holistic, international approach suggests the opposite. This may in turn support over-optimistic predictions toward the improvement of global environmental conditions.[3]
The Netherlands have had a huge impact regarding leaving water footprints across the world. The Netherlands have made this footprint by importing water from other countries which has left increasing scarce regions in less developed countries. Water footprints of a country can come from either water resources used internally or resources that are outsourced. Dutch consumers have made most of their water footprint from agricultural goods and industrial goods..[4]
Many developed countries, such as the United States, have been importing goods, especially ones like sugar, spices, since many centuries ago. Since the beginning of industrial capitalism it has depended on an unequal exchange of land and labor. Rich nations are justifying their consumption patterns by blaming international trade for their reasoning of exploiting resources. Measuring a country's imports and exports in weight and then multiplying that by the number in quantity of imports and exports could help to make an ecological trade balance between nations.[5]
- ^ Clement, Matthew Thomas; Pattison, Andrew; Habans, Robby (2017-12-01). "Scaling down the "Netherlands Fallacy": a local-level quantitative study of the effect of affluence on the carbon footprint across the United States". Environmental Science & Policy. 78: 1–8. doi:10.1016/j.envsci.2017.09.001. ISSN 1462-9011.
- ^ a b Hornborg, Alf; McNeill, J. R.; Martinez-Alier, Joan (2007-01-18). Rethinking Environmental History: World-System History and Global Environmental Change. Rowman Altamira. ISBN 978-0-7591-1397-8.
- ^ Ehrlich & Ehrlich 1990, pp. 39, 269.
- ^ van Oel, P.R.; Mekonnen, M.M.; Hoekstra, A.Y. (November 2009). "The external water footprint of the Netherlands: Geographically-explicit quantification and impact assessment". Ecological Economics. 69 (1): 82–92. doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2009.07.014.
- ^ Hornborg, Alf; McNeill, J. R.; Martinez-Alier, Joan (2007-01-18). Rethinking Environmental History: World-System History and Global Environmental Change. Rowman Altamira. ISBN 978-0-7591-1397-8.