Columbus’ arrival to the New World immediately revealed the tension between a land that could supply for the livelihood of all its inhabitants, and a human desire to make the colonies a profitable enterprise. The search of El Dorado, the silver fountains of Potosí, the landscapes wasted in sugar and Banana Republics, show how Latin America has been a profitable investment despite uncreative exploitation of the environment.

Latin America’s current blessing—and curse—is oil. Dependence on the black gold, while generating needed income for Latin American economies, fails to transform into social capital in the forms of health and education. Moving away from this paradigm is not an easy task, as Ecuador’s failed Yasuní experiment showed on 2013.

The project involved Ecuador compromising not to exploit oil in the Yasuní national park, one of the most biodiverse areas in the world, in exchange for developed countries importers paying half of the estimated worth of the oil underground. The price for leaving the 856 million barrels of petroleum underground was 3.6 billion dollars. After 6 years, the country had only received 1% of the demanded amount, and payment promises reached merely 10%. Faulty planning, and domestic economic pressures to exploit the oil, were definitely crucial to the failure of the initiative, but it also further evidenced man’s preference for short-term gain at the cost of long-term pain, and the collective action problems of the global community in the pursuit of a more sustainable world economy. The United States, in line with their non-ratification of the Kyoto protocol, and England immediately rejected the deal, leaving the burden of payment to countries such as Sweden, France, Germany and Switzerland.

Despite its failure, this project also sought to de-westernize conceptions of the environment as a limit-less provider of material goods.By leaving petroleum underground not only was biodiversity maintained, but also investment in alternative energy sources guaranteed.

Nature itself is probably the most efficient user of resources on Earth, but the freedom through which it provides makes us forget its economic value. Oxygen produced both in forests and seas, to the purification of water, to flood control, to protection against plague, nature provides plenty of otherwise expensive goods essential for our living. One study by Robert Constanza calculates the value of nature’s services as double that of global GDP in a year. Ironically, industrialization drove us to recognize the material value in so many new commodities, while ignoring the value of our most important infrastructure network, nature.

This might be an old story to some, but it gets more interesting once we look at the economic alternatives. The mushroom Pestalotiopsismicrosporay for example has the unique characteristic that it can decompose plastic. Imagine if instead of allowing its extinction, this fungi was industrially grown in dumpsters around the globe, reducing the average decomposition time of plastic from 450 years to only 30 days. Or we can look at amphibians. Various studies affirm that a single hectare of the Yasuni holds more species of frogs and toads than the United States and Canada combined. One of these is the “Monkey Frog” that secretes anti-cancerigenous fluids, which could be further studied to find a cure against the disease.

These discoveries could only be the tip of the iceberg, since exploration of the Amazon for its biological diversity is still largely underfunded. Investment could be made pareto improving for every member of society, if it was focused in areas ranging from pharmaceuticals to waste disposal. It is but a matter of political will, eliminating short-term political goals to invest in long term welfare. Meanwhile, taxes paid for groceries in Canada still go to sponsoring mining ventures for gold, coal and nickel in Colombia, ignoring the voice of civil-society concerning environmental matters. Worst of all, this façade of democracy built on industrial growth, and not on participation, is what developing countries are aiming for.

There is an alternative to this suicidal ‘shortermism’. Once we recognize ourselves as part of the problem, and seize outing blind faith in the technology imposed on us, and recognize the benefits nature blatantly throws into our face, this trajectory can be altered. The West cannot only exploit these alternative resources, but learn of the relations natives have with them. The relationship of the West with the environment is a relatively new one, one of conquest and exploitation of the land until exhaustion. A re-familiarization with nature’s potential, could not only bring economic stability, but also fill the spiritual void that consumerism is now trying to fulfill. Especially in developing economies, where transitional costs to building sustainable economies are lower, there needs to be an urgency not do a remake of the unsustainable industrialization in Europe, but to look for a new way.

Some interesting initiatives, like Chile’s massive solar-energy project in the Atacama desert, testify that most land is productive, that nature is not a wasteland. Additionally, current measures of wealth and living quality, as current indicators like GDP per capita and even the Human Development Index oversimplify, and alter the conceptions of what happiness is, while neglecting the huge impact of environmental damage. Simultaneous to a re-orientation of economic production, attitudes must also change. Of course this is easier said than done, but if we strive towards this we will hopefully never see another war to control the trade of bird shit.