Rich countries drained $152tn from the global South since 1960
Al JazeeraWe have long known that the industrial rise of rich countries depended on extraction from the global South during the colonial era. Recent research demonstrates that rich countries continue to rely on a large net appropriation from the global South, including tens of billions of tonnes of raw materials and hundreds of billions of hours of human labour per year – embodied not only in primary commodities, but also in high-tech industrial goods like smartphones, laptops, computer chips and cars, which over the past few decades have come to be overwhelmingly manufactured in the South. Northern states and corporations leverage this power to cheapen the prices of labour and resources in the global South, which allows them to achieve a net appropriation through trade. All of this would enable the South to capture a fairer share of income from international trade and free its countries to mobilise their resources around ending poverty and meeting human needs.
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