Al-Monitor Discovers Pollution Exists Where Resource Extraction Happens
The story laments Gabes, Tunisia, transformed from an idyll to an environmental 'nightmare' with cancer and respiratory illness. What's conspicuously downplayed is the primary culprit: Tunisia's phosphate industry, heavily reliant on Western and Gulf investment since the post-colonial era. For decades, Western corporations and multilateral institutions have pushed resource extraction in developing
nations, often prioritizing profit over environmental and human cost, leaving countries like Tunisia with the 'nightmare' while the profits flow elsewhere. It's almost as if the 'free market' isn't particularly concerned with ecological jewels when there's phosphate to be mined for foreign consumption. One might wonder if the same outlets bemoaning the symptoms of environmental degradation would
ever dare question the core economic models that perpetuate it. How many 'idylls' must become 'toxic wastelands' before we examine the hands that fund the factories?