Geopolitical Considerations behind the IT Consumerism Michele La Neve . Smashwords Edition Copyright 2012 Michele La Neve License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. Ebook formatting by www.ebooklaunch.com TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT INTERNATIONAL TRADE, WHAT IS COLTAN? 1.1 THE IT MARKET WORLDWIDE 2. THE EXTRACTION OF COLTAN 3. THE CANONICAL PROSPECTIVE OF THE WAR IN THE DRC 4. POLITICAL AND HUMANITARIAN ISSUES 5. STOP CONSUMING IS THE RIGHT WAY TO PURSUE? 6. THE POLITICAL SCENARIO IN THE REGION 7. LINKS BETWEEN THE EXPLOITATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES AND THE CONFLICT IN THE DRC 7.1 OTHER INITIATIVES TO STOP THE PHENOMENON 8. IS “FAIR TRADE “AN OXYMORON? 9. CONCLUSIONS 10. APPENDIX 11. REFERENCES Acknowledgments I would like to take the opportunity to thank those who helped me in making this text proof readable for their time and their patience; Jackie Gallegos, Folakemi Alli Balogun and David De Fazio, for their friendly help and support. I am very happy for the “social experience”, as Aristotle would say, I have been able to experiment during my studies for all those students I met, the real radix sapientiae of any University. Abstract This work starts from an academic project for the “Policy and Sustainability” class at the International University of Monaco, although the topic is the same, the aim is completely different; here I tried to point out a completely different way to deal with business, which should be headed towards human dignity firstly and, as a consequence, towards profit. During these difficult years, in fact, we have been experimenting the importance of having moral values. The financial crisis of 2008 is probably the best example of what the utilitarian, short-term approach is; earning money for the sake of doing it does not pay back if there is no development for everybody. This is the lesson we should learn. This is what we should aim for, exactly like Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant wrote centuries ago and Amartya Sen and E.F. Schumacher only a few decades ago. To support my conclusions, especially the need to switch towards a moral attitude, eventually, I used the “Theory of Moral Sentiments” and the “Critique to Practical Reason” written by the aforementioned philosophers, and, in general, material provided by moral philosophy. Hopefully, I will be able to going further with my research through further studies. 1. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT INTERNATIONAL TRADE, WHAT IS COLTAN? Homo homini lupus, by Thomas Hobbes, is probably the sentence that best fits and describes what the international trade actually is. Literally, it means “the Man is a wolf to Man”, where “Man” has to be understood as human gender and the sentence above describes the basic principles of the “natural state”. This status claims that the human activity is mainly driven by the personal best interest, by the “particulare” as Guicciardini would say[1]. According to this theory, in fact, the human behaviour is not that different from the animal world; recognizing as priorities the survival and the oppression of other men. During history, several are the examples of this principle, such as the “zero-sum” game as epitomized by the realist theory in International Relations theory. During the Roman empire the motto “mors tua vita mea” “your death means my life” was coined to underline how bad human nature could be and it could not be different for a culture that used to enjoy watching gladiators at the Coliseum. Although I strongly believe these are still the core values for most of us, related to the animal world more than the human one, we should keep in mind that, since then, the human gender has hopefully evolve. Even though the aforementioned examples are just history for the civilized world, we should not underestimate what has been happening in the poorest part of the planet, in Africa, for instance. In order to understand what coltan is, we should start from its usages and origins; coltan, tantalum its chemical name, has been recently refined by Werner Von Bolton in 1903 for the first time (Chemicool), It is a shiny, gray, dense metal, highly ductile and it can be drawn into technical wires. (Chemicool). The reasons why it is so well known and used in the IT field are mainly due to its physical characteristics; coltan is very resistant to corrosion and high temperatures and it is an excellent conductor of heat and electricity. (Chemicool) We all know that industrial technology has had a huge development during the last decade, nevertheless, scientists are still fighting against heat in order to preserve the quality and the integrity of their technological products. In fact, all electronic devices share a common issue, which needs to be fixed in order to preserve their own performance and safety, that is, heat production. For instance, personal computers have become faster and more and more sophisticated thanks to a significant increase in microprocessors’ capacity; whereas the other side of the coin is the massive production of heat, near 100° Celsius in a few cases. (Apple Inc., 2012) Consequently, it is very difficult to preserve the integrity of the system, especially when markets require smaller and smaller mobile phones and laptops. It is not difficult, especially for the ones who have been using personal computers for several years, to remember the difference, both in dimensions and in performance, between the devices used until a few years ago and the new ones. If we have had this extraordinary evolution, the credit should go, besides to engineers and researchers, to the large use of coltan in all those devices. The core of every computer, as written before, is the CPU; the microprocessor, when its speed in mathematical calculations increases, this is what happens; it needs more energy and consequently, it gets extremely hot. That is how it looks like one of the newest on the market. Nowadays, coltan is used in almost all technical fields; due to the large use of electronic devices in our daily life, such as car and aerospace industry, telecommunications and medical sector, among the others. The aforementioned list is just an example of all coltan’s uses. In general, we can affirm that it is used whenever there is an electronic microchip. Moreover, along with all the other relevant characteristics, it does not cause any immune response by the human body; that is why coltan is used for surgical and dental implants as well. (Chemicool) The other important aspect is that coltan allows to save energy, allowing to build smaller batteries and, consequently, smaller devices. (Università di Bologna, 2011). In addition, we have to underline that Coltan, once used, is not recyclable and, at this stage, there are no suitable alternatives. Another way to reach similar results can be represented by ceramics but studies to make it work on small devices are still ongoing. However, we are not going to use ceramics on our IT devices for other 5 years, at least. (Università di Bologna, 2011) Moreover, once a coltan-field is discovered, such as in the Katanga province, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, it is relatively easy to extract. As already pointed out, “Tantalum (coltan) is almost completely immune to chemical attack at temperatures below 150°C, and is attacked only by hydrofluoric acid, acidic solutions containing the fluoride ion, and free sulphur trioxide.” (Webelements)[2]. The goal of this research is to demonstrate the connection between the consumption and the exploitation of the DRC natural resources and to propose some ideas such as technical research for suitable alternatives to coltan. Even more importantly, this research is aimed to propose a shift from an utilitarian, short term way to do business towards a more social and, by the human point of view, more acceptable one. It obviously does not mean that corporations should not aim to increase their profits, which allow them to increase their workforce, amongst other things. They should doubtless preserve their shareholders’ interests, but, they should do it bearing in mind an holistic approach. This “new way” (new for the business world, since, as we are going to see very soon, philosophers claimed it centuries ago), should, on one hand, not just earn as much profits as possible in the shortest timeframe, but, on the other hand, it should be headed towards positive externalities, latu sensu, the ones that create a virtuous circle. The same at political level, we are going to see, in fact, that the civil war that is affecting the Democratic Republic of Congo is driven by the economic interests of firms located in some western countries, that are using local political powers to reach their goals. Also in the political sector, politicians should not act in order to reach their personal objectives; either elections or coups d’état. By doing so, they just achieve their own particulare, in most of the cases, ignoring the general well being. (Guicciardini, 2008). This attitude, on the other hand, does not create any development or any new possibility of growth whatsoever. On the contrary, this unwise, and, in some cases, criminal, behaviour must be stopped since it is strictly linked to the elite’s interests rather than general ones and usually it comes along with other unpleasant phenomena such as corruption, nepotism etcetera. What is more, one should admit that, ideally speaking, elected, authorities are the most important and best example of democracy, since they are supposed, as Plato in his “Republic” pointed out, “to make prisoners free” (Plato, La Repubblica, 2007) 1.1 THE IT MARKET WORLDWIDE Before elaborating the essential point of this thesis, I truly believe an analysis of the IT market is crucial, since the companies operating in this field are the most important coltan’s consumers. The increase of sales of electronic devices has been significant in the last few years, therefore, IT companies are more and more concerned about finding appropriate resources of Coltan. Being without it would mean that the production has to be stopped; a too high price for the companies, that they are absolutely not willing to pay. In order to better understand the importance of the high tech market, it is important to know some figures concerning the sales of IT devices. Apple, for instance, has sold more then 170 million “Iphone” devices since 2007 (Il Giornale, 2012). In addition we should mention other competitors such as Research in Motion; the BlackBerry producer, Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, HTC, just to mention the best known ones world wide.[3] We are talking about billions of USD, if we only think that 234 million US residents above 13 years old have a smartphone, we can easily understand how important the above mentioned figures and their impact on the economy are. (ComScore, 2011).[4] Furthermore, we need to consider computers, either desktops or laptops, just to study home consumption and, if we take into account how important it has become having the last technological gadget to show an appropriate status symbol. The rituality of changing devices from time to time has been considered by many people compulsory. As written above, Coltan cannot be recycled and it is a non renewable resource like all minerals, so this lead towards an incredible increase in its prices, from 65 USD in 2000 to 600 USD per kg, which is its current price (Reschia, 2012)[5] To corroborate this statement we should think about what happened a few years ago, in 2001, when, at a certain point, Sony had to stop the production of the “PlayStation 2” because coltan’s extraction had become impossible because of the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. (Rai News 24)[6] Besides, if we think about how many cell phones, videogames and computers are sold every year, we can figure out how important it is having appropriate resources of this mineral. Moreover, we need to point out the growing position of the emerging countries such as India (the second world market for mobile phones with more than 260 million users) (mobiThinking, 2012) and China, whose huge population make this market extremely relevant for IT producers. Always concerning mobile phones, according to the aforementioned figures, we can see how China has the largest quota of subscribers followed by India and the USA (mobiThinking, 2012) The table above, on the other hand, shows the number of subscribers in relation to the three main Chinese operators. Moreover, there is another aspect that should be acknowledged; the growing importance of Chinese producers. Huawei, ZTE, Arcos, were just unknown brands until one or two years ago. However, thanks to the Chinese labour law, which does not provide many rights to employees[7], these producers can sustain incredible production paces, in order to satisfy the demand, creating, consequently, revenues. Very recently, the market share of these new producers has become a geopolitical issue due to the fact that smartphone’s usage has become wider. Most people, nowadays, use their smartphone also to surf the Internet and to exchange emails or even to buy goods or services through their credit card; consequently, this means that a lot of sensitive information is stored on Chinese devices. Whether this should be considered or not a security issue, is something police authorities are supposed to deal with and now it is probably too early to have an opinion based upon relevant facts rather then economic interests. At this moment, we can just say that American security agencies strongly recommend to their officers and entrepreneurs not to use any devices made by Chinese producers. (Garroni, 2012) In the meantime, the following tables show some figures concerning the growing importance of these new producers: Source: (Huawei, 2012) Using the table above just as an example, we can immediately see how much revenues have grown since 2007; from 92,1 to 204 USD Million. Arcos, another Chinese brand, does not have different figures: [...]... of the IT market, it is very clear that not only the IT industry, but also the other ones involved in the exploitation of natural resources, are very strong within the internal political scenario Consequently, decision and policy makers are obliged to deal with these particular interests rather than taking care of our planet and preventing civil wars due to economic reasons The latter is particularly... governance, in accordance with the ethical prospective 6 THE POLITICAL SCENARIO IN THE REGION As already pointed out, unfortunately, the intervention of the U.N did not fix the issue, in spite of the 17,000 blue helmets’ presence on the site (among whom 800 of them were there to protect the mines and the workforce) according to international observers (Rai News 24) As a matter of fact, the United Nations Organization... resources are actually stored in the DRC Therefore, a statement declaring otherwise would definitely raise the question of where the used coltan has been taken from (Rai News 24) There is no super partes authority recognized to certify that the mineral comes from other places rather than the DRC Without this authority, everything has been left in the producers’ hands Moreover, military equipment producers... found in the DRC mines, although it is also available in other countries such as Australia, Canada, Brazil and Mozambique Nevertheless the Democratic Republic of Congo has itself more than 80% of world wide reserves of this mineral Furthermore, it can be extracted more easily from the DRC, since, apparently, it is the only place where it is not stored in the rocks but in the ground[8] (Università di... to the lack of precise figures[17] Under the light of this scenario, it needs to be acknowledged that the United Nations have not imposed their voice within the region so far, fixing the issue for good; the most important achievement reached has been a resolution, as a result of the MONUSCO report (United Nations Security Council, 2001) In particular, according to the aforementioned statement, the. .. what the Crisis Unit of the Italian Minister for Foreign affairs has to say concerning the DRC: “Within the country works an U.N mission called MONUSCO but the region is still far a way to be considered safe…”[30] (Italian Ministry of foreign affairs)[31] 7 LINKS BETWEEN THE EXPLOITATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES AND THE CONFLICT IN THE DRC It is often said that the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the. .. Rwanda’s military seems to benefit directly from the conflict Indeed, the Panel has noted a great integration between the military, the civil society and the business community According to the Panel, Rwanda finances its war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in five ways: Direct commercial activities; Profit from shares it holds in some companies; direct payments; Taxes collected by the “Congo... Rwanda, and its military branch within the exploitation of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s natural resources In particular, there is the group of the Rwandan Patriotic Army whose results are involved in these commercial activities As mentioned before, the RPA, by means of the companies such as Rwanda Metals and Grands Lacs Metals, has an important role in the coltan business Almost all the coltan... of RCD-Goma, is a shareholder”[20] (The United Nations, 2001) On the other side, the report clearly shows the financial network behind the coltan trade and, similarly, the ways used by the above mentioned countries; while the point 76 keeps explaining which are the banks actually involved: “Union des banques congolaises Although the headquarters remains in Kinshasa, it has ongoing operations in areas... and Rwandese political leadership in the exploitation of the DRC’s natural resources, along with western firms Retrieved from (The United Nations, 2001) The Ugandan authorities, in their response to the Panel’s questionnaire, stated that there was no record of transit of mineral products.” (The United Nations, 2001) The table shows clearly that Uganda has, exactly like Rwanda, very limited resources . Geopolitical Considerations behind the IT Consumerism Michele La Neve . Smashwords Edition Copyright 2012 Michele La Neve License Notes:. especially the need to switch towards a moral attitude, eventually, I used the “Theory of Moral Sentiments” and the “Critique to Practical Reason” written by the