Nanotechnology Threatens to Destroy the Global Trade in Commodities

Atomising Third World Economies 

JIM THOMAS / The Ecologist (UK) 1oct04

In all fairness, the science had not even been conceived at the time, but in 1952 one of the most enjoyable comments on what nanotechnology would come to mean for society was already screening in cinemas around the world. In that year Alec Guinness played the eponymous hero of the film The Man in the White Suit, a maverick textile scientist who invents a fabric that never wrinkles, gets dirty or wears out. Far from welcoming this shiny new innovation, the unions and bosses in the film recognise it as a threat to their livelihoods and form lynch mobs to hunt Guinness's character down. In its time the film was an incisive comment on new fibres such as nylon. Today it has a new relevance as engineered nano-fibres incorporate themselves invisibly into everyday products. Invisible or not, the ability to tune the properties of matter at the nano-scale to produce new synthetic materials directly threatens patterns of trade in established commodities and, by extension, the agricultural livelihoods that depend on those commodities.

Consider trousers. If there is a recurrent poster child for US-style nanotech it's the 'nano-trousers' that every nano-evangelist has at some point publicly spilt coffee over before a bemused audience. If all goes well, the coffee beads up like mercury and rolls off without staining. If it doesn't... Well, more fool them. Nano-trousers are the innovation of Texas-based outfit Nano-Tex, which weaves artificial 'nano-whiskers' into clothing to make it stain-resistant. Two of Nano-Tex's inventions aim to replicate the qualities of natural cotton: the fabric Resist Spills breathes in the same way cotton does; while artificial Cotton Touch is specifically designed to feel like cotton to the wearer. Of Cotton Touch, Nano-Tex founder David Soane says: 'This will be our blockbuster.' He's probably right.

But what might be a blockbuster for Nano-Tex could prove a disaster for the world's 20 million cotton farmers, 99 per cent of whom live in the global South. As a commodity, cotton has been in a bad way for some time. A century of price declines accompanied the rise of cheap synthetic petroleum-based fibres. Today, despite record harvests, cotton accounts for only 40 per cent of the world's total fibre consumption. Other natural fibres have fared no better: wool accounts for a mere 2.5 per cent, and silk for a tiny 0.2 per cent. Demand for artificial fibres is growing twice as fast as that for cotton.

If Nano-Tex were a niche producer it might be possible to ignore its challenge to cotton markets. That is not the case, however. Nano-Tex is owned by garment multinational Burlington, and its nano-fabrics have already been successfully incorporated into some of the world's best-known clothing brands, including Eddie Bauer, Lee, Gap, Old Navy and Kathmandu. Nano-Tex has won awards and praise from Time and Forbes magazines, and, perhaps most significantly, attracted the cash of Wall Street's most canny investor Warren Buffet. The latter regards nano-fibres as part of the strategy by which a domestic US textile industry can resurrect itself in the face of overwhelming competition from Asia.

What is true for cotton fabrics is also true for other commodities on which Southern economies currently depend. Nano-gels and nano-clay particles that are intended to replace and reduce rubber in car tyres pose a significant threat to the rubber-tappers of Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Stain-free bathrooms, clothes and self-cleaning windows could have a devastating impact on the markets for starch and tropical oils used in soaps and detergents. The copper industry is a cornerstone of the economy in poor nations such as Zambia, but highly conductive carbon nano-tubes look set to make copper wiring obsolete.

At face value all of this disruption could be sold to the public as an ecological boon. The raw materials for nano-materials could increasingly be sourced closer to home (from ethanol or petroleum, for example), thus reducing transport emissions. Surely nobody would mourn the demise of exploitative mining industries? Nobody but a realist, that is. A sharp switch away from tropical commodities would be callous: it would not hurt the likes of Rio Tinto so much as those forced by poverty to take jobs in their mines. Take the copper trade away from Zambia without a managed transition, and a country already ravaged by Aids and drought would become even less able to set its house in order. Reduce the market for cotton and don't be surprised by an upsurge in suicides among farmers in India. With every new wave of technology it's the poor and vulnerable who get swamped: a shift to nano-commodities will neither help them with new opportunities nor change any fundamental power relations.

Like GM crops and pharmaceuticals, designer nano-materials come swathed in strong intellectual property protections, with patents and profit accruing entirely to Northern corporations. Nor is it clear that one environmental problem is not simply being swapped for another, since nano-fibres and nano-particles are far from receiving a clean bill of health: the UK's leading science academy the Royal Society has recommended a prohibition on environmental applications of nano-particles. We need strong global rules to ensure that new technologies are only deployed if the interests of the poor and the vulnerable are protected.