Negative

Because Economic development is more vital to a government than protection of
the environment I must negate the resolution:
  Resolved: A government's obligation to protect the environment ought to take
precedence over it's obligation to promote economic development.
To better clarify this round I offer the following definitions:
 1. Environment: the condition of the air, water, soil, plants, animals, and
natural surroundings. (World Book Millennium)
 2. Economic Development: To bring into activity or to grow frugality and
prudent expenditure and use of resources. (Black’s Law Fifth Edition)
 
   For this  debate, I will have a Value of Societal Welfare. Societal welfare
is defined as the general condition of the world’s societies. This value
underlines all others because the ultimate goal of a government is to provide
for the welfare of its society. I will be weighng Societal Welfare by the
social contract. The social contract states that the people of a nation give up
some of their freedoms, and in return they receive protection from their
government.
When deciphering a government’s obligation one must weigh all arguments
concerning that decision with the social contract. The social contract
determines what obligations the government must first recognize, thus making it
the standard for the round.
     Contention 1: Economic Development is beneficial to a nation. 
Economic development as defined in the debate is: To bring into activity or to
grow frugality and prudent expenditure and use of resources. In other words it
describes a nation’s effort to better use its resources and to more prudently
monitor spending. Thus, economic development greatly helps a nation to more
effeciently serve it's people, and to put itself ahead of other countries. 
This allows the nation to pursue other goals…like perhaps protecting the
environment, but only if the obligation to economic development is addressed
first and foremost.
Here is a prime example of a nation who values economic development over
protection of the environment but you can see that the U.S enjoys a Quality of
life that exceeds almost all nations in the world. Literacy, use of technology,
infancy birth rates, and health are some of the deciding factors that
concretely determine Quality of Life, and nations who do prosper through
economic development enjoy a high quality of life. 
     Contention 2: The social contract must be upheld.
According to THE SOCIAL CONTRACTOR PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL RIGHT by Jean
Jacques Rousseau
“The clauses of this contract are so determined by the nature of the act that
the slightest modification would make them vain and ineffective; so that, 
although they have perhaps never been formally set forth, they are everywhere
the same and everywhere tacitly admitted and recognized, until, on the
violation of the social compact, each regains his original rights and resumes 
his natural liberty, while losing the conventional liberty in favor of which he
renounced it.” 
This mandates that the government must do all that it can to provide to its
people the best life possible.
 
     Contention 3: Economic development improves Quality of Life. 
According to the CIA world fact book the U.S: has air pollution resulting in
acid rain in both the US and Canada; the largest single emittion of carbon
dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels; water pollution from runoff of
pesticides and fertilizers;
According to the same source, the US has the largest and most
technologically powerful economy in the world, with a per capita GDP of
$37,600.

We can use this economic powert better improve the enviroment, but it is not
our main priority! Since this is a communalistic relationship, the governments
priority lies with promoting economic development, and the enviroment will
always come second.  If we hold enviroment over economy, we will drastically
lower our quality of life, and we will slip out of our economic stability which
in turn will cause us to lose the financial resources we would need to protect
the environment. 
In regards to this debate we have already seen that it is necessicary to
promote economic development for the betterment of both sides of the res.,
Thank You