Has economic globalization been an important driving force in the large- scale environmental deterioration
that has occurred in recent decades? A broader question is whether economic globalization has been
undermining the prospects for sustainable development. If so, must it continue to do so in the future?
These questions address a reality of immense complexity. They will not yield to simple answers.
Arthur Mol, in his Globalization and Environmental Reform, sets out to show "that it is not
globalization that the [demonstrators] attack and reject, and that it should not be.
Globalization . . is a multifaceted phenomenon with potentially devastating but also potentially
beneficial consequences. The environmental NGOs were particularly afraid-and not without
reason-of globalization in its one-sided neo-liberal, economic aspect.
Mol goes on to point out that rigorous analyses of the links between globalization and
the environment are scarce. But he notes that those writers who have addressed
the subject have typically come to the same conclusions:
"...the common view put forward by most scholars was a rather negative one:
globalization processes and trends add to environmental deterioration, to diminishing
control of environ mental problems by modern institutions, and to the unequal distribution
of environmental consequences and risks between different groups and societies.
The dominance of economic (that is, capitalist) globalization processes is often believed
to be the root cause of these detrimental environmental effects. Global political institutions,
arrangements, and organizations and a global civil society are believed to be lagging behind."
Martin Khor, Director of the Third World Network, is one of the most perceptive critics of
current globalization processes. In a recent article, he asks why the implementation of the
agreements reached at the Earth Summit, U.N. Conference on Environment and Development
(UNCED), in 1992 has "largely failed." His answer is clear:
"The reason for failure is not to be found in the sustainable development paradigm
[at the UNCED]; rather, the paradigm was not given the chance to be implemented.
Instead, intense competition came from a rival-the countervailing paradigm of globalisation,
driven by the industrialised north and its corporations, that has swept the world in recent
years. This is perhaps the most basic factor causing the failure to realise the UNCED objectives."
Khor characterizes the sustainable development paradigm as incorporating the following:
the needs of all countries (big or small); a commitment from the strong to help the weak;
a concern with both environment and development; and a realization that the state and
the international community must intervene on behalf of the public interest to attain greater
social equity and bring about more sustainable patterns of production and consumption.
He sees the globalization paradigm as very different: advocating the reduction or removal
of regulations on the market, letting free market forces reign, and granting a high degree
of rights and freedoms to the large corporations that dominate the market. Extended to
the international level, the globalization paradigm, Khor notes, "advocates liberalisation
of international markets, breaking down national economic barriers, and granting rights
to corporations to see and invest in any country of their choice without restraints or
conditions. Governments should not interfere with the free play of the market, and
social or developmental concerns (for instance, obtaining grants from developed countries
to aid developing countries) should be downgraded."
Khor believes the main factor in the ascendancy of the market paradigm and the
marginalization of the sustainable development paradigm has been "the strong support
and aggressive advocacy of the powerful countries" for both results. He sees the
governments of these countries serving as handmaidens to their private commercial
interests, downgrading the United Nations in favor of the Bretton Woods institutions
and the WTO, promoting the competitiveness of their economies by minimizing environ
mental and other standards, and generally giving an increasingly global corporate sector
nearly free reign.
Khor is undoubtedly right that the governments of the large-economy (G-7) countries
have vigorously pursued the market globalization agenda while badly neglecting the UNCED
agenda and its efforts to realize sustainable development. What is more interesting is his
assertion that the former has been intentionally at the expense of the latter. My own
view is that Khor is basically correct on this point, at least with regard to the United States.
Many U.S. policymakers have seen the globalization (market) paradigm as supplanting the
need for the sustainable development (partnership) paradigm. "Trade, not aid" has become
a Washington mantra. Writing in The Economist, the Harvard economist Jefftey Sachs
offered a stinging critique of U.S. policy:
"America has wanted global leadership on the cheap. It was desperate for the developing
world and post-communist economies to buy into its vision, in which globalization, private
capital flows and Washington advice would overcome the obstacles to shared prosperity,
so that pressures on the rich countries to do more for the poorer countries could be
contained by the dream of universal economic growth. In this way, the United States
would not have to shell out real money to help the peaceful reconstruction of Russia, or
to ameliorate the desperate impoverishment and illness in Africa...Washington became
skittish at anything or anybody that challenged this vision."
Moreover, even among those U.S. policymakers favorable to environment and development
objectives, the priority given to the trade and globalization agenda has tended to occupy
the available political space and crowd out sustainable development concerns. Hardly
anything is more fatal in Washington, D.C., than having too many top priorities. In the
battle for attention, environment and development objectives have typically lost out.
This said, the eclipse of the UNCED commitments has surely been brought about by more
than the ascendancy of the globalization paradigm. The post-Cold War period, for example,
was supposed to bring a peace dividend of financial and political resources that could have
been applied to promoting environmental and development objectives. Instead, the United
States and others have been enmeshed in a series of military and peacekeeping engagements,
now embracing the war on terrorism, that have consumed much of the available time, energy,
and money.
Interestingly, even defenders of globalization do not have much to say for themselves on the
environment issue. In their article "The Globalization Backlash," John Mickelthwait and Adrian
Wooldridge ask whether globalization is destroying the environment and answer, "not really."
They make some valid points, such as the fact that there are other powerful anti-environmental
forces at work beyond globalization (they cite $650 billion in annual subsidies for environmentally
destructive activities glob ally) and that multinational corporations are typically better environmental
performers than local counterparts. But they concede that, in the short term, increased international
trade harms the environment by increasing business activity generally because "business of all sorts
tends to despoil the environment." Twice they ask, "How much is greenery worth?"
- implicitly acknowledging that there are environmental costs to economic benefits.
There are at least eight reasons to suppose that globalization can exacerbate environmental
problems. The critics of economic globalization see in it a set of changes that will make the
situation confronting the environment worse. In this critique, economic globalization leads
to (1) an expansion of growth that is environmentally destructive; (2) a decrease in the
ability of national governments to regulate and otherwise cope with environmental management
challenges; (3) an increase in corporate power and reach; (4) the stimulation of particular
sectors such as transportation and energy that have largely negative environmental side
effects; (5) the increased likelihood of economic crises; (6) the commodification of resources
such as water and the decline of traditional local controls on resource use; (7) the spatial
separation of action and impact from responsibility; and (8) in the further ascendancy of
the growth imperative. All of these claims deserve close scrutiny.
A contrary list of forces can be developed-a list of factors that suggest that globalization
may help environmental quality. Global corporations can help to spread the most advanced
environmental management technology and techniques. The strengthening of capacities
in government to manage economic affairs can have spillover effects, strengthening
environmental management. Globalization can lead to increased incomes, which in turn
can lead to governmental revenues for environmental and social programs and to increased
public demand for environmental amenity. And increasing international trade in resources
such as timber could lead to higher prices, more secure property rights, and larger
investments in sustaining forest resources. While something can be said for each of
these forces, their effects are certainly farther down the road than most of the negative
effects mentioned earlier. Nor, on balance, do they seem as powerful. The result, as the
Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz has noted, is that "globalization today. . . is not working
for much of the environment." Nor, in his view, is it "working for many of the world's poor"
or "for the stability of the global economy."
Whatever globalization's environmental consequences in the past, the future holds
much room for improvement. There are a great many things that can and should be
done to green globalization and give it a human face. Indeed, observers have known
for many years some of the steps that are required. Over a decade ago, the World
Resources Institute convened a distinguished group of thirty Western Hemisphere
leaders for a "New World Dialogue on Environment and Development in the Western
Hemisphere." Two members of their respective senates, Fernando Henrique Cardoso
of Brazil and Al Gore Jr. of the United States would later become the president and
the vice president, respectively, of their countries. In its October 1991 Open Letter
to the Heads of State and Government of the Americas, this group said the following:
"Realizing this brighter future will require heightened international cooperation, particularly
between industrial and developing countries, but also among developing countries.
We there fore welcome current initiatives to liberalize trade and to revive growth in our
region and more broadly. But these proposals are too limited. They will succeed only in
expanding unsustainable and inequitable patterns of growth unless they are complemented
by powerful initiatives to promote social equity and to protect the environment. Indeed,
there is much reason to believe, based on past experience and current trends, that unless
major complementary initiatives are undertaken to bring envi- ronmental, economic, and
social objectives together in the new synthesis called sustainable development, liberalizing
trade and reviving growth could lead to short-term gains and long-term disaster. More than
anything else, the Compact for a New World must be a compact for sustainable development."
The group proposed a north-south compact with eight initiatives, including financial
assistance, addressing issues of population, environment, poverty, and development.
Liberalization of trade and investment regimes was only one of the eight.
Clearly, the push for liberalized trade and investment flows should be complemented by
equally concerted efforts on the environmental and social fronts. Needed are adequate
development finance as well as norms and rules of the road to guide globalization-to
protect and benefit poor countries and poor people, the environment, workers,
consumers, and investors. The WTO should be reformed to make it more open and
broadly accountable, with different principles and procedures to guide its decisions.
On the environment front, there should be a WEO (world environmental organization)
to match the WTO, or as Dan Esty and Maria Ivanova advocate in Chapter 5, a global
environmental mechanism. More broadly, an international polity should evolve and
become as robust as the international economy. Things are badly out of phase.
Governance of the international economy, shaky though it is, is far ahead of global
governance in other areas. While efforts to promote economic globalization proceed
apace through the WTO and elsewhere, policymakers must vigorously pursue reforms
and build the institutions needed in the social and environ mental areas. As Stiglitz has
noted, "The most fundamental change that is required to make globalization work in the
way that it should is a change in governance." The policy prescriptions of this new
governance are not difficult to discern and, indeed, have been frequently identified.
At the deepest level there is a question well put by J. A. Scholte. "Students of
globalization," he notes, "must surely take seriously the possibility that underlying
structures of the modern (now globalized) world order- capitalism, the state,
industrialism, nationality, rationalism...may be in important respects irreparably
destructive." In effect, Scholte is suggesting it is perhaps easy to talk about the
greening of economic globalization but tremendously difficult to accomplish.
In the end, the question may be whether societies can free themselves of
the enchantment of limitless material expansion and what John Kenneth
Galbraith has called the "highly contrived consumption of an infinite variety
of goods and services." This question is addressed in a new essay, Great
Transition, by Paul Raskin and his colleagues in the Global Scenario Group.
They believe that many scenarios of world economic, social, and environ
mental conditions are possible, but they favor a "great transition" based
on a "new sustainability paradigm":
"The new paradigm would revise the concept of progress. Much of human
history was dominated by the struggle for survival under harsh and meager
conditions. Only in the long journey from tool making to modern technology
did human want gradually give way to plenty. Progress meant solving the
economic problem of scarcity. Now that problem has been-or rather, could be-solved.
The precondition for a new paradigm is the historic possibility of a post-scarcity
world where all enjoy a decent standard of living. On that foundation, the quest
for material things can abate. The vision of a better life can turn to non-material
dimensions of fulfillment-the quality of life, the quality of human solidarity and the
quality of the earth ...Sustainabiity is the imperative that pushes the new agenda.
Desire for a rich quality of life, strong human ties and a resonant connection to
nature is the lure that pulls it toward the future."
The revolution Raskin and his colleagues see coming a quarter century away is
primarily a revolution in social consciousness and values. They envision a time
when people attach greatest priority to qualitative fulfillment, social solidarity,
and ecological integrity. In 1970, Charles Reich, far ahead of his time, wrote
of such a new consciousness in The Greening of America:" The new consciousness
seeks restoration of the non-material elements of man's existence, the elements
like the natural environment and the spiritual that were passed by in the rush of
material development." Let us hope that Raskin and his colleagues, in seeing these
changes finally occurring fifty years after Reich wrote about them, have given our
species enough time to grow up. It is doubtful that the planet can take much
more of our heedless childhood.
Rights: Island Press June 2003.
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