Globalization and the Environment2

Sunday, April 30, 2006

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Globalization is usually thought of as an economic phenomenon of global movements of capital and trade in goods and services. However there are environmental dimensions of globalization that are equally important both for the future of the life support system of the planet and for their impacts on human society.

As the human population has grown, our impacts on the environment have reached the global scale.
Such impacts include:
-We have released enough carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to have a measurable effect on global climate.
-Chlorofluorocarbons and other man-made gases have attacked and depleted the stratospheric ozone layer as well.
-A number of pesticides and other persistent organic pollutants are now distributed globally, and may threaten hormonal balances and the immune system in man and other animals.
-Some toxic chemicals used in the tropics evaporate in the heat and are transported in the air to the poles, where they condense out in the cold and accumulate in the food chain, in a global distillation process.

The globalization of trade puts pressure on natural resources around the world, helping to drive the rapid depletion of tropical forests, the collapse of many ocean fisheries, and even the global impoverishment of biological diversity.

We travel so much that we are becoming more vulnerable to epidemics, helped along by the global spread of antibiotic resistance.

A number of recent studies have developed scenarios of possible futures in a globalizing world. For example, there is an increasing risk of major flows of environmental refugees.
-One underlying cause of the Rwandan tragedy was high population growth that overshot the carrying capacity of the limited land area. In many places, water shortage, resource depletion, climate change, or sea level rise could displace large numbers of people.
-Another nuclear accident like Chernobyl, or the release of biological warfare agents like anthrax, perhaps by terrorists, could contaminate large areas and make them uninhabitable.

Where will all these people go? If climate change drives farmers off the land in some regions and makes Siberia cultivable, can the displaced farmers move to the newly opened lands? The movement of capital has been globalized and free trade in goods and services is the aim of governments through the World Trade Organization. Yet no one wants to address the politically-sensitive subject of the global movement of people.

Why should one be able to move and not the other? From an ecological perspective, allowing the free movement of people to live and work where they wished would be a true balancing factor in the world system, working against unjust extremes of wealth and poverty. People do not usually like to leave their homes unless they have to. There would be a strong global motivation to redistribute wealth so that most people would prefer to stay at home. This issue is highly complex and controversial, but it raises fundamental ethical questions that cannot be ignored in a discussion of globalization. We may postpone thinking about it, but it will be thrust upon us by future environmental changes.


One challenge in a globalizing society is to empower people and institutions everywhere to respond effectively to their local environmental situations while maintaining at the same time a global perspective on their environmental impacts.
Some elements of a constructive response to achieve this empowerment include:

- More participation should be encouraged at all levels in environmental observing, assessment and management. People can observe their own environment, assess the consequences, and adjust their actions accordingly.

- Everyone must learn to recognize that human systems are part of natural systems and all must be viewed in an integrated and dynamic perspective. The Western intellectual tradition tends to classify things in static compartments, yet the natural world and human society are constantly changing and interacting, requiring more holistic systems thinking. This will have to including the internalization in the economic system of environmental and social dimensions that are presently treated as externalities.


Ultimately, at the most fundamental level, a successful response to globalization will require fundamental changes in human values, both as individuals, and as incorporated in the governmental, corporate and economic structures of society.


brought to you by: xiu (health and environment expert)
Posted by xiu at 10:37 pm
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