The Environment and Globalization
Adapted from the Globalization101.org Issue Brief
Introduction
Tens of thousands of people descended on Seattle, Washington, in December 1999 to protest a World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting of trade ministers from 130 countries around the world that was intended to launch a new, multi-year set of trade liberalization negotiations. At what became known as the "Battle in Seattle," some protestors challenged, in violent street demonstrations, the underlying premise of free trade—namely that the benefits of free trade can be shared by all participants. Some protestors made their point by dressing up as turtles. A 1998 WTO decision overturning a U.S. law intended to protect sea turtles had become a flash point for concern about the effect that open trade and globalization have on the environment. The decision, known as the "shrimp-turtle case," declared a U.S. import ban on shrimp caught without "turtle excluder devices" was in violation of international trade law.
Although the shrimp import ban was intended to protect the environment, most of the affected imports were from Southeast Asian countries that could not afford the turtle excluder devices. Those countries claimed that the United States ban was therefore protecting the environment by harming their development, since their economies depended on shrimp exports. The case thus highlighted important and interrelated questions about the place of environmental protection in a globalized economy.
Globalization and the Environment
These questions have arisen mainly as a result of increased economic integration, but globalization has also meant an important conceptual change in the way we think about the environment. Many of us now see environmental problems as being of international concern, not just national interest—such as protection of the oceans and the atmosphere from pollution. The environment is now considered the "common heritage of mankind," and environmental problems are increasingly the subject of international efforts because of their cross-border effects and the impossibility that just one or a few nations can solve these problems on their own.
Legions of public international and private non-governmental organizations therefore seek solutions for environmental issues, such as the United Nations Environmental Program, Greenpeace, and the Worldwatch Institute. A multitude of treaties have been concluded to harmonize governmental policy on environmental protection. Some environmentalists have even proposed the creation of a "world environmental organization" to coordinate international environmental policies.
Others have questioned the need for rigorous environmental protection, however, on scientific, economic, and sovereignty grounds. Critics of environmental protection argue that alleged dangers, such as global warming, have been exaggerated and the economic harm from regulation of natural resources has been minimized, in pursuit of a radical, anti-capitalist agenda. They argue that too much regulation is both unnecessary and ultimately harmful because it keeps people poor by preventing the competitive use of their resources.
In contrast, advocates of environmental protection say that unregulated economic activity has led to environmental destruction and must be slowed, and they say that their critics are uniformed and pursuing their own agenda of unfettered capitalist expansion.
Environmental protection can entail a drag on economic growth in the short-term. Industries that have to adjust to environmental regulations face disruption and higher costs, harming their competitive position. The question is what to make of this. Some argue that it may be worth slower economic growth in order to protect the environment. Others say that the free market and technological advances are the best tools to solve environmental problems and lift people out of poverty, rather than greater regulation.
The link between the environment and economic development may be more complex than that, however. In fact, in many ways, protecting the environment and promoting economic growth are complementary goals. Poverty in developing countries is a leading cause of environmental degradation. For instance, "slash-and-burn" land-clearing by subsistence farmers has been a major cause of depletion of the Amazon rainforest. Boosting economic growth may then be an effective tool to promote protection of the environment. This is the idea behind the sustainable development movement, which seeks to advance economic opportunities for poorer nations in environmentally friendly ways.
Are International Trade and Protection of the Environment Enemies?
As demonstrated by the protestors in Seattle, the effect of international trade on the environment has been one of the most contentious elements in the world-wide debate about globalization. Opponents of globalization fear that uncontrolled economic growth, fuelled by free trade, harms the environment by causing more pollution and exhaustion of natural resources. Furthermore, they suspect that environmental protection laws are weakened under the guise of promoting free trade by corporations and governments unconcerned about the negative environmental effects of commerce.
In contrast, many corporations, governments, and citizens in developing countries (and some in developed countries as well) are willing to accept a certain level of environmental damage in exchange for economic well-being. They fear that environmental protection laws are really ways for developed countries to prevent their goods from competing fairly.
In 1990, Mexico and Venezuela challenged a U.S. law intended to prevent dolphins from being killed in the tuna-fishing process. The case was the first in a series of disputes in the 1990s whose outcome in GATT dispute resolution panel reports seemed to prioritize free trade over the environment and galvanized opposition to free trade among environmentalists. The origin of what became known as the "tuna-dolphin" case was the United States' Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), which imposed a ban on imports of tuna from countries that did not have a conservation program designed to protect dolphins in the tuna-fishing process. Tuna, it turns out, are often found swimming in schools underneath dolphins. In order to catch the tuna, fishermen used to drag large nets through the water and then pull them up under the tuna.
Dolphins swimming above the tuna would be caught at the same time and die in the nets along with the tuna. The MMPA therefore required American tuna fishermen to adjust their fishing practices to avoid such deaths, and banned tuna from countries in which dolphin deaths from tuna fishing exceeded deaths from U.S. tuna fishing by more than 25 percent. As a result, tuna from Mexico, Venezuela, Panama, Ecuador, and the Pacific island of Vanuatu were banned in 1990. Mexico and Venezuela challenged the U.S. action in the dispute resolution system of the GATT and won their cases in 1991 and 1992. The decision in the Mexico case is considered a key turning point in jurisprudence of the world trade system, even though it was not officially adopted as a binding decision by the members of the GATT. (Mexico and the United States later settled the dispute through negotiations.)
The Environment and NAFTA
Environmental issues (as well as protection of labor rights), therefore, became a focal point for opposition to the United States' plan to join NAFTA. Although NAFTA had been negotiated primarily during the administration of President George H.W. Bush, his successor, Bill Clinton, and the Clinton administration strongly supported integration of the U.S., Canadian, and Mexican economies as a means to promote economic development in all three countries. Some members of Congress, however, were wary of approving the agreement and pressure from them and environmental interest groups resulted in the Clinton administration negotiating a special "side agreement" on the environment (as well as one on labor issues).
The side agreement, called the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC) committed the three governments to studying environment problems, developing scientific research and technology to improve environmental protection, and educating their publics about the environment. The governments also pledged to enforce strictly their own environmental laws and to ensure that private citizens had access to their national court systems to promote environmental protection. It also said that the governments should "consider" implementing environmental protections measures suggested by a new trilateral group called the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC).
The agreement was criticized, therefore, for not actually making the governments responsible for new obligations. Instead, environmental activists pointed out, the agreement only requires that the governments live up to commitments already made under domestic law. If those laws are not effective, the CEC cannot impose new obligations. The CEC also is supposed to rule on disputes if one country believes that another is not enforcing its environmental laws effectively. The procedures for doing so, however, are complex, and the consequences of a negative decision by an arbitral panel are minimal, with development of an "action plan" to resolve the non-enforcement and only symbolically significant fines against the offending government. So far, no cases have been brought.
Again, some of the key issues in the debate over international environmental protection repeated themselves in the NAFTA side agreement negotiations—the sensitivity to international review of national laws, barriers to enforcement of environmental standards, the differences in environmental protection between rich and poor countries, and the priority given to trade over environmental concerns.
The Doha Mandate on the Environment
Aware of the public outcry over the shrimp-turtle case and growing opposition to free trade in many countries—indeed, the summit of trade officials in Seattle in 1999 failed to launch a new round of global trade negotiations—world governments recognized that they had to acknowledge the importance of the environment. When an agreement was reached among all WTO trade ministers to start a new round of global trade negotiations at a summit in Doha, Qatar, in November 2001, therefore, it included a limited mandate to open negotiations on the relationship between trade and environment in the context of the GATT and the 20 multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) governing environmental protection that have provisions affecting international trade.
This was a significant step because it raised the level of concern for the environment from that of merely studies by the CTE to the level of the full negotiations among the members of the WTO, with the results to be included in the final, legally binding, decision to come at the end of the Doha Round. Nevertheless, the results remain to be seen, and skeptics as to the value of the negotiations exist on both sides. Developing world countries are concerned that the negotiations may be a means to discriminate against their goods. To try to forestall this problem, the CTE was also given a further mandate to study the impact of environmental protection measures on access to markets for products from the developing world.
At the same time, environmentalists are concerned that the WTO will still be too focused on free trade. The WTO reaffirmed in the Doha Declaration that its competency is in trade and that the proper forum for solving environmental problems is through MEAs, not the GATT. Environmentalists hope, perhaps too optimistically, that the new round of negotiations will enable them to insert more concern for the environment in the international trading system, what has been called "greening the GATT." This is particularly important for the environmental movement since there is, as of yet, no international organization to coordinate global environmental policy.
The negotiating process will, at the least, open up these issues to wider and more public airing. All of the themes that have wended their way through the development of concerns in the international trade system will be vigorously debated—sovereignty over natural resources versus international control, the role of environmental concerns in trade treaties, and, most importantly, the balance between development and environmental protection.
Global Warming according to the IPCC
Global warming—also called climate change—refers to the worldwide rise in temperatures that has been blamed for severe weather in many parts of the world. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) a worldwide consortium of scientists set up in 1988 by the (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the world's average temperature has risen by 1.1° F (0.6° C) over the past century. The IPCC also predicts an increase in average temperature between 2.5° F (1.4° C) and 10.4° F (5.8° C) over the next century, a rate of warming unprecedented in the last 10,000 years.
This rise in temperature is blamed for a number of environmental problems, such as an increase in the worldwide sea level by four to eight inches (10 to 20 centimeters) caused by melting ice glaciers that threatens to swamp coastal land areas and islands. Global warming may also cause higher precipitation levels and more frequent severe weather, such as El Niņo.
The cause of global warming is human activity, including fossil fuel combustion associated with industrial development, the burning of forests by farmers in the developing world, and even biomass combustion—the burning of wood, coal, and dung for cooking and heat—by the poor. These activities have produced emissions of gases, such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFC’s), which contains elements such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and chlorine, fluorine, and bromide (together called halogens). CFCs and HCFCs are often described as "greenhouse gases" because they warm the atmosphere by trapping heat from the sun and cause the "greenhouse effect."
To combat these problems, in 1992 the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) established a commitment "to achieve…stabilization of atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases at levels that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic (human-induced) interference with the climate system." Since then, 186 countries have joined the UNFCCC, and in 1997, 84 countries agreed on the Kyoto Protocol, a more stringent and detailed procedure for execution of the UNFCCC goals. Under the protocol, signatory nations are supposed to achieve a 5-7 percent reduction from 1990 levels in CO2 emissions by 2008 to 2012.
The Kyoto Protocol came into force in 2004 after Russia signed the agreement. At least 55 countries that account for a total of 55 percent or more of greenhouse gas emissions (at 1990 levels) must ratify the protocol for it to take effect. Most importantly, despite being one of the 84 drafters of the protocol in 1997, the United States has been an outspoken critic of the agreement since then, and as the producer of about 36 percent of greenhouse gases (at 1990 levels), U.S. refusal to ratify has almost single-handedly thwarted the effectiveness of the protocol.
The United States and other countries, such as Australia, have voiced several concerns about the Protocol, focusing on its scientific basis, economic cost, feasibility and fairness.
On the other hand, it is relatively easier for poor nations to upgrade outdated, dirty industrial processes by applying modern technology already available in wealthy countries. In fact, the Kyoto Protocol calls for rich countries to provide technological and capacity-building assistance to poor countries so that these "easy" emissions reductions can be made, with the simultaneous benefit of a badly needed boost to economic efficiency.
Developing nations, however, argue that it is unfair to burden their current economic development with environmental regulations while the richer countries enjoyed unfettered development in decades past without environmental restrictions.
These differences between the United States and many other countries have delayed implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, but most of the international community seems determined to press ahead. Since 2002, the European Union, Japan, and Russia have ratified the protocol, meeting the 55 percent threshold of global emissions and put the protocol into effect. As of 15 April 2004, 84 Parties have signed and 122 parties have ratified or acceded to the Kyoto Protocol.
Nevertheless, the disputes over the balance between economic development and environmental protection and between the responsibilities of rich and poor countries will have to be settled before an internationally coordinated strategy on reducing greenhouses gases can gain the participation of the United States.
Like global warming, depletion of the ozone layer raises complex problems of cause and effect that have led to international disagreements over coordinated efforts to reverse the problem. Unlike global warming, however, ozone depletion has actually been successfully controlled by international cooperation, perhaps providing a model for other efforts at global environmental protection. Ozone is an invisible, poisonous gas molecule (O3) that exists in trace (minimal) amounts in the stratosphere (6-30 miles above the earth). It makes life on earth possible by shielding the planet from 95-99 percent of the sun's harmful ultra-violet (UV) rays, which can cause skin cancer, degenerative eye damage, and suppressed immune response. Rodents subjected to UV irradiation are more likely to die from viruses such as malaria, influenza, and herpes.
The main cause of ozone depletion is emissions from man-made sources of halocarbons, most notably chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Discovered in the early 20th century, these "wonder gases" were renowned for their industrial properties and used in a wide range of applications, including refrigerators, air conditioners, aerosol spray cans, solvents, foams, and fire extinguishers. The downside of these gases is that they linger in the atmosphere—50, 65, 100, or as long as 1,700 years—and thus cause long-lasting environmental damage. The chlorine in CFC interacts chemically with ozone and breaks it up into constituent molecules of oxygen, reducing the capability of the ozone layer to block UV rays.
The international response to the ozone threat has been perhaps the most successful of all global environmental efforts. In 1985, The Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer (known as the Vienna Convention) committed countries to take "appropriate measures…to protect human health and the environment against adverse effects resulting or likely to result from human activities which modify or are likely to modify the Ozone Layer." At that point, scientific understanding of ozone depletion was still limited, so specific measures were not put in place, but countries were willing to recognize the problem and agree in principle to combat it.
As scientists developed precise knowledge of how ozone depletion occurs and started finding definitive proof of an ozone hole, the parties to the Vienna Convention were more inclined to take specific action and thus negotiated the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer. Completed in 1987 and with 183 parties as of June 2002, the Montreal Protocol established tough guidelines for reducing usage of ozone-depleting substances while allowing leeway for the economic growth of developing countries and changes based on scientific advances.
Under an amendment process, the Montreal Protocol can be updated to reflect better understanding of the ozone problem without having to re-negotiate the whole agreement, so that the agreement is flexible yet steadfast. This process has resulted in four subsequent amendments: in London (1990), Copenhagen (1992), Montreal (1997), and Beijing (1999). This success in turning back ozone depletion may provide a model for other efforts to combat global environmental problems. The Vienna Convention and Montreal Protocol succeeded because rich countries first took the lead and made the effort credible, and only then asked less developed countries to follow suit.
Pollution
The balance between economic development and environmental damage is also evident in the problem of pollution and waste products. Increased economic activities, especially in industrial countries, yield pollution from trash and litter, sewage, oil spills, gas and chemical emissions, and nuclear radiation.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), representing the world's 30 richest countries, estimates that from 1980-1995 there was a 25 percent increase per person in waste each year, from 904 lbs. to 1,146 lbs, among its member-countries. OECD says that, "a near doubling of OECD-wide municipal waste generation is conceivable within the next 20 years." Overall, total waste generation in OECD countries exceeded four billion tons in the mid-1990s.
The United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, meanwhile, predicts that by 2025 global waste generation may increase five-fold. Within developing countries, the UN commission expects that waste will double within the next ten years.
What can you do to decrease pollution in your neighborhood? International trade made this problem particularly acute in the 1980s. "Toxic traders" in environmentally stricter industrialized countries were avoiding the increasingly high cost of disposing of hazardous waste domestically by shipping the waste to developing countries and Eastern Europe. To combat what many people perceived to be a contemptible and unfair arrangement, the Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes was drafted in 1989. The convention has three main objectives:
International shipments of hazardous waste require approval of the governments to which the waste will be imported or across which it will transit. Export to certain countries is banned altogether. The convention requires annual reporting by each party, offers legal and technical advice, and promotes financial assistance to developing countries. The Basel convention came into force in 1992 and has 168 parties.
Similarly, the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), adopted in May 2001, places strict controls on production, trade, and disposal of 12 of the most dangerous POPs because these toxic substances—mainly industrial chemical by-products and pesticides—are highly injurious, spread easily, and become more concentrated-and thus more dangerous-as they move from organism to organism up the food chain.
Most of the POPs regulated by the Convention have already been banned in industrialized countries under domestic law, so the primary purpose of the treaty is to provide financial and technical assistance to developing countries. Recognizing the value of international cooperation, President Bush in May 2002 advised the U.S. Senate to ratify the convention, saying, "POPs chemicals, even when released abroad, can harm human health and environment in the United States." As of June 2002, however, only 11 nations have ratified the convention, and it needs 50 parties to enter into force.
Is Sustainable Development the Way Forward?
This Issue Brief has described the effect of globalization on the environment both as a result of the increasing integration of the world's economies through international trade and in the context of multilateral, international efforts to combat the most pressing global environmental problems. As we have discussed, countries disagree over the nature and scope of the threats the environment faces and the way to deal with those threats, with scientific, cultural, and economic considerations all playing roles in these disagreements. The common themes running through these disagreements, though, are the trade-offs between economic development and environmental protection and between international cooperation and individual action.
The movement for sustainable development is one way past these divisions that has become increasingly important both in international policy-making circles and on the ground. In 1987, the World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission) summarized many ideas that had been coalescing among environmentalists into the idea of sustainable development, which the commission defined as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." This definition supported a comprehensive approach to development in all its aspects-social as well as economic-in ways that did not harm the environment or deplete natural resources so that they would still be available in the future.
The first major endorsement of sustainable development came at the 1992 Rio Conference mentioned earlier, which set forth the Rio Declaration on the Environment and Development and the Agenda 21. The declaration outlined the goals of sustainable development. It stated, "Human beings…are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature," and that "environmental protection shall constitute an integral part of the development process and cannot be considered in isolation from it." States were enjoined to "cooperate to eradicate poverty" and to "cooperate in a spirit of global partnership to conserve, protect and restore the health and integrity of the Earth's ecosystem."
But the "differing responsibilities" of nations at differing levels of development was also emphasized, with rich nations supposed to provide scientific know-how, technology, and financial resources to poorer countries to help them develop and protect the environment. At the same time, the declaration noted that states have "the sovereign right to exploit their own resources pursuant to their own environmental and developmental policies, and the responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction." The declaration thus tries to navigate a way through the tensions in the relationship between environmental protection and development, rich and poor nations, and international cooperation and national sovereignty.
Agenda 21 on Sustainable Development
Agenda 21 turned the declaration’s principles into a comprehensive list of programs that the international community committed itself to implementing to achieve economic development and environmental protection in tandem and without conflict. Included in the agenda were items as diverse as ending poverty, promoting human health, fighting corruption, protecting the oceans, forests, and biological diversity, and creating environmentally friendly agricultural practices. All of these were to be accomplished in the framework of local, national, and international governmental and non-governmental initiatives that respected women's rights, workers rights, and the rights of indigenous peoples.
Following the summit, organizations were set up to help implement both the declaration and Agenda 21, such as the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development and the U.S. President's Council on Sustainable Development. More than 150 countries set up national councils to promote Agenda 21 and 1,800 cities and towns drafted programs to implement Agenda 21 in their localities. Advocacy groups, such as Greenpeace and Oxfam, added sustainable development to their own agendas. Further support for sustainable development came in the WTO's 1994 Marrakesh Declaration and the 2001 Doha Declaration, which both affirmed the goal of liberalizing international trade within the context of sustainable development.
The idea of sustainable development has not, however, ended controversies over the relationship between economic growth and environmental protection. In fact, in many ways the World Conference on Sustainable Development in August 2002, intended to review progress since the Rio Summit, demonstrated the continuing divisions in the international community. In the end, the summit was criticized both by those who had high hopes for its success, such as Greenpeace, and by those who had been skeptical all along, for not having achieved much. Although participants at the summit agreed on two key documents, a political declaration and an action plan, similar to the Rio documents, it remains to be seen whether the continuing disputes in the international community can be overcome to lead to real progress on eliminating poverty and simultaneously protecting the environment.
In the 30 years since the 1972 Stockholm Conference, dozens of international conferences, national laws, local initiatives, government programs and non-governmental campaigns have not resolved the fundamental tensions that underlie the relationship between globalization and the environment. Instead, all these efforts have challenged countries to manage those tensions in ways that are politically feasible within their domestic political context and their financial resources. The results of this process for the environment and for human development are still unfolding.