Globalization and the Environment
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Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Arthur Lyon Dahl, Globalization and the Environment, bahai-library.com.
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Globalization and the Environment

Arthur Lyon Dahl

1998-10

*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 and the leverage provided by technology
has increased, our impacts on the environment have reached the global scale.
We have released enough carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to have
a measurable effect on global climate, while chlorofluorocarbons and other
man-made gases have attacked and depleted the stratospheric ozone layer.
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.
Global movements of invasive introduced species have had major biological
and economic impacts on the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, the Great Lakes,
grazing lands, forests, and other resources. As yet, little attention has
been paid to the synergies and interactions between environmental problems,
and between them and social and economic systems, that may, in fact, represent
some of the biggest future problems and surprises. While it has always
been possible to escape from environmental limits at a local or national
scale, the planet is a closed system (except for solar energy) and there
is no escape from planetary limits.
A number of recent studies have developed scenarios of possible futures
in a globalizing world, some of them quite undesirable. They present the
challenge of solidarity or exclusion at a planetary scale. 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.
This does not mean that everything is negative about globalization and
the environment. Studies do suggest that the world can be transformed into
a stable and productive global society, but that this will require fundamental
changes. Space does not permit reviewing all of them here. For example,
it appears technically possible to increase the efficiency of the use of
energy and resources by a factor of 10 in highly-developed societies, with
little reduction in living standards, thus releasing the resources necessary
for the poor and the developing countries to make major advances.
Environmental globalization does not mean that the same solutions should
be applied everywhere. The planetary environment is highly diverse, and
human responses and adaptations to it need to be similarly diverse. 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. The science needed to manage the environment should no longer
be the preserve of an intellectual elite, but a set of rational tools available
to everyone. In many traditional societies, each family had its store of
environmental knowledge related to farming, fishing, hunting and the use
of available materials, built up by close observation over generations,
and passed down within the family. If this traditional equivalent of science
was so widespread before, it could easily be again.
Some elements of a constructive response to achieve this empowerment
include:
- A nested set of environmental information systems from the global
to the local levels should be developed that can provide all stakeholders
with scientific information on the status and limits of natural resources
as a basis for their sustainable management. Global observing systems for
climate, the land and the oceans are gradually being put in place, and
new technologies are steadily increasing our ability to collect environmental
information. However we are falling behind in our ability to analyze and
assess the information now becoming available.
- More participation should be encouraged at all levels in environmental
observing, assessment and management. The principle of subsidiarity applies
to environmental management. With much wider access of all people to science
as a guide to human behaviour and decision-making, local 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.
- New sets of indicators are needed, beyond GNP, that can help to guide
society to maximize not only economic capital, but human and environmental
capital as well. Present measures of development and success are narrowly
economic and miss major characteristics of society. Adopting more balanced
sets of indicators including individual well-being, social progress, effective
community life and governance, and even cultural, scientific and spiritual
dimensions of development would help to steer us in the right direction.
Natural ecosystems like coral reef and tropical rain forests provide
interesting models for human society. They demonstrate that highly rich
and productive communities can survive in impoverished environments if
they maximize the contributions of every component species, use materials
frugally with extensive recycling and little waste, decentralize responsibility
and decision-making (or their ecological equivalents) to each individual,
and build high levels of interaction and symbiosis that are the natural
equivalent of human solidarity.
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. Human values determine how people relate to each
other. They are the social equivalent of the genetic code and instincts
at lower biological levels. A positive mutation in the basic instructions
can change the whole course of evolution.
If the productive economic institutions of society are only accountable
for making a profit, then it is normal for them to do that well at the
expense of everything else. This is a fundamental structural problem related
to the values incorporated in our institutions; businesses are only responsible
for business, and all the social and environmental problems are left to
government. If we do not like the result, then we need to change the values
inherent in our institutional structures and frameworks. The problem is
aggravated by phenomena of rapid economic globalization, while the counterbalancing
political structures have not kept pace and are losing their power over
a globalizing world. Mechanisms for social services, for wealth redistribution
through taxation, and for environmental regulation, do not now exist at
the global level where multinational corporations and institutional investors
are most active and an increasing amount of wealth creation is taking place.
One basic change to consider is in our units of account for development.
At present we use money, but all those aspects of a developed society,
like its laws, science, culture and values, that are not traded in the
market, escape this system of valuation. An alternative to consider would
be units of human potential realized (say person/years of service). A society
that measures its success by its effectiveness in using and developing
all the human potential within it, rather than just in the growth of economic
activity, would evolve in a wholly new direction, one in which spiritual
and material values would be in better balance. Such a society would be
closer to the long-term sustainability demonstrated by natural ecological
systems.
In closing, this seminar has stimulated some personal reflections on
the project on globalization launched here. One encouraging recent trend
has been the growing recognition that politics, economics and science are
not enough. The spiritual or religious dimension of society, that deals
with human values and motivations, cannot be neglected in addressing current
problems linked to globalization, and this will be addressed in another
phase of the project. Around the world there is a growing dialogue between
religions, scientists and the environmental movement in an attempt to bridge
our understanding of environmental problems and the changes in values,
motivation and lifestyles needed to solve them. The environment and religion
are two pressures for more global thinking and acting that are being drawn
into partnership. For example, Bahá'u'lláh, founder of the
Bahá'í Faith, already addressed globalization and the need
for moderation in material civilization explicitly in the mid-nineteenth
century, and other religious thinkers have also pioneered in this area.
High-level meetings of all the major religions on environment and conservation
have been taking place for some time. This is an area where the moral principles
of all religions converge, and where constructive initiatives like this
international seminar are pushing for positive action.

* The views expressed are the author's own
and do not necessarily reflect those of the United Nations Environment
Programme.

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-- Globalization and the Environment (Used by permission of the curator)