# Globalization and the Environment

*Exported from [Holy-Writings.com](https://www.holy-writings.com/) on 2026-06-19 — 1 clipping.*

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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)*