Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The forty chapters of Agenda 21 offer an action plan for sustainable development,
integrating environmental with social and economic concerns, and articulating a
participatory, community-based approach to a variety of issues, including population
control, transparency, partnership working, equity and justice, and placing market
principles within a regulatory framework. Local Agenda 21 (LA21), its local realization,
was and remains not legally binding, although by the end of 2000 many countries,
including the UK, had policies and frameworks for sustainable development at local
and regional levels, with municipal governments in many countries taking a strong
lead. In those, particularly Scandinavian countries where local government has a
considerable degree of autonomy to raise income locally and regulate environmental
matters, LA21 has been most successful. However, throughout the world, even though
local government priorities and powers may differ, global structures of economic,
financial and political power, which include support for the neoliberal free-trade system,
have compromised attempts to fashion sustainable development from the bottom up.
The local cannot be disassociated or disconnected from the global, conceptually or
practically. Nonetheless, the LA21 process continued with, from 2002, Local Agenda
21 turning into Local Action 21. In 2004 the Aalborg Commitments (CEMR/ICLEI,
2004) was published, showing many local authorities within the European Union to
be firmly embracing the need for urban sustainability and good governance.
Rio was, despite all the compromises and shortfalls, a significant achievement,
which over the years, has gained in stature and authority, not least, and somewhat
paradoxically, because of the reluctance of the US to accept sustainable development
policies, its frequent refusal to recognize the importance of the precautionary principle
as a guide to environmental law, the necessity of reaching global agreements on
cutting greenhouse gas emissions and its continuing support for neoliberal economic
globalization. Also, again somewhat paradoxically, the fact that the Rio Declaration
was seriously criticized by many radical green groups made its achievement all the
more valuable and symbolic. For instance,
The Ecologist
magazine published a sharp
critique,
Whose Common Future?
(
The Ecologist
, 1993), in which the Editor, Edward
Goldsmith, noted that the real question is not how the environment should be
managed, but
who
should manage it and in
whose
interest. We may share one planet,
but we do so in an unequal and frequently unjust way. In addition, poverty is not
the absence of a Western lifestyle and neither is it the cause of environmental
degradation, rather it is a consequence. Globalized neoliberal economics and free
trade will destroy cultural and biological diversity, not conserve it. Pollution and
other externalities are caused, not cured, by modernization and development, and
global environmental management, technology transfer and World Bank-financed
infrastructure projects (for example, US$50 billion for 500 dams in 92 developing
countries) reinforce the economic and political hegemony of the developed nations,
notably the US, the big corporations and international financial agencies (Baker,
2006), while leading to further environmental and social problems. There is much
evidence to support these assertions. After serious protests and much adverse publicity,
in part due to the relentless campaigning of the Booker Prize-winning novelist
Arundhati Roy, the World Bank reviewed its commitment to the highly controversial
Narmada Dams project in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh in India, admitting that it
was likely that one million people would be adversely affected through displacement
and/or loss of livelihood by the project. The Bank withdrew its support but, as will
