Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
has led geographer Doreen Massey (1993: 66) to reconceptualize the specificity of
a place as 'a constellation of relations, articulated together at a particular locus'
comprising many experiences and understanding of its links to a wider world. Social
relations of domination and subordination are consequently stretched over space,
over the whole planet, so that child labour on one continent supports consumer
materialism on another, or environmental degradation or conflict in one region
subsidizes politics and energy use in another (Massey, 2005).
Held
et al
. (1999: 377) posit an anthropocentric conception of
environmental
degradation
which refers to 'the transformation of entire eco-systems or components
of those ecosystems . . . whose consequences, whether acknowledged by human actors
or not, have an adverse impact on the economic or demographic conditions of life
and/or the health of human beings'. This conception recognizes the importance of
the interaction between the natural and human-social worlds together with the
problems and opportunities that human activity generates. Resource depletion, water
shortages and, of course, climate change are again key issues. Given this, the
globalization of environmental degradation may take various forms:
The exploitation and destruction of the
global commons
- the atmosphere, marine
environment, hydrological cycles.
Demographic expansion
and exponential economic growth that leads to increases
in pollution and consumption of global raw materials e.g. oil, timber, etc.
Transboundary pollution involving the transmission of pollutants through the
air, soil and water across political borders so that their environmentally degrading
impact occurs in many other countries.
Joseph Stiglitz and globalization
Former Chief Economist at the World Bank and Chair of President Clinton's Council
of Economic Advisers, Joseph Stiglitz (2002) has been an eloquent and constructive
critic of economic globalization, suggesting that experience of the 1980s and 1990s
has been at best uneven and at worst disastrous for many developing countries. As
a result of IMF and World Bank policies, many saw their debts increase, their
economies weaken, their environments degraded, and social injustice and economic
inequality spiral downwards. Globalization has not brought the economic benefits
to poorer countries which advocates of liberalization in the West promised. The
developed world did not open up their markets to goods coming from the developing
world, the developed world did not abolish subsidies to their own farmers, while
frequently benefiting from the loosening of controls on capital flows that enabled
money to easily move in and out of countries irrespective of the social consequences.
Conditions attached to IMF loans undermined the sovereignty and social infrastructure
of developing nations, with governments forced to privatize their assets, abandon
plans for public investment in health, training and education, and lower or abolish
trade tariffs. There is very little for unskilled workers to do in lesser developed
countries in a globalized economy apart from live in slums and join the informal
sector of beggars and casual labourers. These 'structural adjustments' have had
profoundly adverse effects on many urban dwellers, increasing poverty and hardship
to such an extent that researchers have wondered how the poor actually survive
