Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
degradation and its overall magnitude.
27
As noted, there is a growing body of empirical
literature that has reported
ndings consistent with these hypotheses.
With respect to the normative question of how societies ought to make tradeo
fi
ff
s, I have
noted the important di
ff
erence between the wealth-based approach used in conventional
cost-bene
t analysis, in which values are conditioned by ability and willingness to pay,
and a rights-based approach in which all individuals have equal entitlements to a clean
and safe environment. As I have discussed at greater length elsewhere, these two
approaches can have quite di
fi
erent prescriptive implications.
28
Under the wealth-based
approach, for example, if globalization were to promote environmental polarization, in
which improvements in the North were coupled with increasing environmental degrada-
tion in the South, this might be argued to be welfare maximizing; indeed, in the extreme
case, pollution imposed on people who have no ability to pay to avoid it is regarded as
costless. Under a rights-based approach, environmental costs and bene
ff
ts are not
weighed by the purchasing power of those to whom they accrue. The normative stance
that ultimately is adopted by formal and informal institutions for environmental gover-
nance will have profound implications for how globalization a
fi
ff
ects both the distribution
of power and access to environmental quality.
This chapter has questioned several tenets of conventional thinking about the environ-
mental impacts of globalization. I have argued that the assumption that production prac-
tices in the global North are environmentally superior to those in the global South -
shared by many champions and critics of globalization alike - can be quite misleading,
and can lead to the neglect of important environmental issues. I have maintained that
globalization can promote environmental convergence via 'harmonization upward', as
argued by its proponents, and via a 'race to the bottom', as argued by its opponents, but
that neither outcome is assured on
a priori
grounds. I have also noted that instead of con-
vergence, globalization could foster environmental polarization - 'greening' the North
and 'browning' the South. Whether this occurs will depend on the extent to which those
who face environmental burdens are able to take advantage of new opportunities to
bridge social distances and narrow power disparities, so as to promote internalization
through sympathy and governance.
The environmental impacts of globalization not only remain to be seen; they remain to
be determined. The outcome will not be dictated by an inexorable logic. Rather it will
depend on how the new opportunities created by the globalization of markets and gover-
nance alter balances of power, both within countries and among them. As its critics fear,
globalization could accelerate worldwide environmental degradation and deepen environ-
mental inequalities. Yet globalization also gives impetus to countervailing forces that could
bring about a greener and less divided world. The history of the future is still to be written.
Notes
*
An earlier version of this chapter was published as 'Green and brown? Globalization and the environment',
in the
Oxford Review of Economic Policy
,
20
(1), 2004.
1.
Senator John Chafee, quoted in Behr (1993).
2.
'Sabotage of America's Health, Food & Safety, and Environmental Laws', advertisement in
The
Washington Post
, 14 December 1992, by the Sierra Club, Greenpeace USA, Friends of the Earth, and
others; quoted in Commission for Environmental Cooperation (1996, p. 29).
3.
For discussion, see below.
4.
See, for example, Barrett (2000), who also points out that there may be di
erences between harmonization
of emission standards and harmonization of environmental quality standards.
ff
