ENVIRONMENTAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR GLOBAL GOVERNANCE

What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by

As we have embarked upon the 21^st Century, it has become rapidly apparent that much of Man’s “progress” has been illusory, as it has failed to account for the displaced consequences of both its technological advancements and its underlying thought pattern. A techno-materialist global perspective has manifested, one essentially consisting of transferring the power of nature to man. This has left “nature degraded and depleted in the process,”[1] while bifurcating the world’s population into fractious segments sans the global structure to balance the deleterious consequences with the benefits of “progress.” Man today faces threats arising from exponential population expansion[2], the corresponding pursuit of economic growth, the pressure imposed by this demographic and economic growth on scarce resources, and the resultant stress of the environment’s carrying capacity[3]. Concomitantly, there is an increasing divergence and inequality[4] developing globally in four manifest areas: 1) wealth; 2) corporate and democratic globalization; 3) environmental and financial global institutions; and 4) resources and consumptive use. However, “these are not separate crises: an environmental crisis, a development crisis, an energy crisis. They are all one.”[5] These multifarious problems now interconnect horizontally and manifest vertically at local, regional, and global levels creating a seamless net of causes and effects.

The challenges to environmental policy globally vary according to region and socio-economic state, with the penurious facing particularly daunting options. The fundamental question then is: how can this pervasive cycle of interconnected problems be addressed within the current framework of international relations? This paper seeks to address these challenges by examining three interrelated problems which inhibit cohesive and effective environmental global policy: 1) the anarchical relationship of states; 2) the imbalance of economic and environmental institutions; and 3) the pervasive economic growth imperative. Sustainable development[6] has been advanced because it offers a regenerative path that addresses economic development, social injustice, and ecology—as a balanced, integrative approach to global governance. Accordingly, this paper will offer five considerations for sustainable development in future global environmental governance.

Anarchical Relationship of States: The current interlocking problems of development, social justice, and environment all arise within the context of state sovereignty, and as a result, are manipulated through self-interest and nationalistic protectionism. Garret Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons,” which states that as rational self-interested actors, they will seek to maximize their gain at the expense of the common use areas[7] personifies the tension of independent sovereigns maximizing their interests globally. This resulted in fragmentation of political authority among states, each having “diverse interests and a reluctance to relinquish authority over their natural resources,” which has stymied international cooperation and frustrated the response to global environmental problems. Therefore, the overarching problem with achieving sustainability is that there is a mismatch between the political/social goals of self-interested segregated actors and a biosphere that transcends physical borders. This includes issues of shared resources, global common areas, and transboundary externalities, all areas in which sovereignty suffocates the global environmental perspective. As a result, “the doctrine of sovereignty helps perpetuate the illusion that the ecological costs of daily life affect only one’s national territory.”[8]

Unfortunately, the effect of this state-centric model of international relations shrouded in realpolitik is that international agreements, particularly relative to the environment, become one of the only ways to address global problems. “In the prevailing anarchical world order, states for the most part cannot be compelled against their will to enter into cooperative arrangements”[9] to address these international problems. These agreements therefore tend to produce “weak documents reflecting the lowest common denominator of perceived interests…that maximize the responsibilities of other nations while minimizing their own obligations.”[10] Protected and justified by sovereignty, this has had a chilling effect on moving forward with global climate change policy particularly in the Global North.

Global Imbalance of Environmental and Economic Institutions: The powerful elite countries tend to dominate world affairs through an economic agenda, propped by Bretton Woods and WTO, from which their economic comparative advantage provides the opportunity to maximize their benefit through market liberalization and maintaining plutocratic control over the rules of the process, all while minimizing the costs of system—namely, the by-products and denying its cumulative effects globally. The environmental effects are experienced globally, but because of the Global South’s compromised position economically, they disproportionately bear the consequences and yet have little power to alter its influence or the source of its emanation. As a result, “the growing power of global economic institutions such as the WTO juxtaposed against the relative weakness of international institutions charged with the environmental protection and social welfare is leading to a persistent imbalance in today’s emerging structures of global governance.”[11] This has manifesting in a stronger top-down approach to global governance without any centralized authority, which as a result, fundamentally questions the paucity of democracy and accountability to the global citizenry and particularly the Global South.

Three primary factors highlight the imbalance between economic and environmental institutions. First, the explosion of environmental treaties has resulted in fragmentation, duplication, and lack of coordination, which has undermined the efficacy of the global system. Second, the agreements themselves are inherently weak, lacking clear criteria for monitoring and measuring effectiveness. Third, the environmental agreements are generally nonbinding and voluntary, and lack an effective enforcement mechanism. By contrast, economic agreements and institutions (particularly the WTO) have a sense of cohesion—both in the parties and within the agreement, criteria are established, measuring the effectiveness is easier because there are tangible economic results, and finally, the system is created through binding rulings and enforced through trade sanctions.[12]

Economic Growth Imperative: In the past two centuries man has developed a culture wholly dependent upon exponential growth for its economic stability. This remains true today for both the Global North as a fixture and in the Global South as an ideal, which has resulted in “an unholy alliance between Southern and Northern governments in favor of development-as-growth that has largely emasculated the spirit of Rio.”[13] When growth is taken as an imperative, “all efforts become focused on reforming the means of growth (i.e. technologies, forms of organization, incentive structures), while the ends of growth are taken for granted…and awareness of nature’s carrying capacity” falls into oblivion.[14] As a result, two fundamental questions protrude for examination.

First, is economic growth sustainable? Each individual is locked into a system that compels increased production without limit, while the world and its resources are fundamentally limited. As a result, “ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom of the commons brings ruin to all.”[15] The economic system is an open subsystem of the earth’s ecosystem, so “as the economic subsystem grows it incorporates an even greater proportion of the total ecosystem into itself” and therefore increasingly burdens the ecosystem of earth.[16] As a result, many efforts to guard and maintain human progress, to meet human needs, and to realize human ambitions are simply unsustainable—in both rich and poor nations.

Second, does economic growth lead to development? Historically, the bulk of evidence demonstrates that economic growth has led to greater financial gain; however, there is a growing body of evidence that in the US growth now makes us “poorer by increasing costs faster than it increases benefits…in other words, we appear to have grown beyond the optimal scale.”[17] In addition, in lesser developed countries, the benefits of economic growth yield little micro-development as any gains are absorbed by the elite at the expense of the wage earner, which has also contributed to income and wealth inequality globally. This suggests that poverty is derived from a deficit of power rather than a lack of money,[18] and that development is not necessarily linked with economic growth.

On the macro-global level, the same tendency toward power develops. The policies of the Bretton Woods institutions frequently offer subsistence assistance to developing countries based on rules and conditions established by the elite, who are concerned only with economic growth as function of profiteering. As a result, their policies commonly include “slashing government budgets, opening up to trade and foreign investment, and privatizing government-owned enterprises.”[19] Specifically, the WTO’s rules have had the effect of “prying open the emerging markets of the developing world to exports from industrial countries, while leaving intact large barriers to the entry of developing-country products into northern markets.”[20] This created for the Global South an “exports-first” policy over a “food first” policy, which favors large farmers, transnational companies, and promotes monoculture instead of biodiversity.[21] Thus, the WTO usurps the competence to judge not only trade, but on broad aspects of public life.

Sustainable development seeks to expand choices for all, including current and future generations, while protecting the “natural systems” on which all life depends. It places people at its core and diverts from a narrow, economy-centered approach to expansive development, as it views humans as both a means and an end to development. The essence of good global governance environmentally therefore is to reshape the global economy to make it less environmentally harmful and more socially equitable for current and future generations as a moral tenet[22]. As a result, a pattern of global governance becomes pillared on a series of durable “networks,” as opposed to hierarchal, that naturally promote a global ethic based on: 1) a socially-equitable global environmental protocol; 2) a reduced role of sovereignty; 3) a global democratic template of self-rule; 4) global privatization sans non-growth paradigm; and 5) reaccultration.

Socially-Equitable Global Platform and Protocol: First, there is the need for environmental and social justice, where the Global North recognizes its obligation to reduce its ecological footprint[23] through major restructuring of production/consumption patterns; while the Global South must ensure access and fundamental rights[24] for the marginalized majority through fundamental changes in inequality within and between nations. As a result, there is a desperate need for an environmental protocol and general “rules of the road” for the global economy, but it is environmental institutions, not economic ones, that are best equipped to provide the rules supporting sustainability.[25] Environmental policy would become the central hub for all other social institutions—political, economic, and social—with sustainability as the core tenet. The best hope, in the short run, is to address these concerns by “strengthening existing institutions and in enhancing coordination between them,”[26] where NGOs play a significant role in complementing the patterns of “soft law” and norms globally. As a result, this political/environmental format would encourage the use of “global public policy networks” that integrate initiatives by NGOs, businesses, national governments, and international organizations. Power imbalances could, in addition, be addressed by authorizing sanctioning power similar to the WTO through UN organizations already in place (UNEP).

Restructuring Sovereignty: The second consideration is the need for fundamental structural change, not just transactional money flows or environmental controls, and this will necessitate a restructuring of sovereignty to some degree.[27] A concerted move away from rights, and its aforementioned limitations, to responsibilities, would in itself “diminish the self-regarding orientation states tend to assume in international fora and orient them toward a commitment to preserve the earth’s biophysical well-being.”[28] A fundamental tenet would be to advocate the Kantian imperative as a global ethic based upon: what if everybody did it? That is, “the recognition that the global commons belongs to no nation but all people, is an essential pre-condition to the creation of mechanisms to assess whether production activity is moving society towards sustainability or towards increasing polarization of wealth and loss of capacity.”[29]

Democratic Self-Rule: A third consideration is global democracy and democratic self-rule. Indeed, it is generally conceded that “today’s increasingly powerful institutions of international governance suffer from a profound ‘democratic deficit’.”[30] This necessitates both substantive and participatory democracy to create not only an increased democratic presence but also a more equitable social relationship among nations. So, decisionmaking must become democratized at both the international organization level (particularly in economic globalization) and at the grassroots/citizen level through active participatory democracy. This stresses self-organization that embodies democratic self-rule and self-sustainability, while Bretton Woods’ institutions need to be democratized to close the gap with environmental regulation and equalize power of major shareholders, while organizing with more transparency and accountability.

Development sans Economic Growth: The fourth consideration of sustainable development is “development without growth.” That is, the “qualitative improvement of a physical economic base that is maintained in a steady state by a throughput of matter-energy that is within the regenerative and assimilative capacities of the ecosystem.”[31] This would amount to “delinking economic growth from an increase in resource use, and social progress from economic growth.”[32] This consideration requires then a developing, but not necessarily growing, global economy that can be continually maintained and renewed as a steady-state of the environment.[33] A viable option is to focus on “natural capitalism” or the economic advantages of renewable energy. Corporations would be the source of the environmental policy-shaping process through a focus upon renewable energy as a profit-generating mechanism. This would stimulate a regenerative economy[34] in the Global South, where renewables actually become a more efficient Capitalistic concept than nonrenewables because of built-in sustainability and the reduction of long supply chains. This then imparts a possible comparative advantage to the Global South by “anticipating rather than responding to future policy changes.”[35] In fact, this has been suggested by an ECOFYS study[36], and would pressure the US into Protocol compliance due to the threat to its economic supremacy.

How could this be implemented globally? First, emissions trading can stimulate compliance with Kyoto, as a beginning step.[37] Second, removing barriers in both trade and energy subsidies can be an effective step toward social equity and development. Specifically, trade barriers maintain wealthy markets while denying developing countries the opportunity to reap reasonable returns on their investment, while indirect subsidies (particularly oil and gas) inflate the cost of government, raises taxes, eliminate capital from optimal markets and therefore operate as a corporate welfare and becomes a massive disincentive, leaving both the environment and economy degraded. Third, global improvement in efficiency and conservation—“a transition to renewable energies is the regal road towards sustainability; they are climate-friendly, pollution-free, and inexhaustible.”[38] Fourth, because of the resource productivity revolution, the requirements needed to protect the climate are profitable for business.[39] So, through “improved productivity, reduced energy consumption, and ultimately lower prices,”[40] renewables can be profitable beyond that of non-renewables. Fifth, enact a full-cost accounting system that values both renewable and nonrenewable resources at their replacement value, including international taxation through a “polluter-pays principle”[41] and user fees for commons areas (privatization or self-regulation).

Reacculturation: Finally, reacculturation is necessary to change perception and generate a global ethic of responsibility for global commons and social justice. Indeed, environmental policy is most effective when “integrated with ‘non-climate objectives’ of national and sectoral politics and translated into broader strategies for long-term technological and social change aimed at sustainable development.”[42] A change in perception would shift focus from viewing earth as a means of resource acquisition and dumping, to a one of caretaker utilizing regenerative mechanisms. This would engender a shift in common public values that would promote ecology and equity over the value of individual economic efficiency through the means of restraint and responsibility, and enforced through mutually agreed upon coercion.

[1] Sachs, Jo’burg Memo, p. 18.

[2] The annual global growth rate is 1.5% (McNeil, p. 10).

[3] This resultant stress is primarily felt in global climate change which has affected a wide range of physical and biological systems including global warming. The IPCC concluded in this regard that “there is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over that last 50 years is attributable to human activities,” quoted in Flavin, State of the World 2002, p. 28.

[4] This inequality is also concurrently occurring on a micro-national level globally.

[5] World Commission on Environment and Development, From One Earth to One World, p. 260.

[6] Sustainable development: “a sustainable society is one that satisfies its needs without diminishing the prospects of future generations.”

[7] Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” in Green Planet Blues, pp. 38-9.

[8] Wapner, “Reorienting State Sovereignty,” p. 291.

[9] Soroos, “Global Institutions and the Environment,” p. 47.

[10] Soroos, “Global Institutions and the Environment,” p. 47.

[11] French, in State of the World 2002, p. 176.

[12] By comparison: The text of the Uruguay Agreement (WTO basic agreement) exceeded 26,000 pages while Agenda 21 is a mere 273 pages. Sachs, Jo’burg Memo, p. 58.

[13] Sachs, Jo’burg Memo, p. 14.

[14] Sachs, Jo’burg Memo, p. 14.

[15] Hardin, “Tragedy of the Commons,” in Green Planet Blues, p. 39.

[16] Daly, “Sustainable Growth: An Impossibility Theorem,” p. 285.

[17] Daly, “Sustainable Growth: An Impossibility Theorem,” p. 287.

[18] Sachs, Jo’burg Memo, p. 21.

[19] French, in State of the World 2002, p. 185.

[20] French, in State of the World 2002, p. 187.

[21] Sachs, Jo’burg Memo, p. 57.

[22] See Wapner, “People, Nature, and Ethics,” in Current History, p. 359.

[23] Ecological Footprint: outputs from population + economic production + technological innovation.

[24] It is noted that human-rights approach engenders its own problems, namely: 1) the environment has historically been separated from the main UN covenants and would require therefore integration into documents (particularly ICESR) that are already hard-pressed for universal support; 2) in a rights-based system, lawyers then become key players in determining world order, as opposed to social scientists, citizens, and sustainable businesses; 3) implementation problems still exist because they countermand state sovereignty; and 4) since all rights cannot be satiated (at least short-term), prioritization of rights could manifest in heightened conflict and violence globally.

[25] French, in State of the World 2002, p. 176.

[26] Soroos, “Global Institutions and the Environment,” p. 48.

[27] To what degree is debatable, and beyond the scope of this paper.

[28] Wapner, “Reorienting State Sovereignty,” p. 276.

[29] Sachs, Jo’burg Memo, p. 62.

[30] French, State of the World 2002, p. 194.

[31] Daly, “Sustainable Growth: An Impossibility Theorem,” p. 285.

[32] Sachs, Jo’burg Memo, p. 19.

[33] Daly, “Sustainable Growth: An Impossibility Theorem,” p. 287.

[34] Regenerative economy based on Natural Capital, which is the sum total of the ecological systems that support life and cannot be produced by human activity. Hawken, Natural Capitalism, p. 151.

[35] Flavin, State of the World 2002, p. 25.

[36] Flavin, State of the World 2002, p. 47.

[37] See Victor, The Collapse of the Kyoto Protocol, pp. 12-3 for long-term inhibitors of emissions trading.

[38] Sachs, Jo’burg Memo, p. 66.

[39] Hawken, Natural Capitalism, p. 241; also Hawken, p. 255.

[40] Flavin, State of the World 2002, p. 46.

[41] Polluter-Pays Principle: those causing harm to the environment pay for redress.

[42] Flavin, State of the World 2002, p. 34.

GLOBAL GOVERNANCE: ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES AND CONSIDERATIONS