The Sunday News
Fikile Nyathi
GLOBALISATION has resulted in the contraction of space and time, a development that has seen a rapid expansion of international and global economic growth.
It has also coincided with a dramatic rise in global environmental degradation, in the form of increased air and marine pollution, desertification and deforestation, loss of biological diversity and climate change.
This unwanted development has raised important questions such as whether international trade is really to blame for environment degradation.
Jason Bordoff, a trade expert, said, international trade has seen multinational companies wreak havoc on the global environment by moving operations to countries where environmental regulations are weak or non-existent. Economic growth requires the use of increased quantities of energy and natural resources.
Another trade guru who goes by the name Svein Brathen states that this increase in resource use and production often results in adverse environmental consequences. This is because less developed economies generally have limited regulations concerning the protection of the environment while developed economies have imposed relatively stringent environmental protection laws.
A World Bank study of 2015 shows that clearing forests to grow crops accounted for about 20 percent of global carbon emissions. But there is little evidence that companies choose to invest in such countries to shirk pollution-abatement costs in rich countries. Instead, the most important factor in determining the amount of investment is the size of the local market. It has also been found that within a given industry, foreign-operated plants tended to pollute less than local peers.
However, many environmental groups argue that unrestricted competition across countries results in production being shifted to those countries with the least restrictive environmental regulations since these countries experience lower production costs.
They suggest that the removal of trade barriers makes it more difficult for countries to enact environmental protection laws that will reduce their ability to compete in international markets.
“Developing countries are caught between a rock and a hard place, if they don’t remove trade barriers their economies suffer and when they remove their environment suffers,” said Dr Cornelius Ncube, the chairperson of the Department of Development Studies at Lupane State University.
The adverse effects of international trade are felt everywhere, it is accelerating the use of natural resources such as water, forests, fisheries, and minerals, much faster than they can be regenerated.
International trade has also resulted in an increase in carbon-emitting economic growth and deforestation resulting in climate change which has increased the rate of natural disasters that have wreaked havoc on the environment.
Floods have destroyed vegetation and animals as well as sweeping away the top soil. Sea levels are rising and oceans are becoming warmer. Longer and more intense droughts are destroying crops, wildlife and freshwater supplies.
“The connection between carbon-emitting economic growth and increasing trade and industrialisation brought by globalisation is unmistakable,” Weiner Antweiler, Brian Copeland and Scott Taylor wrote a paper titled Is Trade Good For The Environment for the National Bureau of Economics.
Indeed, as world trade grows and millions of factories join the global supply chain, as mines are exploited and timber is felled to meet rising consumer demands, environmental degradation and increased pollution is often the price.
Pollution hits the originating country first, contaminating its soil and water, but soon is absorbed in the atmosphere, where it becomes a global problem — poisoning the air and bringing acid rain to other parts of the world.
The emergence of China’s blazing economic growth, supplying cheap products to the world, has high costs to the environment.
Accelerated burning of coal and use of chemicals to fuel the export machine pollutes not only China’s air and water, but the world’s environment as well. A 2004 study found that the jet stream dispersed chemicals like mercury, spewed by factories in China, to locations thousands of miles away.
A researcher traced a plume of dirty air from Asia to New England, where analysis of collected samples revealed the chemicals had originated in China, reported the Wall Street Journal in 2004.
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) and by extension international trade, also stands accused of destroying the global environment.
Expanding trade driven by globalisation has brought about increased fishing, destruction of forestland, and the spread of polluting industries to the developing world. In a 2005 report, the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation reported that each year about 18 million acres of the world’s forests — an area the size of Panama or Sierra Leone — are lost due to deforestation.
Serious critics of international trade such as Russell Berman reluctantly acknowledge that deforestation cannot be laid at the door of international trade alone. But they rightly point out that international trade does serve as both a conduit and an accelerator for many of the forces that cause the loss of forest cover worldwide.
Advocates of international trade, however, note that the demand for environmental protection rises as countries develop.
Individuals who are in poverty tend to exploit the environment in an unsustainable manner that leads to the destruction of the environment. Since free international trade is expected to encourage economic development, it is argued that international trade encourages increased environmental protection.
Those who support international trade also observe that increased trade is often accompanied by increased foreign direct investment.
Since foreign direct investment generally involves a technology transfer from developed to less developed economies, developing economies usually adopt the relatively “cleaner” production methods in use in developed economies.
This argument suggests that free trade encourages the adoption of more environmentally sound production processes in developing economies.
Dr Ncube said: “With development comes environment protection and conservation. For example the poor who used to exploit the land for firewood turn to stoves and other methods of energy that spare the environment. But as long as the majority are in poverty, protecting the environment is not a priority, the stomach is.”
One reason why environmental protection is lagging in many countries is low incomes.
Countries that live on the margin may simply not be able to afford to set aside resources for pollution abatement, nor may they think that they should sacrifice their growth prospects to help solve global pollution problems that in large part have been caused by the consuming life style of richer countries.
If poverty is at the core of the problem, economic growth will be part of the solution, to the extent that it allows countries to shift gear from more immediate concerns to long run sustainability issues.
Indeed, at least some empirical evidence suggests that pollution increases at the early stages of development but decreases after a certain income level has been reached.
“Trade is one cylinder that propels the engine of growth,” WTO tends to argue.
In addition, international trade can promote greater efficiency in production and the diffusion of environmental technologies and standards throughout the world. For example, more globally oriented companies in the chemical and steel industries tend to adopt and promote higher environmental standards than national companies.
Surprisingly, despite the availability of energy-efficient technologies and know-how, little use is made of them.
The world seems paralysed about how to face the threat of global warming. The world’s top emitter of greenhouse gases, the United States, has refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol, and the nations that have signed it have been inconsistent with its implementation, making only perfunctory attempts to grapple with the challenge of global warming which adversely affects the environment.
The Montreal Protocol is a 1987 international treaty designed to protect the ozone layer by phasing out the production of numerous substances that are responsible for ozone depletion.
Yet there is evidence that with the commitment of nations and effective global governance, it is possible to avert dangerous trends.
“Thanks to concerted action taken in combating ozone depletion through the Montreal Protocol, the ozone hole has shrunk. There are even signs that as a result of economic growth, urbanisation and enlightened public policies born of global awareness, more nations are reversing the long-standing trend toward destruction of their forests,” Nayan Chanda, the founder and editor-in-chief of YaleGlobal Online, an online magazine that publishes articles about globalisation, wrote in his book Bound Together: How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers and Warriors Shaped Globalisation.
In a nutshell, the trade–environment nexus remains a controversial and challenging issue on the international trade agenda.
While it is true that international trade degrades the environment it is also true that international trade at times protects the environment in the long run, thanks to advances in technology.
