Fair Future

Fair Future

Resources Conflicts, Security and Global Justice

by Wolfgang Sachs and Tilman Santarius  

In 1987 the release of the Brundtland Commission’s Our Common Future cast international attention, as never before, on the connections between ecological sustainability and social justice. Yet subsequent global negotiation over the past three decades, be they focused on climate change, biodiversity, forest and soil loss, or persistent pollutants, have largely failed to develop a just framework for future global environmental governance. Instead much of the focus of these multilateral discussions has resulted in business transactions over specific item, like load limits or tradable carbon emissions and sinks, that have not only reinforced but exacerbated the hegemonic control of the powerful and rich to the ongoing detriment of the poor and weak. In fair future, a group of researchers associated with the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment, and Energy for Germany, refocuses attention on the relationship between global justice and the fate of the biosphere. They frame their investigation by posing the following question: how in the future will it be possible for increased numbers of humans to have dignified lives in a world of decreased natural resources and increased pollution? As they see it, the choice facing the global community is quite clear: it’s a matter of either global apartheid or global democracy. To illuminate the multiple facets of the globalization of ecology - it’s asymmetrical distribution, uneven impacts, the geography and control of material flows, and what is required for transnational resource justice to be achieved. The researchers establish the foundation of their argument by detailing how globalization has resulted in spatially and temporally compacting of the globe at three levels: technical, political, and symbolic. This cancellation of global remoteness has meant that not only good deeds but also threats are bound more closely together; a shrinking of distance between zones of profit and loss has more closely connected the lives of the benefactors and victims of the global model of development. As the finite nature of the biosphere has become evident, the belief that ever-expanding profit-oriented industrial growth eventually allows every nation and citizen to share in the fruits of progress increasingly rests on shaky ground; the failure of this promise in turn has fed a culture of increased global rage and resentment. Chapter two reveals the extent to which industrial modernity has established and reinforced patterns of unequal demands on the biosphere. While the industrialized nations in the North tend to be better endowed with forest and agricultural land, countries in the South possess relatively more biodiversity and non-renewable resources yet there is a disproportionate profiting from and use of all global resources by citizens in the North. At the same time, there is a large variation within this North-South framework: as the transnational economic complex extends to newly industrializing countries, these countries draw nearer to older industrial economies in their consumption levels; the industrialized nations of the United States and Canada consumes nearly four times the amount of fossil fuels as countries like Sweden and Malta and within nations there is a spectrum of resource use between citizens and regions. This unequal ecological exchange extends to the distribution of environmental data and advances pollution control measures, the Wuppertal research demonstrate that this is simply the “rich illusion effect.” The clean environmental records of countries in the North are largely achieved by the relocation of the environmental burden to countries in the South from which come the bulk of unrefined resources. The question arises, therefore, what enables this transnational economic complex to disproportionately direct resources to only a quarter of the world’s population. In chapter three the authors examine the mechanisms of power at work in supporting the transnational exchange of a variety of natural resources: oil, agricultural products, water, and genetic materials. They outline the key instruments that have been used to secure access to each group of environmental resources and the dominant resulting impacts of this allocation. Overall, transnational globalization has resulted in a concentration of both control over, and benefits received from natural resources, with finance capital enjoying the biggest gains. Meanwhile those most detrimentally impacted by this pattern of resource allocation have been the indigenous peoples, farmers, and workers, particularly those located in the South. The latter half of the book explores the concept of transnational environmental justice and the mechanisms required to achieve it. In chapter four the authors provide an insightful analysis of the dimensions of environmental justice (recognition and distribution) and present four models that could inform resource justice at an international level: secure livelihood rights: cutting back resource claims: shaping fair exchange: and compensation for disadvantages. They argue for building a world of greater fairness through internationally recognizing the inheritance of both national environmental assets and liabilities, and translating this into two very different paths forwards for industrialized and developing countries. Chapter five details the specifics of this “contraction and convergence model” whereby industrial nations rescue their consumption of resources and pollution loads, and developing counties increase their use of resources until the converge with the industrial countries at an ecologically planetary sustainable level. This transition in resource development would be guided by principles of efficiency, consistency, and sufficiency such that the overall model of development would ensure a livelihood for all citizens and the renewing of each nation’s resource base. Chapter six explores how these local and national resource strategies can be directed and supported at the international level. The Wuppertal researchers argues that the market-oriented form of globalization that currently dominates needs to be replaced by a politically driven form that seeks to find ways for nations to coexist, and they look to institutions of transnational governance to support this transition. They explore some specific multilateral strategies such as the creations of a climate trust that allocates emission rights, and the integrations of global standards on human rights and environment into world trade regimes policies, and advocate a reinventing of the WTO. They also focus attention on the role of transnational corporations and the creation of a legally binding framework to cover the TNCs’ activities to ensure they are transparent, recognize environmental, labour, and human rights standards, adhere to fair and balanced relations within the international production systems, and are accountable before the law. The final chapter discusses the special role that the EU can and should play in advancing global policies and practices of production and consumption that are more resource-light. The Wuppertal researchers position the EU as an eco-social market economy model that can act as a “counter player” to the US and the Washington consensus and Washington security agenda. Other than the final chapters, which offers a rather idealize view of the Eu’s role in the world, this is a sophisticated and insightful assessment of transnational globalization its relationship to environmental justice, national and international security, and natural resource use. While many authors point to the need to integrate the three pillars of sustainability (social, ecological, and economic) into an understanding of the state of the world, the Wuppertal researched adeptly demonstrate how this is done. While an edited collection, the book has a strong tone and argument connecting each chapter, almost as if it was written by a single author. It is a worthwhile read for anyone but would be an instructive addition to a senior undergraduate or graduate course in global studies, environmental studies, environmental justice, or international politics of the environment.

Lorelei Hanson Athabasca University Labour/Le Travail, Volume 63 (Spring 2009)

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