Will Globalization undermine the global environment, diverse cultures, and peoples' freedoms?

"The misdiagnosis that globalization of ideas and practices has to be resisted because it entails dreaded Westernization has played quite a regressive part in the colonial and postcolonial world. This assumption incites parochial tendencies and undermines the possibility of objectivity in science and knowledge. It is not only counterproductive in itself; given the global interactions throughout history, it can also cause non-Western societies to shoot themselves in the foot--even in their precious cultural foot."

"To see globalization as merely Western imperialism of ideas and beliefs (as the rhetoric often suggests) would be a serious and costly error, in the same way that any European resistance to Eastern influence would have
been at the beginning of the last millennium. Of course, there are issues related to globalization that do connect with imperialism (the history of conquests, colonialism, and alien rule remains relevant today in many ways), and a postcolonial understanding of the world h as its merits. But it would be a great mistake to see globalization primarily as a feature of imperialism. It is much bigger--much greater--than that.

The issue of the distribution of economic gains and losses from globalization remains an entirely separate question, and it must be addressed as a further--and extremely relevant--issue. There is extensive evidence th at the global economy has brought prosperity to many different areas of the globe. Pervasive poverty dominated the world a few centuries ago; there were only a few rare pockets of affluence. In overcoming that penury, extensive economic interrelations and modern technology have been and remain influential. What has happened in Europe, America, Japan, and East Asia has important messages for all other regions, and we cannot go very far into understanding the nature of globalization today without first acknowledging the positive fruits of global economic contacts. "

"However, can those less-well-off groups get a better deal from globalized economic and social relations without dispensing with the market economy itself? They certainly can. The use of the market economy is consistent with many different ownership patterns, resource availabilities, social opportunities, and rules of operation (such as patent laws and antitrust regulations). And depending on these conditions, the market economy would generate different prices, terms of trade, income distribution, and, more generally, diverse overall outcomes. The arrangements for social security and other public interventions can make further modifications to the outcomes of the market processes, and together they can yield varying levels of inequality and poverty. "

"But this recognition does not end the discussion about globalized market relations. The market economy does not work by itself in global relations--indeed, it cannot operate alone even within a given country. It is not only the case that a market inclusive system can generate very distinct results depending on various enabling conditions (such as how physical resources are distributed, how human resources are developed, what rules of business relations prevail, what social-security arrangements are in place, and so on). These enabling conditions themselves depend critically on economic, social, and political institutions that operate nationally and globally."

"The injustices that characterize the world are closely related to various omissions that need to be addressed, particularly in institutional arrangements. I have tried to identify some of the main problems in my book Development as Freedom (Knopf, 1999). Global policies have a role here in helping the development of national institutions (for example, through defending democracy and supporting schooling and health facilities), but there is also a need to re-examine the adequacy of global institutional arrangements themselves. The distribution of the benefits in the global economy depends, among other things, on a variety of global institutional arrangements, including those for fair trade, medical initiatives, educational exchanges, facilities for technological dissemination, ecological and environmental restraints, and fair treatment of accumulated debts that were often incurred by irresponsible military rulers of the past."

"To conclude, the confounding of globalization with Westernization is not only ahistorical, it also distracts attention from the many potential benefits of global integration. Globalization is a historical process that has offered an abundance of opportunities and rewards in the past and continues to do so today. The very existence of these potentially benefits makes the question of fairness in sharing the benefits of globalization so critically important.

The central issue of contention is not globalization itself, nor is it the use of the market as an institution, but the inequity in the overall balance of institutional arrangements--which produces very unequal sharing of the benefits of globalization. The question is not just whether the poor, too, gain something from globalization, but whether they get a fair share and a fair opportunity. There is an urgent need for reforming institutional arrangements--in addition to national ones--in order to overcome both the errors of omission and those of commission that tend to give the poor across the world such limited opportunities. Globalization deserves a reasoned defense, but it also needs reform. "

Destroying the Commons

"Now, for the first time in the world's history, a single species -- man -- has developed the technological and economic means to exploit the resources of all the Earth's ecosystems at once. Human beings can watch the gradual destruction by simplification of the Earth's biosystem. Some tell-tale signs of this global process appear as deforestation, desertification, pollution, climate change, and the rapid extinction of species. Others appear as shortages of land, water, and biological resources. All over the world, scarcity is driving people away from the countryside and out of the regions and nations that can no longer support them. Some make up the flood of political or economic refugees. Others migrate to cities where they cause urban sprawl and an intractable scarcity of jobs, sanitation, housing, and the necessary infrastructure. Even now in the megacities of the world, various forms of natural control are working to reduce the size of the human population and its excessive environmental demands. They include parental neglect, disease, unemployment, hopelessness, drug abuse, gratuitous violence, starvation, ethnic conflict, terrorism, and warfare. This kind of empirical evidence supports the generalization that human beings are now stressing the world's ecosystems."
....A General Statement on the Commons

History of the Commons
A General Statement of the Tragedy
of the Commons
Globalization is Greatttt (Debating globalization)
The Key Questions on Globalization
Who are the Players in Globalization?
Is there any alternative to Globalization?

Friedman on Environmental and
Cultural losses

"According to Hollywood, this is what America will
look like when globalization reigns across the land,
and all cultures and environment is homogenized,
standardized, and sanitized." (Friedman, 277)

"Because globalization is creating a single marketplace
--with huge economies of scale that reward doing
the same business or selling the same product all
over the world all at once--it can homogenize
consumption simultaneously all over the world."
(Friedman, 278)

The world becomes one vast global supermarket
selling Pepsi, Coke, MTV, Calvin Kleins, and
PCs through advertising and global branding. This
global market is being actively created by
global corporations. (Chris Lewis)

"Everywhere will start to look like everywhere else,
with the same Taco Bells, KFC's, and Mariotts, with
the same malls, MTV and Disney characters, with
the same movies and Muzak, with the same naked
forests and concrete valleys." (Friedman, 279)

"[In Thailand] "the free market and the Electronic
Herd simply overran the government, or grew so
much richer that the government that investors
could evade every environmental regulation
through corruption." (Friedman, 280)

"Can we develop a method of environmentally
sustainable globalization?" (Friedman, 281)

"Sometimes it is just more profitable to
overexploit the land and to sell out to
rapacious global interests." (Friedman, 287)

"If saving the rain forest from the Electronic
Herd is difficult, saving the culture that
grew up around that rain forest is an even
more complex task." (Friedman, 291)

"Americanization-globalization is not just
about push, it is also about pull. People all
over the world want in on globalization, for
a lot of reasons." (Friedman, 293)

"Today, for better or for worse, globalization
is a means for spreading the fantasy of
America around the world. In today's global
village people know there is another way to
live, they know about the American lifestyle,
and many of them want as big a slice of it as
they can get..." (Friedman, 294)

"When it comes to preserving non-commercial
aspects of life, you cannot ask the market to
do too much, and you don't want to ask the
market to do too much." (Friedman, 299)

"In the long run it would be an illusion to think
that the market and the profit motive alone
can be enough to protect a country's cultural
or environmental assets," argues Fareed
Zakaria. (Friedman, 299)

"There will be no sustainable globalization without
environmental preservation and cultural
preservation." (Friedman, 301)

"When unrestrained globalization uproots cultures
and environments, it destroys the necessary
underlying fabric of communal life." (Friedman, 302)

"Either globalization hmogenizes us only on the
surface, and local cultural roots remain, or it
homogenizes us to our very roots and it becomes
environmentally, culturally, and politically
lethal," argues Yaron Ezrahi. (Friedman, 305)

If the Electronic Herd and global markets determine
economic, political, and social policy, how can
governments limit and control globalization? The
question then becomes: Globalization on whose
terms? If countries need to be competitive and
cooperate with the Electronic Herd and global
corporations, how can they afford to develop
these cultural, environmental, and social filters
to protect their local cultures and ways of life.
(Chris Lewis)

Korten on threats to Jobs and Communities

"In the name of increasing efficiency hundreds of
millions of people are being discarded by a global
economy that has no need for them." (Korten, 221)

"Efficiency is about producing greater output with
less input. When we increase productive output
per hour of human labor, we speak of
increasing productivity." (Korten, 222)

Because of increasing productivity, global
corporations are able to lay off tens of thousands
of workers and force the remaining workers to
produce increasing amounts of goods. Technology
allows global corporations to not need as many
workers to produce increasing quantities of goods.
The problem, however, is that if people don't have
work, who will be able to afford to buy the
increasing amount of goods produced by
more efficient global corporations. (Chris Lewis)

"Derek Bok suggests that top corporate executives
must be paid such outrageous sums to ensure
that they place the short-term interests of
shareholders above all other interests that they
might otherwise be tempted to consider--such as
those of employees, the community, and even
the corporation's own long-term viability."
(Korten, 224)

"The global system is harmonizing standards across
country after country--ever downward toward the
lowest common denominator. Driven by the
imperatives of global financial markets, the global
system values only money. People, with their
incessant special-interest demands for living
wages, prosperous communities, and healthy
environments, are an unwelcome economic
burden--a meddlesome source of inefficiency
to be eliminated." (Korten, 229)

"Human well-being will never be secured by the
kind of economic growth demanded by a rogue
financial system that values people, planet,
and the civilizing bonds of culture and
community only for their current market price.
It comes down to a question of how we want
to live. If we want societies that value life
more than money, we must re-create our
institutions accordingly." (229)

Given the power of the Electronic Herd and global
corporations, how can governments afford to
enforce environmental standards, work-safety and
public-safety standards, and minimum wage and
maximum hours laws? I believe that national and
global government bodies must set minimum
standards that protect workers, the environment,
consumers, and citizens. Only a regulated global
market can preserve our collective human, cultural,
and environmental heritage. The problem then
becomes this: How do we prevent national and
global governing bodies from being bought-off
by global corporations and the wealthy.
(Chris Lewis)

The second larger problem is that many investors,
global corporations, and conservative politicians
argue that we can't afford right now to protect local
workers, the environment, and local societies. Only
when we have created enough wealth, sometime
way off in the future, can we afford to let
non-market values help determine our human,
cultural, and environmental standards.
(Chris Lewis)

In the end, it all comes down to who we believe
should be in control of our societies: Money, wealth,
and the Electronic Herd or democratic citizens
protecting their cultures, ways of life, people, and
local environments? Just because the Electronic
Herd dominates our global economy today, doesn't
mean that it has to be this way. We are, in fact,
in control of globalization. We will, and should,
decide what the future of globalization is, not
the Electronic Herd or the Supermarkets.
(Chris Lewis)

How Tax Bill Gave Business More and More

On Monday, everybody involved was a winner. The Senate gave final approval to Mr. Grassley's bill, which would shower $137 billion in tax breaks into every corner of industry. While the bill's primary purpose is to bolster American manufacturers, it will also help Chinese ceiling-fan companies by eliminating $44 million in tariffs over the next two years. President Bush is expected to sign the bill into law shortly. ...

The story began nearly three years ago, with an initial impetus simply to replace a $5 billion annual tax break for American exporters that the World Trade Organization had ruled was illegal.

But under heavy pressure from big multinational corporations, both chambers also included about $42 billion worth of tax reductions on the foreign earnings of companies based in the United States.

Corporate executives defended the tax cuts on foreign profits, saying that American companies were at a competitive disadvantage because most other countries tax profits earned only inside their borders.

India Daily: View from America, Losing Jobs is Grim

Two weeks ago, I attended a meeting in the north-eastern USA between a public official and eight IT experts. The eight were part of a cadre of 50 in a large insurance company. Most of the people in the meeting had worked for the company for 20 years or more. Suddenly their work had been outsourced to a domestic firm. That firm had in turn announced that it would be replacing the IT workers – who earned an average of $65,000 a year – with Indian workers who would earn something like a tenth of that. Not only would most of these American workers lose their jobs: they were told that, in coming weeks, they would be required to train the Indian employees who were to replace them....

...For while stocks soar and some CEOs earn $100 million a year in pay, the American populace is increasingly worried about the economic future of the US workplace. Chief among their worries is this: Forrester Research predicts at least 3.3 million white collar jobs and $136 billion in wages will shift from the USA to low-cost countries by 2015....

But now the white collar jobs are disappearing too. The USA is in the midst of what is being called a “jobless recovery”. For 43 consecutive months, manufacturers have cut the number of workers on their payrolls. The USA is in the longest employment slump since the 1930s, when the nation was mired in the Great Depression.

The seemingly robust economic recovery, with its 6.1 per cent growth in the last half of 2003, just has not created jobs. Unlike the previous two decades, which saw job growth averaging more than a quarter of a million jobs a month, current job growth is negative or flat.

The offshoring of white collar jobs is the current American nightmare. The professional jobs, the well-paying jobs, the future jobs of the USA's young people, seem to be moving across distant seas to countries where people will work for salaries so low that they would not pay the rent on a small American flat. Soon, people fear, all that will be left are jobs that cannot be exported: flipping hamburgers, making beds in hotels, picking up the garbage.

The problem of offshoring is a difficult one for Americans. Caught in an economic squeeze – real wages have been flat for 30 years, and the middle class is shrinking – there are three ways an American family can maintain its standard of living. One is to work longer hours: Americans now work longer hours than workers in any other industrialised country, even Japan. Another, so widespread it has become the norm, is for all adults in a family unit, not just the husband, to work. The third is to subsidise the cost of necessities by importing low-price goods.

I call this the WalMart affect: We buy products at Walmart made by Chinese workers because we can't afford the high priced goods made by American workers.
The more we buy goods from WalMart, the more companies will take their jobs overseas to China to be
competitive in the global market. (Chris Lewis)

Lewis, Globalization and Global Environment Trends

Using the World Resources Institute's "Global Trends in Environment and Development" internet site, what can we learn about the health of the economy, environment, and society in both developed and developing nations? These trends should give us a further snapshot of the lives and problems facing peoples throughout the world in our emerging global industrial economy.

Since 1945, the vast majority of population growth has occurred in the developing countries. However, the largest consumers of fossil fuels are developed countries. The majority of the malnourished people live in the developing world, especially in Africa. The most polluted and populated cities are in the Third World. First World countries such as the United States, Japan, Germany, and Britain consume vastly more resources than Third World peoples. The per capita income of the United States and Japan is seven times that of Mexico, 70 times that of China, and 80 times that of India. There is widespread soil erosion and deforestation in Third World countries. However, First World countries also have serious soil erosion problems.

The larger picture of global development that these trends paint isn't very encouraging. Despite efforts to develop the Third World, Third World peoples face higher levels of pollution, deforestation, overcrowding, and have lower standards of living and resource consumption. The larger conclusion we can draw from these statistics is that the First World's higher living standards, higher resource consumption, and less serious environmental problems are the direct result of developed countries exploiting the wealth, resources, and environment of the Third World. Despite First World efforts to develop the Third World, the majority of Third World peoples lives and standard of living is lower than it was before 1945, when the developed nations led by the United States began in earnest to develop the Third World.

The failure of global development efforts to solve and reduce the economic, social, and environmental problems facing the Third World has led some First World environmental activists to begin to question development. What we have been witnessing in the last twenty-five years is the increasing convergence of thought by First and Third World environmental activists. They are arguing that development is the primary cause of the economic, social, and environmental problems facing both the industrialized and underdeveloped worlds. These environmental activists are often called Greens in the Europe and the United States. For a brief while in the 1980s, Green Parties were elected to office in European countries and to the European Parliament. The Green activists find that they share a lot in common with the developing perspective of Third World activists who argue that the chief cause of the problems facing the undeveloped world is development and First World efforts to bring the Third World into the emerging global industrial economy.

We can understand this convergence of views about development by looking at Norwegian environmental activists successful argument to keep Norway from joining the European Economic Community. Like their Third World counterparts, Norwegian environmental activists question efforts to make Norway a greater participant in this emerging global industrial economy. They argue that because the larger goal of the European Community is to promote economic growth and trade this will undermine Norway's environment, national control over their economy and society, and their commitment to supporting the economic needs of Norwegians first. Membership in the European Community (the EC) will undermine local and national Norwegian commitment to preserving their environment by forcing Norway to accept the much lower environmental standards created by the EC. In addition, the creation of the EC will lead to greater economic competition and inequality both within and between nations. By giving up their local and national control over their economy to the EC, Norway will give up its rights to control its society and its future. In addition, by promoting economic growth, the EC will encourage increased energy consumption and exploitation of the environment Instead of joining the EC and giving up their control over their economy, society, environment, and future, Norwegians should demand local and national control over their economies and over their lives. Instead of giving up their power to supranational bodies such as the EC, Norway should decentralize their economy and society to focus on economic development to support local needs, local traditions, and their local and national environment.

Rejecting the larger development model that projects the inevitable growth of a global society and economy based on limitless economic growth, endless economic competition, and the erosion of local and national control over their lives, Norwegians opted to develop Norway for Norwegians. They conclude that Norway "must renew our efforts to build a world order on the basis of solidarity with the Third World and with the Earth." But is Norway's action a model for the United States and other countries. Can we, too, reject global development and opt for alternative or counter-development as the Norwegians have?

In his essay, "Liberation Ecology," environmental activist Nicholas Hildyard argues that the United States and other First World countries should reject the global industrial development model. Hildyard argues that development is the cause of the growing problems facing both the First and the Third Worlds. The creation of market economies undermines local control over economies and resources. When land and resources are taken out of the hands of villages and communities and given to individuals to exploit, the end result is increased poverty, the increasing inability of people to support their families and communities, and increasing competition for scare resources. The end result of the growth of market economies is the creation of "rubbish peoples," people who because they have so little wealth, resources, and control over their lives are exploited by the wealthy in their quest for even greater wealth. The creation of social injustice and poverty, Hildyard argues, is the direct cause of environmental destruction and pollution. Individuals can exploit the environment because they are not responsible to anyone expect themselves and their own economic success.

As a result of the growth of the market and industrial development, Hildyard argues, individuals and communities become disempowered, they lose the ability to control their lives and their futures. This power is taken away from them by the market and given to vast, powerful corporate bureaucracies, whether government or for-profit companies. He concludes that disempowerment is the larger result of development and the growth of a modern, industrial economy. Thus, instead of focusing on solving environmental problems and problems of social justice, he concludes that we must recognize that both sets of problems are created by the same larger forces propelling the growth of a global industrial economy. Only by rejecting this development model and focusing on re-empowering local communities can we solve the economic, social, and environmental crisis created by development.

In their essay, "A Social-Ecological Proposal to Link North and South," Silvio Ribeiro and Birgitta Wrenfelt examine the growing recognition that the problems faced in both the First and Third World are caused by development. They argue that diverse groups challenging the global industrial development model are "becoming a whole," they are beginning to join forces and cooperate with their First and Third World counterparts. This growing movement focuses on "alternative development" and challenging the growth of a global industrial economy. They believe in restoring local and national control over economies, resources, environments, and societies. These activists are working to create international cooperation between First and Third World environmental movements. The larger goal is to create an alternative development model, or even what on of the authors of this anthology calls counter- development.

This alternative development or counter-development model focuses on the local control of resources to support local needs; the use of alternative technology to support local economies and protect the environment; the re-empowerment of local communities and governments to support the health and well-being of their people; the rejection of economic growth and individual competition to exploit resources and amass wealth as the central goal of individuals and societies; and supporting local cultures, traditions, and ways of life that help people adapt to and fit into their local environments. This alternative development model rejects economic growth and global industrial development as "progress."

Thus, we now have a growing debate about what kind of development model both First and Third World people should choose. It is no longer simply a question of the inevitability of progress, economic growth, and the global industrial expansion. In the face of increasing efforts to create a global, industrial economy through GATT and the creation of the World Trade Organization, many people are beginning to question the global industrial development model. But can supporters of alternative development convince enough people to challenge the global industrial development? The refusal of Norway to join the EC is an intriguing example of the power of environmental and political activists to challenge development and progress.