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Mid-Day Open Thread: Globalization and the Environment |
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A couple stories related to industrialization and the environment caught my eye this morning.
- In China, pollution has turned a major river red and foamy, forcing 200,000 people now without drinking water to rely on underground sources.
- According to a recent MasterCard study (based on a compilation of scientific data), two of India’s largest cities — Delhi and Mumbai — are at the bottom of the totem poll of environmental friendliness. According to the report, several other major cities in the developing world didn’t score very well either:
The study ranked 21 leading cities in Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa. ÂÂMelbourne led the ranking ahead of Johannesburg and Singapore. Among Chinese cities, the worst performer was Shenzhen, the industrial hub next to Hong Kong, which itself was the best-ranked Chinese city.
While the benefits of globalization are often touted in terms of currency and human capital, the effects of massive urbanization and industrial expansion on the environment are sometimes relegated to the margins of globalization discourse. What do you think, Seminal readers? Is environmental destruction a necessary side effect of globalization? And if so, what should/can be done to minimize globalization’s long-term environmental effects?
Globalization? Perhaps. It’s more the straight march of progress. Which isn’t really to say that environments need to be destroyed for third world countries to become first world countries. However, that’s the general path. That’s what all the current 1st world countries did. If we want the 3rd world not to follow in our footsteps and to skip a couple trials along the way, we’re going to have to help them get there.
Well, I say globalization rather than industrialization because I see much of the industrialization (particulary in China) as the result of foreign investment in manufacturing. I suppose it can also be framed in the context of progress since during the age of industrialization in America, several rivers in and around America’s heartland became incredibly polluted and the effects are still being felt. (In my hometown, we joke of three-eyed fish with legs — a product of industrial pollution in the river, which has improved with time and efforts to clean up but hasn’t disappeared entirely since rampant pollution occured earlier last century.) With China, I believe its possible to see the pollution of much-needed drinking water as a direct consequence of out-sourcing. In America, we receive the benefits of China’s industrial activity yet we’ve managed to outsource the unpleasant effects.
India and China often refer to the environmental liberty with which the West was able to industrialize and develop and argue for the same liberty themselves, but don’t we have an obligation in the developed world to take responsibility for the destruction our materialism inspires? Or do we force India and China to take full responsibility?
Also, in today’s world, environmental degradation is no longer a local phenomenon; its affects on the global ecosystem are noticeable. In that sense, the importance of the environment assumes a new importance in the global world. Whether or not you wish to argue pollution is a product of globalization or straight-up industrialization, its effects have a global relevance.