Development, Power, and the Environment

Neoliberal Paradox in the Age of Vulnerability

Md Saidul Islam

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781135036256
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sustainable Development
• Index: Social Sciences

Unmasking the neoliberal paradox, this book provides a robust conceptual and theoretical synthesis of development, power and the environment. With seven case studies on global challenges such as under-development, food regime, climate change, dam building, identity politics, and security vulnerability, the book offers a new framework of a "double-risk" society for the Global South.

With apparent ecological and social limits to neoliberal globalization and development, the current levels of consumption are unsustainable, inequitable, and inaccessible to the majority of humans. Power has a great role to play in this global trajectory. Though power is one of most pervasive phenomena of human society, it is probably one of the least understood concepts. The growth of transnational corporations, the dominance of world-wide financial and political institutions, and the extensive influence of media that are nearly monopolized by corporate interests are key factors shaping our global society today. In the growing concentration of power in few hands, what is apparent is a non-apparent nature of power. Understanding the interplay of power in the discourse of development is a crucial matter at a time when our planet is in peril — both environmentally and socially. This book addresses this current crucial need.

Part I

Concepts and Theories

1 Challenges of Our Time

Environmental and Social Vulnerabilities

with Quek Ri An

Introduction

“Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”—Murphy’s Law

In March 2011, the world was reminded once more of the frailty of man-made systems, the uncertainties of technology, and the magnitude of destruction they can bring onto the environment supporting human societies and other ecosystems. Technological advancements and social systems are meant to benefit humanity and help societies cope with the vagaries of nature. On the other hand, the nuclear disaster at Fukushima—following the impact of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami—resulted in the destruction of ecosystems, human lives, and property. The magnitude of destruction, coupled with the likelihood of further, yet-unknown effects on future generations, serves to remind us of the need for reflection and reexamination of the environmental and social vulnerabilities confronting humanity in the twenty-first century. It gives us a glimpse of the danger posed to both human and non-human communities (including the physical environments that support these communities) when the systems we build—to safeguard ourselves against the risks brought about by new technological applications and the hazards of natural disasters—fail, as nature’s wrath is unleashed upon us.

This chapter explores the relationship between development, power, and the environment, considering environmental and social vulnerabilities and their distribution between and within countries, nations, communities, and societies undergoing different stages of development. While every community and country in the world today is susceptible to some degree of environmental and social vulnerability, differences in culture, economy, and political circumstances may explain why some countries are much more vulnerable than others. A community’s level of vulnerability also correlates with its ability and resources to manage and control the risks it faces, both real and potential. Development, power, and the environment interact in complex ways to explain how and why the impact of environmental problems is more serious in less developed countries (LDCs) and why they lack the power within existing international political and economic structures to improve their situation and reduce their vulnerabilities. This chapter argues that the current trajectory of development, directed as it is by the dominance of powerful transnational corporations (TNCs) and international financial institutions (IFIs), continues to generate significant environmental, economic, and social vulnerabilities for developing countries and marginalized communities in the face of global environmental problems, threats, and risks into the twenty-first century.

We first begin the chapter by examining key environmental and social vulnerabilities confronting humanity in the twenty-first century. We proceed by analyzing how transnational corporations, dominant international financial and political institutions, and the extensive power of mass media exacerbate or mitigate the vulnerabilities experienced, specifically for developing and Third World¹ countries. The chapter then goes on to examine the unique situation of LDCs, which experience an unequal distribution of risks (ecological and social) as compared to developed countries, where communities possess the ability, technology, skills, capital, and other resources to deal with the risks more efficiently or to redirect the risks elsewhere.

Understanding Vulnerabilities

Vulnerability refers to the susceptibility or potential for harm to social, infrastructural, economic, and ecological systems. It is the result of a set of conditions and processes that influence the way that these systems are harmed by natural and technological hazards or extreme events. Vulnerability is closely associated with resilience, which involves the capacity of these systems to bounce back from disasters or their capacity to both respond to and cope with extreme hazard events. Expressed in a different way, vulnerability is the result of our exposure to hazards and our capacity to cope and recover in a sustainable manner. (Pine 2009:136)

We discuss here two dimensions of vulnerability: environmental and social. Social vulnerability suggests a differential capacity of groups and individuals to deal with the adverse effects of hazards, based on their positions within the physical and social world. Social vulnerability often refers to the capacity of human societies and their social systems to cope with and recover from environmental changes and disasters. It also refers to the extent to which human societies, each with differing levels of resources and abilities available in their social systems, will be impacted by the environmental hazards and disasters. Ecological dimensions of vulnerability refer to the capacity of natural systems to bounce back from disaster. It is the ability, or lack thereof, of our natural systems to deal with stress that may change over time and space (Pine 2009).

Social vulnerability is highest in developing countries, as they have less capacity to cope with environmental changes and threats. They are more vulnerable to the devastating impact of disasters on their economies, infrastructure, and public health. Such factors as wealth, technology, education, information, skills, and infrastructure influence the vulnerability of these developing countries to environmental threats. Poverty is arguably the most important cause of vulnerability; the poor tend to possess lower capacities for coping, thus suffering “a disproportionate burden of the impact of disasters, conflict, droughts, desertification and pollution” (UNEP 2002:303). Social indicators, such as age, also affect vulnerability; children and the elderly are more vulnerable to environmental threats. Marginalized social groups, such as the racially or ethnically marginalized, are more vulnerable too, as they lack the physical resources and social support to respond to such threats. Environmental vulnerability, in turn, has to do with the resilience of the environment to both human and natural threats. Developing states experience higher environmental vulnerability due to an interplay of factors, such as remoteness, geographical vulnerability to natural disasters, ecological fragility, high degrees of economic openness, small internal markets, and limited natural resources (UNEP 2002:313). United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP 2012) has identified twenty-one pressing issues for the 21st century (Table 1.1), clearly showing the magnitude of environmental and social vulnerabilities the planet is facing.

Table 1.1 The Twenty-One Emerging Issues

No.	Issue Title	Ranking*
Cross-cutting issues
1.	Aligning Governance to the Challenges of Global Sustainability	1
2.	Transforming Human Capabilities for the 21st Century: Meeting Global Environmental Challenges and Moving towards a Green Economy	2
3.	Broken Bridges: Reconnecting Science and Policy	4
4.	Social Tipping Points? Catalyzing Rapid and Transformative Changes in Human Behaviour towards the Environment	5
5.	New Concepts for Coping with Creeping Changes and Imminent Thresholds	18
6.	Coping with Migration Caused by New Aspects of Environmental Change	20
Food, biodiversity, and land issues
7.	New Challenges for Ensuring Food Safety and Food Security for 9 Billion People	3
8.	Beyond Conservation: Integrating Biodiversity across the Environmental and Economic Agendas	7
9.	Boosting Urban Sustainability and Resilience	11
10.	The New Rush for Land: Responding to New National and International Pressures	12
Freshwater and marine issues
11.	New Insights on Water-Land Interactions: Shift in the Management Paradigm?	6
12.	Shortcutting the Degradation of Inland Waters in Developing Countries	15
13.	Potential Collapse of Oceanic Systems Requires Integrated Ocean Governance	13
14.	Coastal Ecosystems: Addressing Increasing Pressures with Adaptive Governance	19
Climate-change issues
15.	New Challenges for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation: Managing the Unintended Consequences	7
16.	Acting on the Signal of Climate Change in the Changing Frequency of Extreme Events	16
17.	Managing the Impacts of Glacier Retreat	21
Energy, technology, and waste issues
18.	Accelerating the Implementation of Environmentally-Friendly Renewable Energy Systems	7
19.	Greater Risk Than Necessary? The Need for a New Approach for Minimizing Risks of Novel Technologies and Chemicals	10
20.	Changing the Face of Waste: Solving the Impending Scarcity of Strategic Minerals and Avoiding Electronic Waste	14
21.	The Environmental Consequences of Decommissioning Nuclear Reactors	17

Source: UNEP (2012:4).

*Ranking based on scoring by the UNEP Foresight Panel and after considering the polling results of more than 400 scientists worldwide.

The impacts of environmental change on ecosystems, the environment, and human societies are closely intertwined. The social and human impacts of environmental change will rebound on the well-being of human communities. Environmental changes and threats lead to concurrent environmental and social vulnerabilities, and the effective management of both types of vulnerability is important to protect both human and non-human communities from harm.

Global Environmental Problems

Twenty years after the Rio summit in 1992, world leaders met in Rio once again to discuss the environmental challenges facing humanity. It was a time for them to reflect on how successful and effective the international community has been over the previous two decades in managing the major identified environmental problems. Are we still facing the same environmental problems? Has the situation improved, or are we worse off? Environmental and social vulnerabilities will continue to exist twenty years from now and beyond. The question is what kind of steps can and should be taken to manage these vulnerabilities? Have they been taken? Do countries across the globe experience the same type and degree of vulnerabilities? Or is the distribution of these vulnerabilities uneven? How is the distribution of these vulnerabilities decided and by whom?

The environment—referring to the physical surroundings (both living and non-living physical elements, including energy and matter) that support all life forms on planet Earth—is highly vulnerable. By this, we mean that it is susceptible to ‘attacks’, to ‘hurt’, to ‘damage’, and to ‘destruction’. Environmental problems, caused by human activities, natural causes, or both, threaten the biophysical environment that supports both human and non-human communities. R. Scott Frey has identified two general types of environmental problems: the first is “resource depletion,” and the second is “pollution” (2001:4). UNEP’s 2011 yearbook identifies the depletion of the ozone layer, climate change, natural resource depletion, and biodiversity loss, among others, as the key environmental challenges the world is still facing twenty years after the 1992 Rio summit (UNEP 2011). These challenges reflect the vulnerability of our environment to the hazards caused by human activities and natural environmental changes. The extent and magnitude of environmental and social vulnerabilities are shaped by the ability of communities to deal with these environmental problems.

In the following section, we look at some of the global environmental problems causing environmental and social vulnerabilities for both developed and developing countries. Emphasis is placed on developing countries that are more vulnerable to these environmental problems. We may speak of a vulnerability gap where there is an increasing gap within, between, and across regions, countries, and communities in terms of the risks they face from environmental change and disasters.

Climate Change and Global Warming

Climate change is perhaps the most prominent global environmental issue for the international community in recent decades. This community— which includes governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), industries, the United Nations and its various branches, and ordinary citizens across borders—are increasingly involved in negotiating multilateral environmental agreements to resolve the issue of climate change. Examples of such agreements being reached include the 1989 Montreal Protocol and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The prominence of climate change as an issue is a result of increased media coverage and the interest generated by scholarly and popular articles, research papers, and books. Much of the discourse on climate change is now accepted by the majority of people in the developed world. This discourse includes attributing the causes of climate change to human activities, discussing the adverse impacts climate change has on human societies and ecosystems, and arguing the need for immediate and coordinated responses from the international community to tackle the issue. This section examines the underlying forces driving climate change, the effects of climate change on development issues, and the vulnerabilities of poorer communities and developing countries confronting climate change.

Climate change refers to “the changes in climate directly or indirectly related to the impact of human activities” (Harris 2011:107). Climate change is more popularly known by the non-scientific and sometimes politically incorrect term ‘global warming’; the latter has more negative connotations, whereas ‘climate change’ has more scientific and value-neutral implications. Global warming arises in part from the considerably increased emission of greenhouse gases due to human activities since the twentieth century. Climate change as a real and serious global environmental problem is affirmed by authoritative reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: “[The] warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average sea level” (IPCC 2007:30).

Global consumption patterns are the underlying driving force behind climate change, ensuring that production to meet such demand continues endlessly, thereby increasing the emissions of greenhouse gases into our stratosphere. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide, methane, chlorofluorocarbons, ozone, and nitrous oxide. These gases are emitted through human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels, agriculture (in particular, cattle ranching and rice cultivating, where the animals used for such activities emit methane), deforestation, and other industrial processes (DeSombre 2002). Climate change causes adverse impacts on human societies and ecosystems by increasing the possibilities of droughts, higher sea levels (as a result of melting ice caps), and heat waves, among many other consequences.

Vulnerabilities of human societies are reflected by the alarming impact of climate change on the health of millions; experts observe “increases in malnutrition; increased deaths, diseases and injury due to extreme weather events; increased burden of diarrheal diseases; increased frequency of cardio-respiratory diseases due to higher concentrations of ground-level ozone in urban areas related to climate change; and the altered spatial distribution of some infectious diseases” (IPCC 2007:48). Vulnerabilities of the physical environment and ecosystems to climate change are an increasing concern, too. Expert assessments note, “[T]he resilience of many ecosystems is likely to be exceeded this century by an unprecedented combination of climate change, associated disturbances (e.g., flooding, drought, wildfire, insects, ocean acidification) and other global change drivers (e.g., land-use change, pollution, fragmentation of natural systems, overexploitation of resources)” (IPCC 2007:48).

The impact of climate change will be felt most in countries and communities where environmental and social vulnerabilities to natural environmental changes and natural disasters are higher. Such groups as the elderly, the young, and the poor will suffer more from the risks of climate change; such groups exist in countries regardless of their developed or developing status. The impact of climate change will vary from region to region, depending on their geographical vulnerabilities; the coastal and delta regions of Asia may face increased flooding, Australia may face loss of biodiversity, and North America may face water shortages and heat waves (Harris 2011:109). “The impacts of climate change on natural ecosystems and on human society and economies are potentially severe, particularly in parts of the world where geographic vulnerability and poverty make adaptation difficult or impossible” (Brainard et al. 2009, cited in Harris 2011:108).

Efforts to respond to and resolve the climate change issue have been hampered by global politics between the Global North and South, perceived injustices felt by developing regions, and the unwillingness of developed countries and industries to accept proposed emissions reductions. The failure of the Kyoto Protocol, which “required actual reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases of varying amounts for developed countries, with an average of a 5 percent reduction from 1990 emissions by the period 2008 to 2012” (DeSombre 2002:101), reflects the disagreements between developing and developed countries over who should bear the responsibility for reducing emissions. Developing countries argue that since the developed countries were the ones that have historically contributed to the huge amounts of carbon emissions, the latter should be the ones that have more obligations to reduce emissions. The developing countries, furthermore, are resistant to attempts to limit and control their emissions, as doing so will affect their own development ambitions. The issue is complicated by the pollution estimates showing that developing countries are fast overtaking developed nations as the main contributors of carbon emissions as a result of their industrialization programs. Developed countries, most notably the U.S., are resistant to adopting emissions reductions, as corporations and industries are worried about the impact that doing so will have on their profits. Business and industry groups, specifically those from the petroleum, electric utilities, and automobile sectors, lobby for legislators and governments to avoid climate-related laws and the ratification of international agreements, such as the Kyoto Protocol, that will likely lead to “green taxes” or “carbon taxes”’ (Harris 2011:114). In short, efforts to resolve environmental issues, such as climate change, are complicated by the politics of development and economic growth (details in Chapter 9).

While international negotiations continue to attempt to get more developed and developing countries to agree to cuts, emissions of greenhouse gases continue to increase at alarming rates. Even if the developed countries were to agree to substantial emissions cuts, the developing countries’ emissions will continue to increase. At the moment, it appears that the conflicts in relation to reducing carbon emissions between the developed and developing countries or the Global North-South divide will not be resolved in the near future. The impact of climate change will continue to be felt across the globe, especially in those areas with higher environmental and social vulnerabilities to environmental ch...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• Glossary/Abbreviations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part I: Concepts and Theories
• Part II: Case Studies
• Part III: Sustainable Earth amid Vulnerabilities
• Notes
• References
• Index