Many Governments have decided that liberalizing trade and opening up markets is the path to prosperity. And, indeed, globalization has brought undoubted benefits to many countries in all parts of the world. But its benefits have been very unevenly distributed and as many as one billion of the world’s people eke out a living on less than $1 per day. It is not surprising that social tensions are rising as people are so poor that they need to share a television with their neighbours and watch programmes celebrating conspicuous consumption by the privileged few.
Globalization has also an unnoticed environmental flaw. Throughout history, people have been forced to recognize environmental limits because abusing their local systems of resources would immediately influence their lives for the worse. On the other hand, treating resources with respect and harvesting in a sustainable way immediately reinforce environmentally appropriate behaviour. But with globalized trade, the consumers - or at least those fortunate enough to be able to consume - have no indication of how their consumption is affecting the environment. It is an easy matter for over-exploitation in one part of the world to be financially justifiable by providing inexpensive goods to growing markets in other parts. But when a mangrove is destroyed to make a shrimp pond in Thailand, India or Ecuador, the consumers of shrimp salad in New York or crevettes grillées in Paris or prawn tempura in Tokyo have no idea that productive mangrove ecosystems have been destroyed, disrupting the way of life of coastal peoples. Even worse, once the ponds have ended their productive life after a few years, the people no longer have the other resources of the coastal zone upon which to depend. The consumers simply shift to prawns grown in new shrimp ponds in Viet Nam, Mozambique or Nicaragua, and the local people suffer. Perhaps the problem is fundamentally an ethical one. Peru’s Francisco Sagasti points out that we are all part of a disintegrated, fractured global order - all connected and at the same time divided among peoples, ethnic groups and religions - sharing no common understanding of what we mean by quality of life, equity or development.
We are forcing people to treat their environment as a marketplace, not as the place where they live. Lawyers are becoming the new priests of modern society as they negotiate over “intellectual property rights” that once were held sacred but freely shared.
Perhaps the concept of sustainability can help us to live in a more reasonable balance with the environment. We need to find ways of giving higher priority to: being rather than having; consuming responsibly; preventing environmental damage rather than remediating problems we have created; harnessing science and technology for creation rather than destruction; globalizing values, such as inter-generational solidarity, especially towards the most vulnerable groups - women and children; and promoting the concept of diversity as a value as important as freedom. These are the kinds of changes in our ethical perspective that will be required to ensure truly sustainable forms of development.
We need to redefine globalization, so that it addresses not only market needs but also seeks to provide appropriate support for social equity, cultural diversity and a healthy environment. Of course, all of these ideals need to be defined locally, helping to meet the needs and aspirations of the people whose welfare is dependent on the politics and policies of those who govern. The interests of the planet in all its diversity must be globalized along with a code of ethics and principles, such as those contained in the Earth Charter. This most certainly does not mean that sustainable development needs to be the same everywhere. On the contrary, sustainable development needs to be a local phenomenon that celebrates the diversity of cultural values, promotes the participation of the people whose lives are being affected, and promotes the forms of government where elected officials listen to the voices of the many, and where solidarity, cooperation, equity and respect replace selfishness, antagonism, injustice and dominance. In short, sustainable development provides an alternative vision where natural systems are intimately linked to the systems created by people to allow life to continue to flourish in many forms. The values of sustainability are the values of life, and this is what we must celebrate at the World Summit on Sustainable Development.
