UNconventional: A Point of View
Whose Earth Is It Anyway?
The Failure of Economics to Protect Environmental Health and Quality of Life
By Huey D. Johnson
 | | UNEP Photo |
“The law locks up both man and woman,
Who steals the goose from off the common,
But lets the greater felon loose,
Who steals the common from the goose.”
- Anonymous
“Sustainability” is a word invented to establish a process of growth that would enhance the quality of life for all people. This world attempt at sustainability is about balancing the health of the environment and social considerations with economic efficiency, and without such a balance, they are often meshed in conflict. The problem is that the economic dimension has overwhelmed the environmental and social aspects, limiting the success of sustainability as a concept.
While economics itself is a useful tool, the emphasis of the global economy solely on economic efficiency has failed to adequately consider environmental quality, cultural values, heritage and human rights. The result has been to ignore valuable human heritage, while allowing private economic-profit motives to intrude on long-standing, publicly-owned resources like air and water. The global scale push-for-profits and privatization has led to environmental degradation and declining quality of life that will affect our human existence everywhere. It is time to audit the results of the economic dominance in the hope that another attempt at a balance is possible.
My criticism of economics is backed by personal and professional experience. I’ve worked, studied and travelled in many parts of the world, in order to understand the relationship between heritage and environmental policy. Equally important, I have worked and thrived in highly competitive free-market economic conditions. At first, I chose to pursue other directions because of concern for future generations; now that I have grandchildren, my concern is greater still. It is based on my observations that economic growth as a world policy without a plan or recognition of limits and with its increased consumption cannot be sustained. In fact, it is a threat to their future.
Years ago, I enjoyed a two-year sojourn, alone, wandering around the world. I made the journey to have a better understanding of nations, cultures and histories. My observations have formed both negative and positive conclusions. Sadly, I reflect that much of the conflict in human history was and is based on human competition for natural resources. On the positive side, there have been many cultural examples of human innovation, solving what had to be difficult problems at the time. Those experiences evolved over time to become our human culture.
I ran a government environmental agency with a billion-dollar annual budget, with responsibilities that included managing in a drought, floods and fires. I had a large regulatory responsibility and established a successful cooperative plan with industries on energy, water, forestry fisheries and related issues. I have enjoyed a forty-year career as an environmental activist and in 2001 received the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Sasakawa Environment Prize, an annual award presented by the United Nations. This has been the pinnacle of my career because an international committee of peers independent of the United Nations and UNEP awarded it.
The world is struggling with enormous challenges. At the core of these problems is the management and distribution of natural resources - in many ways the same problems that ancient Rome failed to solve, but still exist today on a global scale. It is timely to write this article to reflect further on the crucial issue of economic growth at the expense of the health of the environment and quality of life on Earth. I see this era of “all things economic” as but another chapter in human history.
I see three problems in the economic emphasis of recent years. The first is the attempt at privatization - the taking-over of public assets, like water and air, which is in conflict with law and tradition. The conflict is that the economic sector’s dominance ignores social considerations and fails to recognize the historic claims to public assets known as the “doctrine of the public trust”. This doctrine embraces cultural traditions that are deeply rooted in humanity and would not disappear.
To proceed with economic dominance while ignoring tradition is a form of naiveté. Attempts to privatize assets that have been traditionally owned by past generations of humanity is a threat for future generations. Public air and water have great monetary value, and large profits come easily when they are privatized. And so, the question of “Who owns air, water and land?” deserves to be asked constantly as a matter of policy and is essential to the debate over world trade.
The problem of economy overwhelming culture or tradition isn’t new. There is ample record in ancient Greek and Roman laws, and some of the first laws of Rome were developed to protect public access to natural resources. They declared that public access to air, navigable waters and running water was so fundamental to civic society that private property rights had no stand to interfere. These concepts emerged over time to become the ongoing laws of modern nations. Challenges to them have been endless in the courts, and now the addition of technology and global business, especially attempts at privatization, seriously renew those old threats.
Economic policy based on money ignores important values of human heritage that are valuable beyond price, because they have emerged from ongoing human experience. These are important to the quality of life. Many of these traditions evolved when the pace of change was slower and problems could be worked out over time, but today the pace is fast and getting faster. Advanced technology and the global dimension of free-market economy tempt us to outrun reality.
The second problem is the failure of the current narrow focus of global profit-driven economics to address new environmental problems, such as shortages, pollution and climate change. An example is the disastrous effect on human health as the water quality declines. Global warming and the increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere as an aftermath of burning fossil fuels is another example.
Finally, the influence of money is so pervasive that economists have moved into every dimension of Government, industry and the non-profit sector, even though much of the unrestricted economic activity is devastating to the environment.
A glaring example of the ability of economic interests to influence international efforts to achieve sustainability recently surfaced in the British scientific journal, New Scientist. In 1972, the first Conference on the Human Environment was held in Stockholm; its goal was to launch global efforts to achieve sustainable development and to establish a new United Nations agency for the environment. I was at the Conference working with Barbara Ward and Margaret Meade. At the time, they had been informed that powerful economic interests were undermining our efforts, which was disturbing and impossible to prove until January 2002.
According to the story in the New Scientist, “a secret group of developed nations conspired to limit the effectiveness of the (Stockholm) Conference”. The thirty-year-old British Government’s records of this group were released, as required by law, earlier this year. Known as the Brussels group, which included Britain, the United States, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and France, it met secretly in 1971 to influence the outcome of the Conference. A document written in 1971 by an official in the British Department of the Environment described the group’s position: “A new and expensive international organization must be avoided, but a small, effective central coordinating mechanism … would not be welcome, but is probably inevitable.” Certainly, the Conference had limited accomplishment, and our adversaries had ample funds. The released document explained our problems.
 | The presence of large numbers of refugees puts pressure on limited water resources and can cause refugees to use contaminated water, at great risk to their health. (UNHCR Photo/C. Sattlberg) |
Economists respond to questions about public ownership of natural resources by pointing out that the modern world, burgeoning with population growth, may be better able to enhance the quality of life by applying technological advances and economic policy. Their argument bears consideration. There is a need for capital resources to achieve sustainability, and the need for economic partners is recognized. The shortage of money for development is a real problem, but getting the capital can be done in innovative ways. For instance, a global green tax on fossil fuels could create the required funds, and it would be a basis of helping to control CO2 in the atmosphere.
My point of this failure of theoretical economics as a public policy device signals a very serious problem. The recent collapse of world fisheries was caused in part by a no-plan, no-management, free-competition fishery, which means the loss of one third of the protein source the global population enjoyed each year. The world is faced with problems like growing shortages of food, and water problems so severe that one third of the world faces shortages and drinks polluted water. These problems won’t be solved by economics alone. Water shortages have drawn the focus of privatization efforts, and there have been mixed results. There have been and continue to be serious conflicts with tradition, where the public faces losing what had been an inherited resource that was understood to be a permanent public asset.
In the United States, the collapse of Enron, a huge multi-national resources company, included failure at privatizing public water. Enron had a subsidiary in California trying to acquire publicly-owned water and sell it back to the cities. The environmental movement challenged the company’s effort from a legal and public trust position, and Enron gave up. They were also trying to acquire water in India and elsewhere. The firm’s bankruptcy is the largest in United States history. Recently in La Paz, Bolivia, foreign corporations attempted to take over the publicly-owned drinking water infrastructure. Riots ensued, lives were lost and foreign corporations withdrew.
My final example involving water is the lure of simple economic fantasy on a large scale, which is likely to lead to a tragedy of historic scale. Increased industrialization is desired in India and China, but to get water for more factories, both countries are taking lands out of agricultural production. Controversial huge dams are being built. Such strategies have serious social and environmental consequences that are ignored by economic emphasis. Lest I be seen as suggesting that California, where I live, is any better, it is so lacking in water policy that it is letting its rivers go dry too. Though the state is a desert, there are few restrictions on drilling wells for more water. Consequently, they are drilled with abandon, and the underground water table is dropping in many areas. Here, economy rages ahead of environment and social aspects too.
Another example is air pollution, a result of economic growth that does not value the health of the environment or the public right to clean air, which is an enormous public trust issue. Recently, a scientific journal confirmed that the particulates from burning coal for energy cause cancer and other health problems in humans, especially in urban centres. Diesel truck particulates were also confirmed in the article as problems. The list goes on.
| “Historically, competition for land is well known as a source of conflict ... ” |
|
 |
|
