Approaches to a Political Economy of Environment the Environmental
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IGNACY SACHS Approaches to a political economy of environment The environmental revolution constitutes a challenge to the social sciences in general1, and to economic theory in particular. Up to now, economists failed to respond to it, and pioneering books such as Kapp's Social costs of private enterprise did not generate the discussion they deserved2. Coddington goes as far as to plead guilty for the failure of the economists as a profession, to integrate a major characteristic of recent technological progress into their theoretical thinking: the provision of opportunities for shifting costs from the producer onto society. According to him, the main body of economic thought is ill-adapted to coming to terms with the ecological viewpoint and, therefore, "it may even be the case that the greatest service economists can render posterity is to remain silent" 3. This paper will take a slightly less pessimistic view. It will be argued that a political economy of environment, as distinct from an economics of environ- ment might be constructed, provided we recognize the need for far-reaching revisions of large chunks of theory. For obvious reasons, it cannot be done in one paper, not at this juncture. Our aim is much less ambitious: to identify some of the problem-areas and to suggest a few priorities for further study. Before we turn, however, to this task, it may prove useful to clear the ground by attempting a brief classification of the main ideological trends discernible in environmental discussions. Social science production is never quite free from ideological bias and this is particularly true with respect to writings on envi- 1. See S. Tsuru (ed.), Environmental disruption: A challenge to social scientists, Tokyo, 1970 (Proceedings of International Symposium organized under the auspices of the Interna- tional Social Science Council, Tokyo, March 8-14, 1970). 2. K.W. Kapp, The social costs of private enterprise, Oxford, 1950. The far-reaching impli- cations of this book were underlined by J. Weiller in a review note, published in Revue d'histoire économique et sociale 29, 1951, pp. 414-417. 3. A. Coddington, "The economics of ecology", New society 393, April 9, 1970, pp. 595- 597. 126 Political economy of environment ronment, as any response in this field will perforce involve the collective action of large populations *. The motives behind the concern Disregarding shades, and minor differences of emphasis, the bulk of literature on environment (mostly in USA) can be classified, for our purposes, into six groups. 1. The diversionists come first, as far as publicity is concerned. This is understandable since they enjoy the support of several establishments. In their view, environmental disruption — the reverse side of the scientific and technological revolution — is taking such alarming proportions that it should become a major and constant concern for citizens, at the expense of other political preoccupations nowadays considered less important. People are called upon to organize themselves in order to protect the ecosystem. But the action they are expected to take is to be of a purely conservationist nature ; no links whatsoever are established between environmental disruption and the working of the socio-political system. Young people in particular are exhorted to devote their exclusive attention to environment in the hope that they may thus be diverted from other burning international or social issues and that, at the same time, they will stop short of digging too deeply into the socio- political context of environmental disruption. The writers who, in good faith, produce piles of gloomy books, pamphlets and articles on the alarming state of the biosphere and the imminent disaster facing humanity in this way become involved, whether they realize it or not, in a campaign of political mystifications. For those, however, respon- sible for having launched it, environment, as such, matters very little indeed 5. It is just an issue which can be easily played up and lends itself to exploitation as a safety-valve, because many people are disturbed by the worsening quality of their lives. 2. The attitude of big business towards environmental concern is ambivalent. While some industrialists fear an increase in costs, threatening their competi- tivity 6, others, on the contrary, approach the matter from a more positive angle. Anti-pollution for them is likely to become an important market and, possibly, an additional pretext for the spending of public funds in such a way as to increase private profits. 4. See G. Vickers, Value systems and social process, Harmondsworth, 1970, pp. 181-183. 5. Were this a legitimate concern, it should reflect itself in the appropriation of public funds for environmental action. 6. See, i.a., R.S. Diamond, "What business thinks about its environment", in: The environment: A national mission for the seventies, New York, 1970, pp. 55-64 (reprinted from Fortune). Ignacy Sachs 127 As one of them has put it in an article entitled "Social-sector industries: The challenge of our conscience" (sic): "It is interesting to reflect that perhaps in the years ahead great careers and even fortunes will accrue to those who devote their efforts to societal — not production — problems. Air and water and noise and landscape pollution control; housing; recreation; education; transportation; public facilities requirements — these and other social needs present a market measured in the trillions of dollars and human survival ."7 Seen in this perspective, the index of advertisers in the Scientific American special issue on Biosphere 8 makes very interesting reading indeed. 3. For the neo-malthusians busy keeping the underdeveloped countries from industrializing, environmental concern is an excellent pretext, as they may now claim that, not only food, but also all other resources of the spaceship Earth are supposedly in short supply, to such an extent that the Earth may even prove incapable of supporting on a sustained basis a population as large as the present one9. Such an approach is being consistently developed by Paul R. Ehrlich among others. In a best selling pamphlet10 he enjoins Americans to write letters to politicians, insisting, i.a., on the following points: population is far outstripping food production, more than half of the world is hungry and many are dying of starvation; not all countries can be industrialized; DCs cannot feed UDCs. In more scholarly papers he does not hesitate to ask for the stopping of aid to underdeveloped countries, unless a substantial share of the same is spent on population control: "We will have to recognize the fact that most countries can never industrialize and that giving them industrializa- tion aid is wasteful."11 In the same vein the Paddock brothers suggested 12 that the concept of "triage" borrowed from military medicine should be applied to aid policies. Underdeveloped countries which lag hopelessly behind in the population — food game should not be assisted, as the resources allocated to them will be wasted. They should be instead permitted to starve to death, in order to concentrate resources on better cases. The Paddocks had India in mind, but it seems that their recommendation will be first applied on a mass scale in East Pakistan, where millions of people are almost certain to die next 7. D. Carley, in: H.W. Helfrich, Jr. (ed.), Agenda for survival: The environmental cr isis New Haven, Conn., 1970, p. 98 (2nd ed.). 8. Scientific American 223 (3), September 1970. 9. L.G. Cole, "Playing Russian roulette with biogeochemical cycles", in: Helfrich (ed.), op. cit., p. 14. See also the findings of the System Dynamic Laboratory of MIT summarized by G. Leach in The observer, June 27, 1971, and J. Forrester, The world dynamics, Boston, Mass., 1971. 10. P.R. Ehrlich, The population bomb, New York, 1970, pp. 177-178 (13th ed.). 11. P.R. Ehrlich, "Famine 1975: Fact or fallacy?", in: Helfrich (ed.), op. cit., p. 64. 12. W. and P. Paddock, Famine — 1975! America's decision : Who will survive?, Boston, Mass., 1967. 128 Political economy of environment year in the midst of world's indifference18. The fullest presentation of Ehrlich's views is contained, however, in his well-known book Population, resources, environmentu. The DCs are asked to "de-develop" and at the same time to share their income with the UDCs. As for the UDCs, while they wait for the de-development of the DCs, they should content themselves with a "semi-development". In a passage of his book, which brings back memories of colonial theories, he explains what "semi-development" means to him: "As examples of semi-development, Kenya and Tanzania might be semi-developed as combination agrarian-recreation areas. They, and some other African nations, can supply the world with a priceless asset: a window on the past when vast herds of nonhuman animals roamed the face of the Earth. They could also provide one of the many living stockpiles of organic diversity, stockpiles which may prove of immense value as mankind attempts to replenish the deteriorated ecosystems of the planet. These and similar areas could serve as rest-and-rehabilitation centers for people from the more frantic industrialized parts of the planet. They would also serve as guarantors of cultural diversity, as areas specifically reserv- ed to permit peoples to maintain their traditional ways of life [...] We need to create a demand for what Aborigines, Eskimos, Kenyans and Honduras can supply, what might be called cultural resources. These priceless resources are in short supply, they are dwindling rapidly, and they are nonrenewable. A way must be found to permit these people access to more of the fruits of industrial societies without attempting to industrialize the entire world.',16 In short, alleging the need to protect the UDCs from the mistakes of over- development and the limited resources of the spaceship earth, Ehrlich manipu- lates the concepts of cultural pluralism in such a way as to propose an inter- national division of labour closely resembling relationship between public and animals in a zoo.