Exporting Environmentalism

Exporting Environmentalism is the first book to examine industry's transnational promotion of environmental ideas and practices.

Should there be firmer restrictions on trade, with more policies aimed at protecting its environmental impacts, or would the environment benefit most from unrestricted free trade? Do importing countries have a responsibility only to their local ecosystems, or are they also responsible for environmental degradation caused by the production of traded goods in exporting countries? Trading the Environment examines both the dependence and the effects of international trade on the earth's life support systems and looks at ways in which trading regulations could be adapted to promote ecologically sustainable economic development. It addresses the issues from a fully integrated approach, focusing on the interrelations between ecosystems, economic development and trade. The authors provide a carefully constructed ecological and economic analysis of trade and the environment, examine the existing legal and institutional frameworks and set out 16 recommendations to achieve environment beneficial trade at both national and international levels. Trading with the environment was originally commissioned by the Swedish government and is already regarded thereon essential reference. It makes an excellent introduction as well as constructive analysis, both for students and for policy-makers and professional economics and other scientists working on the issues. Published in 1995

Until very recently, studies of the environmental movement have been heavily biased towards the North Atlantic worlds. There was a common assumption amongst historians and sociologists that concerns over such issues as conservation or biodiversity were the exclusive preserve of the affluent westerner: the ultimate luxury of the consumer society. Citizens of the world's poorest countries, ran the conventional wisdom, had nothing to gain from environmental concerns; they were 'too poor to be green', and were attending to the more urgent business of survival. Yet strong environmental movements have sprung up over recent decades in some of the poorest countries in Asia and Latin America, albeit with origins and forms of expression quite distinct from their western counterparts. In Varieties of Environmentalism, Guha and Matinez-Alier seek to articulate the values and orientation of the environmentalism of the poor, and to explore the conflicting priorities of South and North that were so dramatically highlighted at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. Essays on the 'ecology of affluence' are also included, placing ion context such uniquely western phenomena as the 'cult of wilderness' and the environmental justice movement. Using a combination of archival and field data,. The book presents analyses of environmental conflicts and ideologies in four continents: North and South America, Asia and Europe. The authors present the nature and history of environmental movements in quite a new light, one which clarifies the issues and the processes behind them. They also provide reappraisals for three seminal figures, Gandhi, Georgescu-Roegen and Mumford, whose legacy may yet contribute to a greater cross-cultural understanding within the environmental movements.

In recent years, international trade in toxic waste and hazardous technologies by firms in rich industrialized countries has emerged as a routine practice. Many poor countries have accepted these deadly imports but are ill equipped to manage the materials safely. For more than a decade, environmentalists and the governments of developing countries have lobbied intensively and generated public outcry in an attempt to halt hazardous transfers from Northern industrialized nations to the Third World, but the practice continues.In her insightful and important book, Jennifer Clapp addresses this alarming problem. Clapp describes the responses of those engaged in hazard transfer to international regulations, and in particular to the 1989 adoption of the Basel Convention. She pinpoints a key weakness of the regulations—because hazard transfer is dynamic, efforts to stop one form of toxic export prompt new forms to emerge. For instance, laws intended to ban the disposal of toxic wastes in the Third World led corporations to ship these byproducts to poor countries for "recycling." And, Clapp warns, current efforts to prohibit this "recycling movement" may accelerate a new business endeavor: the relocation to poor countries of entire industries that generate toxic wastes.Clapp concludes that the dynamic nature of hazard transfer results from increasingly fluid global trade and investment relations in the context of a highly unequal world, and from the leading role played by multinational corporations and environmental NGOs. Governments, she maintains, have for too long failed to capture the initiative and have instead only reacted to these opposing forces.

Nation-states are failing to resolve global problems that transcend the abilities of single governments or even groups of governments to address. This book argues that this dilemma is not as new as is sometimes claimed. It offers crucial context and even lessons for present-day debates about resolving the most urgent environmental problems.

Dr Paul Dargusch investigates how environmentalism influences venture level export performance. The two central constructs of the book (environmentalism and the export performance of export ventures) are issues of great importance to contemporary business management. No previous published study has investigated how environmentalism influences venture or firm level export performance, and as such, this book makes a significant contribution to the development of new knowledge in the field.