Globalization is a threat to the environment. The increased economic activity from globalization will create pressure for more inputs from the environment and create more waste to be emitted into the environment. A projected increase in world GDP of six to eight times by 2100 will likely double or quadruple the world’s needs for inputs, and increase potential pollution by two to four times as well.
Whether the environment will actually deteriorate depends on government responses across the world. Although there will be challenges associated with increased growth, as cited above, there will also be vast resources. As the countries of the world grow wealthier, there is every reason to believe that they will want to purchase more environmental services. The benefits of protecting the environment will increase with growth. Governments in the future will be able to afford to abate pollution, control activities that damage the landscape, and conserve valuable wildlands.
The question is whether governments will be prepared to respond and deliver the desired environmental protection. Governments will need to learn how to provide environmental protection effectively and efficiently. They must not only create laws to protect the environment, but they must also enforce those laws. Protection must weigh the costs and benefits of each action. Although every country could improve the institutions that protect their environment, the greatest concern about the adequacy of governmental institutions is in developing countries. The absence of sufficient institutional support for environmental protection in developing countries is a major concern in the coming century. As incomes rise, these environmental institutions may gain the needed resources and support to become effective. But if environmental institutions in developing countries are not strengthened as economies develop, economic growth will not lead to environmental protection.
Although the bulk of the responsibilities for protecting natural resources and the environment will lie with national governments, some issues will be local and some will extend beyond national borders. Soil pollution (solid waste) tends to be a local issue because the problems associated with it tend to be spatially limited (impacting only the local area itself). Air and water pollution, however, tend to be a national issue because the impacts from these decisions tend to extend well beyond state and local boundaries. Only the national government is of sufficient spatial size that it can weigh all the costs and benefits of abatement choices. Transboundary problems where countries share a common resource are likely to be dealt with in bilateral agreements. Neighboring countries should be able to work out agreements to share natural resources that they hold in common.
But global commons—resources held in common across many nations— require special attention, whether we are concerned about the global atmosphere or the open oceans. International agreements are needed to share these resources and to manage them for the common good. Because protecting global commons can sometimes be costly, as with the control of greenhouse gases, it is critical that these agreements be efficient. Resources to protect global commons must be spent wisely so that everyone remains a party to the agreement. Such international treaties are unquestionably needed and the fate of the global commons depends upon them. This is an area where increased institutional maturing is needed.
Although there are some very real threats to the environment associated with global economic growth, the greatest risk to the environment is a stagnant world economy with extensive poverty. Without the increased income that will undoubtedly come with globalization, there is very little hope of making much progress in improving global environmental quality. If globalization were to stop, international trade shrink, and the world’s economy come to a standstill, few resources would be left for environmental protection. A smaller global economy may use fewer inputs and generate less pollution, but the environment would not improve. Poor countries would have few resources to address the problems they already face. There would be little chance to improve either human or natural conditions. A hungry voter is very unlikely to want to spend new public resources to protect the environment. A stagnant world economy is very likely to decide that abatement is too expensive to take seriously, and that wildlands need to be developed. All in all, economic stagnation poses as much a risk to the environment as economic growth.
Global economic growth implies new challenges for protecting the environment. More will have to be done to reduce global inputs and increase abatement. But global economic growth also implies new opportunities. With increased wealth, countries could afford to protect their resources more carefully. All countries would have to develop effective governing structures, but with the increased wealth they could afford them. Long-term environmental protection requires economic growth. Environmentalists should focus their energy on developing effective institutions to guide globalization, not on creating chaos to stop growth.
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