Environment/IPE

Environmental problems and international cooperation (water, food, climate change)

• Problems of Global Cooperation

• Global governance

• Epistemic Communities (knowledge communities among experts, policy makers

• Kyoto Protocol

• Sustainable development and link to production, distribution, consumption

• Small farming/agribusiness• Bio diversity (sustainability, organic small

farming)• Water use for commodity production (coca

cola) vs. farming• Intellectual property rights/natural

resources

• Terms• Environmentalism/ anthropocentric• Ecologism / humans-nature, ecocentric • Light Green - reformist agenda –

capitalism+ enviromentalism• Dark Green - radical • Market incentives (clean technology)• More radical political/social change

• Environment/IPE – debate between

• Technocentric and Ecocentric approaches to sustainability

• Core assumption of economic growth/consumption/multiplication of needs

• Critics argue – this represents western cultural values, e.g. consumerism

• Technocentric Ecocentric• Economic growth Zero eco. Growth• Large scale org. small scale• Green consumerism Limited• Conservationist Preservationist• Trade/environment anti-trade• states small

communities• IEO resist industrialize

• Environment, natural resources, agriculture and poverty

• Destruction of small faming through agribusiness, role of WTO

• Grain, wheat, water• Seed sector liberalized, replace organic

small farms with hybrid genetic seeds, BT cotton

• Non-renewable seed, high cost chemicals

• US $4 billion subsidies for agribusiness

• Ban on indigenous oils (mustard, coconut etc.) replace with high cost soya and palm oil (India 70% of market now soya and palm oil)

• Palm oil- destruction of rain forest, Borneo

• Soya – deforestation, Amazon

• Monsanto – seed

• Intellectual property rights, patent on natural resources

• ‘Bio-piracy’ intellectual property theft • Vandana Shiva (Indian physicist, global

environmental activist) 1993 Right to Livelihood Award

• Neem, India (11 years law suit) • Rice Tex- Texas patent on variety of basmati• Monsanto – patent on variety of wheat • Water- Coca Cola bottling water,• India farmer suicides

Global Crisis, Water ‘Blue Gold’

World Bank reports – 80 countries water shortage threaten health and economy

“Water, like energy, will probably become the most critical resource issue facing most parts of the world at the start of the 21st century”

2.4 billion people no access to clean water

12% of world’s population uses 85% of water

Reasons for Water depletion

Population growth , demand for water double every 21 years (claim – water scarcity)

Global Delivery system?

Unsustainable levels of consumption

Since 1900 six fold increase in water use, only 2 fold increase in population size

Water usage for higher standard of living (not grain based, but meat)

Depletion of ground water suppliesCoca Cola Bottling plants in India forced

Indian farmers to dig as deep as 450 ft. below ground

(1 litre of Coca Cola = 3 litres of water)Privatization of water delivery raises costs in

LDCs

• United Nations, 2006 UN Human Development Report

• “We reject this (Malthusian perspective that global water problems are a problem of scarcity and population growth). The availability of water is a concern for some countries. But the scarcity at the heart of the global water crisis is rooted in power, poverty and inequality, not in physical availability.”

• Vandana Shiva

• Not a water shortage crisis but a water management crisis