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ANALYSIS

Globalization, trade and migration:Undermining sustainability

William E. ReesUniversity of British Columbia, School of Community and Regional Planning, 6333 Memorial Road, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6S 1T2

A R T I C L E I N F O

E-mail addr ess: wrees@i nterchange.ubc.ca

0921-8009/$ - see front matter © 2006 Elseviedoi:10.1016/ j.ecolecon.2005.12.0 21

A B S T R A C T

Article history:Received 15 September 2005Received in revised form19 December 2005Accepted 22 December 2005Available online 21 April 2006

I examine the impact of expanding international trade andmigration on prospects for globalsustainability from a strictly biophysical/ecological/behavioral perspective. My startingpremise is that techno-industrial society is inherently unsustainable. Humans have anatural propensity to expand to occupy all accessible habitats and use all availableresources. Because of continuous growth propelled by improving technology, the modernhuman enterprise is already in a state of ecological overshoot. Globalization and tradeexacerbate the situation by shuffling resources around and short-circuiting the negativefeedback that would otherwise result from local resource degradation. This allowspopulation and material growth within each individual trading region to exceed localbiophysical limits. This, in turn, accelerates the depletion of natural capital everywhere andensures that all now trade-dependent regions hit global limits simultaneously. Large-scalemigration also worsens matters by reducing negative feedback and enabling increasedresource consumption. Moreover, because resource scarcity is likely to precipitate conflictamong self-identifying ‘tribal’ groups within multi-cultural societies, uncontrolledmigration may create conditions that impede the implementation of policy measuresrequired for ecological sustainability. Global sustainability is thusmost likely to be achievedthrough policies that foster increased regional self-reliance, encourage greater investmentin local natural capital, and favor the development of strong, diverse local economies ‘inplace.’ Such measures will raise local (and therefore global) bio-capacities and reduce boththe pull and push factors in international migration.

© 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Analytic framework

The purpose of this essay is to assess the impact of globa-lization, particularly expanding international trade and mi-gration, on prospects for ‘sustainability.’ Since much has beenwritten on the social, ethical and economic aspects of thisproblem, I approach it fromanexplicitly biophysical/ecologicalpoint of view.

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r B.V. All rights reserved

I adopt the latter perspective for two practical reasons. First,with significant exceptions, a truly ecological (as opposed to‘environmental’) framework is still quite rare in discussions ofsustainability. Indeed, in recent years a wish list of allegedlydesirable socio-economic goals have come to dominatesustainability discussions at the expense of even shallowenvironmental factors. This is unfortunate because itdiminishes the role of the most fundamental dimension of

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the sustainability conundrum—a stable productive ecosphereremains prerequisite to everything else. Second, the ecologicalperspective includes more than contemplation of environ-mental trends and developmental implications. More inter-esting and potentially more important is the behavioralecology of humans themselves. It is time that ecologicaleconomics became more attentive to the unconscious distalcauses of human social and economic behavior that reside infundamental human nature.

1 A genetic predisposition is not an inevitability but rather atendency that will play out in the absence of a self-conscious orexplicit decision to override it.

2. Knowing ourselves: is humanitysustainable?

From this strictly ecological perspective, my starting premiseis that techno-industrial society is already fundamentallyunsustainable—the human enterprise is on a collision coursewith biophysical reality (Rees, 2002). The primary reason isthat humans are literally consuming the material basis oftheir own survival. Few people understand the implications ofthis simple biophysical reality: all 6.4 billion people on Earthplus the entire stock of manufactured ‘capital’ – all our homes,cars, stereos, computers, furniture, toys, offices, factories,infrastructure, etc. – are made from natural capital (resources)extracted from nature and the maintenance and furthergrowth of the human enterprise requires the continuousextraction of ever greater quantities of energy and materialsfrom the same source. Moreover, all this energy and materialthroughput is ultimately returned to the ecosphere indegraded form. The problem is that even current rates ofexploitation of many critical ‘resources’ exceed the rates atwhich these forms of natural capital can self-produce (in thecase of living resources) or be replenished (as is the case ofresources such as soils and groundwater stocks). And non-renewable natural capital is literally that and should be usedwith great discretion. In terms of ‘far-from-equilibrium’thermodynamics, we might say that to raise the humanenterprise ever further from entropic equilibrium requires theirreversible dissipation of an ever-increasing quantity ofconcentrated energy and matter first produced by natureand the production of prodigious quantities of (often toxic)waste. That is, beyond certain limits, the growth andmaintenance of the human system is possible only at theexpense of disordering nature, of increasing global entropy(Schneider and Kay, 1994, Rees, 2003).

There has, of course, been some recognition of the role ofmaterial consumption in accelerating ecological decay. Eventhe politically sensitive proceedings of the UN Conference onEnvironment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, in 1992(Agenda 21, Chapter 4) explicitly identified the “unsustainablepattern of consumption and production, particularly inindustrialized countries” as “the major cause of the continueddeterioration of the global environment” (UNEP, 1992a).Similarly, Principle 8 of the Rio Declaration on Environmentand Development (UNEP, 1992b) recognized that “To achievesustainable development and a higher quality of life for allpeople, States should reduce and eliminate unsustainablepatterns of production and consumption…”

“States,” however, are notoriously unresponsive to norma-tive admonitions, however rational they might appear.

Fourteen years after Rio, the ecological state of the world hasworsened and the over-consumption of nature's goods andservices remains the proximal cause. According to therecently released Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA),“Nearly two thirds of the services provided by nature tohumankind are found to be in decline worldwide. In effect, thebenefits reaped from our engineering of the planet have beenachieved by running down natural capital assets.” The MEAadvances a “…stark warning. Human activity is putting suchstrain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of theplanet's ecosystems to sustain future generations can nolonger be taken for granted” (MEA, 2005).

One reason humans find it difficult to constrain unsus-tainable economic behavior is a fundamental quality that weshare with all other species: Homo sapiens has a naturalpredisposition to occupy all suitable accessible habitats anduse up all available resources, at least to the extent ofprevailing technological capability.1 This is, of course, thebiological basis of the Malthusian conundrum, the contempo-rary growth ethic and mainstream economics' dictum thatresources unused are resources wasted.

It also suggests that human migration has an ancient bio-behavioral tap-root. People have always sought out greener –or at least emptier – pastures. This is how we have come, overthe past 50,000years, to command a geographic rangeunequalled by that of any other mammalian species. Humansnow occupy virtually the entire planet. And does anyoneseriously believe that were we to discover a new resource-richcontinent today, the world community would this time agreeto dedicate it strictly to conservation rather than squabbleover the rights to occupation and exploitation?

Humans not only have the most geographically extensiveof habitats but we also exploit ecosystems evermore intenselythan any other species. In the industrial era, cumulativetechnology (we get better and better at exploiting nature) andthe globalization of trade (larger richer markets demand evergreater flows of commodities and resources) have acceleratedthe degradation of land and waterscapes on every continent.Indeed, themajor reason contemporary humanmigrants seekgreener pastures is because of our species’ improving record ofcreating brown ones all over the planet.

Industrial humanity's truly unique status as hyper-con-sumer has been underscored by recent studies of ourcontemporary ecological niche. Reasoning that, to be sustain-able, humans should resemble ecologically similar consumerspecies in key parameters, Fowler and Hobbs (2003) tested thehypothesis that H. sapiens is “ecologically normal”, i.e., thathumans fall within the normal range of natural variationobserved among such species for a variety of ecologicallyrelevant measures. Fowler and Hobbs rejected their nullhypothesis: their analysis shows that humanity is an outlierspecies along many axes representing the exploitation of thelife-support goods and services of nature. For example, humanconsumption of biomass from marine ecosystems lies almostan order of magnitude above the upper 95% confidence limitfor biomass consumption by 54 marine mammal species and

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almost two orders of magnitude above the upper 95 confi-dence limit for biomass ingestion by 96 other mammalianspecies of all kinds. In these circumstances, can anyone besurprised that 90% of the targeted fish biomass has beenremoved from large areas of the oceans in just 50years ofindustrial fishing (Myers andWorm, 2003)? It is no small ironythat, while some economists insist that the human economyis “dematerializing” or “decoupling” from nature, such bio-physical analyses show that we have, in fact, become thedominant consumer organism in all the world's majorecosystem types (Rees, 2002/3). Fowler and Hobbs (2003) askwhether, in the circumstances, industrial humans are eventheoretically sustainable.

3. Globalization, trade and (un)sustainability

As noted, the world talks a good line about sustainabilityand the need to shift to less ecologically damagingproduction and consumption processes. But practical realityis a different matter altogether. The fact is that all majornational governments and most mainstream internationalagencies remain fixated on a mythic vision of globaldevelopment and poverty alleviation centered on unlimitedeconomic expansion and fuelled by economic integration,open markets and more liberalized trade. Indeed, ‘sustain-ability’ has been subsumed under this wider agenda via theglib assumption that through the machinations of themarketplace, increased factor productivity and the efficiencygains of trade will be sufficient means to achieve sustain-ability's end (Rees, 2002).

From the perspective of environment human ecology andsustainability, this mainstream development model raisesseveral yellow flags. To begin, the world community has paidscant attention to the ecosystemic implications of continu-ously expanding material consumption. True, some criticsraise the possibility that more liberal trade will lead to thecompetitive reduction of environmental (pollution) standards,but this is not the major problem. More important is the effecton remaining stocks of natural capital. Keep in mind that theobjectives of more liberal trade are to relieve resourceconstraints on local economic expansion and to expand overalleconomic production/consumption. In addition to increasingpollution loads, these factors stimulate the global demandfor resources and allow population and material growthwithin all trading regions to be sustained beyond the localbiophysical limits that would exist in the absence of trade.

The ecological result is potentially (and predictably)catastrophic but generally ignored by proponents of global-ization. Many wealthy trading nations have enormousecological footprints that vastly exceed their domestic bio-capacities (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996, Rees, 2002). Throughtrade and accompanying impositions on the global com-mons, these nations now live largely – and relativelyprecariously–on bio-productivity imported from othercountries and on common pool global life support functions.For example, the UK Japan, and the Netherlands, have‘ecological deficits’, four, five and six times larger respectivelythan their domestic bio-capacities. Even the relatively low-density, resource-rich United States imposes an ecological

load on other countries and the global commons equivalentto twice that nation's gross biophysical output (estimatesbased on data in WWF, 2004).

Clearly, not everyone can follow this conventional devel-opment path—for every country running an ecological deficitthere has to be an equivalent surplus somewhere else.Unfortunately, there are few surpluses. Indeed, the world isin an overall state of ecological ‘overshoot’ 20% beyond thesustainable long-term bio-productivity of the planet (WWF,2004).

That we can seemingly ignore global ‘overshoot’ under-scores one of the most ecologically dangerous effects of trade.By enabling consuming populations to support themselves onthe output of distant ecosystems, trade eliminates negativefeedback from stressed local ecosystems that would normallycurb population and material growth and maintain themwithin domestic carrying capacity. Thus released from localecological constraints, import-dependent populations or theirper capita consumption continue expanding, often to theextremes illustrated above.

Trade seems to increase carrying capacity only because wethink of each trading region/country as a separate opensystem. However, the world as a whole is materially closedand this makes the situation considerably more complicated.Resources – particularly non-renewable resources – importedfor consumption in region ‘a’ are no longer available forconsumption in the exporting region ‘b’ and visa versa. Hence,the exchangemay result in a one-off increase in thepopulationof each region, but it also increases global consumption andwaste generation. Meanwhile, any export-related depletion ofnatural capital stocks limits future development options.

This latter point suggests how unfettered trade mayactually lead to a permanent reduction of global carryingcapacity. Global trade exposes pockets of scarce resourceseverywhere to the largest possible market and to a growingpool of ever-wealthier buyers. If this bids up prices, it mayencourage ever-greater exploitation/harvest rates by export-ing nations (or of common pool resources) to the point of stockdepletion or ecosystemic collapse (as has often been thehistory of open-access fisheries).

In other circumstances, resource depletion is acceleratedby falling prices. Where there are several competing suppliersof a particular commodity, market surpluses may drive pricesdown. Exporting nations then have to sell more resources topay for expensive manufactured imports or simply to servicetheir development loans (and there will be more buyers at thelower prices). Harvest or depletion rates thus increase, but as‘profit’ margins decline, less surplus is available for thesustainable management of productive stocks which thendeteriorate.

In summary, trade does not actually increase total carryingcapacity; it merely enables all countries, their economieshappily expanding through trade, to hit the biophysical ceiling– global limits to growth – simultaneously. Unfortunately, inthe absence of negative ecological feedbackwhere it counts (inthe richest countries) sheer systemic momentum has driventoday's world into a state of ecological overshoot. In thesecircumstances, and contrary to mainstream beliefs, unfet-tered trade permanently reduces long-term human carryingcapacity with potentially disastrous consequences.

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4. Factoring in migration

The environment created by globalization and expandingmaterial trade provides the context in which to assess theecological implications of similarly liberalized migrationpolicies. Again, I largely ignore humanitarian and economicarguments for and against migration with only the reminderthat ultimately ecological considerations trump all others.

International migration is currently more restricted thantrade which, to many observers, seems unfair and illogical—ifgoods can move freely, why not people? From the ecologicalperspective, thismay be thewrongway to put the question. Asargued above, unfettered material flows create numerousenvironmental problems and there are probably as manyreasons for a cautionary approach to open migration.

Perhaps the most-repeated ecological argument againstmore liberalmigration is that immigrants towealthy countrieseventually come to adopt the consumer life-styles, andtherefore acquire the larger eco-footprints, of their newcompatriots. No surprise here—after all, one of the majormotivations for migration is pursuit of higher materialstandards. Most observers recognize that, while migrationbenefits the immigrants, it also places more stress on theecosystems of their newly adopted homelands and that this iscounter-productive in terms of sustainability.

But the situation is actually more complicated than it firstappears. First, remember that buoyed up by trade, manywealthy countries seemingly float freely far above their owndomestic carrying capacities. Thus, in many cases, theadditional ecological impact of the new immigrant actuallyfalls as much or more on exporting countries and the globalcommons than it does on his/her new homeland. In this way,migration from poor to rich countries not only contributes tothe total ecological load of adopted wealthy countries but alsoaccelerates the drawdown of ‘surplus’ natural capital invarious developing countries around the world.

Second, immigrants and temporary laborers in wealthiercountries often send considerable sums of money to theirfamilies back home (see Heilmann, 2006-this issue). Thesetransfers or remittance payments no doubt improve thematerial standards of the recipients—Heilmann even suggeststhat remittances “can be seen as possible source of sustain-able development.”

Unquestionably money transfers would be a clear benefitif their only effect were to reduce poverty and inequity.Unfortunately, from the biophysical perspective on anecologically overloaded planet, the indirect impacts mayactually detract from net long-term sustainability. First, tothe extent that they are dedicated to consumption, particu-larly of imported goods, remittances may well contribute tonet resource depletion and pollution, both local and global.2

Second, money payments from abroad may have the samedamping effect on sustainability-oriented reform inimpoverished countries as material trade has in richcountries. By shielding the recipient countries from the ill

2 The same monies remaining in the hands of donors wouldalso be dedicated to consumption but would arguably more likelybe spent on services with lower biophysical impacts.

consequences of degradation of domestic ecosystems, trans-fers tend to short-circuit negative feedback from the localenvironment that might otherwise lead to domestic policiesthat would moderate population growth and ecological decay.Hence, remittances, like trade, contribute to the grossecological overshoot that may yet prove fatal to globalbiophysical integrity. Third, a significant opportunity cost ofconsumption is that it makes remittance monies unavailablefor investment in local development. This does nothing forthe long-term sustainability in the recipient community.Fourth, to the extent that the short-term local benefits ofremittances to some families stimulates the emigration ofmembers of other poor families in the same community, theycontribute to a snowballing positive feedback loop thatexacerbates all the above ecological problems.

A final sustainability-oriented argument against uncon-trolled large-scale migration is a sensitive (eco-)behavioralone. It starts from the evidence that humanity is “a biologicalspecies that evolved over millions of years in a biologicalworld, acquiring unprecedented intelligence yet still guided bycomplex inherited emotions and biased channels of learning”(Wilson, 2005). One inherited pattern that biases our learningis the near universal human tendency to identify more withlike than with dissimilar individuals. In short, humans have apredisposition for what we might call tribal affiliation.Moreover, the evidence suggests that the relevant ‘tribe’ canbe defined by many disparate characteristics ranging fromskin color and facial features among races to ideology, religionand language even within racial groups.

In an ideal world such seemingly superficial differenceswould have no effect on how people treat one another. Manyhumanistic analysts' normative vision of the future is one inwhich fully integrated multi-racial and multi-cultural popula-tions are able to coexist in contentment and peace. But this isnot an ideal world. People of different linguistic, religious orethnic ‘tribes’ may live together in relative harmony whentimes are good, everyone's basic needs are satisfied and thefuture looks bright. However, social discord and civil strife isalmost certain to erupt among self-identifying groups withinlarger (e.g., national) populations if land and resource scarcityintensifies (as may result, for example, from climate change)or some groups appear to be systematically privileged byprevailing social and political institutions. The simple fact isthat “There is something deep in religious [or linguistic, ornationalist, or ideological or…] belief that divides people andamplifies societal conflict” (Wilson, 2005), and nothing hasmore potential to amplify societal conflict than existinginequity aggravated by resource scarcity and economicdecline.

The modern world is replete with examples of tribal strifeat least partly rooted in land or resource shortages rangingfrom spectacular episodes like the 1994 Rwanda genocide tothe long-running Irish Protestant–Catholic and Palestinian–Israeli conflicts. The reestablishment of political stability in‘post-war’ Iraq is being complicated by religious and ideolog-ical conflicts among rival Islamic sects. The three weeks ofrioting by Muslim and other poor immigrant groups in variousFrench cities in October, and violent outbreaks between whiteAustralians and Arab (Islamic) immigrants in Sydney inDecember 2005, serve as warning that civil society may

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crumble even in our richest cities when tribal divisions alongreligious or ethnic lines are exacerbated by bigotry, socialinequity and persistent poverty.

In short, there is sufficient evidence to hypothesize thatmulti-racial or multi-cultural countries are more likely tounravel chaotically in the event of rapid ecological change,resource shortages, or economic decline than are morehomogenous societies. Because socio-political stability is aprerequisite for ecological sustainability, we thus have yetanother reason for a pre-emptive cautionary approach tolarge-scale migration in coming decades. National immigra-tion policies should both limit immigration to manageablelevels and adopt explicit ‘melting pot’ strategies designed tofacilitate the integration and assimilation of new-comers intothe social and economic fabric of their adopted countries.They should also include ongoing public education programsthat stress both the need for, and the national benefits of,limited immigration.

The main objectives of this approach are to discourage thedevelopment of persistent immigrant enclaves, to accelerateimmigrants' development of a sense of identity with the largersociety, and to improve public understanding of the modernrole of immigration. Strong social cohesion is necessary tofacilitate the implementation the economic and environmen-tal changes that may be required for ecological sustainability.Immigration policies that favor multiculturalism and thatapparently succeed during periods of growth and plenty maynot be adaptive in the face of rapid global ecological change oreconomic decline.

5. Toward a sustainable ‘new world order’

As noted, analysts often argue that labor should be treated thesame as capital and goods in the globalization process.Neumayer (this volume) suggests that “…it is hypocritical toallow goods, services and financial flows to cross borderswithout restriction but to restrain completely the cross-borderfollow of people.” I agree that there should be more co-equaltreatment of people and goods in international relations butwith a twist. Rather than merely liberalizing migration tomatch the free-flow of goods/capital, the world shouldseriously consider re-regulating both to help achieve ecolog-ical sustainability.

As argued above, the current form of trade-orientedglobalization leads inevitably to ecological unsustainabilitythrough the accelerated erosion of natural capital. Otherstudies show that the coincidently widening income disparitybothwithin and between countries reduces population health,increases crime rates and weakens social cohesion (Wilk-inson, 1996). Large-scale migration can significantly exacer-bate both trends.

It seems that if the world is serious about achieving anecologically sustainable socio-political and economic orderthen it should abandon the prevailing models of globalization.World leaders, international development agencies and soci-ety at large must be weaned from the perpetual global growthmyth and its spin-off policies of economic integration,expanding trade and even freer movement of people. Inshort, we need a genuine paradigm shift. Let us face

collectively the possibility that on a planet in ecologicalovershoot, achieving sustainability will demand lower levelsof material consumption, reduced movement of goods andpeople, and the rehabilitation of ecosystems everywhere insupport of local human populations. It is also time that thewealthy contemplate consuming less in order to free upecological space for the poor. The ultimate goal of globalsustainability should be to enable the entire human family tolive with dignity and a reasonable degree of economic andsocial security within the ecological means of nature.

In contemplating such a sustainable new ‘new worldorder,’ the following should be kept in mind:

• What recent generations take to be ‘normal’ – continuouseconomic growth with constantly rising material expecta-tions – is actually an historical anomaly. In this respect, thepast two centuries represent the single most atypical periodof human history. A return to normalcy requires theadoption of a stable steady-state economy.

• The expansion of human capital (individual knowledge,wisdom, leadership skills) and social capital (capacity-building relationships andmutual support networks) shouldbe able to compensate for the reduced material throughputrequired to enable the recovery of essential natural capital.Indeed, social capital and an enhanced sense of communitymay prove to be a more than adequate substitute for theexcesses of private consumption that characterize high-income countries and that undermine ecological sustain-ability. Meanwhile let us recognize that:

• For both biophysical and geopolitical reasons, is not eventheoretically possible to manage and control the globaleconomy as a functional unit. (This is a question of scale andcomplex systems behavior.) On the other hand:

• It should be possible to manage and contain local/regional(even national) economies. If all significant regional econ-omies were to achieve sustainability (i.e., economic ade-quacy, reasonable equity, and a level of resource throughputthat conserves adequate stocks of natural and manufac-tured capital) the aggregate effect would be globalsustainability.

• Sustainable economies are more likely to be locally basedeconomies, those with a stake in maintaining local natural,human, social and manufactured capital stocks. (Contrastthis with today's preoccupation with seeking out and [over-]exploiting cheap resources and labor all over theworld, bothto increase market share at the corporate level and tomaintain currently unsustainable levels of resource con-sumption and economic growth in high-income countriesthat have depleted their own natural capital or otherwiseovershot domestic carrying capacity.)

• Fortunately the well-developed eco-social philosophy ofbioregionalism provides a conceptual framework for ‘livingin place’ and a practical approach to strategic planning thatemphases regional self-reliance and sustainability (Carr,2004).

• As suggested above, ecological sustainability requires themaintenance of adequate per capita physical stocks ofnatural capital. Rather than encouraging resource-depletingtrade (which can drive people from the land, creatingrefugees and out-migration pressure), international

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programs for sustainable development should be redirectedto investment in natural capital (fisheries, soils, forests, etc.)particularly in developing countries.

• The rehabilitation of local ecosystems should, in turn,enable the development and maintenance of local econo-mies ‘in place’ reducing the push factor in internationalmigration.

None of this is to deny that have created a world in whichsome trade and migration are necessary, particularly tomaintain resource poor regions through the transition.However, we also need to recognize that in an ecologicallyover-stretched world, material exchange should be confinedto essentials and true ecological surpluses, and migrationdesigned mainly to serve humanitarian purposes such asrelieving the suffering induced by wars, persecution andnatural disasters.

To many, turning back the clock on globalization will seeman impossible task and they may well prove right. However, ifglobal downsizing is a precondition for sustainability the onlyway to avoid the implosion of modern civilization may be toabandon our present ways of thinking and being. On this pointhistory again holds a lesson. Jared Diamond's study of ‘howsocieties choose to fail or succeed’ shows that successfulsocieties (those that are able to head off ecologically inducedcollapse) are those bold enough to challenge and replace theircore values when the latter have clearly become maladaptive(Diamond, 2005).

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