Globalization and (dis)order

What did you think?

Major Points from the film Bitter Seeds

1. Sovereignty: India as a member state in the world trade organization lacks the ability to block Monsanto from entering India

2. Corporations and their economic practices can shape social and cultural practices and aggravate existing problems.

3. In this case free trade has led to diminished choice

Beware false choice

'Indian farmers can choose farming and assume the risks or leave it for another job'

'Indian farmers can choose to grow something else'

Environmental Justice

• The term works by focusing attention on those with the least resources to combat environmental problems.

• Responds to a pattern of low-income groups burdened with pollution.
  • UN report titled: Climate Change Resilience—an Opportunity for Reducing Inequalities claims that it will be the poor who will suffer the adverse effects of climate change.

What happens 'there,' happens here.

Amazon rainforest is important in maintaining global climate. It is being destroyed by development, illegal logging  and agricultural use.

Calculating the cost of environmental problems

• ecosystem services: paying benefits accrued from nature

• ecological foot print: assesses the amount of land and water used to produce a product consumed by you.  

With a concern for environmental Justice there is also the question of how to compensate for environmental pollution.

• One American consumes 34 times the electricity at home that an Indian consumes.
• Nearly 9 out of 10 Americans commute using a car or van, compared to 1 in 10 Indians.
• The average per capita consumption in the U.S. is 36 times higher than India's, with the average American spending 15 times more on food — and 50 times more on housing.

Environmental degradation does not happen outside of global political problems and issues

Global North: Heavily industrialized and wealthy. Has a history of using the resources of the global south for its processes of industrialization

Global South: developing, would like to use resources to develop and build wealth for it's nations citizens.

As the world has realized the dangers of unlimited development, there is conflict behind who should cut back and act more responsibly

Remembering Doreen Massey

Globalization has not meant that the world is a blank space with equally situated individuals. History, physical geography, systems of inequality matter. Progress is not guaranteed for everyone. 

What are the conditions that shape the crisis in Vidarbha?

The Green Revolution

These policies have failed to see farming as a process, that includes the environment and society.

Starting in the 1930s, India embarked on nation-wide agricultural transformations that emphasized 'modern' agricultural techniques in order to produce higher yields.

• New varieties of hybrid seeds that were 'high yield'
• debunking traditional planting methods  (mono cropping)
• Use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides

Lepawsky and McNabb

• The relationship between rich countries and poor countries more nuanced
  • developing countries also engage in policies that are environmentally damaging.
    • Pollution havens
• Pollution does not stay in one place.
  • Recycled for value.
  • Potential for dangerous materials to be recycled into new products

Guiyu

• China is both a large manufacturing center of electronic projects and location recycling of the world's e-waste
• Majority of e-waste processed informally (in back yards, workshops and in public)
• Methods include manual recycling for reusable parts, esp. metals. The remainder is dumped in fields, local dumps, and waterways
  • Acid
  • handheld lighters and torches
  • pliers
• Soil and water samples from Guiyu have high levels of polychlorinated biphenyls,  Polybrominated diphenyl ethers  and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

                                              ---Liu, X., Tanaka, M., Matsui, Y. 2006. Electrical and Electronic Waste Management in China: Progress and the barriers to overcome. Waste Management and Research, 24, 92-101.

• These chemicals impact human health, possibly causing different types of cancer, developmental stagnation,  Organ damage.
• recyclers can earn up to $600 a month
• Thanks to public pressure and international attention Guiyu now only processes Chinese E-waste

The globalization of your trash