Globalization Straining Planet's Health

GLOBALIZATION STRAINING PLANET'S HEALTH
Alliances Needed to Safeguard Environment

Globalization presents growing threats to the planet and its inhabitants, according to a new report from the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington DC-based research organization. Forests are shrinking as the value of global trade in forest products climbs, from $29 billion in 1961 to $139 billion in 1998. And fisheries are collapsing as fish exports rise, growing nearly fivefold in value since 1970 to reach $52 billion in 1997. Human health is also endangered, with pesticide exports increasing nearly ninefold since 1961, to $11.4 billion in 1998.

The surge in movements of goods, money, species, and pollution across international borders is placing unprecedented strains on the planet, said Hilary French, author of Vanishing Borders: Protecting the Planet in the Age of Globalization. Ironically, the best way to tackle these problems is by putting globalization to work for us, instead of against us.

Channeling globalization to protect, rather than undermine, the earth's natural systems, is key to building an environmentally stable society in the 21^st century. People are using new communications technologies to create powerful international coalitions, like last December's outpouring of citizen concern at the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Seattle. And trade can help spread environmentally beneficial products and technologies, from shade-grown coffee to wind power.

World exports of goods increased 17-fold between 1950 and 1998, from $311 billion to $5.4 trillion; the volume of foreign direct investment has grown almost 15-fold just since 1970, reaching $644 billion in 1998; and the number of transnational corporations worldwide grew from 7,000 in 1970 to some 60,000 today.

These trends pose major environmental challenges. While economists tout record-breaking increases in global commerce in recent decades, more sobering statistics are being reported by the world's leading biologists: the loss of living species in recent decades represents the largest mass extinction since the dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago.

Globalization is a powerful driving force behind today's unprecedented biological implosion.  An upsurge of trade and investment in natural resources sectors such as forestry, mining, and petroleum development is threatening the health of the world's forests, mountains, waters, and other sensitive ecosystems. And the rapid growth in the movement of human beings and their goods and services has provided convenient transportation for thousands of other species of plants and animals that are now taking root on foreign shores. On any given day, some 2 million people cross international borders, while 3,000 to 10,000 aquatic species are moving around the world in ship ballasts. Once "exotic species" establish a beachhead in a foreign ecosystem, they often proliferate, suppressing native species, and imposing high economic costs.

International commerce is also a potent mechanism through which hazardous products and technologies move around the world. Over the last few decades, the developing world has become home to a growing share of the hazard-laden petrochemical industry. Approximately 41 percent of U.S. foreign direct investment in the Philippines in 1998 was in chemicals, as was 22 percent of such investment in Colombia.

High-tech industries such as computers and electronics have also gone global in recent years. Despite their early reputation as relatively clean, these industries can exact heavy environmental costs. Semiconductor manufacturing employs hundreds of chemicals, including arsenic, benzene, and chromium, all of which are known carcinogens. More than half of all computer manufacturing and assembly operations