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<a href="http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=56&ItemID=14026" eudora="autourl">
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=56&ItemID=14026<br>
<br>
</a><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=5>The Environmental Movement in
the Global South:<br>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>The Pivotal Agent in the
Fight against Global Warming<br>
by Walden Bello; Focus on the Global South; October 13, 2007</b>
<br><br>
The developing world’s stance towards the question of the environment has
often been equated with the pugnacious comments of former Malaysian Prime
Minister Mohamad Mahathir, such as his famous lines at the Rio Conference
on the Environment and Development in June 1992:<br><br>
<a name="1b"></a>When the rich chopped down their own forests, built
their poison-belching factories and scoured the world for cheap
resources, the poor said nothing. Indeed they paid for the development of
the rich. Now the rich claim a right to regulate the development of the
poor countries…As colonies we were exploited. Now as independent nations
we are to be equally exploited
<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#1a#1a">1</a>
</sup>.<br><br>
<br><br>
Mahathir has been interpreted in the North as speaking for a South that
seeks to catch up whatever the cost and where the environmental movement
is weak or non-existent. Today, China is seen as the prime exemplar of
this Mahathirian obsession with rapid industrialization with minimal
regard for the environment.<br><br>
<br><br>
This view of the South’s perspective on the environment is a caricature.
In fact, the environmental costs of rapid industrialization are of major
concern to significant sectors of the population of developing countries
and, in many of them, the environmental movement has been a significant
actor. Moreover, there is currently an active discussion in many
countries of alternatives to the destabilizing high-growth
model.<br><br>
<br><br>
Emergence of the Environmental Movement in the NICs<br><br>
</b> <br>
<a name="2b"></a><br>
Among the most advanced environmental movements are those in Korea and
Taiwan, which were once known as “Newly Industrializing Countries”
(NICs). This should not be surprising since the process of rapid
industrialization in these two societies from 1965 to 1990 took place
with few environmental controls, if any. In Korea, the Han River that
flows through Seoul and the Nakdong River flowing through Pusan were so
polluted by unchecked dumping of industrial waste that they were close to
being classified as biologically dead. Toxic waste dumping reached
critical proportions. Seoul achieved the distinction in 1978 of being the
city with the highest content of sulphuric<a name="2b"></a> dioxide in
the air, with high levels being registered as well in Inchon, Pusan,
Ulsan, Masan, Anyang, and
Changweon<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#2a#2a">
2</a></sup>.<br><br>
<br>
<a name="3b"></a><br>
In Taiwan, high-speed industrialization had its own particular hellish
contours. Taiwan’s formula for balanced growth was to prevent industrial
concentration and encourage manufacturers to set up shop in the
countryside. The result was a substantial number of the island’s 90,000
hectares locating on rice fields, along waterways, and beside residences.
With three factories per square mile, Taiwan’s rate of industrial density
was 75 times that of the US. One result was that 20 per cent of farm land
was polluted by industrial waste water and 30 per cent of rice grown on
the island was contaminated with heavy metals, including mercury,
arsenic, and
cadmium<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#3a#3a">
3</a></sup>.<br><br>
<br><br>
In both societies, farmers, workers, and the environment bore the costs
of high-speed industrialization. Both societies, it is not surprising,
saw the emergence of an environmental movement that was spontaneous, that
drew participants from different classes, that saw environmental demands
linked with issues of employment, occupational health, and agricultural
crisis, and that was quite militant. Direct action became a weapon of
choice because, as Michael Hsiao pointed out:<br><br>
<br>
<a name="4b"></a><br>
People have learned that protesting can bring results; most of the
actions for which we could find out the results had achieved their
objectives. The polluting factories were either forced to make immediate
improvement of the conditions or pay compensation to the victims. Some
factories were even forced to shut down or move to another location. A
few preventive actions have even succeeded in forcing prospective plants
to withdraw from their planned
construction<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#4a#4a">
4</a></sup>.<br><br>
<br><br>
The environmental movements in both societies were able to force
government to come out with restrictive new rules on toxics, industrial
waste, and air pollution. Ironically, however, these successful cases of
citizen action created a new problem, which was the migration of
polluting industries from Taiwan and Korea to China and Southeast Asia.
Along with Japanese firms, Korean and Taiwanese enterprises went to
Southeast Asia and China mainly for two reasons: cheap labor and lax
environmental laws.<br><br>
<br><br>
Environmental Struggles in Southeast Asia<br><br>
</b> <br><br>
Unlike in Korea and Taiwan, environmental movements already existed in a
number of the Southeast Asian countries before the period of rapid
industrialization, which in their case occurred in the mid-eighties to
the mid-nineties. These movements had emerged in the seventies and
eighties in struggles against nuclear power, as in the Philippines;
against big hydroelectric dams, as in Thailand, Indonesia, and the
Philippines; and against deforestation and marine pollution, as in
Thailand and the Philippines. These were epic battles, like the struggle
against the Chico River Dam in the northern Philippines and the fight
against the Pak Mun Dam in the northeast of Thailand, which forced the
World Bank to withdraw its planned support for giant hydroelectric
projects, an outcome that, as we shall see later on, also occurred in
struggle against the Narmada Dam in India. The fight against industrial
associated partly with foreign firms seeking to escape strict
environmental regulations at home was a case of a new front being opened
up in an ongoing struggle to save the environment.<br><br>
<br><br>
Perhaps even more than in Northeast Asia, the environmental question in
Southeast Asia was an issue that involved the masses and went beyond
being a middle-class issue. In the Chico struggle, the opposition were
indigenous people, while in the fight against the Pak Mun Dam, it was
small farmers and fisherfolk. The environmental issue was also more
coherently integrated into an overarching critique. In the case of the
Philippines, for instance, deforestation was seen as an inevitable
consequence of a strategy of export-oriented growth imposed by World
Bank-International Monetary Fund structural adjustment programs that
sought to pay off the country’s massive foreign debt with the dollars
gained from exporting the country’s timber and other natural resources
and manufactures produced by cheap labor. The middle class, workers, the
urban poor, and environmentalists were thrust into a natural alliance.
Meantime, transnational capital, local monopoly capital, and the central
government were cast in the role of being an anti-environmental
axis.<br><br>
<br>
<a name="5b"></a><br>
The environmental movements in Southeast Asia played a vital role not
only in scuttling projects like the Bataan nuclear plant but in ousting
the dictatorships that reigned there in the seventies and eighties.
Indeed, because the environment was not perceived by authoritarian
regimes as “political,” organizing around environmental and public health
issues was not initially proscribed. Thus environmental struggles became
an issue around which the anti-dictatorship movement could organize and
reach new people. Environmental destruction became one more graphic
example of a regime’s irresponsibility. In Indonesia, for example, the
environmental organization WALHI went so far as to file a lawsuit for
pollution and environmental destruction against six government bodies,
including the Minister of the Environment and
Population<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#5a#5a">
5</a></sup>. By the time the dictatorships wised up to what was
happening, it was often too late: environmentalism and anti-fascism fed
on one another.<br><br>
<br><br>
Environmental Protests in China<br><br>
</b> <br><br>
We might be seeing the same process in China today.<br><br>
<br>
<a name="6b"></a><br>
The environmental crisis in China is very serious. For example, the
ground water table of the North China plain is dropping by 1.5 meters (5
feet) per year. This region produces 40 percent of China's grain. As
environmentalist Dale Wen remarks, “One cannot help wonder about how
China will be fed once the ground aquifer is depleted”
<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#6a#6a">6</a>
</sup>. Water pollution and water scarcity; soil pollution, soil
degradation and desertification; global warming and the coming energy
crisisthese are all byproducts of China’s high-speed industrialization
and massively expanded consumption.<br><br>
<br>
<a name="7b"></a><br>
Most of the environmental destabilization<a name="7b"></a> in China is
produced by local enterprises and massive state projects such as the
Three Gorges Dams, but the contribution of foreign investors is not
insignificant. Taking advantage of very lax implementation of
environmental laws in China, many western TNCs have relocated their most
polluting factories into the country and have exacerbated or even created
many environmental problems. Wen notes that the Pearl River Delta and
Yangtze River Delta, the two Special Economic Zones where most TNC
subsidiaries are located, are the most seriously affected by heavy metal
and POPs (persistent organic pollutants)
pollution<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#7a#7a">
7</a></sup>.<br><br>
<br>
<a name="8b"></a><br>
Global warming is not a distant threat. The first comprehensive study of
the impact of the sea level rise of global warming by Gordon McGranahan,
Deborah Balk, and Bridget Anderson puts China as the country in Asia most
threatened by the sea level rise of up to 10 meters over the next century
<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#8a#8a">8</a>
</sup><a name="9b"></a>. 144 million of China’s population live in
low-elevation coastal zones, and this figure is likely to increase owing
to the export-oriented industrialization strategies pursued by the
government, which has involved the creation of numerous special economic
zones. “From an environmental perspective,” the study warns, “there is a
double disadvantage to excessive (and potentially rapid) coastal
development. First, uncontrolled coastal development is likely to damage
sensitive and important ecosystems and other resources. Second, coastal
settlement, particularly in the lowlands, is likely to expose residents
to seaward hazards such as sea level rise and tropical storms, both of
which are likely to become more serious with climate
change”<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#9a#9a">
9</a></sup>. The recent spate of super-typhoons descending on the Asian
mainland from the Western Pacific underlines the gravity of this
observation.<br><br>
<br>
<a name="10b"></a><br>
In terms of public health, the rural health infrastructure has
practically collapsed, according to Dale Wen. The system has been
privatized with the introduction of a “fee for service” system that is
one component of the neoliberal reform program. One result is the
resurgence of diseases that had been brought under control, like
tuberculosis and schistosomiasis<a name="10b"></a>. Cuba, in contrast,
has won plaudits for its rural health care system, which is ironic, says
Wen, given that the Cuban system was based on the Maoist era’s “barefoot
doctor”
system<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#10a#10a">
10</a></sup>.<br><br>
<br><br>
Another big public health issue has been food safety. The combination of
the industrialization of food production and the lengthening of the food
chain from production to consumption is strongly suspected to be the
cause of bird flu, which has migrated from China to other countries. The
government has become an unreliable actor in dealing with new diseases
such as bird flu and SARS, prone as it is to engage in minimizing the
threat if not promoting a cover-up, as it did in the case of
SARS.<br><br>
<br>
<a name="11b"></a><br>
As in Taiwan and Korea 15 years earlier, we see unrestrained
export-oriented industrialization bringing together low-wage migrant
labor, farming communities whose lands are being grabbed or ruined
environmentally, environmentalists, and the proponents of a major change
in political economy called the “New Left.” Environment-related riots,
protests and disputes in China increased by 30% in 2005 to more than
50,000, as pollution-related unrest has become “a contagious source of
instability in the country,” as one report put it. Indeed, a great many
of recorded protests fused environmental, land-loss, income, and
political issues. From 8700 in 1995, what the Ministry of Public Security
calls "mass group incidents" have grown to 87,000 in 2005, most
of them in the countryside. Moreover, the incidents are growing in
average size from 10 or fewer persons in the mid-1990s to 52 people per
incident in 2004
<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#11a#11a">11</a>
</sup>. Notable were the April 2005 riots in Huashui, where an estimated
10,000 police officers clashed with desperate villagers who succeeded in
repelling strong vested interests polluting their lands.<br><br>
<br>
<a name="12b"></a><br>
As in Taiwan, people have discovered the effectiveness of direct action
in rural China. "Without the riot, nothing would have changed,"
said Wang Xiaofang, a 43-year-old farmer. "People here finally
reached their breaking
point"<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#12a#12a">
12</a></sup>. As in Southeast Asia, struggles around the environment and
public health may be leading to a more comprehensive political
consciousness.<br><br>
<br><br>
The strength of China’s environmental movement must not be exaggerated.
Indeed, its failures often outnumber its successes. Alliances are often
spontaneous and do not go beyond the local level. What Dale Wen calls a
national “red green” coalition for change remains a potential force, one
that is waiting to be constructed. Nevertheless, the environmental
movement is no longer a marginal actor and it is definitely something
that the state and big capital have to deal with. Indeed, the ferment in
the countryside is a key factor that is said to have made the current
Chinese leadership to be more open to suggestions from the so-called “New
Left” for a change of course in economic policy from rapid
export-oriented growth to a more sustainable and slower domestic-demand
led growth.<br><br>
<br><br>
The Environmental Movement in India<br><br>
</b> <br><br>
As in China, the environment and public health have been sites of
struggle in India. Over the last 25 years, the movement for the
environment and public health has exploded in that country. Indeed, one
can say that this movement has become one of the forces that is deepening
Indian democracy. <br><br>
<br>
<a name="13b"></a><br>
Environmental and public health struggles go way back, but perhaps the
single biggest event that propelled the movement to becoming a critical
mass was the Bhopal gas leakage on December 3, 1984, which released 40
tons of methyl isocynate<a name="13b"></a>, killing 3000 people outright
and ultimately causing 15,000 to 20,000
deaths<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#13a#13a">
13</a></sup>. The struggle for just compensation for the Bhopal victims
continues till this day.<br><br>
<br><br>
There is today a proliferation of struggles in this vast
country.<br><br>
<br><br>
There is the national campaign against Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola plants
for drawing ground water and contaminating fields with sludge. There are
local struggles against intensive aquaculture farms in Tamil Nadu,
Orissa, and other coastal states. There is a non-violent but determined
campaign by farmers against GMO’s, which has involved the uprooting and
burning of fields planted to genetically engineered rice.<br><br>
<br><br>
In public health, the key issue has been the tremendous pressure from
foreign pharmaceutical companies to get India to adopt patent legislation
that would be consistent with the WTO’s Trade Related Intellectual
Property Rights Agreement (TRIPs). The great fear is that this would
affect the ability of the country’s pharmaceutical industry to produce
cheap generic drugs for both the home market and for export. With between
2 million and 3.6 million people living with HIVputting India behind
South Africa and Nigeria in numbers living with HIVand with so many
African countries with large HIV-infected populations depending on cheap
Indian drug imports, to comply or not to comply with TRIPs has become a
life-and-death issue.<br><br>
<br>
<a name="14b"></a><br>
Two years ago, key amendments pushed by progressive forces were
incorporated into the Indian Patents Act, resulting in what one
influential journal described as “a relatively loose patents regime for
now”<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#14a#14a">
14</a></sup><a name="15b"></a>. One key amendment was that Indian
companies could continue to produce and market drugs they were producing
before January 1, 2005, after paying a “reasonable royalty” to the patent
holder. They were banned from doing this under the previous patent
regime. Another important amendment made the process of exporting drugs
to another country less cumbersome by eliminating the need for a
compulsory license from that
country<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#15a#15a">
15</a></sup>. These may seem to be minor gains, but in the byzantine
world of TRIPs, the devil is in the detail.<br><br>
<br><br>
It would be worthwhile, at this point, to look closely at what has become
the most influential of India’s mass-based environmental movement: the
anti-dam movement.<br><br>
<br><br>
Dams often represented the modernist vision that guided many Third World
governments in their struggle to catch up with the West in the post-War
period. The technological blueprint for power development for the
post-World War II period was that of creating a limited number of power
generators--giant dams, coal or oil-powered plants, or nuclear plants--at
strategic points which would generate electricity that would be
distributed to every nook and cranny of the country. Traditional or local
sources of power that allowed some degree of self-sufficiency were
considered backward. If you were not hooked up to a central grid, you
were backward.<br><br>
<br>
<a name="16b"></a><br>
Centralized electrification with its big dams, big coal-fired plants, and
nuclear plants became the rage. Indeed, there was an almost religious
fervor about this vision among leaders and technocrats who defined their
life's work as "missionary electrification" or the connection
of the most distant village to the central grid. Jawaharlal Nehru, the
dominant figure in post-World War II India, called dams the "temples
of modern India," a statement that, as Indian author Arundhati Roy
points out, made its way into primary school textbooks in every Indian
language. Big dams have become an article of faith inextricably linked
with nationalism. “To question their utility amounts almost to
sedition"<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#16a#16a">
16</a></sup>.<br><br>
<br>
<a name="17b"></a><br>
In any event, in the name of missionary electrification, India's
technocrats, Roy observes in her brilliant essay, The Cost of Living, not
only built "new dams and irrigation schemes...[but also] took
control of small, traditional water-harvesting systems that had been
managed for thousands of years and allowed them to
atrophy"<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#17a#17a">
17</a></sup>. Here Roy expresses an essential truth: that centralized
electrification preempted the development of alternative power-systems
that could have been more decentralized, more people-oriented, more
environmentally benign, and less capital intensive.<br><br>
<br><br>
The key forces behind central electrification were powerful local
coalitions of power technocrats, big business, and urban-industrial
elites. Despite the rhetoric about "rural electrification,"
centralized electrification was essentially biased toward the city and
industry. Essentially, especially in the case of dams, it involved
expending the natural capital of the countryside and the forests to
subsidize the growth urban-based industry. Industry was the future.
Industry was what really added value. Industry was synonymous with
national power. Agriculture was the past.<br><br>
<br><br>
While these interests benefited, others paid the costs. Specifically, it
was the rural areas and the environment that absorbed the costs of
centralized electrification. Tremendous crimes have been committed in the
name of power generation and irrigation, says Roy, but these were hidden
because governments never recorded these costs. In India, Roy calculates
that large dams have displaced about 33 million people in the last 50
years, about 60 per cent of them being either untouchables or indigenous
peoples<br><br>
<br>
<a name="18b"></a><br>
India, in fact, does not have a national resettlement policy for those
displaced by dams. The costs to the environment have been tremendous. Roy
points out that "the evidence against Big Dams is mounting
alarmingly--irrigation disasters, dam-induced floods, the fact that there
are more drought prone and flood prone areas today than there were in
1947. The fact is that not a single river in the plains has potable
water"<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#18a#18a">
18</a></sup>.<br><br>
<br>
<a name="19b"></a><br>
Things changed when the government announced its plans to dam the mighty
Narmada River in the late seventies. Instead of quietly accepting the
World Bank-backed enterprise, the affected people mounted a resistance
that continues to this day. The Narmada Bachao Andolan movement led by
Medha Patkar at the Sardar Sarovar Dam and Alok Aggarwal and Silvi at the
Maheshwar Dam drew support from all over India and internationally. The
resistance of the people, most of them adivasis or indigenous people,
succeeded in getting the World Bank to stop funding the project and
saddling it with delays, making the completion of the dam uncertain. The
Supreme Court, for instance, ordered rehabilitation for all those
affected by the Sardar Sarovar Dam's construction, and in March 2005
ruled to halt construction on the dam until this had happened.
Construction of the dam has now been halted at 110.6 meters, a figure
that is much higher than the 88 metres<a name="19b"></a> proposed by the
activists, and lower than the 130 meters that the dam is eventually
supposed to reach. It is unclear at this point what the final outcome of
the project will be or when it will be completed, though the entire
project is meant to be finished by
2025<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#19a#19a">
19</a></sup>. The fate of the Maheshwar Dam is similarly
unclear.<br><br>
<br><br>
Equally important was the broader political impact of the Narmada
struggle. It proved to be the cutting edge of the social movements that
have deepened India’s democracy and transformed the political scene. The
state bureaucracy and political parties must now listen to these
movements or risk opposition or, in the case of parties, being thrown out
of power. Social movements in the rural areas played a key role in
stirring up the mass consciousness that led to the defeat in 2004 of the
neoliberal coalition led by the Hindu chauvinist BJP (Bharatiya Janata
Party) that had campaigned on the pro-globalization slogan “India
Shining.” While its successor, the Congress Party-led coalition, has
turned its back on the rural protest that led to its election and
followed the same anti-agriculture and pro-globalization policies of the
BJP, it risks provoking an even greater backlash in the near
future.<br><br>
<br>
<a name="20b"></a><br>
The environmental movement faces its biggest challenge today: global
warming. As in China, the threat is not distant either in space or in
time. The Mumbai deluge of 2005 came at a year of excessive rainfall that
would normally occur once in a hundred
years<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#20a#20a">
20</a></sup><a name="21b"></a>. The Himalayan glaciers have been
retreating, with one of the largest of them, Gangotri, receding at what
one journal described as “an alarming rate, influencing the stream
run-off of Himalayan
rivers”<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#21a#21a">
21</a></sup><a name="22b"></a>. Six per cent, or 63.2 million, of India’s
population live in low elevation coastal zones that are vulnerable to
sea-level
rise<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#22a#22a">
22</a></sup><a name="23b"></a>. On the Gujarat coast, sea level rise is
displacing villages, as it is many more places along India’s 7,500
km-long coastline. One report claims that in the “Sunderbans, two islands
have already vanished from the map, displacing 7000 people. Twelve more
islands are likely to go under owing to an annual 3.14 sea level rise,
which will make 70,000 refugees. Five villages in Orissa’s Bhitarkanika
National Park, famous for the mass nesting of Olive Ridley turtles, have
been submerged, and 18 others are likely to go
under”<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#23a#23a">
23</a></sup>.<br><br>
<br><br>
As in China, the challenge lies in building up a mass movement that might
be unpopular not only with the elite but also with sections of the
urban-based middle class sectors that have been the main beneficiaries of
the high-growth economic strategy that has been pursued since the early
1990’s.<br><br>
<br><br>
National Elites and Third Worldism<br><br>
</b> <br><br>
The reason for tracing the evolution of a mass-based environmental
movement in East Asia and India is to counter the image that the Asian
masses are inert elements that uncritically accept the environmentally
damaging high-growth export-oriented industrialization models promoted by
their governing elites. It is increasingly clear to ordinary people
throughout Asia that the model has wrecked agriculture, widened income
inequalities, led to increased poverty after the Asian financial crises,
and wreaked environmental damage everywhere.<br><br>
<br><br>
It is the national elites that spout the ultra-Third Worldist line that
the South has yet to fulfill its quota of polluting the world while North
has exceeded its quota. It is they who call for an exemption of the big
rapidly industrializing countries from mandatory limits on the emission
of greenhouse gases under a new Kyoto Protocol. When the Bush
administration says it will not respect the Kyoto Protocol because it
does not bind China and India, and the Chinese and Indian governments say
they will not tolerate curbs on their greenhouse gas emissions because
the US has not ratified Kyoto, they are in fact playing out an unholy
alliance to allow their economic elites to continue to evade their
environmental responsibilities and free-ride on the rest of the
world.<br><br>
<br><br>
This alliance has now become formalized in the so-called “Asia Pacific
Partnership” created last year by the US, China, India, Japan, Korea, and
the United States as a rival to the United Nations-negotiated Kyoto
Protocol. Having recently recruited Canada, which is now led by Bush
clone Stephen Harper, this grouping seeks voluntary, as opposed mandatory
curbs on greenhouse gas emissions. This is a dangerous band of states
whose agenda is nothing else than to spew carbon as they damn well
please, which is what voluntary targets are all about.<br><br>
<br><br>
The Need for Global Adjustment<br><br>
</b> <br><br>
There is no doubt that the burden of adjustment to global warming will
fall on the North, and that this adjustment will have to be made in the
next 10 to 15 years, and that the adjustment needed might need to be much
greater than the 50 per cent reduction from the 1990’s level by 2050 that
is being promoted by the G 8. In the eyes of some experts, what might be
required is in the order of 100 or 150 per cent reduction from 1990
levels. However, the South will also have to adjust, proportionately less
than the North but also rather stringently.<br><br>
<br><br>
The South’s adjustment will not take place without the North taking the
lead. But it will also not take place unless its leaders junk the
export-oriented, high-growth paradigm promoted by the World Bank and most
economists to which its elites and many middle strata are
addicted.<br><br>
<br>
<a name="24b"></a><br>
People in the South are open to an alternative to a model of growth that
has failed both the environment and society. For instance, in Thailand, a
country devastated by the Asian financial crisis and wracked by
environmental problems, globalization and export-oriented growth are now
bad words. To the consternation of the Economist, Thais are more and more
receptive to the idea of a “sufficiency economy” promoted by popular
monarch King Bhumibol, which is an inward-looking strategy that stresses
self-reliance at the grassroots and the creation of stronger ties among
domestic economic networks, along with “moderately working with nature”
<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#24a#24a">24</a>
</sup>.<br><br>
<br><br>
Thailand may be an exception in terms of the leadership role for a more
sustainable path played by an elite, and even there the commitment of
that elite to an alternative path is questioned by many. What is clear is
that in most other places in the South, one cannot depend on the elites
and some sections of the middle class to decisively change course. At
best, they will procrastinate. The fight against global warming will need
to be propelled mainly by an alliance between progressive civil society
in the North and mass-based citizens’ movements in the South.<br><br>
<br><br>
As in North, the environmental movements in the South have seen their
ebbs and flows. It appears that, as with all social movements, it takes a
particular conjunction of circumstances to bring an environmental
movement to life after being quiescent for some time or to transform
diverse local struggles into one nationwide movement. The challenge
facing activists in the global North and the global South is to discover
or bring about those circumstances that will trigger the formation of a
global mass movement that will decisively confront the most crucial
challenge of our times.<br><br>
<br><br>
The assistance of my colleagues Afsar Jafri and DaleWen in the
preparation of this article is gratefully acknowledged. They are not,
however, responsible for any possible errors of fact or
interpretation.<br><br>
</i> <br><br>
Footnotes:<br><br>
</b> <br>
<a name="1a"></a><br>
<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#1b#1b">1.</a>
<a name="2a"></a>i. Mohamad Mahathir, Speech at United Nations Conference
on Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro, June 13, 1992 <br><br>
<br><br>
<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#2b#2b">2.</a>
<a name="3a"></a> The environmental crisis in Korea is treated at length
in Walden Bello and Stephanie Rosenfeld, Dragons in Distress: Asia’s
Miracle Economies in Crisis (San Francisco: Food First, 1990),
pp<a name="3a"></a>. 95-118. <br><br>
<br><br>
<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#3b#3b">3.</a>
<a name="4a"></a> See ibid., p<a name="4a"></a>. 195-214. <br><br>
<br><br>
<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#4b#4b">4.</a>
<a name="5a"></a> Ibid, p<a name="5a"></a>. 213. <br><br>
<br><br>
<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#5b#5b">5.</a>
Frieda Sinanu, “Coming of Age: Indonesia’s Environmental Network Faces
Dilemmas as it Turns 25,” Inside Indonesia, 2007;
<a href="http://insideindonesia.org/content/view/72/29/">
http://insideindonesia.org/content/view/72/29/</a><a name="6a"></a>
<br><br>
<br><br>
<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#6b#6b">6.</a>
Interview with Dale Wen, Focus on the Global South website,
<a href="http://www.focusweb.org/interview-with-dale-wen">
http://www.focusweb.org/interview-with-dale-wen</a><a name="7a"></a>
<br><br>
<br><br>
<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#7b#7b">7.</a>
<a name="8a"></a> Ibid <br><br>
<br><br>
<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#8b#8b">8.</a>
Cited in R. Ramachandran, “Coming Storms,” Frontline, Vol. 24, No. 7
(April 7-20, 2007);
<a href="http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2407/stories/2007042001609000.htm">
http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2407/stories/2007042001609000.htm</a>
<a name="9a"></a> <br><br>
<br><br>
<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#9b#9b">9.</a>
<a name="10a"></a> Quoted in ibid<a name="10a"></a>. <br><br>
<br><br>
<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#10b#10b">
10.</a><a name="11a"></a> Email communication, Sept. 25, 2007 <br><br>
<br><br>
<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#11b#11b">
11.</a><a name="12a"></a> Fred Bergsten et al., China: What the World
Needs to Know now about the Emerging Superpower (Washington: Center for
Strategic and International Studies and Institute for International
Economics, 2006), pp<a name="12a"></a>. 40-41. <br><br>
<br><br>
<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#12b#12b">
12.</a> “Increase in Environmental Unrest Causes Instability in China,”
Green Clippings,
<a href="http://www.greenclippings.co.za/gc_main/article.php?story=20060906170952367">
http://www.greenclippings.co.za/gc_main/article.php?story=20060906170952367</a>
<a name="13a"></a> <br><br>
<br><br>
<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#13b#13b">
13.</a> “Bhopal Disaster,” Wikipedia;
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_Disaster">
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_Disaster</a><a name="14a"></a>
<br><br>
<br><br>
<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#14b#14b">
14.</a> V. Sridhar Siddharth Narrain, “A Tempered Patents Regime,”
Frontline, Vol. 22, No. 8 (2005);
<a href="http://www.flonnet.com/fl2208/stories/20050422004602800.htm">
http://www.flonnet.com/fl2208/stories/20050422004602800.htm</a>
<a name="15a"></a> <br><br>
<br><br>
<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#15b#15b">
15.</a><a name="16a"></a> Ibid <br><br>
<br><br>
<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#16b#16b">
16.</a><a name="17a"></a> Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living (London:
Flamingo, 1999) <br><br>
<br><br>
<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#17b#17b">
17.</a><a name="18a"></a> Ibid. <br><br>
<br><br>
<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#18b#18b">
18.</a><a name="19a"></a> Ibid <br><br>
<br><br>
<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#19b#19b">
19.</a> “Narmada River,”Wikipedia;
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narmada_River">
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narmada_River</a><a name="20a"></a>
<br><br>
<br><br>
<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#20b#20b">
20.</a> R. Ramachandran, “Himalayan Concerns,” Frontline, Vol. 24, No. 4
(2007);
<a href="http://www.flonnet.com/fl2404/stories/20070309006201000.htm">
http://www.flonnet.com/fl2404/stories/20070309006201000.htm</a>
<a name="21a"></a> <br><br>
<br><br>
<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#21b#21b">
21.</a><a name="22a"></a> Ibid. <br><br>
<br><br>
<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#22b#22b">
22.</a><a name="23a"></a> R. Ramachandran, “Coming Storms…” <br><br>
<br><br>
<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#23b#23b">
23.</a> Dionne Busha, “Gone with the Waves,” Frontline, Vol. 24, No. 14
(2007);
<a href="http://www.fllonnet.com/fl2414/stories/20070727000206600.htm">
http://www.fllonnet.com/fl2414/stories/20070727000206600.htm</a>
<a name="24a"></a> <br><br>
<br><br>
<a href="http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17458#24b#24b">
24.</a> Thailand Human Development Report 2007: Sufficiency Economy and
Human Development (Bangkok: United Nations Development Program, 2007),
pp. 48-49. <br><br>
<br><br>
<br><br>
<br>
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