Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork
Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork
Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork
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Chapter 4: The toxic cradle of productionfirms ensure practices which are directly contrary to those advertised to consumers.This is <strong>the</strong> flexibility that corporations seek to protect and it is enhanced by corporateadvocacy in o<strong>the</strong>r fora such as <strong>the</strong> World Trade Organisation. It is this advocacy thathas subjected national regulatory systems to international competition. And it is thisadvocacy which creates Byzantine market responses such as carbon trading: after a greatdeal of ma<strong>the</strong>matics, and profit, <strong>the</strong> carbon credits traded still have no relationship toactual carbon emissions.Box 14: The illusion of clean production in EuropeIn his book Fair Future, Wolfgang Sachs writes:Only rarely is it still smelly and noisy in <strong>the</strong> late-industrial economy and windingtowers and blast furnaces have all but disappeared from <strong>the</strong> landscape. But evenwhere <strong>the</strong> Internet and design have taken over, a national economy cannotget by without raw materials. The acquisition and processing of raw materials,including <strong>the</strong> environmental costs associated with <strong>the</strong>m, have only dropped outof sight in Europe … <strong>the</strong> greater part of <strong>the</strong> material flow never takes <strong>the</strong> formof a circulating object but remains somewhere along <strong>the</strong> product’s life cycle asdetritus or waste. …We may speak schematically of a multilayered distribution of ecologicalburdens around <strong>the</strong> globe. At <strong>the</strong> top of <strong>the</strong> ladder stand <strong>the</strong> late-industrialeconomies, in which visible environmental pollution is on <strong>the</strong> decline, whileimports, which pollute <strong>the</strong> countries of origin, are on <strong>the</strong> increase … Cleannessis here largely achieved, but largely through relocation of <strong>the</strong> ecological burden.… Halfway up <strong>the</strong> ladder are <strong>the</strong> newly industrializing economies, whichundertake heavy industrial production and <strong>the</strong>refore have to cope with classicalforms of <strong>the</strong> pollution of water, air and soil – and people. Self-poisoning is <strong>the</strong>price <strong>the</strong>y have to pay for a greater share of value creation, achieved in partby supplying <strong>the</strong> North with industrial goods. Right at <strong>the</strong> bottom stand <strong>the</strong>raw material economies of <strong>the</strong> poorest countries – or of poor regions withinnewly industrializing economies – which is where <strong>the</strong> great majority of peoplelive. They supply raw metals and especially agricultural raw materials to <strong>the</strong>newly industrializing or affluent countries, and as a result <strong>the</strong>y have to contendwith waste, deforestation, soil erosion and water shortage. This especially affectspeople living close to nature and groups of small farmers who directly dependon it for <strong>the</strong>ir livelihood. [Sachs 2007: 61, 66]- 86 - groundWork - <strong>Wasting</strong> <strong>the</strong> <strong>Nation</strong>