Reflections on work in a sustainable society

Ecumenical Review, The, July, 1996 by Francis Wilson

The conflict between development and the environment in the early stages of industrialization in Asia is not of course unique. There is good evidence to suggest that pollution in British cities was worse in the earlier stages of industrialization than later. As Wilfred Beckerman has pointed out in a trenchant critique of insufficiently rigorous thinking in this field, "during the 1960s average smoke concentrations in urban areas in Britain fell by 60 percent, and sulphur dioxide concentrations fell by 30 percent, despite increasing population and industrial output".(6) The fact that London eliminated smog and cleaned the Thames or that Europe is moving to reduce noxious emissions from motor vehicles does not necessarily imply that Mexico City will clear its air nor that New Delhi will clean up the Jumna. But it is quite possible that they will do so.(7) In not turning its attention to environmental problems until certain basic material conditions have been fulfilled, China is no different from other countries that have already walked the path of primary industrialization. The difficult question is whether or not the very much larger absolute population numbers with which Beijing or Bombay or indeed the world as a whole has to cope in the 1990s, compared with Paris or Pittsburgh in earlier generations, fundamentally alters the possibility of a successful outcome from an environmental perspective.

In central and eastern Europe the most immediately pressing problems centre on high levels of long-term unemployment combined with a high proportion of subsistence and part-time smallholders. The essay by the Csanadys (pp.379-86) asks how the economies in transition in the former socialist countries of Europe, with their tremendous bulk of under-developed labour which cannot compete efficiently in the world market, can adapt to the forces of globalization without further damaging those who lack the necessary economic skills.

Offering an African perspective, a paper at the consultation by Florence Ziumbe argued that a clearer understanding is needed of how the three issues of trade, environment and development are related. Poverty is a central concern, as is the way in which powerful industrial countries are believed to use, or misuse, their power to increase the difficulties of development. For Zimbabwe, the concerns that most resonate in this area are those which relate to externally imposed Structural Adjustment Programmes and the current process of trade liberalization. It is pertinent to note that Africa is widely perceived to be the region most vulnerable to changes in world market conditions and that in the short run at least the consequences of the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations could cause considerable difficulties in much of the continent. Ms Ziumbe is not alone in concluding that "trade liberalization as currently being implemented in Zimbabwe and many countries in Africa creates an impediment to the achievements of sustainable development". But there is also good news from Africa. An example of what is possible comes from the rural Machakos district, east of Nairobi. Here is an astonishing story of environmental recovery combined with rising standards of living, stimulated rather than exacerbated by population growth over a sixty-year period from 1930 to 1990.(8)