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Dialogues@RU is published
annually
by the
Writing Program at
Rutgers, The State
University of New Jersey
Volume Two
Spring 2003
Clean Development to Address
Global Climate Change, Inequality, and Environmental Rights - Page
3
by Kara Scharwath
The prospect of clean, sustainable development has the potential to address effectively the issues of inequality and to ensure the environmental rights of those in less-developed countries through the "decarbonization" of development in those countries. What this means, essentially, is that new development should involve technologies that emit low amounts of greenhouse gases. Roberts states that development must be "delinked from fossil fuel consumption" (507). To minimize carbon emissions and "delink" development from fossil fuel consumption, technologies used by new industries in developing countries must be based primarily on renewable resources rather than on fossil fuels. Development of this sort is sustainable because it does not involve the use of finite resources that will eventually run out. Private investment in "clean technology" has had some success in developing countries. In his article, "The Legacy of Rio," Christopher Flavin discusses the outcomes of the 1992 U. N. Conference on Environment and Development, known as the Earth Summit. He describes how the opening up of markets in developing countries has accelerated the degradation of natural resources, but at the same time has accelerated the transfer of more environment-friendly technologies. He states that "opportunities abound for profitable investments in more environmentally benign products and processes" (350). Removal of trade barriers has spurred the growth of new markets in developing countries, but due to weaknesses in their governing regimes and the desire to bring in new industries, environmental health has suffered. Private investment prospects for technologies that are more environmentally benign have resulted. These include investment in less carbon-intensive technologies (Flavin 350). However, success stories concerning investments in alternative fuel sources in poorer countries are few and far between, which suggests that there are problems with the prospect of relying on clean development to address climate change. But if future development projects can evolve, primarily using these technologies, developing countries will be able to advance their societies without fear that participation in climate change negotiations will affect their ability to develop. If alternative fuel sources can be made available, these countries can participate in binding agreements to lower their emissions through the Kyoto Protocol and still have opportunities to further their development and improve their living standards. The success of this prospect is difficult to project into the future when one considers the sporadic and unpredictable occurrences of successful alternative fuel markets, even in countries with fully developed economies. Will it really work? The potential for this type of clean development to address global climate change inequalities, coupled with private investment opportunities in developing countries, provides concrete possibilities for effective ways to address the issue of development through the market. However, Collins-Chobanian argues that the market economy fosters growth and threatens sustainability. She states, "the market economy does not value sustainability, but growth" (141). This argument is exemplified by the above description of the degradation of natural resources that resulted from expanded markets in developing countries. The general nature of the market economy is to accelerate the use and degradation of finite natural resources, but because clean development is based on renewable resources, it can be considered sustainable. But is the economy that it creates sustainable? Is it logical to assume that just because less carbon-intensive development is encouraged, all subsequent development of the economy will be sustainable? Other problems with this proposed solution to the development problem are high risks and initial costs associated with clean investments.
Clean investment projects in developing countries are often associated with heightened risk and involve technologies that are significantly more expensive to implement than more readily available technologies. In "Towards a Private-Public Synergy in Financing Climate Change Mitigation Projects," Zhang ZhongXiang and Aki Maruyama discuss the risks that are involved with climate change mitigation projects. These risks include those related to the performance and management of unconventional technologies, and regulations of investment and import of the technologies (1370). Additional costs are required to manage these risks and to establish the institutions needed to deal with risk issues. These institutions, along with environmental monitoring institutions, are often lacking in developing countries. When investments are made in low-emission technologies, the issue arises of who should pay the costs additional to those of least-cost technologies, which Cooper and Arrow discuss in their article, "International Approaches to Global Climate Change/A Comment on Cooper." They say,
It seems reasonable to decline to finance infrastructure investments that are unnecessarily damaging to the environment and acceptable to ask the borrowing country to pay fully for the incremental cost of any environmental benefits that will accrue directly to it, but it is reasonable to expect the international community to pay most or all of the incremental cost (depending on the income level of the borrowing country) associated with greenhouse gas emissions in cases in which the benefits will accrue to the world as a whole. (44)
The populations of developing countries profit from these investments because their economy is being developed, providing them with additional capacity to gain access to environmental rights. However, the benefits of investment in clean technology go to the world as a whole, so it is only fair that the international community cover or supplement the additional costs. Similarly, when private investments in clean technologies in developing countries involve significant risks and additional costs to manage these risks, the international community should cushion these costs in order to promote investment, the benefits of which accrue to the world as a whole in the form of reducing the risk of global climate change.