Global resource consumption, environmental space and ecological structural change: implications for sustainable development from the perspective of North-South relations.

• Author: Furst, Edgar

Abstract

This article aims at contributing to the recent debate on structural change with ecological orientation, assuming a perspective from sustainable development in the South. It starts from reviewing the issues of national innovation systems, social learning, socioeconomic equity, political institutions and the societal transformation from Fordism to an emerging post-fordist regime, within the context of current globalization. Subsequently, the environmental dimension of the global process of uneven development, i.e. the physically unsustainable scale and socially unequal appropriation of material flows, is assessed by recurring to the concept of environmental utilization space. Based on this, some ecological features of the structural change related to post-fordist globalization and its expected main consequences for the North-South-relationships are discussed. Addressing the mentioned structural change, the analysis is focused on the strategic guideline of dematerialization as the normative orientation of an overall eco-efficiency and sufficiency in economy and environment at global and national level. This leads to the assessment of the challenges for a proactive policy of an ecological structural change (ESC) in the South by means of an agenda for future research. Finally, main conclusions are derived with the purpose to clarify some elements for the debate on sustainable development, which are considered as essentials for both development theory and ecological-economic policy of structural change.

1. Introduction

   In the international debate on a comprehensive notion of economic development in the background of international trade and North-South relationships, it is well acknowledged that development requires an innovative transformation of productive and institutional forces in material, technological, socio-economic and cultural dimensions (CEPAL, 1990 for Latin America; OECD, 1992 for Europe and the industrialised North). In particular, some consensus has been reached that long-term socio-economic development is a question of social learning, historically accumulated knowledge and a particular micro-meso-macro interplay between enterprise innovation, socio-technological and cultural evolution, structural policy oriented to systemic competitiveness, and societal networks of political self-organisation/ regulation (Amsden, 1989; Lundvall, 1992; Nelson, 1993; CEPAL, 1996, 1998; Messner, 1997).

   The underlying processes of technical change, productivity development, institutional transformation and societal modernisation have long historical roots -in particular from the expost perspective of current globalisation (Castells, 1996-98). Its concrete patterns of structural change during different stages are being shaped by socio-economic (self-)regulation forms of governance both globally and nationally, commonly called development models. This is exemplified by the present transition from Fordism towards Post-Fordism on global, national and local-urban levels whose concrete productive and institutional features and analytical interpretations are still subject to an ongoing controversy in social science (1). In principle, this evolutionary societal perspective can be stated as valid for industrialised countries (ICs), such as the Netherlands, as well as for developing countries (DCs), such as Costa Rica, e.g. due to tourism in this country (Furst and Hein, 2001).

   It is in this context where sustainable development can and should be rethought and made more operational as a normative guide for societal transformation (Hein, 1998). Doing this, productive transformation, environmental sustainability and social equity become essentials for assessing the issue of renewed opportunities and persisting risks of the Southern societies in participating in the race towards economic globalisation, in particular in the international trade of their mostly resource-based products with the North. For these essentials, it is specially relevant to ground the structural competitiveness of developing export economies on the ecological design and environmental supply chain management of cultivated/manufactured export products in the South, showing that the often reclaimed trade-off between competitive performance and environmental protection is reversed in a virtuous cycle, both on the level of corporations (Porter/van der Linde, 1995) and in society as a whole (Tylecote/van der Straaten, 1997). This would enable the corresponding export countries to benefit deliberately from the so-called environmentally sound and socially fair international trade (for two distinct perspectives, see UNCTAD, 1995, and FoEI, 1997).

   However, it can be assumed that the underlying globalisation drive induces, in any case, a tendency towards a relative worldwide homogenisation of production and consumption patterns. This, in turn, can lead to considerable environmental changes in terms of increasing needs for resources (materials and energy) and services (ecological cycles, etc.) provided by nature. It is clear that the scope of this need and the corresponding impact depend on the simultaneous technological progress and structural change in the future, both being processes of uncertain evolution.

   Hence, globally intensifying and/or nationally late-coming dynamics of development and modernisation can be seen as processes characterised by society-specific breakthroughs of techno-economic innovations and growing social living standards based on material and energy consumption. This implies a particular bottom level for the nature utilisation and resource consumption, but also allows for some control of the environmental load beyond this minimum resource flow by means of use efficiency and social equity. However, how high should the bottom of resource use and demand for environmental functions be? What maximum consumption of natural and environmental resources in ICs and DCs must be allowed--in the same or differentiated threshold levels--for feeding the "machinery" of economic progress associated with international competitiveness, when this is confronted with the current sustainability challenge in view of globalisation and late-coming development?

   Guided by the above questions, my reflections on the issue of global resource consumption as a key dimension for sustainable development will be structured as follows:

   In section 2, some basic inquiries and 'selected' areas of the debate related to the global sustainability of nature consumption are raised in such a manner that they can be assessed taking into account my arguments on the relevance of these topics for DCs. Section 3 provides a discussion of the scope, limits and theoretical/operational versions of the environmental space (ES) approach as the key concept for grasping the global resource problem. This allows for some elements to reinterpret the North-South disparity in terms of over-and under-appropriation of ES due to unequal resource flows and use intensities. Following, in section 4 some central features of the presently proposed dematerialisation and ecological structural change in the North will be analysed, focusing on their relevance (structural consequences) for the South and its integration in the world market. This leads to the assessment of the challenges for a proactive policy of ecological structural change (ESC) in the South as such, limiting this to some key components of a future research agenda (section 5). Finally, certain aspects considered as essentials for an ecological policy of structural change and sustainable development in the context discussed here will be summarised in the conclusion.

2. Main issues in the debate on sustainable resource consumption

   When addressing sustainable development from a perspective of international resource flows, the central question are frequently the following: What should be--globally and country-specifically both in the North and in the South--the permissible link between income growth and material energy use in order to prevent an irreversible deterioration of the basic life-support functions of the ecosystem called "Earth"? Or could a de-linking be expected between economic growth and ecological degradation at a certain turning-point in the development process, where further income increases lead to higher environmental quality and social welfare (implying reduced poverty in DCs)? This hypothesis is the main message of the World Development Report 1992 (IBRD, 1992), as well as of the well-known Brundtland Report (WCED, 1987).

   From the perspective of the Word Bank, such an environmental version of trickle-down effects of growth in the South is heavily based on the rationale of moving towards a greening of economic policy reforms (Cruz et al., 1997). This means fundamentally better resource management associated with an undistorted price and property-right setting at micro and macro levels, as well as some revised trade and incentive policies in DCs. This does not imply that these reforms involve a radical structural change in the production and consumption patterns prevailing in the North or on a global level.

   This de-linking hypothesis is better known as the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), which states that an 'inverted U'-shaped relationship exists between environmental damages and per-capita income growth (2). This will be reviewed below in more detail with regard to its North-South implications (see section 4). The same question can be raised in terms of the currently high appreciated efficiency or productivity in resource use: Can the "efficiency revolution" -now exalted everywhere- really reach "half of the nature consumption and double the welfare" (von Weizsacker/Lovins/Lovins, 1997), i.e. reducing the utilisation of energy and other nature-based inputs in the production and final consumption of goods and services by "Factor 4" (Ibid.; see also Hawken/Lovins/Lovins, 1999)? The EKC issue and the eco-efficiency...