Globalization and Sustainable Development: Case Study on International Transport and Sustainable Development

Published date01 March 2014
Date01 March 2014
DOI10.1177/1070496513507260
Subject MatterArticles
Article
Globalization and
Sustainable Development:
Case Study on
International Transport
and Sustainable
Development
Jonathan Ko
¨hler
1
Abstract
This article assesses the potential contribution for international shipping and long-
haul aviation to contribute to sustainable development (SD). The trade literature
shows that newly industrializing countries are benefitting from international trade for
export-led growth. However, the least developed countries with limited access to
international trade networks do not participate in the new global production net-
works. The World Trade Organization/General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change regimes do not have the development
of more sustainable transport systems as a priority. In this sense, international trans-
port remains on the fringes of the environment and development policy fields. Three
transition pathways to SD have been developed: (a) information and telecommuni-
cations technologies leading to particip.ation of least developed countries in global
production networks, (b) changes in social preferences toward a high priority for the
environment, leading to an extensive growth in fair-trade networks and sustainable
production and consumption, and (c) SD from economic growth in newly industria-
lizing countries, with an increased priority placed on solving environmental problems.
Keywords
transport, sustainable development, transitions, shipping, aviation
Journal of Environment &
Development
2014, Vol. 23(1) 66–100
!The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/1070496513507260
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1
Fraunhofer-Institut fu¨r System- und Innovationsforschung ISI, Sustainability and Infrastructure Systems,
Karlsruhe, Germany
Corresponding Author:
Jonathan Ko
¨hler, Fraunhofer-Institut fu¨ r System- und Innovationsforschung ISI, Sustainability and
Infrastructure Systems, Breslauer Strasse 48, 76139 Karlsruhe, Germany.
Email: j.koehler@isi.fraunhofer.de
The modern world and its economic development is characterized by globaliza-
tion: The accelerating interdependence of practically all people in the world with
increasing economic integration, increasing political interaction, and increasing
cultural contact (harmonious or conf‌lictual) between dif‌ferent societies are facts
of everyday life in the world we live in (Brown, 2008). There is a very extensive
literature on globalization.
1
International transport is one of the main contribu-
tors to this process (van Veen-Groot & Nijkamp, 1999; Wackerman, 1997), and
the two most important modes of long-haul international transport—deep sea
shipping and aviation—have seen rapid growth that is projected to continue (e.g.,
Buhaug et al., 2009; Button, 2008; Hummels, 2009; Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2010). This growth in long-haul trans-
port has been seen as a major positive driver of economic development, through
promoting trade and hence growth in the newly industrializing countries (NICs)
such as Brazil, India, and China (OECD, 2010; van Veen-Groot & Nijkamp,
1999). The impacts on the least developed countries (LDCs) have received less
attention in the transportation and trade literature. Freight transport by sea has
become part of logistics services forming new global production networks
(GPNs) (Leinbach & Capineri, 2007), and aviation activity has also increased
rapidly, through long-distance tourism, international business travel, and air
freight (Button, 2008). The trend in international logistics is for ever greater
integration, also between modes. Henstra, Ruijgrok, and Tavasszy (2007)
describe the new connection between air and sea freight, whereby the cost and
performance dif‌ferences of the two modes are optimally combined to minimize
the combined cost and risk of international trade. Shipping is used to fulf‌ill the
estimated baseload demand at low cost, while high-cost, but rapid and therefore
quick-reacting, air freight is used to meet short-term variations in demand.
However, the ideas of sustainable development (SD), following the
Brundtland Report (Brundtland Commission, 1987), have led to a more critical
examination of transportation and trade. Alam (2008) argues that the World
Trade Organization (WTO)/General Agreement on Tarif‌fs and Trade (GATT)
approach to free trade does not take suf‌f‌icient account of environmental impacts
(see also Daly & Farley, 2004). Furthermore, these institutions are argued to act
against the interests of LDCs (Alam, 2008; Pedersen, 2003). The f‌irst step in this
process has been to consider the environmental impact of transport (OECD,
2010; van Veen-Groot & Nijkamp, 1999). Peters et al. (2009) show that allocat-
ing emissions based on responsibility by consumption can change the CO
2
emis-
sions allocated to some countries by up to 60%. The new GPNs often do not
fully account for their environmental impacts (e.g., see Deutsch et al., 2007, for
aquaculture and Yellishetty, Ranjith, & Tharumarajah, 2010, for iron and steel).
Although land freight modes are a major contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions, overseas trade is almost exclusively aviation and deep sea shipping
and these are important sources of emissions. Daley (2009) and Walker and
Cook (2009) have questioned the overall benef‌its of aviation, while Macintosh
Ko¨hler 67
and Wallace (2009) show that emissions from aviation are set to increase by up
to 100% between 2005 and 2025, given current policy. Even allowing for the
downturn in 2008–2009, this suggests large-scale increases in emissions in the
next decades. The environmental impacts of shipping have also been widely
recognized (Buhaug et al., 2009); shipping climate change emissions have a simi-
lar magnitude to aviation and are also increasing rapidly as international trade
and transport are projected to continue to grow (OECD, 2010).
International shipping and aviation present a particularly dif‌f‌icult problem
for climate mitigation policy because both industries have the main part of their
productive process in international waters/airspace, outside regions of national
legal jurisdiction. Therefore, policy and regulation have to be agreed on by the
international institutions and proceed mainly by consensus, such that countries
that oppose environmental legislation can prevent the adoption of environmen-
tal policy. The environmental impact of international transport has been recog-
nized in the international bodies that regulate shipping and aviation; the
environmental impact of aviation has been discussed in the International Civil
Aviation Organization (ICAO) Council’s Committee on Aviation
Environmental Protection, but without being able to agree on actual mitigation
policy. However, the European Union (EU) has taken action by including the
aviation sector in the EU emissions trading scheme from 2012 (Anger & Ko
¨hler,
2010). The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has performed an
assessment of the GHG emissions of ships and mitigation technologies and
introduced in 2011 the Energy Ef‌f‌iciency Design Index (EEDI) as a standard
and the Ship Energy Management Plan.
There are two limitations to this policy response by society to emissions from
long-haul transport. First, the policy initiatives are only just beginning in avi-
ation and the EU Emissions Trading System is assessed to have only a slight
ef‌fect on emissions to 2020 (Anger & Ko
¨hler, 2010), and the only policy imple-
mented for GHG emissions reductions in shipping is the EEDI (IMO, 2009),
which has only been agreed as an information measure and would require the
adoption of binding standards to have a wide inf‌luence. Second, no account is
taken of social development. SD is considered to consist of three pillars: social
development must be considered alongside the environment and economic
growth (Brundtland Commission, 1987; OECD, 2008). There is no holistic
assessment of the potential contribution of long-haul international transport
to SD, taking into account all three pillars. Gudmundsson and Ho
¨jer (1996)
proposed a theoretical framework including social factors, but we have been
unable to f‌ind an actual application. The other sector that has a pervasive
impact on the process of globalization is information and communications tech-
nology (ICT), for which such a survey does exist (Heeks, 2010). In this context,
Kleine (2010) uses the capabilities approach proposed by Sen and shows that the
addition of the social pillar of SD does require a broadening of analysis to use
methods from anthropology and empirical social science in addition to
68 Journal of Environment & Development 23(1)

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