International institutions and emerging actors in a globalized world.

• Author: Guimaraes, Roberto P.

Different dimensions of globalization and environmental regimes

The process of globalization includes different phenomena that are often misunderstood and leading to contradictory interpretations. Some authors define it exclusively in economic terms (increasing homogenization an internationalization of consumption and production patterns), in its financial expressions (the magnitude and growing interdependence of capital flows internationally), or also in its commercial aspects (increased external "exposure" and openness of national economies). Others prefer to emphasize the character of globalization in its political (widespread predominance of liberal democracies and of civil liberties worldwide, as well as new forms of social participation and empowerment) and institutional dimensions (prominence of market forces, increased convergence of regulatory mechanisms and instruments, increased flexibility of labor markets). Still others choose to highlight the speed of technological change (its impacts in the productive apparatus, in labor markets as well as in structures and relations of power) and the impressive revolution experienced by mass media ("massification" in access, transmission and dissemination of information, greater prospects for decentralization, possible erosion of national cultural identities).

However, making use of a somewhat different approach to analyze these clearly multifaceted phenomena--ooking at globalization as a process more than as a group of specific vectors--some still prefer to study these from the viewpoint of international relations and of the emergence of new economic, commercial and political alliances and blocs. Not few, including myself, consider it more revealing to unveil globalization from a sustainable development perspective. These question, for instance, the economic rationality of globalization in its many dimensions vis-a-vis the logic and the pace of natural processes. In other words, capital (flows) may have become "globalized", yet the same has not taken place with respect to labor or natural resources. Moreover, the prospects of a process of globalization founded upon an upward, unlimited and unchecked economic growth model are also seriously disputed, particularly in view of the reality of exhaustion of many natural resources (e.g., fauna, flora, non-renewable sources of energy) as well as of deterioration of natural processes which are crucial for the ecosystemic viability of life on the planet (ozone layer, climate, etc.). Finally, those of us who subscribe to these and other serious reservations point also to the growing consensus about the social unsustainability of the current style of development, a reality of globalization in the midst of increasing social inequality and exclusion, a reality which certainly precedes but has been exacerbated by the very process of globalization.

One may deepen a socio-environmental standpoint by asserting that the character of globalization, or at least of the neoconservative ideology underlying and legitimating the hegemonic modernity of today's world, appear to leave but only two alternatives to emerging countries. Either these integrate themselves fully--albeit subordinated and dependent--in the globalization bandwagon of the world market, or it will not remain nothing more to those countries than the reality of backwardness masked behind the illusion of autonomous development.

The position advocated here supposes that the foregoing standpoint in fact begs the real question. At the heart of today's challenges lies, not the inevitable tendency of insertion into a world increasingly globalized, but what mode of insertion is convenient to emerging economies, whether prevailing patterns of insertion allow these countries to retain the national control of growth, and what sort of alternatives allow these societies to maintain and foster social cohesion, cultural identity and environmental integrity. As Alfredo Calcagno, father and son, have appropriately pointed out in a brilliant book debunking neoliberalism (Calcagno and Calcagno, 1995:265):

"We are told that we must all board the modernity train (as if there was only one), even though we do not know where it will take us, we do not know whether we will be allowed to board it as full-fare passengers or service personnel who are sent back to their origin once the journey is over, or whether we will turn ourselves immigrant labor at the final destination. In short, we are being counseled, as sovereign countries, to adopt a behavior that no liberal (as a matter of fact, not even a sane person) would embrace at a railroad station ..."

The expansion of globalization has also intensified latent tendencies to establish quantifiable, measurable parameters to all and every single phenomena of an socio-environmental nature. At the very outset, one must realize that quantification or "parameterization" cannot aspire to a higher logic than human values. Moreover, we should heed to the words of no other than Einstein himself, a hard scientist par excellence, who warned that "[mathematical laws] ... insofar as they refer to reality, they are far from being true; inasmuch as they constitute something accurate, they do not reflect reality" (cited in Capra, 1974:39). Far from attempting to disqualify the mathematical, quantified base of economics, these comments point to deficiencies of economic theory, including environmental economics--not to be confused with ecological economics--to adequately grasp the complexities of socio-environmental phenomena. The later require interpretations that incorporate as well qualitative, institutional and historical aspects not easily or directly measured via quantitative parameters.

Much criticism has been levied also against recent attempts at...