Globalization and Human Ecology

Globalization and Human Ecology
Excerpt from my Day 1 of Comprehensive Examination
for Post-Graduate Diploma in Community Development

by Alexey Rola Cajilig


The Global Village Phenomenon

Globalization – a new world concept. Globalization as a concept brings countries closer, unifying each country within a common economic, security/military, political and cultural policies and understanding. Although this concept has been in existence for decades, especially through the United Nations, it is only now that a more vivid picture of globalization can be seen. Europe implemented a single currency policy, the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT) was signed, anti-money laundering and terrorism bills were introduced, human resource outsourcing is widely implemented, multinational companies play a major role in local economies, international issues are affecting local political stances, cultures are widely influenced by global media and even environmental issues are now being discussed in a paradigm of interrelatedness. Globalization is likewise characterized by an open market economy where investments, goods and services can be accessed to and from nations. In hindsight, the trend of globalization is towards a systematic standardization of policies and processes to foster equal access to opportunities and resources.

The Millennium Development Goals. As an example of a concrete outcome of globalization, a common goal was agreed through the MDG. It is a unified declaration where governments commit to achieve by integrating the goals to their short and long term development objectives. Among these goals include poverty eradication and environmental protection.

Development Issues

Development is the presence of alternative actions towards emerging cultural, political, economic and environmental issues, and the capacity of individuals and societies to take specific actions to address these concerns in a truly participatory, empowering and sustainable manner, taking into consideration the carrying capacity of the environment. Currently, the key global development issues include poverty, culture, pollution and environmental degradation.

Poverty. In this age of globalization, poverty remains a formidable issue of every nation. While there are many parameters on poverty, I choose to define it as the absence of alternative actions to address an individual’s compounded political, cultural, economic and environmental concerns. At first glance, the glaring issue is on economic poverty, or on the capacity of an individual to feed him/herself and his/her family (basic needs). This individual/family needs will eventually impact society, especially on a collective sense. It must be noted that low/no income will lead to low standard of living, which will lead to low/no productivity (Circular and Cumulative Causation by Gunnar Myrdal). Eventually, it will lead to a vicious cycle that will breed crime, exploitation and unrest, affecting other development components.

Culture. There is a two-pronged issue concerning culture in a global context. The first one is on a pervading culture of inequity and inequality. With the control and management of the political and economic structures of society still strongly with the oligarchs, only limited access to opportunities and resources are available for the grassroots. In this context, the rich will continue to amass wealth while the poor will remain poor. This situation is however not limited to social classes but also involves gender and age biases.

The other concern is based on the Theory of Diffusionism where the dominant class (oligarchs) imposes their conception of reality to the subordinate class (grassroots). This culture of hegemony will further exploit people as they blindly accept both the covertly and overtly oppressive systems imposed on society. This exploitative system will cause people to submit to the former cultural conception of societal dominance and accept their fate as second or third class citizens. Worse, effective indigenous approaches used in addressing development concerns may also be lost as a result of cultural diffusion.

These cultural concerns are not limited to the micro situation of nations but are also visible in the relationships of nation-states.

Pollution and Environmental Degradation. Apart from poverty and social injustice, pollution and environmental degradation are issues causing increasing alarm to various nation-states. Smoke emissions and unabated environmental destruction caused global warming, health issues, natural and man-made disasters, and lower agricultural productivity, among other things.

It is interesting to note that during the industrial revolution until recent years, the use of cars, and smoke-emitting factories, coal mines and aggressive use of pesticides and fertilizers in agriculture were used as parameters for development. To date, these parameters are actually affecting the “development of development.”

Pivotal Point

Climate Change - A Global Concern. Development discussions usually point towards poverty alleviation as the key issue. Since the purpose of development is to do better (Robert Chambers), the position of addressing poverty will always hold water. However, in recent times, it became apparent that directly addressing poverty may not be the effective solution. The burning issue of this day is climate change. This is a phenomenon brought by decades of global warming, which drastically changed the sea/ocean’s temperature due to the melting of ice glaciers and the drying out of natural inland water systems.

Climate change has drastic impacts on nation-states and the global economy as a whole. Rainfall seasons became erratic, thus adversely affecting established cropping patterns/calendars and more importantly farm yield and income. Flooding became more frequent which often results to landslides thus compounding the housing, education and economic concerns of local communities. Beyond poverty, climate change exposed people to vulnerabilities, where governments may not be able to readily address due to its unexpected and unforeseen impacts.

At a glance, climate change may be perceived as a purely environmental issue. However, in looking at the causes of global warming more closely, it actually stemmed from our economic and cultural activities driven towards our endeavor to achieve development. In this regard, the underlying causes of climate change must be recognized within the economic (especially on the mode of production), political (government policies on industries vis-à-vis its environmental impacts), cultural and environmental components of development.

More importantly, climate change may not be dealt with on a per nation-state basis, but rather on a holistic approach using a paradigm of interrelatedness.

A Step towards Equilibrium – a Human Ecological Perspective. The growing awareness and concern on climate change should gear societies towards sustainable development – direction towards progress which puts emphasis on the carrying capacity of the environment to support the population and the industries around it. As mentioned earlier, addressing climate change will involve a holistic and multi-pronged approach of interrelated programs implemented in all nation-states, at a simultaneous and sustained manner. The economic activities will likewise need to revolve around the environment’s carrying capacity, thus changing the political and cultural face of societies globally (loosely based on the Equilibrium Theory of Odum).

Key Players in Development

Conventional Players – A Structural Analysis. At the macro level, the key players in globalization are the so-called first-worlds – the industrialized and highly-industrialized countries – the global oligarchs. They basically call the shots since investments, regulating bodies and multinational companies come from these nation-states. The economic interests of these nations dictate the local development strategies, which affects the political and cultural dynamics of global economies. Clearly, this is also the case in the micro setting of nation-states, where the sub-structure (economics and mode of production) affects the superstructure (politics and culture).

Active Involvement of Grassroots – Radical Change in the Sub-structure. There has to be a genuine participation of the smaller nation-states in the planning and implementation of development programs. Beyond mere representation, these nation-states must be able to choose their desired development directions based on their capacities and aspirations. To standardize processes and policies for all under a globalized system will only lead to exploitation since the technical, economic and military capacities of smaller nation-states are of no equal to the global oligarchs.

The same is true within the micro environment, as in the case of the Philippines. The grassroots must be given genuine opportunity to participate in the planning and implementation of development programs. They are the ones who are experiencing poverty, and are the ones most vulnerable to climate change, hence are in the best position to identify concrete solutions and alternative actions to address felt development issues.

Challenges of Contemporary Development

Moderating the Greed. A major challenge in contemporary development is in moderating the greed of people. How do we limit our own insatiability? How do we sustain adherence to such limits? This greed leads to exploitation and oppression. It is a pervasive character which may also haunt the grassroots should they succeed in taking the helm of power. This goes beyond culture, politics and economics, since there is also a need to achieve a balance between economic and environmental concerns. We also need to look deeply into the carrying capacity of the environment to provide for the population and the industries that supports it.

Globalization as A Model of Linear Development, Dualism and Dependency. Another challenge is the development models embraced in globalization. We are trapped in a formula of western solutions fostering a system that will only breed dependency and economic bankruptcy.

Structural Adjustments. In the Philippine context, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has recommended several structural adjustments in order for us to gain a favorable rating from the agency. We may opt not to operationalize these recommendations, however, by not acting on it, we will not be eligible for foreign investments cum loans, and may not be entertained in the arena of the global oligarchs. These structural adjustments were mostly based on western economic standards which are not entirely applicable to local situations. As a result, our local oligarchs gain more profit while we are burdened with more loans.

Agricultural – Industrial Economies / Small Nation – Big Nation Economic Exchanges. The globalization process is a merger of agricultural (from small nation-states) and industrial (global oligarchs) economies. Based on the Dualism Theory, the stronger industry will eventually prevail at the expense of the weaker ones. In our case, the resulting trade relations we have with industrialized nations will eventually dry us out. To elaborate this point, let’s look at the agricultural context of the Philippines and China. Traditionally, we import rice and other agricultural commodities to other countries. However, along with the advent of globalization came cheap agricultural commodities from China, way below the farm gate prices in the Philippines. As a result, and because of practicality, we patronize Chinese goods, impacting heavily on the capacity of local farmers to sustain production. With a decreased profitability, farm lots are now converted to residential lots and other commercial purposes. Prices from China are still low, however, we may be looking at a future situation where we may be held hostage to higher prices of the same agricultural commodities simply because of our local incapacity to produce our population’s food requirements.

Center-Periphery Relationship. In contemporary development, we are faced with a textbook dependency situation where we obtain loans, grants and investments from industrialized nations, and in return, export our goods and services. Our government often announces these loan agreements as if these were manna from heaven, and an answer to our development woes. However, we have seen in recent months that being a periphery of another nation breeds corruption (based on our structural set-up) among other things. It also plunges us into debts, the presence of which (as well as the need for it) puts us in a compromising position of accommodation and compromise, as in the case of our recent Spratly Islands agreements with China and Vietnam.

Terrorism. This is a side effect of globalization. As the new world economic order was established, the battle for ideologies was also elevated into the global arena. Perhaps to effectively address terrorism is to address the equality and equity issues along with other cultural concerns like religion and political perspectives.

Putting Our Acts Together. The challenge of contemporary development is in the implementation of an integrated solution (global action). There is a need to agree initially on a principle of global environmental protection, then on poverty alleviation based on the principles of equity and equality.

Addressing Poverty Towards a New World

It is now clear that in order to effectively address poverty, we also need to address the global issue on climate change. In moving forward, we need to change institutions as Myrdal suggested. In order to cope with the present carrying capacity of the environment, policies on population, spatial allocations, economic activities, cultural practices and governmental policies should undergo changes.

Likewise, since the development of human beings may lead to economic development (Psychological Theory of Development), programs paving the way for well-being and eventually for self-actualization must be put in place. In doing this, we also need to consider the humanization of the oppressed which includes both the oligarchs and the grassroots (Freire).

This will be a long process of breaking the mindset of poverty by influencing the sub-structure through the active participation of the grassroots in the planning and implementation of solutions to poverty.

The process may perhaps take a Taoist approach of going back to nature, which when taken collectively, will influence a global renewal movement through globalism – a cooperation among nations to sustain a global economy based on equality, equity and environmentally-sound economic programs and policies.