Human Development and the Environment In the context of International Environmental Governance

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Human Development and the EnvironmentIn the
context of International Environmental Governance

• Brendan Barrett
• UNU Academic Programme Officer
• Lecture to the Asia Pacific Initiative
  Environmental Seminar Series
• 14 October 2005

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Outline of Presentation

• Explore relationships between environmental and
  human development discourses.
• Explore the confusion that surrounds these
  debates.
• Discuss the emerging international dialogue,
  relating to the Millennium Development Goals.

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What is Human Development?

• Human development is fundamentally about freedom,
  enhancing peoples choices and raising their
  level of well-being.
• Freedom includes the basic capacity to avoid
  deprivations such as starvation, endemic diseases
  or premature mortality.
• Encompasses the acquisition of certain basic
  skills (e.g. numeracy and literacy) as well as
  the capacity to enjoy participation in the
  political and economic system (the push for
  democracy!).

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Redefining Development

• Development has the potential to challenge
  contemporary tendencies that reinforce social
  exclusion. As a result, through development it
  may be possible to expand freedoms to an
  ever-greater number of people.
• However, a new form of human development has to
  emerge which ensures everybody can benefit from
  the expansion of freedoms in the globalizing
  world.
• According to Fischer and Hajer, we must move away
  from the Culture of Progress the insistence
  that problems once identified can be handled by
  the institutions of science, technology and
  management.
• They argue that we need a deeper cultural
  critique of modern society.

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Living (and Dying) without Freedom

• According to the 2000 Millennium Development
  Report around 1.2 billion people have to live on
  less than 1 a day.
• Furthermore, Jeffrey Sachs argues that eight
  million people die each year because they are too
  poor to stay alive.
• Of nearly 36 million people now living with
  HIV/AIDS worldwide, more than 23 million are in
  sub-Saharan Africa.
• Malaria alone takes two lives every minute of
  every day mainly children under 5 and pregnant
  women.
• TB has resurfaced and causes 1.5 million deaths
  each year.

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Environmental Challenge 1 Do we really face a
crisis?

• Human induced environmental change has
  intensified dramatically over the past 50 years.
• Overall picture across the globe is one of nature
  under siege and humanity the aggressor.
• According to the GEO 2000 report, indicative
  global environmental problems include climate
  change, loss of biodiversity and desertification.
• The report argued that global emissions of CO2
  reached a new high of nearly 23 900 million
  tonnes in 1996 - nearly four times the 1950
  total.
• Future projections are very worrying.

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Environmental Challenge 2(findings from the GEO
3 report)

• Endangered Species 25 of the world's
  approximately 4,630 mammal species and 11 of the
  9,675 bird species were at significant risk of
  total extinction.
• Water Crisis If present consumption patterns
  continue, two out of every three persons on Earth
  will live in water-stressed conditions by the
  year 2025.
• Endangered Coral More than half the world's
  coral reefs are potentially threatened by human
  activities, with up to 80 at risk in the most
  populated areas.
• Chemicals Exposure to hazardous chemicals has
  been implicated in numerous adverse effects on
  humans from birth defects to cancer. Global
  pesticide use results in 3.5 to 5 million acute
  poisonings a year.
• Soil 20 of the world's susceptible drylands are
  affected by human-induced soil degradation,
  putting the livelihoods of more than 100 million
  people at risk.

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Life has never been so good...

• Some commentators like Bjørn Lomborg argue that
  we have made great progress in the past few
  decades.
• Living standards are improving in many parts of
  the world.
• In developing countries over the past 30 years,
  life expectancy increased from 46 to 62 years,
  infant mortality rates have halved, and adult
  literacy rates have risen from 48 to 70.
• Proportionally fewer people are starving (1970,
  35 of all people in developing countries were
  starving, by 1996 this had dropped to 18).
• More people have access to clean drinking water
  In 1970, 30 of all people in developing
  countries had access to drinking water. In 2000,
  this had risen to 80.

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Getting better all the time

• Water 3.7 of humanity is suffering from chronic
  water scarcity but this is not a serious problem.
  For many of the countries concerned this is no
  surprise.e.
• Forests In 1950, the world had 40.24 million km2
  of forest, in 1994 it had 43.04 million km2.
• Food No imminent agricultural crisis
  approaching. Food will get cheaper and ever more
  people will be able consume more and better food.
  
• Species Extinction Correct rate of species
  extinction is 0.7 of all species over 50 years.

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Nothing to worry about...

• Air Pollution For major air pollutants like SO2
  and smoke, concentrations have dropped
  significantly in many industrialized countries.
  Air in London has not been cleaner since the
  Middle Ages.Global Warming Yes it is happening,
  but there will be benefits and costs. Anyway, the
  money we spend on Global Warming could be better
  spent elsewhere. (Interesting to hear Prof.
  Hamanakas views on this.)
• Energy Reserves of oil, gas and coal have
  increased.Other resources All indicators
  suggest that we are not likely to experience any
  significant scarcity of raw materials in the
  future.

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Why the confusion?
Scientific Uncertainty Used as an excuse for
prevarication and delay. Vested Interests Tie
society into old approaches and methods and
prevent innovation and adaptation. Disagreement
about the Causes e.g. Is the problem one of
production or consumption? Who caused the problem
and who should pay?
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Key determinants of prosperity or decline

• Globalization economic integration political
  mission. Offers prospects of either shared global
  prosperity or widening of the economic and social
  divide.
• Global Economic System Characterized by
  increasing instability and insecurity.
  Marginalization of the poorest countries (e.g.
  sub-Saharan African accounted for only 1.4 of
  global exports in 1995, down from 3.1 in the
  1950s).
• Technology Gap Key technologies and science not
  shared globally i.e. those associated with
  space, information, education, nano-tech and
  biotech.

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Seven economic challenges

• Rolph van der Hoeven of ILO argues that there
  are seven challenges confronting contemporary
  patterns of economic development
• - Integration of economies but developing
  countries not the main beneficiaries.
• - inadequacy of economic growth
• - informalization of work
• - inequality
• - insufficient human capital
• - Economic instability and
• - Insecurity of economy and employment.

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Which way forward....?

• Many commentators, including some on this course,
  argue that good governance is the start point. Is
  it really?
• We hear a lot about institutional reform -
  especially of the United Nations.
• We hear about taming the trans-national
  corporations.
• But there may be more fundamental questions that
  we are only just beginning to address - such as
  meeting commitments including the 0.7 ODA?

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Significant changes

• A relatively coherent and stable system of global
  governance, including the United Nations system,
  the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and
  GATT/WTO, has contributed to the move forward in
  the search for a qualitatively different form of
  human development.
• In recent years there has been much emphasis
  (UNICEF and in national ODA programmes) on a
  human rights approach to development.
• UNDP has been championing the human development
  approach.
• The importance of participation is increasingly
  highlighted as a critical element of development.
  Evidence from around the world in the Voices of
  the Poor study highlights the issues of
  powerlessness and voicelessness.

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Concerns about the UNs Role

• While appreciating that the UN can function as a
  powerful force for positive change, it is
  important to recognize that there is no carte
  blanche.
• Not many would with the idea of running the world
  through international institutions linked to the
  executive arms of national government promoting
  some form of technocratic executive arrangements
  for global management. This is one argument
  against multilateral environmental agreements.
• How democratic is the UN? Who elects the
  Secretary General? Who represents you in the
  General Assembly? Who negotiates these MEA?
• Current view on the UN system may be outdated and
  in need of an overhaul.
• Is the UN (and the World Bank) is a dynamo for
  change or a dinosaur on the verge of extinction?

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New Role for the UN

• Walden Bello argues that it is no surprise that
  the WTO and IMF are currently mired in a severe
  crisis of legitimacy. The dynamics of such
  institutions clash with the needs of an
  increasingly sophisticated world and with the
  burgeoning aspirations of peoples, countries, and
  communities in both the North and the South.
• Reforms are needed to deconcentrate institutional
  power in order to create a more pluralistic
  system of international institutions and
  organisations.
• Ulrich Beck argues that we need some kind of
  trans-national system of social and environmental
  protection linked to the spread of civil society
  and participatory/representative democracy.
• The UNs role is to provide vision, and guidance
  while working collectively and inclusively with
  civil society, government, business and all other
  stakeholders to reduce obstacles to the creation
  of a sustainable world free from want and fear.

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A new discourse is emerging...

• Amartya Sen defines development as freedom and
  provides a useful framework to integrate the
  development and environment debates.
• Highlighted seven basic freedoms that form the
  pillars for the realization of basic human
  development and human rights freedom from
  discrimination, freedom from want, freedom to
  develop and realize ones human potential,
  freedom from fear, freedom from injustice,
  freedom of thought and speech and the freedom for
  decent work.
• Freedom promoted through human development can no
  longer be seen as a burden but rather as a
  springboard for the creation of a new form of
  economic growth uncoupled from environmental
  stress.
• Environmental issues are constitutive of
  development. The freedom to enjoy clean air as
  well the basic need of having clean water is part
  of human development.

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Creating a new international movement...(or just
wishful thinking)

• The 2000 Millennium Summit was a landmark event.
• New goals defined for the UN and its member
  states
• 'FREEDOM FROM WANT' the Development Agenda
• 'FREEDOM FROM FEAR' The Security Agenda
• A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE The Environmental Agenda
• RENEWING THE UNITED NATIONS

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International Development Goals(reaffirmed at
the Millennium Summit September 2000)

• Reduce by half in the proportion of people living
  in extreme poverty by 2015.
• Universal primary education in all countries by
  2015.
• Demonstrated progress towards gender and
  empowerment of women by eliminating gender
  disparity in primary and secondary education by
  2005.
• Reduction by 2/3 in the mortality rates for
  infants and children under age 5 and a reduction
  by 3/4 in maternal mortality by 2015.
• Access through the primary health care system to
  reproductive health services for all individuals
  of appropriate ages as soon as possible and no
  later than the year 2015.
• Implementation of national strategies for
  sustainable development in all countries by 2005
  so as to ensure that current trends in the loss
  of environmental resources are effectively
  reversed at both global and national levels by
  2015.

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Some Issues for Discussion

• Are you satisfied with the attempts to redefine
  human development? Can we escape from the culture
  of progress? Is there a feasible alternative?
• Should the development discourse overtake the
  environmental discourse -whereby the latter is
  subsumed in the former?
• Do you consider that the international governance
  is the best approach to securing the future of
  humanity? Are we missing something? What other
  mechanisms are available to us and how can they
  be gainfully employed? Are we just stuck in a
  dysfunctional paradigm whereby many of our
  institutions are not working and are adding to
  the problems rather than helping to solve them?
• Do multilateral environmental agreements fall
  with this latter category? How many environmental
  problems have been positively resolved as a
  result of MEAs?

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Thank you