POL S 384 Lec 14 1

Transnational Grassroots Action for Ecology & Justice: Transnational Grassroots Action for Ecology & Justice:

A Global Immune System?A Global Immune System?

Beyond environmental treatiesContentious transnational politics

Sustainability & justiceIndigenous people’s issues

Large dams & waterA global immune system?

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The zone of environmental treatiesThe zone of environmental treaties

• Transboundary & global commons issues– Privileges territorial sovereignty– Most environmental degradation occurs locally, but

has transnational social causes

• Authoritative, stabilized knowledge base– Privileges universal scientific rationality– “Other knowledges” are marginalized

• Nation-states and their institutional constructs are the ultimate authorities– Social movements, NGOs & industry vie for

influence

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Destabilization of knowledge

Zone of international regimes

Deterritorialization of nature

Hybridization of authority

Interstate regimes as a subset of institutional forms

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Contentious transnational politicsContentious transnational politics

• Complex issues, knowledge bases & authority structures– Intersection of human rights, environment– Multiple knowledges, diverse stakeholders– Local degradation with transnational causes– Political engagement beyond the nation-state

• Environmental governance as protecting places and people rather than managing transboundary pollution & global commons– Watersheds & water supply

• Dams, safe water access, industry practices– Conserving biodiversity – Ecosystems

• Forests• Deserts• High mountains

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SustainabilitySustainability

• Of what?– Decoupling economic growth from throughput– Renewable vs. nonrenewable resources– Organisms, species, ecosystems, life support systems

• There is no “away” …and people live there.

• For whom?– People? Which ones? Whose “common future?”

• For how long?– Future generations & the futurity problem

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Elements of JusticeElements of Justice

• Distributive– Equity– Custom– Desert

• Procedural– Civil liberties & participation

• Justice as fairness– Rawlsian justice: veil of ignorance

• Ecological justice?– Beyond anthropocentrism

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Environmental Justice & Indigenous PeoplesEnvironmental Justice & Indigenous Peoples

• The “Fourth World”– Globalization on the periphery of the periphery– 15% of population have traditional claims to 25% of

world’s land & resources– 6,000 cultural groups

• Most will be extinct by 2050

• Human rights-environment link– Oil, mining, dams, hunting & fishing rights– Cultures as systems of knowledge

• Cultural survival & sustainability

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Large Dams: The NarmadaLarge Dams: The Narmada

• Nehru: dams as “modern temples” of India– Green revolution: irrigation

• 4-fold increase in food production since 1950

• 25 million displaced by dams– Peasants, dalits, adivasis

• Adivasis: 40% of displaced, 8% of pop.• Tribunal Award: “land for land”

• Narmada River divides North & South India– 30 large dams planned

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Popular resistance to Narmada DamsPopular resistance to Narmada Dams

• Narmada Bachao Andolan– Started 1985, all volunteer, women-led– Medha Patkar: main leader– Satyagraha, fasting, “stand-ins”

• Transnational alliance– Multilateral Development Bank Campaign– International Rivers Network– Patkar testified to Congress in 1989 – World Bank reform movement

• WB withdrew in 1993, began environmental reforms

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Water PrivatizationWater Privatization

• Problem: 40% of world’s people lack safe water• World Bank solution: markets

• Private investment, raise prices• Trained 10,000 professionals in DCs• All IMF loans since 1998 require water privatization

• People on private water– From 40 million (1955) to 500 million (2000)

• Cochabamba & Latin American populism– Symbolism of water

• Michael Goldman, Imperial Nature• Ken Conca, Governing Water

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A global immune system?A global immune system?

• “The purpose of a global immune system is to identify what is not life affirming and contain, neutralize, or eliminate it.”– Is this a good metaphor for the global sustainability

movement?• “We will either come together as one, globalized

people, or we will disappear as a civilization. … [We must] reclaim our role as engaged agents of our continued existence.”– Is this true? What happens to individuality under this

view?