Market Based Environmentalism In Developing Nations

With neo-liberalism approaching its peak, free market environmentalism has become the basis of many environmental policies, especially in developing nations (or global south). Free-market environmentalism argues that the free market and property rights provide the best means of preserving the environment, internalizing pollution costs, and conserving resources.

Free-market environmentalists, hence, argues that the best way to protect the environment is to clarify and protect property rights. This adopts the technique of negotiations to improve environmental quality. For example: If affected parties can compel polluters to compensate them, they will reduce or eliminate the externality. Market proponents advocate changes to the legal system that empower affected parties to obtain such compensation. They further claim that governments have limited affected parties' ability to do so by complicating the tort system to benefit producers over others. Market based environmentalism recognises environmental problems as ‘market failures’ and emphasises on reducing the negative externality. This kind of environmentalism overlooks the fact that environment problems also affect socio-political-cultural landscape of the society and viewing it only through market principles narrows down environmentalism to just an economic resource. Though many environmentalists blame markets for many of today's environmental problems, free-market environmentalists blame many of these problems on distortions of the market and the lack of markets. Government actions are blamed for a number of environmental detriments. One of the most important argument in the favour of market-based environmentalism is that, economists argue that, if industries internalized the costs of negative externalities, they would face an incentive to reduce them, perhaps even becoming enthusiastic about taking advantage of opportunities to improve profitability through lower costs.

Moreover, economists claim this would lead to the optimal balance between the marginal benefits of pursuing an activity and the marginal cost of its environmental consequences. But as already mentioned above, it only talks about the profit and loss and dealing of environment in market but it totally ignores the socio-cultural implications of environment on human beings. Further, there are market-based policy instruments that helps in facilitating market-based environmentalism. In environmental law and policy, market-based instruments (MBIs) are policy instruments that use markets, price, and other economic variables to provide incentives for polluters to reduce or eliminate negative environmental externalities. MBIs seek to address the market failure of externalities (such as pollution) by incorporating the external cost of production or consumption activities through taxes or charges on processes or products, or by creating property rights and facilitating the establishment of a proxy market for the use of environmental services. Market-based instruments are also referred to as economic instruments, price-based instruments, new environmental policy instruments (NEPIs) or new instruments of environmental policy. Examples include environmentally related taxes, charges and subsidies, emissions trading and other tradeable permit systems, deposit-refund systems, environmental labelling laws, licenses, and economic property rights. For instance, the European Union Emission Trading Scheme is an example of a market-based instrument to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Market-based instruments differ from other policy instruments such as voluntary agreements and regulatory instruments. However, implementing an MBI also commonly requires some form of regulation. Market based instruments can be implemented in a systematic manner, across an economy or region, across economic sectors, or by environmental medium (e. g. water). Individual MBIs are instances of environmental pricing reform.

When western world has already reached to the saturation of development its global south that is becoming more and more the centre of development. In the age of privatisation and neo-liberalisation, Market based environmentalism and MBIs have become an easy policy to tackle environmental problems. It is important for policymakers to realise that putting a price on environmental problems can never be beneficial in long run and its consequences are disastrous. Policies that include charging environmental taxes or fines for industries that exceed the defined limit of emissions has become a joke and an easy way out. These policies have failed in motivating the industrialists to works towards environmental problems. Moreover, it has become an easy way out for them. While, the North-American and European countries have progressed towards development through destructive means, global south is on similar path. Market based environmentalism is just an innovative way to destroy environment for the profits and success in the market. While many global south countries like, South Africa, Bolivia etc. have focused on other innovative techniques diverting from MBE, like creating awareness about green economy and framing policies to sustainably and judicially use resources. MBE has created the ‘tragedy of commons’ by degrading resources and then turning them into commodities, greatest example of this is ‘water’. MBE have tricked us into believing that these common property resources are commodities and it can be used only by people who can ‘afford’ it, thereby making resources such as water a luxury for so many people. To sum up, there is a need for policymakers to come up with comprehensive policies for environments. Moreover, state intervention and regulation are needed to regulate MBE, before they privatize every natural resource present.

Greening the Urban Culture, a Policy Perspective

As the world is progressing towards urbanisation, taking care of environment has become one of the goals. In order to make cities ‘smarter’, policymakers are coming up with the idea of “Greening the Urban Culture”, also known as green urbanism. It has been defined as the practice of creating communities which is an advantage to ecosystem as a whole, in other words, it basically means providing benefits to human and the environment. According to Timothy Batley, it is an attempt to shape more sustainable places, communities and lifestyles, and consume less of the world’s resources. It is considered to be interdisciplinary, combining the collaboration of landscape architects, engineers, urban planners, ecologists, transport planners, physicists, psychologists, sociologists, economists and other specialists in addition to architects and urban designers as to make urban spaces more inclusive, cohesive and greener in its approach. Batley was one of the first person to emphasise on including Green Urbanism in planning and management of urban centres around the world. The vision of the idea as remarked by him, was, mainly creative design ideas for urban renewal and environment sustainability. Further, more scholars also started researching and adding more dimensions to it, Lehman quoted saying that Green Urbanism should be a proactive concept which strives to work towards zero carbon, fossil fuel free future infrastructures systems for renewable energies, public transport and individual energy-efficient building designs. He designed and planned out six pointers that exemplify Green Urbanism:

• Cities that strive to live within their ecological limits, fundamentally reduce their ecological footprints, and acknowledge their impacts on other cities and communities and the larger planet.
• Cities that are green and function in ways that is analogous to nature.
• Cities that strive to develop positive symbiotic relationships with and between its hinterlands (whether that be regional, national, or international).
• Cities that strive toward local and regional self-sufficiency and take full advantage of and nurture local/regional food production, economy, power production, and many other activities that sustain and support their populations.
• Cities that facilitate and encourage more sustainable, healthful lifestyles.
• Cities that emphasize a high quality of life and the creation of highly liveable neighbourhoods and communities.

A policy perspective: As far as, we have discussed, the principle of Green Urbanism, this part of the article will analyse the policy perspective of it in India. In recent decades, India has seen unprecedented population growth and urbanization. In the period between 2001 and 2011, the total population increased by 17. 64%. Moreover, according to the census, India had 5,161 classified towns and 384 urban agglomerations in 2001 and it has increased to 7,935 classified towns and 475 urban agglomerations in 2011, making India the second largest urban system in the world. However, the current urban growth is far exceeding the capacity of infrastructure and services. While many are attracted to cities because of the potential opportunities for better livelihoods (concentration of services, availability of jobs, improved lifestyle etc. ), local governments are facing the daunting challenge of meeting the needs of all citizens - with a special focus on the urban poor, providing housing and basic services, and building the infrastructure required to keep pace with the growing population. For this growth to be sustainable, policies, strategies and actions must be guided by an approach that aims at positive social, environmental and overall economic impacts: Green Growth.

‘Green Growth’ or ‘Green Urbanism’ is still a new concept in India, as it is around the world. Indian cities need to better understand what a Green Growth process entails - and the benefits that can be derived from it - before they can effectively start their transition towards a Green Growth path. To bridge this knowledge and awareness gap, the Global Green Growth Institute in India has set up the “Urban Green Growth Strategies for Indian Cities Program”, to support municipal and state governments by providing technical and strategic expertise to better meet their development objectives and offering implementation support for green and inclusive growth. It is very important for academicians and future policymakers to understand that, the ambition and scale of the urban transformation in India will only be sustainable if the path chosen to achieve targeted objectives is essentially a ‘green’ path. The nature and extent of the environmental pressures and damages being caused by India’s cities are yet to be fully measured; however, there is sufficient evidence in the levels of air and water pollution alone that these cities are producing externalities that are likely to severely impede the productivity of the indigent populations and are contributing to global phenomena like climate change to unprecedented levels. In this scenario, the developmental impetus needs to be steered towards greener solutions and a new approach to the economy of cities.

To sum up, there are several initiatives that work towards promoting a more “greener” development in India but hardly anyone is aware about it. While researching for the topic, I got to know about the strategies and vision adopted by Ministry of Urban Development towards Green Urbanism. But, none of this is getting implemented properly due to lack of awareness of the importance of it.

Environmental Justice and Intersectionality

When we talk about justice, we usually discuss it in the context of social relationships among the humans, justice in context of environment is sort of a contemporary concept. The concept of “Environmental Justice” emerged in USA in 1980s. It stirred a discussion among academicians, policymakers, bureaucrats etc. The term, environmental justice has two distinct uses with the more common usage describing a social movement that focuses on the fair distribution of environmental benefits and burdens. The other use is an interdisciplinary body of social science literature that includes theories of the environment and justice, environmental laws and their implementations, environmental policy and planning and governance for development and sustainability, and political ecology. The United States Environmental Protection Agency defines environmental justice as follows:

Environmental justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, colour, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. EPA has this goal for all communities and persons across this Nation. It will be achieved when everyone enjoys the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards and equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work.

Environmental discrimination is something which correlates with social and political discrimination. If a person or a community is socially ostracized due to prevalent power dynamics in society, they are definitely going to discriminated or ostracized environmentally, in terms of disproportionate resources etc. Environmental justice is an important social movement to increase the awareness about rights of people on the environment etc. Under this head only, intersectionality is also being discussed. The concept of environmental justice and intersectionality is needed to be studied further because it all relates with socio-political-economic standing of a person. Hence, the urgency to unpack this concept is real. Environmental justice struggles intensify, as do related risks to socio-environmental equity and environmental health. It was found out in many reports worldwide that pollution kills nine million people worldwide annually and “threatens human societies”.

As climate change accelerates, it’s a definitive that we are going to witness more extreme weather patterns, more frequent and intense disasters, and consequent environmental justice and health burdens as industrial toxicants and hazards are subsequently released. Intersecting issues of environmental injustice continue to become increasingly acute – and society’s most vulnerable members often bear the brunt of these increased risks. Issues of equity and environmental justice stand at the nexus of these intersecting socio-environmental problems. Answers to these environmental questions do not exist in isolation, but are instead connected to intersecting forms of structural environmental injustice and dominant ideologies that operate as classist, racist, sexist, nativist, homophobic, and anthropocentric matrices of domination. In response to these forces, though, people use deeply intersectional, innovative strategies to resist environmental injustices. Thus, it is important to study environmental through intersectionality. Intersectionality provides the conceptual tools to help elucidate and strengthen environmental justice scholarship in precisely these nuanced ways. Fusing the two can indeed add power and relevance to the environmental justice perspective.

This concept has never been researched and discussed in much detail in Indian academic circles, but social movements like Chipko Movement or Narmada Bachao Andolan depicts that Indian environmentalism can never be dealt in silos and there has always been an intersectionality with environmental justice. Hence, for justice to be fully achieved there is a need to study it through different concepts. Moreover, I also feel that it becomes duty of scholars to align environmental movements with other intersectionality and to work to incorporate these considerations into decision-making processes to prevent future environmental injustices. While environmental justice movements have seen limited success in the past, we believe that intersectional solidarity in research and scholarly works and activism that more clearly identifies and holds accountable powerful actors, organizations, structures, and processes has the capacity to enhance the transformational capabilities of environmental justice efforts. In conclusion, inequality embedded in social systems, processes, and relations has been a central problem for not only humans but for ecosystem as well. Deeply intersectional analyses of environmental injustices, therefore, serve to enhance and examine multiple forms of inequity as they are embodied and experienced in the context of socio-environmental issues.