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Environmental Problems

Article · February 2012

DOI: 10.1002/9780470670590.wbeog174

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 1

Environmental problems the subject of citizen and governmental atten-

tion worldwide (Dunlap et al. 1993; Frank
RILEY E. DUNLAP AND ANDREW K. JORGENSON
et al. 2000). Environmental problems, espe-
cially human-induced climate change, continue
In recent decades environmental problems
to have a prominent place on the international
have become globalized in terms of their exist-
policy agenda.
ence and impacts as well as the socioeconomic
“Environmental problems” is a ubiquitous
forces that generate them. After briefly noting
but vague concept, and we begin by clarify-
the growth of international awareness of envi-
ing the nature of these problems and how they
ronmental problems, this entry examines first
emerge from human use of the environment by
the nature of environmental problems and their
employing some basic concepts from ecology.
global reach, then evidence that humans are
Ecologists note that the environment provides
increasingly pushing against global ecological
many “goods and services” for human beings
constraints, next the global politico-economic
(de Groot et al. 2002), but we can simplify these
forces that generate and exacerbate ecological
into three general functions that it performs
degradation on a worldwide basis, and finally
for human populations and all other species
ends with concluding remarks.
(Dunlap & Catton 2002). First, the environ-
Humans have faced poor environmental
ment provides us with the resources necessary
conditions throughout history, but what we
for life, from clean air and water to food and
think of as environmental problems became
shelter, as well as the natural resources used in
more common and apparent with industriali-
industrial economies. In providing what ecolo-
zation and urbanization. In the United States,
gists term the “sustenance base” for human
for example, air and water pollution from
societies, the environment is serving a “sup-
factories and dense urban living conditions
ply depot” function. It supplies us with both
attracted growing attention throughout the last
renewable and non-renewable resources, and
century, and by the 1960s became recognized
overuse of the former (e.g., water) may result
as significant problems. Concern over air and
in shortages and the latter (e.g., fossil fuels) in
water pollution rapidly spread to a range of
potential scarcities.
other conditions – soil erosion, pesticide con-
Second, in the process of consuming
tamination, deforestation, declining animal
resources humans produce “waste” products;
populations and species, and so on – through
indeed, we produce an enormously greater
the efforts of environmental scientists, activ-
quantity and variety of wastes than does any
ists, and policy-makers. These diverse con-
other species. The environment must serve as
cerns gradually merged into environmental
a “sink” or “waste repository” for these wastes,
problems (or environmental degradation),
either by absorbing or recycling them into use-
and the 1970 Earth Day in the United States
ful or at least harmless substances. When the
and then the 1972 United Nations Conference
waste products (e.g., city sewage or factory
on the Human Environment in Stockholm
emissions) exceed the environment’s abil-
helped turn “environmental quality” into a
ity to absorb them, the result is water and air
major international issue. By the time of the
pollution.
United Nations Conference on Environment
Finally, like all other species, humans must
and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992,
also have a place to live, and the environment
significant “Green Parties” had been formed
provides our “habitat” – where we live, work,
in Europe and environmental problems were

The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Globalization, First Edition. Edited by George Ritzer.

© 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2012 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
2
play, and travel (e.g., homes, factories, shop-
ping malls, transportation systems, and rec-
reational areas). Thus, the third function of
the environment is to provide “living space”
for human populations. When we overuse a
given living space – from a city to the entire
Earth – overcrowding and/or overpopulation
result.
In sum, when humans overuse an environ-
ment’s ability to fulfill any single function,
environmental “problems” in the form of pol-
lution, resource shortages, and overcrowding
and/or overpopulation are the result. Yet, not
only must the environment serve all three func-
tions, but when a given environment is used for
one function its ability to fulfill the other two
can be impaired. Incompatibilities between the
living-space and waste-repository functions
are apparent, for example, when using an area
for a waste site makes it unsuitable for living
space. Similarly, if hazardous materials escape
from a landfill and contaminate the soil or
water, the area can no longer serve as a supply
depot for drinking water or agricultural prod-
ucts. Finally, converting farmland or forests
into housing subdivisions creates more living
space for people, but means that the land can
no longer function as a supply depot for food
or timber or as habitat for wildlife.
Separating these three functions and analyz-
ing conflicting uses of them provides insight
into the evolution of environmental prob-
lems over time. In the 1960s and early 1970s,
when awareness of environmental problems
was growing rapidly in the United States, air
and water pollution (reflecting overuse of the
environment as waste repository) and the
protection of areas of natural beauty and rec-
reational value (stemming from overuse of the
environment for timber, minerals and other
resources) were major concerns. The “energy
crisis” of 1973–1974 highlighted the depend-
ence of modern industrialized nations on fos-
sil fuels, and thus our vulnerability to energy
shortages ultimately stemming from the finite
nature of the global supply depot. The living-
space function came to the fore in the late
1970s when it was learned that the Love Canal
neighborhood in upstate New York was built on
an abandoned chemical waste site that was leak-
ing toxic materials, the first of a rapidly growing
number of contaminated sites discovered (but
seldom fully remediated) in the United States.
Similar developments have occurred in nations
around the world, particularly with increas-
ing industrialization and resource use, result-
ing in the global spread of local and regional
environmental problems.
In addition, problems stemming from func-
tional incompatibilities at larger geographical
scales have become common in recent dec-
ades. The quest for living space, agricultural
land, and timber leads to tropical deforesta-
tion and loss of biodiversity, while use of the
atmosphere as a waste site for aerosols and
greenhouse gases produces ozone depletion
and climate change. Global warming, in turn,
threatens to make some land areas (particu-
larly coastal zones) less habitable or agricultur-
ally productive while also producing changes
in ocean temperature that are harmful to
invaluable coral reefs and fish populations on
which humans depend. The geographical scale
of these problems and their impacts combined
with the international diffusion of more local-
ized problems clearly constitute a globalization
of environmental problems.
The above examples of how human activi-
ties are affecting the ability of the environment
to serve as our supply depot, living space, and
waste repository focus on specific aspects of
particular environments such as a given river’s
ability to absorb wastes without becoming pol-
luted. It is more accurate, however, to note that
it is not “the environment” but “ecosystems”
and ecological processes that provide these
three functions for humans – and for all other
species. Exceeding the capacity of a given eco-
system to fulfill one or more of the three func-
tions may disrupt not only its ability to fulfill
the others, but to continue functioning at all
(deGroot et al. 2002).
Human overuse leading to potential ecosys-
tem collapse can be observed in the near death
of the Aral Sea in the former Soviet Union
resulting from the combination of industrial

pollution and diversion of water for agricul-
ture. Similar processes plus urbanization pose
an increasingly serious threat to the survival of
the Florida Everglades. More ominously, ecol-
ogists and climatologists are concerned that
growing use of fossil fuels as our prime energy
source will generate – via increased green-
house gas (especially CO2) emissions – climate
change throughout the global ecosystem that
may lead to unforeseeable and irreversible eco-
logical consequences, which will prove harm-
ful to humans and other species (America’s
Climate Choices 2010).
Analysts use the “ecological footprint,” a
measure which captures all three functions of
the environment, to measure the “load” which
humans place on the global ecosystem (Haberl
et al. 2004). Their results suggest that currently
humans make more demands – in terms of
resource use, waste production, and land uti-
lization – than is sustainable in the long run
(Kitzes et al. 2008). In other words, current
populations and lifestyles are exhausting non-
renewable resources like fossil fuels; creating
shortages of renewable resources such as fresh
water, fisheries, and forests; and generating
accumulating levels of pollution, particularly
hazardous wastes. Another way of putting it
is that the ever-growing human population is
exceeding the long-term “carrying capacity” of
the global ecosystem.
The changes in human demand on the
global ecosystem can be illustrated, admittedly
in a highly simplistic but nonetheless analyti-
cally helpful manner, via Figs 1 and 2. Figure 1
depicts the situation about a hundred years
ago. First, note that conflict between the three
functions (represented by overlapping circles)
was relatively modest, since there was generally
ample land available to allow for considerable
segregation of human uses of the environment.
Second, the combined use of the global ecosys-
tem for all three functions, or the total human
“footprint,” presumably fell within the Earth’s
long-term carrying capacity represented by the
outer circle.
In contrast, the current situation depicted
in Fig. 2 differs significantly in both respects.
3
On the one hand, as the Earth is increasingly
used to fulfill the three functions for humans,
conflicts between the three have become com-
monplace. In the extreme, use of the global
atmosphere as waste repository for greenhouse
gases creates changes in climate that threaten
human habitats and sustenance activities
around the world. Second, in line with growing
agreement that the total load of human popula-
tions – measured by ecological footprints and
other indicators (Haberl et al. 2004; Kitzes et al.
2008) – appears unsustainable, the three inner
circles indicating human use of the global eco-
system now exceed the boundaries of the outer
one symbolizing the Earth’s long-term carrying
capacity.
Historically the notion that human socie-
ties face “limits to growth” was based on the
assumption that we may run out of food sup-
plies or natural resources such as oil, but con-
temporary “ecological limits” refer to the finite
ability of the global ecosystem to serve all three
functions simultaneously without having its
own functioning impaired. The limited ability
of the Earth’s atmosphere to absorb greenhouse
gas emissions without producing deleterious
changes in climate may prove the most signifi-
cant ecological limit of all, making prevention
of global warming a critical challenge.
Again, we see the global nature of what are
more aptly termed ecological problems and
constraints. Yet, while the problems are clearly
global and affect human societies worldwide,
it is obvious that some societies (and people)
have contributed a hugely disproportionate
share to our current problems and demands
on the global ecosystem. Environmental ana-
lysts emphasize that the ecological footprints of
poorer nations, and particularly the individual
footprints of their citizens, are vastly lower
than those of wealthy nations and their citizens
(York, Rosa & Dietz 2003).
Distinguishing between the three func-
tions of the environment is helpful not only
in clarifying the nature of ecological problems
but also for understanding how such problems
are increasingly generated in a globalized eco-
nomic system. In a global economy control
4
Living
space
Supply Waste
depot
repository
Figure 1 Competing functions of the
environment – c.1990*.
*Area within largest circle symbolizes global
carrying capacity.
(Dunlap 2007).
over withdrawals and additions is often dis-
embedded from sites of resource extraction
and subsequent sites of processing, use, and
disposal of these resources in the form of com-
mercial products. Control frequently rests in
wealthy and powerful nations whose economic
centers direct much of the world’s economy.
The result is that a good deal of ecological deg-
radation within poor nations stems from their
relationships with more economically and mil-
itarily powerful wealthy nations, even as the
poorer nations are also especially vulnerable
to the global-level problems such as climate
change that have been created largely by the
richer nations.
Environmental social scientists are increas-
ingly analyzing the generation and impacts
of ecological problems at the global level
via a wide range of comparative and cross-
national studies. Many of these studies are
guided by World Systems Analysis (WSA), a
broad perspective on the nature of the global
economy. Although early studies in this tradi-
tion tended to use position in the world sys-
tem – core, semi-peripheral, and peripheral
Living
space
Supply
Waste
depot
repository
Figure 2 Competing functions of the
environment – current situation*.
*Areas outside of largest circle symbolize human
load in excess of global carrying capacity.
(Dunlap 2007).
nations – to predict phenomena such as GHG
emissions (Burns et al. 1997), over time stud-
ies have built on Stephen Bunker’s pioneer-
ing efforts (Bunker 1984) to trace the nature
and consequences of the flow of ecological
goods across borders and in the process have
developed sophisticated models of “ecologi-
cally unequal exchange” that involve – at least
implicitly – distinguishing among the three
basic functions of the environment (Jorgenson
2006).
These studies demonstrate that wealthy
and militarily powerful (or core) nations are
able to use poorer (both peripheral and semi-
peripheral) ones as supply depots, obtaining a
growing portion of the natural resources they
consume from those nations occupying more
peripheral positions in the world economic
system. Likewise, wealthy nations increas-
ingly use poorer nations as waste reposito-
ries by shipping wastes to them for disposal,
locating polluting industries in them, and
overusing the global commons (oceans and
atmosphere) on which all nations depend. In
the process, the wealthy nations – including

those implementing programs of “ecological
modernization” aimed at minimizing environ-
mental degradation – manage to protect their
own environments or living spaces by shifting
their resource extraction and waste problems
to poorer nations. A result is that the wealthier
nations despoil the living spaces and ecosystem
viability of the poorer nations (York & Rosa
2003).
Research in the ecologically unequal
exchange tradition that focuses on the supply
depot function, typically in macro-comparative
contexts, commonly employs relational meas-
ures that capture the relative extent to which
the exports of a given nation are sent to wealth-
ier and more militarily powerful nations. It is
argued that partly through this “vertical flow of
exports” from less developed countries, more
developed and militarily powerful nations are
able to at least partially externalize their high
levels of consumption-based environmen-
tal costs to the former. This in turn tends to
increased levels of environmental degrada-
tion within the borders of the less developed
nations while also suppressing their domestic
levels of resource consumption (Rice 2007). For
example, poorer nations may replace forests
that provided sustainable supplies of plant and
animal life for local populations with vast and
privately owned coffee farms or cattle ranches
whose yields are primarily exported to wealthy
nations.
Generally speaking, the populations of
wealthier and more militarily powerful coun-
tries are positioned advantageously in the con-
temporary world economy, and are thus more
likely to secure and maintain favorable terms of
trade allowing for greater access to the natural
resources and sink (or waste-repository) capac-
ity of areas within less developed countries.
These structural relationships allow the wealthy
and powerful nations to partly outsource or
shift the environmental costs and burdens
of their extremely high consumption levels,
which ultimately contributes to the depletion
of natural resource stocks in less developed
countries. In short, these types of ecologically
unequal exchange relationships are structural
5
mechanisms that enable the high-consuming
populations of affluent and militarily powerful
nations to treat poorer nations as their supply
depots. Longitudinal analyses of the ecologi-
cal footprints of nations (Jorgenson & Clark
2009) as well as cross-national studies of defor-
estation in less developed countries (Shandra
et al. 2009) support these propositions, while
in-depth historical case studies highlight the
ways in which the consequences of ecologically
unequal exchange relationships are felt by the
disadvantaged populations of poorer nations
(Hornborg 2006).
Turning to the waste-repository function,
many studies draw from the foreign invest-
ment dependence perspective, which has its
roots in WSA, and examine the extent to which
foreign direct investment contributes to vari-
ous forms of environmental degradation in
less developed nations. During earlier decades,
many less developed countries experienced a
deepening of foreign debt, which resulted in
austerity measures being developed by global
finance and governance institutions such as the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World
Bank. These austerity measures often encour-
age the governments of indebted countries
to create more appealing conditions for trans-
national corporations and foreign capital.
Thus, in an effort to attract foreign investment
and transnational enterprises headquartered
in developed countries, many less developed
nations have attempted to establish more
favorable business conditions, including pro-
viding exemptions to regulations designed to
protect their environments from industrial
activities.
With these conditions in mind, it is argued
that a large proportion of foreign direct invest-
ment in less developed countries finances
highly polluting and ecologically inefficient
manufacturing processes and facilities, many
of which are outsourced from the wealthy
nations. While this allows for transnational
firms headquartered in the global North to
treat less developed countries as waste reposi-
tories, the commodities produced by these
heavily polluting facilities are largely intended
6
for export to high-consuming developed
nations. Cross-national studies of less devel-
oped countries support these arguments,
indicating that foreign direct investment con-
tributes to the growth of greenhouse gas emis-
sions and air pollutants (Jorgenson, Dick &
Mahutga 2007) and the use of synthetic pesti-
cides and fertilizers (Jorgenson & Kuykendall
2008) in these nations. Complementing cross-
national research on foreign direct investment
and the environment are case studies of the
Maquiladora centers in Mexico (where heav-
ily polluting plants owned by US interests are
concentrated) as well as various communities
within other less developed countries. These
studies provide in-depth illustrations of how
transnational economic relationships lead to
the treatment of less developed countries as
waste repositories for the wealthy nations and
contribute to tragic public health and regional
ecological problems in these poorer countries
(Frey 2003; Pellow 2007).
The focus has been on the increasingly
global nature of human-caused environmental
problems as well the global economic forces
that generate these problems. Research on the
ecological footprints of nations indicate that
the populations of the global North use – on
average – two to thirty times as much bio-
productive resources, including land, as the
populations of poorer countries (Jorgenson &
Clark 2009). Growing strands of scholarship
in contemporary environmental social science,
including the ecologically unequal exchange
and foreign investment and environment tradi-
tions, provide useful analytical tools and empir-
ical evidence for clarifying the extent to which
structural relationships between nations –
particularly along the global North–global South
divide – allow the higher-consuming popula-
tions in the former to treat the latter as supply
depots and waste repositories and in the process
degrade the living spaces of southern nations.
These interrelated processes not only lead
to environmental problems with potentially
catastrophic ecological and public health con-
sequences within the poorer, southern nations,
but they also encourage the generation of
global-level problems. The weak environ-
mental regulations in many poor nations (the
stimulus for wealthy nations to invest in pro-
duction processes within them) and the debt-
driven pressure to develop export economies
enhance levels of greenhouse gas emissions,
tropical deforestation and water pollution that
have global-level ramifications. Furthermore,
allowing residents of wealthy nations to shift
the environmental degradation resulting from
resource extraction, production, and result-
ing polluting from their borders to the poorer
nations of the world encourages their environ-
mentally harmful high levels of consumption –
a major contributor to global environmental
problems. In short, distinguishing among the
three functions of the environment as advo-
cated by Dunlap and Catton (2002) provides
major insight into both the nature and causes
of global environmental problems.
It is tempting to conclude that economic
globalization is inevitably harmful to the
environment. However, such a conclusion
would overlook the potential for other forms
of globalization to mitigate the environmental
harms associated with ecologically unequal
exchange relationships and the outsourcing of
resource-intensive and polluting industries to
poorer nations. For example, along with the
emergence of public concern for the environ-
ment observed in nations around the globe
(Dunlap & York 2008), the growth and reach
of international nongovernmental environ-
mental organizations and the establishment of
environmental ministries and regulations in
national governments have increased in recent
decades (Frank et al. 2000). Recent research
shows that such civil and political forms of
globalization appear to have the potential to
mitigate – to some extent at least  –  the envi-
ronmental harms caused by forms of economic
globalization, particularly the harmful effects
of foreign direct investment in poor nations
(Jorgenson, Dick & Shandra 2011).
In sum, while some forms of economic
globalization have thus far contributed to
environmental degradation both within poor
nations as well as globally, the future is open

to alternatives. If enough pressure could be
mounted by transnational environmental
organizations and international nongovern-
mental organizations more generally, both in
collaboration with localized third-world envi-
ronmental activism, it is possible that stronger
international environmental regulations could
be developed and enforced, the policies of the
World Bank and the IMF pushed in a more
environmentally benign direction, and mul-
tinational corporations encouraged to adopt
“greener” practices (Pellow 2007). The deck
is stacked in favor of the economically and
geopolitically powerful, but the outcome is
not predetermined. Perhaps the current eco-
logically unsustainable trajectory of human-
kind can be altered, but doing so will require
a globalization of effective social and political
action on behalf of sustainability.
SEE ALSO: Climate change; Environment and
Development, Rio Declaration; Environmental
activism; Environmental change; Environ-
mental globalization; Environmental protection
movement.
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