Internationally, environmental degradation follows the paths of least resistance. Between 1989 and 1994, it is estimated that the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) countries exported 2,611,677 metric tons of hazardous wastes to non-OECD countries (16). Yet these exports should come as no surprise in light of the comments of the current U.S. Under Secretary of the Treasury and former World Bank official Lawrence Summers. In a December 12, 1991, World Bank memo, Summers opined: “Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs?(17).  As Summers’ logic would have it, lives in developing nations are of less value; thus, it makes economic sense to export pollution to those nations.  Whatever the economic logic, the in-country effects of hazardous wastes can be serious. The negative effects of these exports are exacerbated because many of the recipient countries lack the technology to adequately contain and monitor these wastes to protect public health.

Beyond the waste trade, environmental injustices manifest themselves in numerous ways globally. Ethnic and racial minorities have borne the brunt of nuclear testing (18). The Western Shoshone in the United States, ethnic minorities in the Central Asian Republics, Australian Aborigines, ethnic minorities in Algeria, and indigenous people in the South Pacific have all suffered acute and prolonged health problems caused by radiation from testing (19). In another example of environmental injustice, the benefits of biodiversity conservation in protected areas tend to be lowest at the local level and highest at the national and global level; while the costs are the highest at the local level and the lowest at the national and international levels (20). Similarly, in the context of determining national contributions to global climate change, methane emissions of draft animals and naturally decaying areas are unjustly given parity with carbon dioxide emissions from luxury automobiles and inefficient power plants (21).

References and notes

16. Greenpeace, The Database of Known Hazardous Waste Exports from OECD to Non-OECD Countries, 1989–March 1994 (Greenpeace, Washington, D.C., 1994).

17. The World Bank, Memorandum, Lawrence H. Summers, December 12, 1991.

18. Minority Rights Group, The Pacific: Nuclear Testing and Minorities (Minority Rights Group, London, 1991), p. 5; or Arjun Makhijani, Howard Hu, and Katherine Yih, Nuclear Wastelands: A Global Guide to Nuclear Weapons Production and Its Health and Environmental Effects (MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1997).

19. Dana Alston and Nicole Brown, “Global Threats to People of Color,” in Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots, Robert Bullard, ed. (South End Press, Boston, 1993), p. 183.

20. Michael Wells, “Biodiversity Conservation, Affluence, and Poverty: Mismatched Costs and Benefits and Efforts to Remedy Them,” Ambio, Vol. 21 (1992), pp. 237–43.

21. Steven Yearley, Sociology, Environmentalism, Globalization: Reinventing the Globe (Sage Publications, London, 1996), pp. 103–107.