Is ethics the missing link?

• Author: Kakabadse, Yolanda
• Position: Thinking Aloud - Ethics of consumption and globalization

Many Governments have decided that liberalizing trade and opening up markets is the path to prosperity. And, indeed, globalization has brought undoubted benefits to many countries in all parts of the world. But its benefits have been very unevenly distributed and as many as one billion of the world's people eke out a living on less than $1 per day. It is not surprising that social tensions are rising as people are so poor that they need to share a television with their neighbours and watch programmes celebrating conspicuous consumption by the privileged few.

Globalization has also an unnoticed environmental flaw. Throughout history, people have been forced to recognize environmental limits because abusing their local systems of resources would immediately influence their lives for the worse. On the other hand, treating resources with respect and harvesting in a sustainable way immediately reinforce environmentally appropriate behaviour. But with globalized trade, the consumers--or at least those fortunate enough to be able to consume--have no indication of how their consumption is affecting the environment. It is an easy matter for over-exploitation in one part of the world to be financially justifiable by providing inexpensive goods to growing markets in other parts. But when a mangrove is destroyed to make a shrimp pond in Thailand, India or Ecuador, the consumers of shrimp salad in New York or crevettes grillees in Paris or prawn tempura in Tokyo have no idea that productive mangrove ecosystems have been destroyed, disrupting the way of life of coastal peoples . Even worse, once the ponds have ended their productive life after a few years, the people no longer have the other resources of the coastal zone upon which to depend. The consumers simply shift to prawns grown in new shrimp ponds in Viet Nam, Mozambique or Nicaragua, and the local people suffer. Perhaps the problem is fundamentally an ethical one. Peru's Francisco Sagasti points out that we are all part of a disintegrated, fractured global order--all connected and at the same time divided among peoples, ethnic groups and religions--sharing no common understanding of what we mean by quality of life, equity or development.

We are forcing people to treat their environment as a marketplace, not as the place where they live. Lawyers are becoming the new priests of modern society as they negotiate over "intellectual property rights" that once were held sacred but freely shared.

Perhaps...