Globalisation and the Environment

In this final lesson on the state and globalization we're going to talk about the impact of globalization specifically on environmental issues and the topic of the environment and climate change more broadly. So it's actually quite interesting because we know already and we should know already as relatively educated people, you only have to be relatively educated to have this detailed understanding, but we know that the issue of climate change is undoubtedly the most important problem. the world is going to have to deal with in the next few decades or potentially not deal with. Well let's just see how it goes and we'll just let it all unfold and then let it all destroy the world. That's probably the foreign policy of a number of different states at the moment. But it's also an issue where we can actually provide a very convincing argument against globalization, against the idea that globalization has had a positive impact. If we look at all the other examples that we've done, that we've examined. We looked at the impact of globalization on human rights. Generally speaking, human rights have had greater protections as a result of globalization. Similarly for things like prevention of poverty or things like the prevention or the adjudication of conflict, these different things tend to have been positively impacted by globalization. However, the environment is probably one that is not impacted very positively as the result of globalization. So this lesson what we're going to do is talk about the negative impact that globalization has had on the environment before looking at a number of global initiatives that have attempted to reduce the impact of globalization on climate change and or solve the problem of climate change in more detail. So globalization has had an adverse impact on the environment for a number of reasons. Firstly, we have the increase in industrialization that leads to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. simple as that. It's quite simple. Industrialization has also led to an increase in deforestation. Now you might be thinking, well, what has globalization got to do with industrialization? Well, granted, there has been industrialization that takes place and can take place independent of globalization, but with greater globalization has increased the amount of industrialization that exists within the world, especially when it comes to the creation and establishment of greater and deeper supply chains. Things like huge oil tankers and maritime exports all either directly contribute to greenhouse gas emissions like you know giant freighters and stuff having having an adverse effect and but also in certain situations where they're not intended to have a negative impact but do so for example when it comes to oil spills and to damage to the environment in regards to pollution of certain ecosystems we'll talk about those don't you worry in a couple of minutes time The need for greater energy consumption has led to an increase in all kinds of economic and environmental disasters over the years. Oil spill disasters, nuclear disasters, as well as the just general increase in energy consumption, generally increasing greenhouse gas emissions. None of this should be particularly controversial to anyone who is listening. Now, when we talk about globalisation, we talk about the environment, we have to make focus on the impact of multinational corporations. Because arguably the greatest detrimental impact on the environment comes from these multinational corporations. There are multiple examples of this being the case. Some of the most pertinent examples concern the impact of oil companies when it comes to their impact on environmental hotspots. Now before I start going in, and attacking multinational corporations for a second. I should make it very, very clear that multinational corporations don't exist in a vacuum, okay? They exist because of the demand for their products or their services from ordinary individuals. The only reason why oil companies exist and why oil companies are so exploitative in terms of environmental damage is because there is a huge demand for energy across the entire planet. I think it's often the case that when we talk about sort of populist... policies relating to the environment and the impact of corporations. People try to try to detach multinational corporations from the greater global societal system that exists that allow them to exist and that allow them to have the detrimental impact and essentially make it so that they have to have a detrimental impact on the environment. So let's just be a little bit clear on that before we carry on. So the best example of A multinational corporation, specifically an oil company, having a detrimental impact on the environment comes from a case that exists against Chevron, which is an oil company. Now, I'm not going to go into this in a great amount of detail, but I would really heavily, highly encourage you to research this case because it's wild, the kind of things that took place within this case. Essentially, the person who litigated this case, the person who litigated against the oil company Chevron, the human rights lawyer, is, I believe, under house arrest as a result of this case, as a result of threats from the Chevron oil company. But it was a... essentially was one of the largest lawsuits in history, a $9.5 billion claim against the oil company Chevron for environmental damage that was caused to the Amazon rainforest. Now, it's still going back and forth. They actually lost that case. Chevron lost the $8.5 billion claim, $9.5 billion claim. However, they are yet to pay a single penny because they are holding it up in litigation as much as possible because they know. and I think every other oil company knows, that if they can be successfully sued for $9.5 billion for the environmental damage that was done to the Amazon rainforest, then that will open the floodgates to litigation against essentially every other oil company in the world for environmental damage that they caused. So it is incredibly important for Chevron to not set that as a precedent. So it is important for them to... not pay that money because if they pay that money then essentially every other oil company could potentially go bankrupt as a result of cases that can be brought against them. That's all I'm going to say on this particular issue it is incredibly interesting so I would highly recommend googling just Chevron lawsuit 9.5 billion rainforest or something and going through and examining that case it's really really interesting. So as I put here google for more it's pretty wild. Now equally I A few months ago in fact, Peru launched legal claims against a Spanish oil company by the name of Repsol. So again, for damage that they did to the environment, there has been a claim brought against Repsol by the whole country, by the state of Peru. Oil spills are also a very, very important thing that we have to talk about, because I think people underestimate the impact of oil spills on the local environment of particular regions from which the spills come from. You might not think that a single oil tanker would be able to do the amount of damage that it does, but when an oil spill like that takes place, it can almost permanently disrupt the ecosystem from which that spill is taking place. So, for example, within a maritime setting, specifically when you've got maritime vessels that are carrying oil, they get damaged, releasing that cargo into the environment, then you have a situation where we have very detrimental oil spills. This is a direct example of how globalisation and supply chains can have detrimental impact on the environment because it is an example of the need for the global integration of the transportation of various products, for example oil, to and from different areas within a maritime supply chain setting, damaging the environment essentially. There are a couple of examples of this being detrimental in terms of maritime oil spills. So you have the Tauri Canyon oil spill which I believe it had a detrimental impact on the United Kingdom. You also have the Exxon Valdez, which is also an incredibly damaging oil spill as well. Oil spills can also take place within the context of oil drilling. So where you have established an oil rig and there is drilling taking place and then that drilling goes wrong for whatever reason, whatever technical engineering based reason, that can then lead to the oil well that is dug to just to spew oil out into. the ocean and the best example of this is of course the deep water horizon disaster that took place i believe it was the early 2000s or mid mid 2000s the deep water horizon oil spill and explosion as a result as well again focus on that if you want to look at any of these in more detail these are all really really interesting cases for anyone that's interested in their sort of maritime law or their maritime supply chains this is a really interesting topic to get into So we can all think of examples of how globalization has had a detrimental impact on the environment. But what about efforts within global politics to support climate initiatives? Because there has been a pushback in terms of the efforts that is made. There is a growing body of law that exists in terms of environmental protection. And we see that environmental protection finds its way into other areas of the law as well, which we'll get to in a minute. So one apt example of... How globalization has had a positive impact on the environment is the near universal banning of CFCs in certain consumer and industrial products that resulted in the depletion of the ozone layer. So some of you might, depending on when you watch this, some of you might not actually know that much, if anything, about the ozone layer. But when I was growing up, there was a hole in the ozone layer, essentially, which was above Antarctica that was causing skyrocketing temperatures. And this hole in the ozone layer was caused by this particular compound, CFCs, chlorofluorocarbons. And they were found in things like hairsprays. Basically what the CFCs did was that they would attach to ozone and they would bind with ozone, react with ozone and actually just deplete the ozone because it would split the ozone molecules up into separate compounds. So essentially you're getting rid of ozone when you're putting CFCs into the atmosphere. When the ozone layer was discovered, I believe it was in the 1980s, it was very quickly determined that CFCs were the cause and a... an alternative to cfcs were very quickly attributed and then a number of universal and international multilateral treaties established a near permanent and universal banning of cfcs in all kinds of consumer industrial products to the point now where the ozone layer is is healing it is now nowhere near as big as it used to be and it is predicted to have all but gone within the next 20 30 40 years and so this is a really interesting example of how the ozone layer, how a detrimental impact to the environment can actually be reversed as a result of global agreement on a particular issue. So that's a very interesting example that we can look at. Another interesting example is of course the Paris Climate Accords. It's an example of radical harmonization of beliefs in terms of the international community. Now of course we remember that the Trump administration unilaterally withdrew from the Paris Climate Accords but the Biden administration rejoined the accords. I believe on the first day of inauguration essentially and the Paris climate accords aren't entirely they're not necessarily producing a certain binding obligation on the part of states they are setting targets for states when it comes to the reduction in co2 emissions to the point where they are essentially setting targets to become net zero by a certain date in time and it gives states the discretion to be able to implement the results for the Paris climate accords in their own policy ways really really interesting it's a really really good example of how you can utilize the you can utilize the the ways in which we can incentivize states to become net zero as a result of setting realistic targets for each individual state and then giving the states the power and authority to be able to to to um to to legislate on this themselves really interesting example are the paris climate accords and also the paris climate accords i believe are nearly universally established they are nearly universally signed on to i'm pretty sure now i might be wrong in this so i'll put a disclaimer in the description if i am but i'm pretty sure north korea are party to the paris climate accords that's how universal they are in terms of agreement across the world Support for the environment is also found very heavily in other examples of law, specifically within economic globalisation. So, for example, when it comes to trade regulation, there are a number of general exceptions to certain provisions on the basis of providing protection for the environment. So, when you sign on to trade treaties, so, for example, WTO law, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, you have a certain number of obligations under the GATT and the GATS and the TRIPS agreement, for example. do uphold in this particular regime. So I'm not going to go into any great detail of it, but the examples of this include, for example, a principle that you should establish national treatment for products that are imported versus products that are domestic. There is also the most favoured nations treatment as well, which involves not being discriminatory to one country over another on the basis of the similar products that are being imported and exported, etc, etc, etc. But... While there are all these obligations as part of the WTO, there are also exceptions that are allowed for within the WTO as well. Some of these exceptions are on the basis of the establishment of regional integration, so customs unions. So, for example, the relationship between states within the European Union is different to the relationship between third states in the European Union as part of the World Trade Organization. The reason for that is because there are general exceptions within the WTO to regional customs unions. But there are also exceptions. on the basis of the protection of the environment. And that is part of Article XX of the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade. They provide general exemptions, some of which relate to environmental protection. There are also agreements and rules in place on the ways in which we regulate trade of biological materials. They are known as sanitary and phytosanitary products. So sanitary referring to human and animal products, and phytosanitary referring to plant products. Again, all of these different things. relates to the regulation of environmental measures within the broader context of world trade law. Finally we have the growth of international economic law which I have mentioned or sorry international environmental law sorry which I have mentioned already and we see an increase in activity of over the past few decades. So there are multiple rules derived from international custom so for example there is a general duty within customary international law for states to warn other states of damage or danger that are of an environmental nature. So an example of this being breached is the 1986 Chernobyl disaster that took place, where the Soviet Union didn't actually warn anyone about the damage that was done with the meltdown of the reactor number four in Chernobyl in Pripyat. Now, this is a general rule of law, a general practice that exists. So essentially if there is a for example a nuclear spill, nuclear disaster that has taken place or there is any other kind of environmental disaster there is a general duty for states to warn other neighbouring states that could potentially be in danger of this environmental danger. It's generally seen as part of the good neighbourly principle of principle which is principle 21 of the Stockholm Declaration and then finally within the realm of treaty law we find examples of environmental protection. A lot of different treaties today relate to protecting the environment or if they don't relate to protecting the environment they have a certain amount of environmental protection baked into them. So for example there's the Kyoto Protocol, there is the POP Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants and others as well. For those who want to go into more detail on the different treaties and international environmental law I highly encourage you to do so.

But it's also an issue where we can actually provide a very convincing argument against globalization, against the idea that globalization has had a positive impact. If we look at all the other examples that we've done, that we've examined. We looked at the impact of globalization on human rights. Generally speaking, human rights have had greater protections as a result of globalization.

Similarly for things like prevention of poverty or things like the prevention or the adjudication of conflict, these different things tend to have been positively impacted by globalization. However, the environment is probably one that is not impacted very positively as the result of globalization. So this lesson what we're going to do is talk about the negative impact that globalization has had on the environment before looking at a number of global initiatives that have attempted to reduce the impact of globalization on climate change and or solve the problem of climate change in more detail.

So globalization has had an adverse impact on the environment for a number of reasons. Firstly, we have the increase in industrialization that leads to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. simple as that.

It's quite simple. Industrialization has also led to an increase in deforestation. Now you might be thinking, well, what has globalization got to do with industrialization?

Well, granted, there has been industrialization that takes place and can take place independent of globalization, but with greater globalization has increased the amount of industrialization that exists within the world, especially when it comes to the creation and establishment of greater and deeper supply chains. Things like huge oil tankers and maritime exports all either directly contribute to greenhouse gas emissions like you know giant freighters and stuff having having an adverse effect and but also in certain situations where they're not intended to have a negative impact but do so for example when it comes to oil spills and to damage to the environment in regards to pollution of certain ecosystems we'll talk about those don't you worry in a couple of minutes time The need for greater energy consumption has led to an increase in all kinds of economic and environmental disasters over the years. Oil spill disasters, nuclear disasters, as well as the just general increase in energy consumption, generally increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

None of this should be particularly controversial to anyone who is listening. Now, when we talk about globalisation, we talk about the environment, we have to make focus on the impact of multinational corporations. Because arguably the greatest detrimental impact on the environment comes from these multinational corporations.

There are multiple examples of this being the case. Some of the most pertinent examples concern the impact of oil companies when it comes to their impact on environmental hotspots. Now before I start going in, and attacking multinational corporations for a second.

I should make it very, very clear that multinational corporations don't exist in a vacuum, okay? They exist because of the demand for their products or their services from ordinary individuals. The only reason why oil companies exist and why oil companies are so exploitative in terms of environmental damage is because there is a huge demand for energy across the entire planet. I think it's often the case that when we talk about sort of populist...

policies relating to the environment and the impact of corporations. People try to try to detach multinational corporations from the greater global societal system that exists that allow them to exist and that allow them to have the detrimental impact and essentially make it so that they have to have a detrimental impact on the environment. So let's just be a little bit clear on that before we carry on.

So the best example of A multinational corporation, specifically an oil company, having a detrimental impact on the environment comes from a case that exists against Chevron, which is an oil company. Now, I'm not going to go into this in a great amount of detail, but I would really heavily, highly encourage you to research this case because it's wild, the kind of things that took place within this case. Essentially, the person who litigated this case, the person who litigated against the oil company Chevron, the human rights lawyer, is, I believe, under house arrest as a result of this case, as a result of threats from the Chevron oil company.

But it was a... essentially was one of the largest lawsuits in history, a $9.5 billion claim against the oil company Chevron for environmental damage that was caused to the Amazon rainforest. Now, it's still going back and forth.

They actually lost that case. Chevron lost the $8.5 billion claim, $9.5 billion claim. However, they are yet to pay a single penny because they are holding it up in litigation as much as possible because they know. and I think every other oil company knows, that if they can be successfully sued for $9.5 billion for the environmental damage that was done to the Amazon rainforest, then that will open the floodgates to litigation against essentially every other oil company in the world for environmental damage that they caused.

So it is incredibly important for Chevron to not set that as a precedent. So it is important for them to... not pay that money because if they pay that money then essentially every other oil company could potentially go bankrupt as a result of cases that can be brought against them.

That's all I'm going to say on this particular issue it is incredibly interesting so I would highly recommend googling just Chevron lawsuit 9.5 billion rainforest or something and going through and examining that case it's really really interesting. So as I put here google for more it's pretty wild. Now equally I A few months ago in fact, Peru launched legal claims against a Spanish oil company by the name of Repsol. So again, for damage that they did to the environment, there has been a claim brought against Repsol by the whole country, by the state of Peru.

Oil spills are also a very, very important thing that we have to talk about, because I think people underestimate the impact of oil spills on the local environment of particular regions from which the spills come from. You might not think that a single oil tanker would be able to do the amount of damage that it does, but when an oil spill like that takes place, it can almost permanently disrupt the ecosystem from which that spill is taking place. So, for example, within a maritime setting, specifically when you've got maritime vessels that are carrying oil, they get damaged, releasing that cargo into the environment, then you have a situation where we have very detrimental oil spills. This is a direct example of how globalisation and supply chains can have detrimental impact on the environment because it is an example of the need for the global integration of the transportation of various products, for example oil, to and from different areas within a maritime supply chain setting, damaging the environment essentially.

There are a couple of examples of this being detrimental in terms of maritime oil spills. So you have the Tauri Canyon oil spill which I believe it had a detrimental impact on the United Kingdom. You also have the Exxon Valdez, which is also an incredibly damaging oil spill as well. Oil spills can also take place within the context of oil drilling. So where you have established an oil rig and there is drilling taking place and then that drilling goes wrong for whatever reason, whatever technical engineering based reason, that can then lead to the oil well that is dug to just to spew oil out into.

the ocean and the best example of this is of course the deep water horizon disaster that took place i believe it was the early 2000s or mid mid 2000s the deep water horizon oil spill and explosion as a result as well again focus on that if you want to look at any of these in more detail these are all really really interesting cases for anyone that's interested in their sort of maritime law or their maritime supply chains this is a really interesting topic to get into So we can all think of examples of how globalization has had a detrimental impact on the environment. But what about efforts within global politics to support climate initiatives? Because there has been a pushback in terms of the efforts that is made. There is a growing body of law that exists in terms of environmental protection.

And we see that environmental protection finds its way into other areas of the law as well, which we'll get to in a minute. So one apt example of... How globalization has had a positive impact on the environment is the near universal banning of CFCs in certain consumer and industrial products that resulted in the depletion of the ozone layer.

So some of you might, depending on when you watch this, some of you might not actually know that much, if anything, about the ozone layer. But when I was growing up, there was a hole in the ozone layer, essentially, which was above Antarctica that was causing skyrocketing temperatures. And this hole in the ozone layer was caused by this particular compound, CFCs, chlorofluorocarbons. And they were found in things like hairsprays. Basically what the CFCs did was that they would attach to ozone and they would bind with ozone, react with ozone and actually just deplete the ozone because it would split the ozone molecules up into separate compounds.

So essentially you're getting rid of ozone when you're putting CFCs into the atmosphere. When the ozone layer was discovered, I believe it was in the 1980s, it was very quickly determined that CFCs were the cause and a... an alternative to cfcs were very quickly attributed and then a number of universal and international multilateral treaties established a near permanent and universal banning of cfcs in all kinds of consumer industrial products to the point now where the ozone layer is is healing it is now nowhere near as big as it used to be and it is predicted to have all but gone within the next 20 30 40 years and so this is a really interesting example of how the ozone layer, how a detrimental impact to the environment can actually be reversed as a result of global agreement on a particular issue.

So that's a very interesting example that we can look at. Another interesting example is of course the Paris Climate Accords. It's an example of radical harmonization of beliefs in terms of the international community. Now of course we remember that the Trump administration unilaterally withdrew from the Paris Climate Accords but the Biden administration rejoined the accords.

I believe on the first day of inauguration essentially and the Paris climate accords aren't entirely they're not necessarily producing a certain binding obligation on the part of states they are setting targets for states when it comes to the reduction in co2 emissions to the point where they are essentially setting targets to become net zero by a certain date in time and it gives states the discretion to be able to implement the results for the Paris climate accords in their own policy ways really really interesting it's a really really good example of how you can utilize the you can utilize the the ways in which we can incentivize states to become net zero as a result of setting realistic targets for each individual state and then giving the states the power and authority to be able to to to um to to legislate on this themselves really interesting example are the paris climate accords and also the paris climate accords i believe are nearly universally established they are nearly universally signed on to i'm pretty sure now i might be wrong in this so i'll put a disclaimer in the description if i am but i'm pretty sure north korea are party to the paris climate accords that's how universal they are in terms of agreement across the world Support for the environment is also found very heavily in other examples of law, specifically within economic globalisation. So, for example, when it comes to trade regulation, there are a number of general exceptions to certain provisions on the basis of providing protection for the environment. So, when you sign on to trade treaties, so, for example, WTO law, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, you have a certain number of obligations under the GATT and the GATS and the TRIPS agreement, for example.

do uphold in this particular regime. So I'm not going to go into any great detail of it, but the examples of this include, for example, a principle that you should establish national treatment for products that are imported versus products that are domestic. There is also the most favoured nations treatment as well, which involves not being discriminatory to one country over another on the basis of the similar products that are being imported and exported, etc, etc, etc.

But... While there are all these obligations as part of the WTO, there are also exceptions that are allowed for within the WTO as well. Some of these exceptions are on the basis of the establishment of regional integration, so customs unions.

So, for example, the relationship between states within the European Union is different to the relationship between third states in the European Union as part of the World Trade Organization. The reason for that is because there are general exceptions within the WTO to regional customs unions. But there are also exceptions. on the basis of the protection of the environment. And that is part of Article XX of the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade.

They provide general exemptions, some of which relate to environmental protection. There are also agreements and rules in place on the ways in which we regulate trade of biological materials. They are known as sanitary and phytosanitary products. So sanitary referring to human and animal products, and phytosanitary referring to plant products. Again, all of these different things.

relates to the regulation of environmental measures within the broader context of world trade law. Finally we have the growth of international economic law which I have mentioned or sorry international environmental law sorry which I have mentioned already and we see an increase in activity of over the past few decades. So there are multiple rules derived from international custom so for example there is a general duty within customary international law for states to warn other states of damage or danger that are of an environmental nature. So an example of this being breached is the 1986 Chernobyl disaster that took place, where the Soviet Union didn't actually warn anyone about the damage that was done with the meltdown of the reactor number four in Chernobyl in Pripyat.

Now, this is a general rule of law, a general practice that exists. So essentially if there is a for example a nuclear spill, nuclear disaster that has taken place or there is any other kind of environmental disaster there is a general duty for states to warn other neighbouring states that could potentially be in danger of this environmental danger. It's generally seen as part of the good neighbourly principle of principle which is principle 21 of the Stockholm Declaration and then finally within the realm of treaty law we find examples of environmental protection. A lot of different treaties today relate to protecting the environment or if they don't relate to protecting the environment they have a certain amount of environmental protection baked into them.

So for example there's the Kyoto Protocol, there is the POP Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants and others as well. For those who want to go into more detail on the different treaties and international environmental law I highly encourage you to do so.

Transcript for:Globalisation and the Environment

Transcript for:
Globalisation and the Environment