Organic dumping

The German sociologist Ulrich Beck argued in his most famous book, Risk Society (1986), published in English in 1992, that while material goods are distributed as a result of power and economy, pollution is democratic; it affects everyone equally. This forms the basis for four critical chapters written by French academics on how environmental destruction affects people differently. With a background at the Centre for Development and the Environment at UiO in the 1990s, where we discussed ecology, economy, and philosophy with figures like Arne Næss, Harold Wilhite, and Nina Witoszek, this starting point for a book on the environmental consequences for different countries feels somewhat banal after 30 years. However, the debate may have simply progressed further in Norway than in France.

Nothing new

Nevertheless, the retired philosophy professor from Sorbonne, Catherine Larrère, recently published a small (104 pages) book titled Les inégalités environnementales (Environmental Inequalities) with the prestigious publisher Presse Universitaires de France (PUF). Larrère, who contributed one of the four chapters herself, has been involved in the international environmental debate for a lifetime and is clearly frustrated that the environment is not considered a self-evident variable in economic and social analyses. She argues that economists ignore the environment in their societal analyses, while ecophilosophers ignore the fact that the consequences of environmental degradation and different types of pollution are vastly different for the rich and the poor. However, she absolutely does not want the environment and pollution to be included in analyses, as Lawrence Summers, the former Chief Economist of the World Bank, did in 1991. At that time, Summers argued for the profitability of relocating polluting industries to poor countries because the lives of the poor have lower economic value than those of the rich.

In a neoliberal world dominated by New Public Management, it is better to pollute in poor countries than in rich ones because the latter can afford to avoid it. Larrère uses the term «ecological dumping» to describe such processes. Although the wealthiest billion people in the world today account for more than half of global pollution, it is the poor who are both most exposed to and most vulnerable in the deteriorating environment. So far, nothing new.

Conflicts

The chapter by Laura Centemeri and Gildas Renou provides an overview of the research conducted by the Catalan economist Joan Martínez Alier, known for his studies on resource conflicts. His most famous work, The Environmentalism of the Poor: A Study of Ecological Conflicts and Valuation, was published in English in 2002 but did not appear in French until 2014. Consequently, Centemeri and Renou’s contribution also feels somewhat dated. By the way, Martínez Alier was the initiator of a good and up-to-date environmental conflict atlas available at https://ejatlas.org/.

Eloi Laurent, a French economist employed at Stanford University, devotes his chapter to different environmental disadvantages for France’s poor and the rich. He is most concerned that the inexpensive neighbourhoods in the major cities where the poor reside have more noise and air pollution than the affluent areas in the same cities, leading to significantly shorter average life expectancy for the poor. Simply following the reports on Oslo as a divided city in recent decades is enough for such information not to come as a surprise.

Cognitive dissonance

The final part of the book is the best. Urbanist Cyria Emelianoff, who has studied various sustainable cities worldwide for 20 years, explains how planners exacerbate environmental inequalities in cities and how the wealthy can buy areas with minimal environmental damage. She talks about gated communities that include rivers and nature reserves; she questions the wealthy jet-setters who yearn so strongly to return to nature and exert such pressure on natural properties that the people who already live there cannot afford to stay. She analyzes the eco-trends in the wealthy world (vegetarianism/veganism, urban farming, the use of natural remedies, e-bikes) as a reaction to the cognitive dissonance many of us experience, knowing that our consumption, where car use, and flights are as natural as eating mangoes from Pakistan and beans from Kenya, is not truly compatible with the desire for a sustainable environment. The little we do for a better environmental world is negligible. However, as Emelianoff somewhat resignedly states, most individuals are adept at using the arguments they can live with, thereby masking some of the environmental problems even for those who are actually environmental advocates. Without appearing moralistic, Emelianoff reminds us that it is not attitude but action that can save the environment locally, nationally, and globally.