J. Timmons Roberts

Building on structuralist perspectives of the world economy, a small but growing group of researchers have forged a new literature on `ecologically unequal exchange' and documented that energy and materials disproportionately flow from the Global South to the Global North. These findings have begun to influence efforts to negotiate a `post-Kyoto' global climate regime. Since the extraction of resources and energy is one of the most damaging stages of the chain of commodity production, a logical next step is the mounting cry from developing countries that they are owed an `ecological debt' by the North. The G-77 and China have seized on these ideas and a movement for `climate justice' is now gaining strength in and exerting influence in international negotiations, including the UNFCCC meetings in Delhi, Bali, and Poznań. This article reviews the history of these related three ideas and examines their potential to reshape the discussion of `burden sharing' in the post-Kyoto world where development is constrained by climate change.

The potential loss or large-scale degradation of the tropical rainforests has become one of the iconic images of the impacts of twenty-first century environmental change and may be one of our century's most profound legacies. In the Amazon region, the direct threat of deforestation and degradation is now strongly intertwined with an indirect challenge we are just beginning to understand: the possibility of substantial regional drought driven by global climate change. The Amazon region hosts more than half of the world's remaining tropical forests, and some parts have among the greatest concentrations of biodiversity found anywhere on Earth. Overall, the region is estimated to host about a quarter of all global biodiversity. It acts as one of the major ‘flywheels’ of global climate, transpiring water and generating clouds, affecting atmospheric circulation across continents and hemispheres, and storing substantial reserves of biomass and soil carbon. Hence, the ongoing degradation of Amazonia is a threat to local climate stability and a contributor to the global atmospheric climate change crisis. Conversely, the stabilization of Amazonian deforestation and degradation would be an opportunity for local adaptation to climate change, as well as a potential global contributor towards mitigation of climate change. However, addressing deforestation in the Amazon raises substantial challenges in policy, governance, sustainability and economic science. This paper introduces a theme issue dedicated to a multidisciplinary analysis of these challenges.

This article examines four periods of environmental policy-making in the Amazon region of Brazil. It specifically analyses the role of pro-environment and pro-development policy networks in affecting policy design and implementation. It argues that the efforts of environmentalist networks trying to advocate or block relative developmentalist policies in the Amazon depend on three critical factors—whether they are able to attract the support of elites (or at least block their developmentalist policy initiatives); the type and level of international support they have; and the organizational and financial resources that they are able to mobilize. In analysing the four periods, this article finds that while international influences and resources have been substantial in enabling environmentalist networks to flourish and influence the policy, their effectiveness has been nearly always outweighed by Brazilian developmentalist interests. The outcome in each phase has been a different form of stalemate on environmental protection, and the deforestation continued each time, albeit at slower rates. These findings suggest that the key for significantly lower rates of deforestation on the Amazon may be in the ability of pro-environment networks to neutralize opposition by creating an incentive structure that ‘compensates’ potential losers of policies that promote conservation.

The globalization of economic production fundamentally reshapes how a ‘fair’ solution to the climate change problem must be forged. Emissions are increasing sharply in developing countries as wealthy nations ‘offshore’ the energy- and natural resource-intensive stages of production. We review a new and relatively under-utilized theory of ‘ecologically unequal exchange’ and apply it to the case of climate change. We describe four distinct principles that have been proposed to assign responsibility for carbon emissions, discuss their inadequacies, and briefly lay out some ‘hybrid’ proposals currently under consideration. We suggest combining hybrid proposals with environmental aid packages that help poorer nations transition from carbon-intensive pathways of development to more climate-friendly development trajectories, using remuneration from the so-called ‘ecological debt’. In the context of deadlock over a completely inadequate Kyoto Protocol, we argue that fairness principles, climate science, and an understanding of globalization and development must be integrated. La globalización de la producción económica cambia completamente la forma de cómo una “simple”solución al problema del cambio climatológico debe de ser alterado. Las emisiones han aumentado bruscamente en los países en desarrollo mientras que los países ricos operan en el extranjero las fases intensas de producción de energía y utilización de recursos naturales. Hemos revisado una teoría nueva y relativamente poco utilizada de ‘intercambio ecológico desigual’ y la hemos aplicado al caso del cambio del clima. Describimos cuatro principios distintos que se propusieron para asignar la responsabilidad a las emisiones de carbón, discutimos sus faltas de adecuación y planeamos brevemente unas propuestas ‘híbridas'que se encuentran actualmente bajo consideración. Sugerimos combinar las propuestas híbridas con los paquetes de ayuda para el medio ambiente que ayuden a las naciones más pobres a hacer la transición de las vías intensivas de desarrollo de carbón a trayectorias de desarrollo más adaptable al clima, usando renumeración de la llamada ‘deuda ecológica’. En el contexto sobre un Protocolo de Kyoto estancado y completamente inadecuado, discutimos que la justicia, ciencia climatológica y el entendimiento de globalización y desarrollo deben integrarse.

Workers and environmentalists in the United States have often found themselves on opposite sides of critical issues. Yet at the WTO meeting in Seattle in November 1999, they came together in a historic protest many see as a watershed in the formation of a new blue-green “Seattle Coalition.” However the two camps are again in con?ict over substantive issues, and in the changed political climate of post 9-11, the question arises of the coalition’s durability. The paper ?rst brie? y reviews the history of labor-environment interactions in the United States. It then examines a series of problems and potential areas of promise for the movements: di?culties of coalition-building, expectations of reciprocation, local vs. national connections, and the question of di?ering class cultures and interests. Finally, three areas of potential research and action are suggested: new roles for the mainstream environmental groups, just transition alliances and climate justice alliances. We propose that the environmen-tal justice and environmental health wings of the green movement are more suited to making long-term coalitions with labor than are habitat-oriented green groups.