| BOOKS | publications | |
| The trade and sustainable development debate | |||||
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Trade and Sustainable Development - A Guide for the Perplexed
Published by Group for Environmental Monitoring, P.O. Box 30684, Braamfontein, 2017, South Africa.
Review by M. Munetsi.
Trade and Sustainable Development - A guide for the perplexed is an overview of trade and environment debates currently underway in international meetings. The book seeks to enlighten policy-makers and the general public about some of the dangers of the current world order being shaped up by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and, in general, the North increasingly represented by transnational corporations (TNCs). Globalisation, as advanced by the WTO, seeks to create "free trade" and open up economies to international competition. But, as the book explains, countries with greater economic and political power are only negotiating a version of free trade that is beneficial to their power base - the TNCs. |
TNCs, which control 70 percent of world trade, are working on achieving the best combination of free trade and protected trade to suit their profit margins, independent of any national interests.
The book says there is need to examine the overall implications of the global industrial exploitation of natural resources, especially by TNCs. There is need to improve people's lives through sustainable development - ie meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of further generations to meet their own needs. |
Development can be at the cost of environmental degradation "We need to look at how industrial exploitation is rapidly depleting or destroying natural systems. "Above all, we need to adjust our whole understanding of what kind of growth is possible, not just for developing countries but also for the massively industrialised countries of the North, which are today attempting to define the growth path for poorer underdeveloped countries to follow," says the book. |
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