nations. But whereas Ricardo elaborated his thesis for a pre-modernist European
region, contemporary free trade and free dumping now relates to a global context
comprising billions of consumers with access to fast intercontinental shipments,
instant credit and information sharing. This compels modern transnational com-
panies to relocate, and if necessary relocate again to soft-on-labour jurisdictions,
soft-on-minimum-wage labour laws, and soft-on-environmental-protection
geographical regions. Specialization herds labour-intensive industry into labour-
cheap areas, and concentrates resource exploitation ‘up to the competitive margin’
in resource-endowed regions.
The orthodoxy endorsed by the NAFTA (North America Free Trade), EEC
(European Economic Community), APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation
forum), and the Australasian CER (Closer Economic Relations) styles of agree-
ment work against the production of within-nation goods and services supply and
import-substitution. Instead, in the spirit of free trade and competitive marketing,
these protocols encourage cheaper importation from marginally more favourable
(usually lower labour-costing and fossil-fuel subsidized) production environ-
ments.^10 GATT and its offspring the World Trade Organization have, for example,
displaced garment workers in economically more advanced ‘northern’ nations
because of the comparative labour-cost advantages of garment assembly in
densely populated lower-income ‘southern’ nations. Another example is free trade
movements of the needless biscuits and confectionery kind, both ways between
several producing countries. These sum-loss situations come about as a conse-
quence of the overuse of fossil fuels – finite non-replaceable resources, no less –
to facilitate trivial one-off profit-taking and transportations of no
within-nation and little between-nation relevance.
Clearly, then, there is a downside as well as an upside to glob-
alization and growth. Technical improvements in fibre and food
production have always been welcome, yet gene transplanting,
particularly between species, is perceived widely to be unnatural,
even spooky. Similarly, imbalances of wealth between individu-
als has always been a tacitly accepted part of the human condi-
tion, even though it sometimes leaves the really poor and some
first-nation people stuck with a Stone Age plight. Mastery over
trade in accordance with a worldly mantra has, to some, a mes-
sianic attraction. But the reality is that all persons are individu-
als, all communities are different, all nations are distinct. A One
World trade organization does not, and never will, fit all. Open
trade unhindered by ideological protection is an ideal; but
imposed from Geneva it is perceived by many as undermining
internal hegemony, inhibiting national autonomy, and reducing
cultural identity.
There is an ethical compass in individuals which amounts
sometimes to a religiosity, for those who have a God a ‘sanctity’,
and for those who do not have a God a ‘certainty’. Those who
hold to these sanctities and certainties accept and applaud the
gains and benefits of science, appreciate the economy of advan-
Charter for Conservation with Development 81James Lovelock,
atmospheric scientist,
contends that a
[w]holistic regulation is
at work, explaining the
biospheric upheavals of
the twentieth century.
For some this mutual
connectivity is a matter
of simple conviction, for
others science gives a
better explanation. This
is where Lovelock’s Gaia
finds accord with many
of those who have a
belief in God: as well as
suiting many others who
have no God. I consider
it a mistake to rely on
the mysticism of Gaia.
The ‘balance of nature’
is wondrous, but do not
push mystical
explanations too far, for
nature, of itself, lacks an
anthropocentric
conscience.