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Industrial geography and the environment
Ap,,,,edGu,,graphy. Vol.17.No. 3.p~.193~201. 1991 C 1997Elsev~rSc1ence Ltd Pnntedm GreatBntan. All nShtrresewed 0143.6?28/97517.00 +000
PII: SOl43-6228(97)00004-0
Industrial geography and the environment David Gibbs School of Geography and Earth Resources, University of Hull, Cottingham Road, Hull HU6 7RX, UK
Michael
Healey
Department of Geography and Geology, Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education, Francis Close Hall, Swindon Road, Cheltenham GL50 4AZ. UK
While the environment has increasingly become an area of research for many social and natural scientists, there has only been a limited engagement with these issues by industrial geographers. This paper investigates the contribution that industrial geographers can make to the environmental debate, particularly in relation to the integration of economic and environmental policy. The importance of the appropriate scale at which to address environmental problems is discussed. 0 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd Keywords: environment, industrial geography, sustainable development A major item on natural and social science research agendas in the 1990s continues to be the environment. However, the environment has received little attention from industrial geographers. Given the industrial origins of so many current environmental problems, this is perhaps surprising. Industrial geographers have, in the main, been concerned with different research agendas (although see Walker et al., 1979 and Stafford, 1985 for earlier concerns with these issues and, more recently, Taylor, 1995). A major research agenda for many industrial geographers over the past decade has been the implications for local and regional economies of the processes of economic restructuring consequent upon the shift from Fordism to an as yet indeterminate form of post-Fordism (Storper and Scott, 1992). Within this agenda, environmental factors have played a minor role and research by industrial geographers has effectively proceeded on a course parallel with environmental research. In part, this is a consequence of the effective division of geography into human and physical specialisms (Johnston, 1989). For many human geographers, environmental issues are natural science concerns and, as such, best left to physical geographers (Simmons, 1990; Katz and Kirby, 1991). From time to time geographers have used the environment to revive the argument for a geography that needs integrated human-environment research (Cooke, 1992). For example, Johnston (1996) specifically focuses on an understanding of environmental problems from a human geography perspective. Similarly, Harvey has called for ‘a whole new look at the relations between ecology, environment and politicaleconomic perspectives in geography’ (Harvey, 1990: 376) and has moved towards a greater integration of environmental concepts into his own work (Harvey, 1993a,b, 1996). However, in contemporary mainstream industrial geography it is relatively rare to find 193
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geography
and the environment:
D. Gibbs and M
Healey
research workers with an interest in environmental issues. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to assist in remedying this deficiency. It is argued that this relative absence of industrial geographers from the environmental debate has occurred to the detriment of both industrial geography and environmental research. This is not to argue for an academic division of labour in which industrial geographers and environmental researchers have different expertise or experiences that the other does not have, or could not develop, but rather for the most part that they have been pursuing different research agendas. The industrial content of the environmental debate is under-researched and it is proposed that recent work by industrial geographers has a role to play in this context.
Environmental
problems and sustainable
development
Before assessing the contribution that industrial geography can make, it is important to be clear regarding the issues that need to be addressed. While it is easy to talk in general terms about ‘environmental issues’ or ‘problems’, it is important to specify which are of central importance and likely to have major impacts upon the world environment. As a starting point, Table I lists 13 key environmental problems of global importance identified by the UK Centre for the Exploitation of Science and Technology (CEST), which was set up in 1988 by a consortium of major UK companies to contribute to the identification and commercialization of industrially promising areas of science and technology. It is, however, an independent organization which aims to provide industry with an overview of the industry and environment debate. Some of the problems identified by CEST, such as smells and noise, are essentially local in their impact. While possessing a high nuisance value at this scale, they are essentially amenity impacts where the effects are relatively obvious and the remedial measures relatively well known (Local Government Management Board, 1993). However, others are likely to have major impacts upon the world environment, such as the potential for global warming and sea level changes as a consequence of the enhanced greenhouse effect. Addressing these environmental issues is more problematic, given that both their impacts and the remedial measures required are less certain. For the purposes of this paper, however, the important point concerning these problems is that they are primarily generated by industryrelated activities. For example, the main greenhouse gases-nitrogen oxides, carbon dioxide and methane-result from electricity generation and use, transport, coalmining and manufacturing production. In total, it is estimated that 62 per cent of greenhouse gases produced by human activity arise from industrial processes, energy consumption and
Table 1 Key environmental Technology (CEST) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
problems identified by the Centn? for the Exploitation
Greenhouse effect Stratospheric ozone depletion Acid rain Water quality Heavy metals Volatile organic compounds and smells Persistent organics
8. 9. IO. 1 I. 12. 13.
of Science and
Air quality Noise Waste management Contaminated land Major spills and incidents Releases from biotechnology
Nore: CEST defined these 13 problems from priority lists within the UK Department of the Environment, the Netherlands Ministry of Housing, Physical Planning and Environment and the European Commission. It deliberately excludes radioactive materials and problems of population control, deforestation, desertification and erosion. Source: CEST (I99 I) 194
Industrial geography and the environment: D. Gibbs and M. Healey
transport (Houghton et al., 1992). Different pollutants result from different sources, however. For example, in the UK the two main sources of nitrogen oxides are power stations and road transport, carbon dioxide results mainly from power stations and industry, while industry is the primary source of methane and volatile organic compounds (Smith, 1993). Emissions of these pollutants on a world scale are not restricted to developed countries but are also found in the former centrally planned economies of Eastern and Central Europe and increasingly in newly industrializing countries (Ludwig, 1990; Mumme and Sanchez, 1992). A major policy response at various spatial scales to these problems has been to argue that sustainable development must form the basis of future economic development (HM Government, 1990; Commission of the European Communities, 1992; United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, 1992). As opposed to earlier environmentalists’ claims that a ‘no-growth’ policy was needed, current environmental debates revolve around what type of development is to be achieved, with the objective of integrating economic and environmental policies. Although sustainable development is a concept that has been around in various guises for several years, it acquired popular momentum with the publication in 1987 of Our Common Future, the report of the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development, often referred to as the Brundtland Report. Sustainable development, in the much-quoted definition utilized by the World Commission, ‘meets the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987: 43). A commitment to sustainable development has been entered into at all levels of policymaking, from the United Nations Commission on Environment and Development’s (UNCED) global Agenda 21 programme (the 1992 ‘Earth Summit’) in Rio de Janeiro, to the European Union’s (EU) Fifth Environmental Action Programme, entitled ‘Towards Sustainability’, to the national and local level (HM Government, 1990, 1994; Commission of the European Communities, 1992; UNCED, 1992; Local Government Management Board, 1993). Many policy-makers are agreed that sustainable development must form the basis of future economic policy, even if they are rather more vague on what it means and how to achieve it. Policy-makers have not been alone in their conversion to sustainable development. The International Chamber of Commerce launched a Business Charter for Sustainable Development (International Chamber of Commerce, 1991) and the Business Council for Sustainable Development published an investigation of the implications of sustainable development for international business (Schmidheiny, 1992). A useful distinction can be made between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ forms of sustainability (Daly and Cobb, 1989). In the former, environmental concerns assume a higher priority in economic policy, but there is no specification of the environmental quality to be achieved. The strong version of sustainability, however, specifies minimum levels of environmental quality to be achieved prior to consideration of other goals. This version begins from a presumption that society cannot simply let economic activity result in a continual decline in the quality and functions of the environment, even though it may be beneficial in other ways (Jacobs and Stott, 1992). In the strong version of sustainable development there are lower limits to environmental quality, such that a sustainable economy is a constrained economy (Jacobs, 1991). This distinction between weak and strong versions of sustainability is important because of the implications for understanding how implementing sustainable development will affect the economy. With weak sustainability, the emphasis will effectively be on raising environmental efficiency; that is, reducing the environmental impact of each unit of economic activity. It addresses individual parts of the economy, such as firms or sectors, but does not have an holistic approach to the environment. It is this version of sustainable development that receives most endorsement from the business 195
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sector (Schmidheiny, 1992). Conversely, strong sustainable development will require targets to be set for environmental impacts such as emission levels and measures taken to constrain firms and individuals to ensure that these targets are met such that the whole of the economy is affected, rather than some of its constituent parts (Jacobs and Stott, 1992). Adopting a strong version of sustainability as the basis of economic development necessitates a number of changes in the conceptualization of development. First, it involves the integration of environmental and economic policy, so that the conflicts between them are not hidden but resolved within a common framework. Secondly, the concept of development broadens from one emphasizing growth to one incorporating notions of economic welfare, encompassing non-financial elements. Thus sustainable development means that environmental quality can improve economic development through, for example, improving the health of the workforce and creating jobs in environmentally related sectors of the economy. Sustainable development is not therefore solely concerned with a growth in real incomes. Finally, the concept of sustainable development incorporates a commitment to equity. That is not just the creation of wealth and the conservation of resources, but also their fair distribution. The notion of equity should operate not just intergenerationally but also intragenerationally. A commitment to equity necessitates greater public participation and democratic action (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987). It is in relation to the notions of welfare and equity that the strong version of sustainability differs most from the weak version, and it is also here that the more contentious issues arise. In either variant, the issue of sustainable development has so far received little attention from industrial geographers. This is a situation that needs to be remedied for two main reasons. First, industrial geographers should not relegate to a position of secondary importance an issue that is an important agenda item for two of their important objects of study, business and government. Secondly, research by industrial geographers into understanding recent economic and spatial restructuring has much to offer the environmental debate. In the next section of this paper, the potential contribution of research in industrial geography to an understanding of environmental problems and sustainable development is examined in more detail.
Environmentalists, industrial geography and post-Fordism The dominant research agenda for many industrial geographers in recent years has been the practical and theoretical significance of changes from Fordism to some form of emergent post-Fordism (see for example Dunford and Kafkalas, 1992; Storper and Scott, 1992). While there is considerable debate over understanding the processes behind such changes, there is general agreement that ‘something fundamental has occurred’ and that this is reflected in changing industrial location and organization. While industrial geographers have made little attempt to relate such developments to environmental issues, some environmentalists have seen these developments as laying the basis for a more ‘environmentally friendly’ industrial future. A common approach by environmentalists has been to conflate some of these observed locational and organizational changes in the economy with the inevitable outcomes of a move to a specific form of post-Fordism (see for example, World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987; Friends of the Earth, 1990a; Elkin et al., 1991). The environmentalists’ interpretations of the processes at work, however, are often at variance with the interpretations of industrial geographers. For example, two features of postFordism have been seized upon by some environmentalists: the move towards information and communication-technoIogy-based industries and the rise in importance of smaller 196
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units of production. The Brundtland Report argues that new technologies offer opportunities for the dispersal of jobs and industry, thus relieving cities of population and pollution pressures, providing non-farming jobs in the countryside and producing consumer goods that cater to local markets (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987). Under this scenario, information and communication technologies are believed to offer new ways of working, and make working at or closer to home a real possibility, with consequent reductions in pollution. Some environmentalists believe that this would mean an end to commuting except for occasional meetings as most long-distance communication would be by face-to-face telecommunications systems (see Porrit, 1990, for example). A frequent assumption is that new information and communication technologies are inherently benign and that they allow opportunities for substitution between commuting and teleworking (Clark, 1993). However, it has been estimated that for every 1 per cent of the UK workforce who take up telecommuting, there is only a national energy saving of 0.06 per cent (British Telecom, 1992). It has also been argued that the higher levels of interconnection permitted by information and communication technologies stimulate demand for travel, rather than substitute for it (Marvin, 1992). In addition, information and communication technologies, through permitting the growth of just-in-time production and delivery systems, act to increase the amount of interaction, usually by road traffic, with a concomitant rise in pollution. The evidence for the widespread dispersal of industrial activity or the development of telecommuting forming a major part of any post-Fordist developments is, so far, extremely limited. The trend towards smaller-scale business is also thought to be naturally more environmentally friendly than large-scale Fordist business because smaller units are assumed to involve local control (Friends of the Earth, 199Ob). A typical statement of this viewpoint is provided by Crabtree: Local people who control their own local economy are less likely to waste their resources and pollute their environment than distant decision makers with no local rootsthe integration of economic and ecological goals is best secured by decentralising the management of resources. (Crabtree, 1990: 177) The bases for such conclusions are rarely stated explicitly and the main substance for such environmentalists’ arguments is an implicit use of the work of the flexible specialization institutionalists (for example Piore and Sabel, 1984; Hirst and Zeitlin, 1992), which has been subject to substantial criticism by industrial geographers (Amin and Robins, 1990; Amin, 1992; Amin and Malmberg, 1992). The supposedly beneficial environmental consequences of flexible specialization rest upon a number of unsubstantiated assumptions. While industrial geographers would certainly concur with the view that the development of smaller- scale industry has been a major trend within the structure of industry in developed countries in recent years, this does not automatically mean independent small firms. Large firms have been engaged in a process of disintegration and devolution to form smaller units. Production may be decentralized, but the decentralization of control and the extent of local autonomy may be limited. Decentralization is also understood in a different way by environmentalists, in that it is again equated with widespread dispersal. From an industrial geography viewpoint, decentralization has occurred from older core industrial areas to new spaces of industrial production. However, the development of new industrial spaces suggests that a new pattern of industrial agglomeration is occurring, rather than widespread dispersal. Environmental researchers would benefit from a reading of these debates within industrial geography It can be argued that even where there has been a move towards smaller-scale production this does not prevent problems arising, such as the generation of local pollutants 197
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which contribute to global problems. The issue of whether a small unit or firm automatically leads to greater environmental responsiveness is a highly debatable one (Roberts, 1995). Ironically, this may apply to small units of environmentally aware corporations, but small$rms do not necessarily have good environmental records. In some cases their rates of compliance with pollution restrictions and regulations on workplace and employee conditions, for example, are much poorer than those of larger firms (Rainnie, 1984). Not only may large firms have the resources to invest in processes and products for sustainable development, but they may also, for instance, be more energy efficient or better able to utilize pollution abatement technologies due to their economies of scale (Welford and Gouldson, 1993). In some areas, such as waste disposal, small firms may be squeezed out of the market by increasingly stringent regulations. Small-firm suppliers to larger firms may find that in future they are required to meet certain environmental management standards (such as the British Standards Institute’s Environmental Management Standard BS 7750) if they are to continue their supply function. In addition, as industrial geographers have long known, larger, multi-plant firms have more options open to them than small independent firms. They may externalize some of their environmental problems through shifting production to developing countries or by subcontracting out the processes concerned. Certainly any policy for sustainable development needs to address the issues of large firms, not only because of their importance for most economies, but also because they will play a major role in hindering or assisting moves towards sustainable development (Schmidheiny, 1992). The enthusiasm of environmentalists for small firms and local production appears to rest upon an optimistic view of industrial futures. Research by industrial geographers has an important role to play in helping the understanding of the economic and spatial processes that underlie environmental problems. Overly deterministic claims that a combination of new technology and small business are important components of a necessary move towards sustainable development are questionable when re-examined from the perspective of industrial geography. Recent work by industrial geographers indicates that the organizational and spatial form of post-Fordism is far from necessary, but is open to debate and shaping (Storper and Scott, 1992). A more productive line of investigation, as opposed to trying to see necessary favourable outcomes in the changing organization of production, may be to analyse the extent to which recent political, social and economic moves towards sustainable development are the early signs of fundamental changes in the ways that industrial economies and societies are organized. It could be suggested that growing public awareness of environmental issues, the rise of ‘green consumerism’ and the incorporation of sustainable development into economic policy represent constituent elements of a new means of social and economic organization (McGrew, 1993). If this is the case, then in the longer term the whole issue of environmentalism and sustainable development may prove problematic for policy-makers and industrialists. While the scale and consequences of environmental problems are such that the modest reforms currently on offer are inadequate for the task, it is possible that these reforms will create a momentum for more radical measures (O’Riordan, 1992). Effectively this implies that current measures to implement weak sustainability may lead to pressure to implement strong sustainability. If strong sustainable development does become the guiding principle of economic development, then radical changes in the form and nature of capitalism will occur. At the very least, strong sustainable development measures are incompatible with the market-orientated policies that have become common in developed countries (Jacobs, 1991). Coordination, cooperation, equity and democratic involvement are essential features of policies for strong sustainable development. In the longer term, adopting weak sustainable development measures is unlikely to reduce sufficiently the major threat posed by environmental degradation to existing economic and social organization. However, at 198
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present this is very much open to future shaping through social struggle and conflict. Indeed, Harvey (1993a) argues that concepts such as sustainable development are currently a means by which capital is seeking the continuation of a particular set of social relations. Its adoption as a concept by the International Chamber of Commerce and the Business Council for Sustainable Development may be a reflection of this and, as O’Riordan (1992: 311) points out, it is an aspect of ‘the changing relationship between modern environmentalism and legitimation of the survival of capitalism’.
Conclusion and policy implications This paper started out from the premise that environmental problems are largely the product of industrial activity and therefore should be of interest to industrial geographers. Moreover, the potential impacts upon global economies and societies of these environmental problems if left unchecked (global warming, sea level change and so on) are of such an order of magnitude that they necessitate a new approach to economic development. Such an approach is supposedly enshrined in the idea of sustainable development, but it has been argued here that the approach to industrial analysis and policy implications developed by many environmentalists lacks rigour, resting upon unsupported assumptions conceming the role of technology and industrial organization. It is in this context that recent work in industrial geography helps to illuminate some of these issues through work on the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism. This work points out that the supposed dispersal of industrial development is in reality the development of new spatial agglomerations and that industry is undergoing concentration of ownership rather than a move towards local autonomy. The contradictory nature of information and communication technologies can also be highlighted, in that while they have the potential to act as a means of dispersal and decentralization, they also allow centralization of ownership control. These stand in contrast to environmentalists’ analyses which conflate observed economic changes with spatial outcomes. Recent research in industrial geography has much to offer environmental analysis, but it should also be clear that a consideration of the implications of global environmental problems and sustainable development should be incorporated into current approaches in industrial geography As a starting point industrial geographers need to consider how incorporating sustainable development in both weak and strong forms will have an impact upon economic development over space (Gibbs and Healey, 1995). There are two key issues in the definition of strong sustainability that have barely been addressed-economic welfare and equity-while greater attention has been devoted to the task of integrating the economy and the environment. Thus one of the key aims of strong sustainable development-a commitment to equity-may be lost in the process of environmental improvement. Poorer and marginal groups in a local area may have most to fear from a local strong sustainable development strategy (the loss of manual jobs in polluting industries, for example), but perhaps they also have the most to gain (not only through an improved environment, for example, but also through the labour-intensive nature of job creation in environmental protection). There is also a need to consider the most appropriate spatial scale at which to implement policies for sustainable development (Gibbs and Healey, 1995). While the nature of the important environmental problems is global in scale, implementing policy at this level is problematic. At the other end of the spatial scale, Cohen (1993) argues that individual urban areas are too small to cope with environmental problems that stretch across administrative boundaries; these need to be dealt with by strengthening both municipal and regional government. However, individual local or regional authorities acting in isolation, as with individual firms or countries acting in isolation, will not ‘solve’ the 199
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environmental problem because of the cross-boundary nature of such problems. Indeed this stresses the need for strong sustainable development, as weak sustainability measures only address the margins of environmental problems, and do so in isolation. Moreover, the local economy itself is an area that has been a point of some contention in industrial geography, with considerable debate over whether economic development measures for local economies can be effective in a world dominated by large corporations and subject to economic restructuring processes operating on a global scale (Swyngedouw, 1989; Amin and Malmberg, 1992). A similar debate needs to take place around the appropriate scale for sustainable development. Approaching sustainable development from the purely local level is not enough; what is needed is an interplay between policy ‘from above’, as in Agenda 21 and EU policy, and ‘from below’ in the form of local-level initiatives, such as local schemes for pollution control. This meso-scale role has been envisaged by some as providing a new role for regional planning (see for example Breheny, 1993; Roberts and Tilley, 1993; Steiner and Nauser, 1993). More research needs to be undertaken to establish the relevant spatial scales for effective policy implementation.
Acknowledgements David Gibbs would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Economic and Social Research Council’s Global Environmental Change Programme (Grant no. L320253132). We are grateful for the comments of the anonymous referees on earlier versions of this paper.
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Harvey, D. (1993a) The nature of environment: the dialectics of social and environmental change. Socialist Register, l-5 1. Harvey, D. (1993b) Cities of dreams. Guardian, 15 October, 1S-19. Harvey, D. (1996) Justice, Nature and the Geography of Dtfference. Blackwell, Oxford. Hirst, I? and Zeitlin, J. (1992) Flexible specialization versus post-Fordism: theory, evidence and policy implications. In Pathways to Industrialisation and Regional Development, ed. M. Storper and A. Scott, pp. 70-l 15. Routledge, London. Houghton, J. T., Callander, B. A. and Varney, S. K. (1992) Climate Change 1992: TheSupplementary Report to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. HM Government (1990) This Common Inheritance. Cm 1200, HMSO, London. HM Government (1994) Sustainable Development. Cm 2426, HMSO, London. International Chamber of Commerce (I 991) The Business Charter Tar Sustainable Develooment. ICC. Paris. Jacobs, M. (1991) The Green Economy. Pluto Press, London. . Jacobs, M. and Stott, M. (1992) Sustainable development and the local economy. Local Economy 7(3). 261-272.
Johnston, R. J. (1989) Environmental Problems: Nature, Economy and State. Belhaven, London. Johnston, R. J. (1996) Environmental Problems: Nature, Economy and State. Wiley, London. Katz. C. and Kirby, A. (1991) In the nature of things: the environment and everyday life. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 16(3), 259-271.
Local Government Management Board (1993) Greening Economic Development. LGMB, Luton. Ludwig, H. F. (1990) Moving towards economic-cum-environmental sustainability in Asian developing countries. The Environmentalist 10(4), 237-280. McGrew, A. (1993) The political dynamics of the ‘new’ environmentalism. In Business and the Environment. Implications of the New Environmentalism, ed. D. Smith, pp. 12-26. Paul Chapman Publishing, London. Marvin, S. (1992) Telecommunications and the Environment: A Framework for Sustainable Cities. Report for British Telecom, Department of Town and Country Planning, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Mumme, S. P and Sanchez, R. A. (1992) New directions in Mexican environmental policy. Environmental Management 16(4), 465474.
O’Riordan, T. (1992) The environment. In Policy and Change in Thatcher’s Britain, ed. P Cloke, pp. 297324. Pergamon, Oxford. Piore, M. and Sabel, C. (1984) The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities@ Prosperity. Basic Books, New York. Porrit, J. (1990) Where on Earth are we Going? BBC Books, London. Rainnie, A. (1984) Combined and uneven development in the clothing industry: the effects of competition on accumulation. Capitaland Class 22, 141-156. Roberts, P (1995) Environmentally Sustainable Business: A Local and Regional Perspective. Paul Chapman Publishing, London. Roberts, P. and Tilley, F. (1993) Sustainable regional economic development and planning. Paper presented to conference on Integrating Regional Economic Development and Environmental Management, University of Nottingham. Schmidheiny, S. (1992) Changing Course: A Global Business Perspective on Development and the Environment. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Simmons, I. (1990) No rush to grow green? Area 22(4), 384387. Smith, D. (1993) Business and the Environment. Routledge, London. Stafford, H. A. (1985) Environmental protection and industrial location. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 75,2277240.
Steiner, D. and Nauser, M. (1993) Human Ecology: Fragments of Anti-Fragmentary Views of the World. Routledge, London. Storper, M. and Scott. A. (1992) Pathways to Industrialisation and Regional Development. Routledge, London. Swyngedouw, E. A. (1989) The heart of the place: the resurrection of locality in an age of hyperspace. Geografiska Annaler Series B 7(l), 13l-42. Taylor, M. (1995) Environmental Change: Industry, Power and Policy. Avebury, Aldershot. United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (1992) Agenda 21. UNCED, Conches, Switzerland. Walker, R., Storper, M. and Gersh, E. (1979) The limits of environmental control: the saga of Dow in the delta. Antipode 11(2), 48-60. Welford, R. and Gouldson, A. (1993) EnvironmentalManagement and Business Strategy. Pitman, London. World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) Our Common Future. Oxford University Press, Oxford. (Revised manuscript received I7 January 1997)
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Industrial geography and the environment David Gibbs School of Geography and Earth Resources, University of Hull, Cottingham Road, Hull HU6 7RX, UK
Michael
Healey
Department of Geography and Geology, Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education, Francis Close Hall, Swindon Road, Cheltenham GL50 4AZ. UK
While the environment has increasingly become an area of research for many social and natural scientists, there has only been a limited engagement with these issues by industrial geographers. This paper investigates the contribution that industrial geographers can make to the environmental debate, particularly in relation to the integration of economic and environmental policy. The importance of the appropriate scale at which to address environmental problems is discussed. 0 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd Keywords: environment, industrial geography, sustainable development A major item on natural and social science research agendas in the 1990s continues to be the environment. However, the environment has received little attention from industrial geographers. Given the industrial origins of so many current environmental problems, this is perhaps surprising. Industrial geographers have, in the main, been concerned with different research agendas (although see Walker et al., 1979 and Stafford, 1985 for earlier concerns with these issues and, more recently, Taylor, 1995). A major research agenda for many industrial geographers over the past decade has been the implications for local and regional economies of the processes of economic restructuring consequent upon the shift from Fordism to an as yet indeterminate form of post-Fordism (Storper and Scott, 1992). Within this agenda, environmental factors have played a minor role and research by industrial geographers has effectively proceeded on a course parallel with environmental research. In part, this is a consequence of the effective division of geography into human and physical specialisms (Johnston, 1989). For many human geographers, environmental issues are natural science concerns and, as such, best left to physical geographers (Simmons, 1990; Katz and Kirby, 1991). From time to time geographers have used the environment to revive the argument for a geography that needs integrated human-environment research (Cooke, 1992). For example, Johnston (1996) specifically focuses on an understanding of environmental problems from a human geography perspective. Similarly, Harvey has called for ‘a whole new look at the relations between ecology, environment and politicaleconomic perspectives in geography’ (Harvey, 1990: 376) and has moved towards a greater integration of environmental concepts into his own work (Harvey, 1993a,b, 1996). However, in contemporary mainstream industrial geography it is relatively rare to find 193
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geography
and the environment:
D. Gibbs and M
Healey
research workers with an interest in environmental issues. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to assist in remedying this deficiency. It is argued that this relative absence of industrial geographers from the environmental debate has occurred to the detriment of both industrial geography and environmental research. This is not to argue for an academic division of labour in which industrial geographers and environmental researchers have different expertise or experiences that the other does not have, or could not develop, but rather for the most part that they have been pursuing different research agendas. The industrial content of the environmental debate is under-researched and it is proposed that recent work by industrial geographers has a role to play in this context.
Environmental
problems and sustainable
development
Before assessing the contribution that industrial geography can make, it is important to be clear regarding the issues that need to be addressed. While it is easy to talk in general terms about ‘environmental issues’ or ‘problems’, it is important to specify which are of central importance and likely to have major impacts upon the world environment. As a starting point, Table I lists 13 key environmental problems of global importance identified by the UK Centre for the Exploitation of Science and Technology (CEST), which was set up in 1988 by a consortium of major UK companies to contribute to the identification and commercialization of industrially promising areas of science and technology. It is, however, an independent organization which aims to provide industry with an overview of the industry and environment debate. Some of the problems identified by CEST, such as smells and noise, are essentially local in their impact. While possessing a high nuisance value at this scale, they are essentially amenity impacts where the effects are relatively obvious and the remedial measures relatively well known (Local Government Management Board, 1993). However, others are likely to have major impacts upon the world environment, such as the potential for global warming and sea level changes as a consequence of the enhanced greenhouse effect. Addressing these environmental issues is more problematic, given that both their impacts and the remedial measures required are less certain. For the purposes of this paper, however, the important point concerning these problems is that they are primarily generated by industryrelated activities. For example, the main greenhouse gases-nitrogen oxides, carbon dioxide and methane-result from electricity generation and use, transport, coalmining and manufacturing production. In total, it is estimated that 62 per cent of greenhouse gases produced by human activity arise from industrial processes, energy consumption and
Table 1 Key environmental Technology (CEST) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
problems identified by the Centn? for the Exploitation
Greenhouse effect Stratospheric ozone depletion Acid rain Water quality Heavy metals Volatile organic compounds and smells Persistent organics
8. 9. IO. 1 I. 12. 13.
of Science and
Air quality Noise Waste management Contaminated land Major spills and incidents Releases from biotechnology
Nore: CEST defined these 13 problems from priority lists within the UK Department of the Environment, the Netherlands Ministry of Housing, Physical Planning and Environment and the European Commission. It deliberately excludes radioactive materials and problems of population control, deforestation, desertification and erosion. Source: CEST (I99 I) 194
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transport (Houghton et al., 1992). Different pollutants result from different sources, however. For example, in the UK the two main sources of nitrogen oxides are power stations and road transport, carbon dioxide results mainly from power stations and industry, while industry is the primary source of methane and volatile organic compounds (Smith, 1993). Emissions of these pollutants on a world scale are not restricted to developed countries but are also found in the former centrally planned economies of Eastern and Central Europe and increasingly in newly industrializing countries (Ludwig, 1990; Mumme and Sanchez, 1992). A major policy response at various spatial scales to these problems has been to argue that sustainable development must form the basis of future economic development (HM Government, 1990; Commission of the European Communities, 1992; United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, 1992). As opposed to earlier environmentalists’ claims that a ‘no-growth’ policy was needed, current environmental debates revolve around what type of development is to be achieved, with the objective of integrating economic and environmental policies. Although sustainable development is a concept that has been around in various guises for several years, it acquired popular momentum with the publication in 1987 of Our Common Future, the report of the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development, often referred to as the Brundtland Report. Sustainable development, in the much-quoted definition utilized by the World Commission, ‘meets the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987: 43). A commitment to sustainable development has been entered into at all levels of policymaking, from the United Nations Commission on Environment and Development’s (UNCED) global Agenda 21 programme (the 1992 ‘Earth Summit’) in Rio de Janeiro, to the European Union’s (EU) Fifth Environmental Action Programme, entitled ‘Towards Sustainability’, to the national and local level (HM Government, 1990, 1994; Commission of the European Communities, 1992; UNCED, 1992; Local Government Management Board, 1993). Many policy-makers are agreed that sustainable development must form the basis of future economic policy, even if they are rather more vague on what it means and how to achieve it. Policy-makers have not been alone in their conversion to sustainable development. The International Chamber of Commerce launched a Business Charter for Sustainable Development (International Chamber of Commerce, 1991) and the Business Council for Sustainable Development published an investigation of the implications of sustainable development for international business (Schmidheiny, 1992). A useful distinction can be made between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ forms of sustainability (Daly and Cobb, 1989). In the former, environmental concerns assume a higher priority in economic policy, but there is no specification of the environmental quality to be achieved. The strong version of sustainability, however, specifies minimum levels of environmental quality to be achieved prior to consideration of other goals. This version begins from a presumption that society cannot simply let economic activity result in a continual decline in the quality and functions of the environment, even though it may be beneficial in other ways (Jacobs and Stott, 1992). In the strong version of sustainable development there are lower limits to environmental quality, such that a sustainable economy is a constrained economy (Jacobs, 1991). This distinction between weak and strong versions of sustainability is important because of the implications for understanding how implementing sustainable development will affect the economy. With weak sustainability, the emphasis will effectively be on raising environmental efficiency; that is, reducing the environmental impact of each unit of economic activity. It addresses individual parts of the economy, such as firms or sectors, but does not have an holistic approach to the environment. It is this version of sustainable development that receives most endorsement from the business 195
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sector (Schmidheiny, 1992). Conversely, strong sustainable development will require targets to be set for environmental impacts such as emission levels and measures taken to constrain firms and individuals to ensure that these targets are met such that the whole of the economy is affected, rather than some of its constituent parts (Jacobs and Stott, 1992). Adopting a strong version of sustainability as the basis of economic development necessitates a number of changes in the conceptualization of development. First, it involves the integration of environmental and economic policy, so that the conflicts between them are not hidden but resolved within a common framework. Secondly, the concept of development broadens from one emphasizing growth to one incorporating notions of economic welfare, encompassing non-financial elements. Thus sustainable development means that environmental quality can improve economic development through, for example, improving the health of the workforce and creating jobs in environmentally related sectors of the economy. Sustainable development is not therefore solely concerned with a growth in real incomes. Finally, the concept of sustainable development incorporates a commitment to equity. That is not just the creation of wealth and the conservation of resources, but also their fair distribution. The notion of equity should operate not just intergenerationally but also intragenerationally. A commitment to equity necessitates greater public participation and democratic action (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987). It is in relation to the notions of welfare and equity that the strong version of sustainability differs most from the weak version, and it is also here that the more contentious issues arise. In either variant, the issue of sustainable development has so far received little attention from industrial geographers. This is a situation that needs to be remedied for two main reasons. First, industrial geographers should not relegate to a position of secondary importance an issue that is an important agenda item for two of their important objects of study, business and government. Secondly, research by industrial geographers into understanding recent economic and spatial restructuring has much to offer the environmental debate. In the next section of this paper, the potential contribution of research in industrial geography to an understanding of environmental problems and sustainable development is examined in more detail.
Environmentalists, industrial geography and post-Fordism The dominant research agenda for many industrial geographers in recent years has been the practical and theoretical significance of changes from Fordism to some form of emergent post-Fordism (see for example Dunford and Kafkalas, 1992; Storper and Scott, 1992). While there is considerable debate over understanding the processes behind such changes, there is general agreement that ‘something fundamental has occurred’ and that this is reflected in changing industrial location and organization. While industrial geographers have made little attempt to relate such developments to environmental issues, some environmentalists have seen these developments as laying the basis for a more ‘environmentally friendly’ industrial future. A common approach by environmentalists has been to conflate some of these observed locational and organizational changes in the economy with the inevitable outcomes of a move to a specific form of post-Fordism (see for example, World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987; Friends of the Earth, 1990a; Elkin et al., 1991). The environmentalists’ interpretations of the processes at work, however, are often at variance with the interpretations of industrial geographers. For example, two features of postFordism have been seized upon by some environmentalists: the move towards information and communication-technoIogy-based industries and the rise in importance of smaller 196
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units of production. The Brundtland Report argues that new technologies offer opportunities for the dispersal of jobs and industry, thus relieving cities of population and pollution pressures, providing non-farming jobs in the countryside and producing consumer goods that cater to local markets (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987). Under this scenario, information and communication technologies are believed to offer new ways of working, and make working at or closer to home a real possibility, with consequent reductions in pollution. Some environmentalists believe that this would mean an end to commuting except for occasional meetings as most long-distance communication would be by face-to-face telecommunications systems (see Porrit, 1990, for example). A frequent assumption is that new information and communication technologies are inherently benign and that they allow opportunities for substitution between commuting and teleworking (Clark, 1993). However, it has been estimated that for every 1 per cent of the UK workforce who take up telecommuting, there is only a national energy saving of 0.06 per cent (British Telecom, 1992). It has also been argued that the higher levels of interconnection permitted by information and communication technologies stimulate demand for travel, rather than substitute for it (Marvin, 1992). In addition, information and communication technologies, through permitting the growth of just-in-time production and delivery systems, act to increase the amount of interaction, usually by road traffic, with a concomitant rise in pollution. The evidence for the widespread dispersal of industrial activity or the development of telecommuting forming a major part of any post-Fordist developments is, so far, extremely limited. The trend towards smaller-scale business is also thought to be naturally more environmentally friendly than large-scale Fordist business because smaller units are assumed to involve local control (Friends of the Earth, 199Ob). A typical statement of this viewpoint is provided by Crabtree: Local people who control their own local economy are less likely to waste their resources and pollute their environment than distant decision makers with no local rootsthe integration of economic and ecological goals is best secured by decentralising the management of resources. (Crabtree, 1990: 177) The bases for such conclusions are rarely stated explicitly and the main substance for such environmentalists’ arguments is an implicit use of the work of the flexible specialization institutionalists (for example Piore and Sabel, 1984; Hirst and Zeitlin, 1992), which has been subject to substantial criticism by industrial geographers (Amin and Robins, 1990; Amin, 1992; Amin and Malmberg, 1992). The supposedly beneficial environmental consequences of flexible specialization rest upon a number of unsubstantiated assumptions. While industrial geographers would certainly concur with the view that the development of smaller- scale industry has been a major trend within the structure of industry in developed countries in recent years, this does not automatically mean independent small firms. Large firms have been engaged in a process of disintegration and devolution to form smaller units. Production may be decentralized, but the decentralization of control and the extent of local autonomy may be limited. Decentralization is also understood in a different way by environmentalists, in that it is again equated with widespread dispersal. From an industrial geography viewpoint, decentralization has occurred from older core industrial areas to new spaces of industrial production. However, the development of new industrial spaces suggests that a new pattern of industrial agglomeration is occurring, rather than widespread dispersal. Environmental researchers would benefit from a reading of these debates within industrial geography It can be argued that even where there has been a move towards smaller-scale production this does not prevent problems arising, such as the generation of local pollutants 197
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which contribute to global problems. The issue of whether a small unit or firm automatically leads to greater environmental responsiveness is a highly debatable one (Roberts, 1995). Ironically, this may apply to small units of environmentally aware corporations, but small$rms do not necessarily have good environmental records. In some cases their rates of compliance with pollution restrictions and regulations on workplace and employee conditions, for example, are much poorer than those of larger firms (Rainnie, 1984). Not only may large firms have the resources to invest in processes and products for sustainable development, but they may also, for instance, be more energy efficient or better able to utilize pollution abatement technologies due to their economies of scale (Welford and Gouldson, 1993). In some areas, such as waste disposal, small firms may be squeezed out of the market by increasingly stringent regulations. Small-firm suppliers to larger firms may find that in future they are required to meet certain environmental management standards (such as the British Standards Institute’s Environmental Management Standard BS 7750) if they are to continue their supply function. In addition, as industrial geographers have long known, larger, multi-plant firms have more options open to them than small independent firms. They may externalize some of their environmental problems through shifting production to developing countries or by subcontracting out the processes concerned. Certainly any policy for sustainable development needs to address the issues of large firms, not only because of their importance for most economies, but also because they will play a major role in hindering or assisting moves towards sustainable development (Schmidheiny, 1992). The enthusiasm of environmentalists for small firms and local production appears to rest upon an optimistic view of industrial futures. Research by industrial geographers has an important role to play in helping the understanding of the economic and spatial processes that underlie environmental problems. Overly deterministic claims that a combination of new technology and small business are important components of a necessary move towards sustainable development are questionable when re-examined from the perspective of industrial geography. Recent work by industrial geographers indicates that the organizational and spatial form of post-Fordism is far from necessary, but is open to debate and shaping (Storper and Scott, 1992). A more productive line of investigation, as opposed to trying to see necessary favourable outcomes in the changing organization of production, may be to analyse the extent to which recent political, social and economic moves towards sustainable development are the early signs of fundamental changes in the ways that industrial economies and societies are organized. It could be suggested that growing public awareness of environmental issues, the rise of ‘green consumerism’ and the incorporation of sustainable development into economic policy represent constituent elements of a new means of social and economic organization (McGrew, 1993). If this is the case, then in the longer term the whole issue of environmentalism and sustainable development may prove problematic for policy-makers and industrialists. While the scale and consequences of environmental problems are such that the modest reforms currently on offer are inadequate for the task, it is possible that these reforms will create a momentum for more radical measures (O’Riordan, 1992). Effectively this implies that current measures to implement weak sustainability may lead to pressure to implement strong sustainability. If strong sustainable development does become the guiding principle of economic development, then radical changes in the form and nature of capitalism will occur. At the very least, strong sustainable development measures are incompatible with the market-orientated policies that have become common in developed countries (Jacobs, 1991). Coordination, cooperation, equity and democratic involvement are essential features of policies for strong sustainable development. In the longer term, adopting weak sustainable development measures is unlikely to reduce sufficiently the major threat posed by environmental degradation to existing economic and social organization. However, at 198
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present this is very much open to future shaping through social struggle and conflict. Indeed, Harvey (1993a) argues that concepts such as sustainable development are currently a means by which capital is seeking the continuation of a particular set of social relations. Its adoption as a concept by the International Chamber of Commerce and the Business Council for Sustainable Development may be a reflection of this and, as O’Riordan (1992: 311) points out, it is an aspect of ‘the changing relationship between modern environmentalism and legitimation of the survival of capitalism’.
Conclusion and policy implications This paper started out from the premise that environmental problems are largely the product of industrial activity and therefore should be of interest to industrial geographers. Moreover, the potential impacts upon global economies and societies of these environmental problems if left unchecked (global warming, sea level change and so on) are of such an order of magnitude that they necessitate a new approach to economic development. Such an approach is supposedly enshrined in the idea of sustainable development, but it has been argued here that the approach to industrial analysis and policy implications developed by many environmentalists lacks rigour, resting upon unsupported assumptions conceming the role of technology and industrial organization. It is in this context that recent work in industrial geography helps to illuminate some of these issues through work on the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism. This work points out that the supposed dispersal of industrial development is in reality the development of new spatial agglomerations and that industry is undergoing concentration of ownership rather than a move towards local autonomy. The contradictory nature of information and communication technologies can also be highlighted, in that while they have the potential to act as a means of dispersal and decentralization, they also allow centralization of ownership control. These stand in contrast to environmentalists’ analyses which conflate observed economic changes with spatial outcomes. Recent research in industrial geography has much to offer environmental analysis, but it should also be clear that a consideration of the implications of global environmental problems and sustainable development should be incorporated into current approaches in industrial geography As a starting point industrial geographers need to consider how incorporating sustainable development in both weak and strong forms will have an impact upon economic development over space (Gibbs and Healey, 1995). There are two key issues in the definition of strong sustainability that have barely been addressed-economic welfare and equity-while greater attention has been devoted to the task of integrating the economy and the environment. Thus one of the key aims of strong sustainable development-a commitment to equity-may be lost in the process of environmental improvement. Poorer and marginal groups in a local area may have most to fear from a local strong sustainable development strategy (the loss of manual jobs in polluting industries, for example), but perhaps they also have the most to gain (not only through an improved environment, for example, but also through the labour-intensive nature of job creation in environmental protection). There is also a need to consider the most appropriate spatial scale at which to implement policies for sustainable development (Gibbs and Healey, 1995). While the nature of the important environmental problems is global in scale, implementing policy at this level is problematic. At the other end of the spatial scale, Cohen (1993) argues that individual urban areas are too small to cope with environmental problems that stretch across administrative boundaries; these need to be dealt with by strengthening both municipal and regional government. However, individual local or regional authorities acting in isolation, as with individual firms or countries acting in isolation, will not ‘solve’ the 199
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environmental problem because of the cross-boundary nature of such problems. Indeed this stresses the need for strong sustainable development, as weak sustainability measures only address the margins of environmental problems, and do so in isolation. Moreover, the local economy itself is an area that has been a point of some contention in industrial geography, with considerable debate over whether economic development measures for local economies can be effective in a world dominated by large corporations and subject to economic restructuring processes operating on a global scale (Swyngedouw, 1989; Amin and Malmberg, 1992). A similar debate needs to take place around the appropriate scale for sustainable development. Approaching sustainable development from the purely local level is not enough; what is needed is an interplay between policy ‘from above’, as in Agenda 21 and EU policy, and ‘from below’ in the form of local-level initiatives, such as local schemes for pollution control. This meso-scale role has been envisaged by some as providing a new role for regional planning (see for example Breheny, 1993; Roberts and Tilley, 1993; Steiner and Nauser, 1993). More research needs to be undertaken to establish the relevant spatial scales for effective policy implementation.
Acknowledgements David Gibbs would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Economic and Social Research Council’s Global Environmental Change Programme (Grant no. L320253132). We are grateful for the comments of the anonymous referees on earlier versions of this paper.
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