SOUTH AFRICA: Globalisation & Environment Executive Course

Ready for the WSSD? Enroll in P&DM's Globalisation & Environment Executive Course.

The University of the Witwatersrand's Graduate School of Public and Development offers short courses for government and non-government officials, to provide cutting-edge information about public and development issues.

"Globalisation and Environment" is convened by PATRICK BOND (P&DM) and
MICHAEL DORSEY (DARTMOUTH)from May 6 - 10 2002

The objectives of this post-graduate level course are to:
? develop Southern African civil society leadership and conceptual capacity
in relation to international economics, politics and environmental issues;
? provide relevant case studies to trace the development of international
social and environmental movements; .
? identify policy issues that provide global-local linkages (e.g.,
municipal services, privatisation, debt and trade); .
? help establish follow-up research and advocacy challenges and strategies
for participants, and begin conceptual work on proposals that will take the
work forward in local settings;
? provide training in research/writing skills/analysis that will develop
participants into confident writers for constituents and media.

Course description:
What's behind globalisation? Where is it taking Southern African civil
society, and what are the specifically environmental problems and prospects?
What global-regional-national-local modes of public policy intervention, and
popular mobilisation, is globalisation generating? What aspects of
globalisation and environment are relevant to a region now suffering uneven
development--and in some cases extreme crisis--but also opening up popular
debates over development strategy and environmental stewardship for the
first time?

Using mainly a critical literature, this certificate course begins by
surveying debates surrounding the nature of the globalisation process said
to be central to defining the parameters of contemporary international
political economy. We ask, first of all, whether the current period is one
of corporate/financial power, or vulnerability--or both? Did the terrorism
of September 11, 2001 and subsequent geopolitical realignments make any
difference to the underlying dynamics? Do environmental problems offer the
basis for further conflict, or for building global-scale systems of
regulation that necessarily bring different interests together?

In the process, we consider different foundational positions on key
strategic problems, such as the relationship of current to previous epochs
of globalisation, the roles and capacities of states, the nationalist
project today (in Southern Africa and elsewhere), competing traditions of
analysing the Third World's international economic integration, and
macro-ecological trends. As we examine prospects for international
institutional reform, the nature of the embryonic `global state' comes under
scrutiny, especially as it relates to the World Summit on Sustainable
Development which will be held in Johannesburg in August-September 2002. We
will hone in on central issues, players, discourses, strategies and tactics
associated with WSSD advocacy, exploring the main ways that these have
relevance to regional and local environment/development debates.

In this process, the course addresses issues surrounding civil society
mobilisation--some as dramatic as the `Battle of Seattle' and similar
confrontations in Prague, Washington, Quebec City and Genoa; others bound up
in global-scale reforms; others more modest and localised (for example, to
particular socio-environmental sectors) but no less worthy of
attention--that the corporate globalisation process has given rise to.
Topics will include the (often conflictual) relationships between activist
initiatives and sustained NGO/labour `insider' engagements. As a result, we
will ask whether sometimes-convergent, sometimes-divergent campaigns
associated with opposition to globalisation are sustainable, cumulative and
generalisable. In short, is the phenomenon of international social-justice
activism truly a `movement' or instead merely a set of discrete,
disconnected and untenable issues/organisations which may never achieve a
lasting alliance and gain sufficient power to make change? To answer
requires considering the movement's key `components' (such as the labour,
environmental, feminist, church and even anarchist contributions) and its
`cultural' and `intellectual' groundings, as well as some central
strategic/tactical debates about the way forward, and about appropriate
alliances.

The course will also interrogate specific state/civil-society strategies
and tactics. Both a seminar-style reading and case-study method will be
used, and topics will arise that may include, for example, the use (and
abuse) of Social Clauses to uplift Third World labour and environmental
standards; the agenda for institutional reform of the World Bank and IMF;
the struggle for HIV-AIDS treatment access; access to household water,
sanitation and electricity; and major environmental issues such as global
warming, construction of large dams, and toxic waste management, all of
which are relevant in Southern Africa. These cases, and others, will be
analysed using a variety of materials, including videos (which will be
available for purchase). Participants are expected to become versed in
concrete globalisation/environment issues, assess policy options and
strategic advocacy choices, and be capable of reading--and summarising to
the seminar--advanced intellectual material that is at the cutting-edge of
world debate.

Course facilitators:
Coordinator: Patrick Bond, Professor, Wits P&DM
Patrick holds a PhD in geography and environmental engineering from Johns
Hopkins University. He has drafted more than a dozen policy documents for
the South African government, and worked with civil society groups across
the region. He is the author of seven books, covering development finance,
political democratisation in South Africa and Zimbabwe, urban development,
social and development policy, urban social movements, and the international
movements for social justice. His latest book, available in June 2002,
covers South/ern African environmental problems and solutions in the context
of the WSSD. He has taught the accredited "Advanced Topics in Political
Economy" course for masters-level and doctoral-level students several times
at Wits P&DM, in Japan at the Yokohama National University Department of
Economics, in Canada at York University's International Political Economy
and Environment summer school and in Zimbabwe for the Coalition on Debt and
Development.

Co-teacher: Michael Dorsey, Marshall Fellow, Dartmouth University
Michael is the Thurgood Marshall Fellow in Geography and Environmental
Studies at Dartmouth University, US, and is associated with the Institute
for Ecological Studies in Quito, Ecuador. His PhD work in anthropology from
the University of Michigan focuses on indigenous people and environmental
activism in Latin America. He is an expert on environmental racism, and has
served for several years on the board of the Sierra Club, the largest
environmental group in the United States. He has also been involved in
numerous United Nations processes leading up to the World Summit on
Sustainable Development.

Reading list:

1) BACKGROUND TO GLOBALISATION, AND ITS IMPACT ON SOUTH AFRICA
Khor, M. (2001), Globalisation and the Crisis of Sustainable Development,
Penang, Third World Network.
Bond, P. (2001), Against Global Apartheid: South Africa meets the World
Bank, IMF and International Finance, Cape Town, University of Cape Town
Press, Chapters 1-3, 5 and 7.
Bond, P. (2002), "The New Partnership for Africa's Development: Social,
Economic and Environmental Contradictions," forthcoming in Capitalism,
Nature, Socialism, 13, 3.

2) ENVIRONMENTAL DISCOURSES
Harvey, D. (1996), Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference,
Oxford, Basil Blackwell, Chapter 13, The Environment of Justice,
pp.366-402.
Daly, H. (1996), Beyond Growth, Boston, Beacon Press, Chapter 5,
Fostering Environmentally Sustainable Development, pp.88-95.
Waring, M. (1994), "Ecological Economics," in V.Shiva (Ed), Close to
Home: Women Reconnect Ecology, Health and Development Worldwide, London,
Earthscan, pp.155-161.
Brewer, P. (2001), "Nature, Development and Inequality: Are Women the
Last Colony?," Links, 19, pp.90-111.
Dorsey, M. (1998), "Race, Poverty and Environment," Legal Studies Forum,
22, 1-3, pp.501-518.
Bond, P. (2000), "Economic Growth, Ecological Modernization, or
Environmental Justice?: Conflicting Discourses in Post-Apartheid South
Africa," Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, 11, 1, pp.33-61.

3) DEVELOPMENT DISCOURSES
Sachs, W. (1992), The Development Dictionary, London, Zed Press, Chapters
to be announced.
Escobar, A. (1995), "Imagining a Post-Development Era," in J.Crush (Ed),
Power of Development, New York, Routledge, pp.211-227.
Manzo, K. (1995), "Black Consciousness and the Quest for a
Counter-Modernist Development," in J.Crush (Ed), Power of Development, New
York, Routledge, pp.228-252.

4) THE UNITED NATIONS TO THE RESCUE?
Karliner, J. (1997), The Corporate Planet: Ecology and Politics in the
Age of Globalization, San Francisco, Sierra Club Books; Chapter 2, The
Greening of Global Reach: Corporate Environmentalism Comes of Age,
pp.30-57.
Bennis, P. (2000), Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates today's
UN, New York, Olive Branch Press, Chapter Eight, To the World's Attention,
pp.174-210.
Jasper, W. (1992), Global Tyranny... Step by Step, Wisconsin, Western
Publishers, Chapter Seven, The Global Green Regime, pp.121-143.
United Nations Economic and Social Council (2001), Implementing Agenda
21, Commision on Sustainable Development, http://www.johannesburgsummit.org
Dodds, F. and M.Strauss (2002), Briefing for Participation in Earth
Summit 2002, London, Stakeholder Forum for Our Common Future.

5) CIVIL SOCIETY CHALLENGES
Klein, N. (2000), No Logo, London, Flamingo; Chapter 14, Bad Mood Rising,
pp.325-343.
Petras, J. and H. Veltmayer (2001), Globalization Unmasked: Imperialism
in the 21st Century, London, Zed, Chapter 8, NGOs in the Service of
Imperialism, pp.128-138.
Bond, P. (2001), Against Global Apartheid: South Africa meets the World
Bank, IMF and International Finance, Cape Town, University of Cape Town
Press, Chapters 10-11.

Course Cost: R 5000.00 per participant, including teas, lunches and course
materials

For more information, contact Edith Lefine on 011-717-355 or
[email protected]