we,

hree years after
Norwegian Prime
Minister Gro
Brundtland’s his-
toric report made
“sustainable devel.
opriient”’ a house-
hold word
throughout the
industrialized world, the landscape of
green politics is changing dramatically.

On one side, in ground already staked
out by Michael Wilson and George Bush,
hundreds of new companies have
appeared, offering “‘environmentally-
friendly” products and a new range of
technologies to cope with industrial wastes
and environmental accidents. British
Columbia last month hosted a world-wide
meeting — the Globe 90
conference — dedicated to the idea that
the response to the environmental
challenges of the 90s “‘must stem from
industry and be economically driven.”

But in this province at least, that
landscape is also being changed by an
increasing number of environmentalists
who see the Globe 90 conference’s
“market environmentalism” as exactly the
wrong way to go. And together with other
groups — trade unions and Native
organizations in particular — they’re
making the case that tinkering with
regulations and compelling companies to
produce chlorine-free coffee filters won’t
solve the problem — that it requires
changes to current economic priorities
which place the corporate bottom line
above environmental concerns.

By SEAN GRIFFIN
_iaialadeien aparece ce

As corporations strive to cash in on the green boom, many environmentalists

are going ina different direction — working with other groups for a change in

18 « Pacific Tribune, April 30, 1990

That change, they say, means
addressing some basic issues such as
control of resources and aboriginal land
claims and dealing with the question of
environmental sustainability before
economic growth.

Since the time of Brundtland’s report,
both government and industry have
striven to put their own definitions to
sustainable development, working at the
same time to ensure that the changes
demanded by a public that is increasingly
environmentally aware can be managed
within the confines of the market
economy.

Finance Minister Michael Wilson
typified it in a speech to the Economic
Policy Council of the United Nations last
September when he argued that
regulations and legal sanctions against
pollution weren’t the answer — that
“creative, market-based solutions” should
be developed that “encourage new
technologies.”

At the Globe 90 conference the displays
were filled with scores of companies
armed with just such new technologies,
hoping to cash in on market opportunities
created by new public and government
interest in recycling and resource
conservation. And last week, Robyn
Allan, the senior economist with the B.C.
Central Credit Union urged corporate
readers of the Globe and Mail Report on
Business to take the initiative in
developing opportunities in environmental
technologies.

“Since the world is going to have to
adjust to the costs of a clean environment

— including a massive cleanup — we
may as well make money doing it,” she
said.

Although many worry that the market
approach to environmental problems will
lull many Canadians into thinking that
the crisis can be overcome through
technology without any fundamental
changes in the way the society produces
and consumes, arguments like Allan’s
have helped to sharpen the debate over
the direction the environmental movement
should take in the future.

Business and environmentalists are “on
fundamentally different paths,” says
Catherine Stewart, the regional director of —
Greenpeace for the last 2 years.

Industry has focused exclusively on
“sustainable development,” she says,
adding that for business, “development is
still the noun and sustainable only an
incidental adjective. For
environmentalists, on the other hand,
developing sustainability is the
key — ensuring that priority is given to

_restoring health and balance to the

environment.

“Our focus is away from erawth; away
from wasteful production,” she
emphasizes, adding that Canadians in
particular have “tan awesomely wasteful
society.”

Significantly, the question of
growth —and who will benefit from that
growth —was a central issue in the
establishment of the NDP Greens, one of
a number of groups which tries to bring
together environmental activism with a
broader social program.

In a speech to the business. community
in March, 1989, NDP leader Mike
Harcourt rejected any idea that New
Democrats in office would seek limits on ~
economic growth and assured corporate’?
leaders that the NDP would be in favour
of growth, although with a fairer
distribution of the wealth 'created 110

Larry Kuehn, one of the Paaritbes of
the NDP Greens and the managing editor
of the left alternative magazine, New
Directions, responded with an article ine"
the September edition entitled “Living and
prospering without growth.” In it he cited
as an example of the problem of capitalist
growth the B.C. forest industry which has”
depended on ever-increasing logging to
maintain its profits while reducing the
work force through technology.

As long as that goes on, he argued, the
environmental degradation would
continue and fewer and fewer people
would benefit from it.

As well as writing the article — which,
Kuehn notes, touched off considerable
controversy within the NDP — Kuehn
and others launched the NDP Greens as a —
caucus within the party. It was billed as
providing a “socialist perspective on the
environment.”

The initial meeting brought together
half a dozen people, he says, “but it’s just
been growing ever since.” The caucus
demonstrated that it enjoys wide support
during the debate on Carmanah Valley
logging at the February convention of the
NDP.

In addition, the NDP Greens have
extended their organization from the
Lower Mainland to Vancouver Island, the
Northwest and the Cariboo, Kuehn says.

He also notes that there have been
changes within the environmental
movement itself, as many, in the course of
being active on ecological issues have seen
the connections with other issues of social
justice and peace.

“The environmental movement is
coming of age,” he says, pointing to the
movement’s beginnings in the 1970s. But
although the activism of that decade did
win some regulations, and some structures
of regulatory control, he adds, virtually
the whole apparatus was dismantled
amidst the free market policies and de-
regulation of the Reagan era.

That has not only created a new sense —