Globalization and Rethinking of Environmental Consumption From a Sustainability Perspective

Abstract

Sustainable environmental consumption has been a marginalized concept in international development studies and cooperation. In recent decades, there has been growing interest in identifying robust indicators that demonstrate the evidence of globalization and unsustainable environmental consumption. Globalization is premised on integrating the world into a global village. Various dimensions of globalization have different effects on the ecosystem. Plausible evidence linking globalization trajectories into practical interactions suggesting sustainable environmental consumption has been less lucid as the effects of globalization on the ecological environment does not provide clear patterns. This hugely significant problem has reopened critical debates on novel thinking on dynamics of environmental consumption patterns of the affluent societies in the era of globalization and its implications on environmental sustainability. This chapter deployed content analysis methodology and political ecology framework to review and analyze seminal studies on sustainable consumption and globalization, including relevant globalization indexes. The aim is to provide evidence of the impact of globalization on environmental consumption. The chapter suggests that globalization results in asymmetrical and deleterious natural resource extraction between the affluent North and poor South. It offered alternative thinking in which sustained policy framings and international development collaboration could be institutionalized to strengthen sustainable environmental consumption one which is premised on ecological justice and natural resource equality.