When authors can successfully bridge environmental issues with business concerns, the resulting books are a welcome addition to any library. Two new books can be fully recommended as they provide key insights in what can accurately be called the business environment.
Green Ink traces the conflicts between economic growth and the environment and reviews both policies and priorities. The book soars when the author addresses regulation, taxes and permits and environmental law. Here are serious issues which need to be analyzed in a less hysterical fashion than either a Greenpeace or Gregg Easterbook review.
Cairncross continues her review of policies and looks at what has been implemented to save energy, to manage wastes and protect nature. "The strongest reason for protecting biological diversity is simply the vague but universal human feeling that the existence of the natural world matters and enriches the context of life," she writes.
Greening business itself receives full coverage, as well as business opportunities and environmental investment. "It is wrong to pretend that the environment can be cleaned up for nothing," she writes. "The 'win-win' argument breeds the view that pollution prevention is costless... yet pollution takes place because polluters force the rest of society to carry the costs of their polluting activities; so preventing pollution involves forcing polluters to carry their share of the costs."
Finally, the author reviews international trade agreements and their impact on the environment. Cairncross recounts the U.S.-Mexico debate on tuna fishing that was argued during the same time as the NAFTA debates. The U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) sets rules for countries that want to export their produce to the United States.
Often fishermen trapped the dolphins in addition to the yellow-fin tuna. The law mandates that imports are allowed only if the exporting country's laws are as stringent as the United States'. The author takes issue with environmentalists dependence on legal maneuvers:
"The tuna-dolphin dispute was not about a purely environmental issue," Cairncross writes. Nice as dolphins are, they are not an endangered species. And if the main goal of environmentalists had been to protect dolphins, it would have been wiser (and cheaper) to help Mexican fishermen acquire safer designs of nets... Better solutions can be found, if environmentalists are willing to concentrate on ends rather than means. Trade restraints are rarely the best way to improve environmental protection."
This book is an excellent resource and certain to stir intelligent debate in circles that examine the relations among business and environmental concerns.
Editors Miguel Angel Gil and Gustavo Alanis Ortega present a rich mosaic with commentary by INE directory Gabriel Quadri de la Torre, the World Bank's Herman Daly, environmental lawyer Adriana Diaz and others.
The book questions the role between business and environment, offers regional perspectives and examines NAFTA and a potential hemispheric free trade zone's potential impact on the environment.
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