**2. Globalization and the environment**

There are several approaches to evaluate environmental sustainability. Environmental Performance Index has been used as a composite indicator to evaluate the state of sustainability of 180 countries by considering 11 issue categories [9]. These categories are air quality, sanitation and drinking water, heavy metals, waste management, biodiversity and habitat, ecosystem services, fisheries, climate change, pollution emission, water resources, and agriculture. Similarly, Environmental Performance Assessment Composite Index has been developed in [10] by combining three indices associated with natural resources, sustainable and efficient use of resources, and use of alternative resources. Likewise, six broad thematic categories energy performance; waste management; air quality and pollution; water quality and pollution; land use, agriculture, and fisheries; and biodiversity, forests, and soils have been proposed by [11] as indicators of environmental sustainability.

Ecological footprint is another common quantitative metric for measuring environmental sustainability. Basically, it is the amount of land, measured in global hectares, required to support a particular lifestyle [12]. Although the ecological footprint gives a valuable quantitative measure of environmental sustainability and enables comparisons of biocapacities of different nations, it does not take technological change and underground resources into account [13]. Furthermore, it does not take land degradation into account [14].

Based on the adaptations from abovementioned studies, this chapter characterizes environmental sustainability in three broad categories of energy and resources consumption, greenhouse gases emission, and pollution to evaluate the interactions between globalization and environmental sustainability.

#### **2.1 Energy and resources consumption**

Globalization has a potential to cause both increase and decrease in energy and resources consumption. Globalization can increase the applications of improved technologies in low- and middle-income nations that lead to higher process and energy efficiencies, eventually reducing the energy and resources consumption. Contrastingly, globalization could also support economic growth that requires higher energy and resources consumption [15].

A popular measure of globalization is the KOF Globalization Index (KOFGI), which measures globalization along the economic, social, and political dimensions for different countries [16]. The 10 most globalized nations based on KOFGI [17] are all high-income nations in Europe that also have very high energy consumption per capita [18]. However, the material footprints of these nations are decreasing over

*Rethinking an Approach for Sustainable Globalization DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.105141*

time with the exception of Sweden and Denmark [19]. Material footprint is one of indicators of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and refers to the total amount of raw materials extracted to meet final consumption demands [20]. It may be noted here that the 10 most globalized nations have material footprints higher than the global average, and the majority of them have footprints higher than the European Union average [19]. It is also noteworthy that 50 most globalized nations [17] are primarily high-income nations with a few upper middle-income nations such as Malaysia and Thailand [21].

Energy consumption of top Asian economies has been found to increase with globalization [22]. It has been reported that the physical quantities of goods traded internationally only represent one-third of the actual natural resources that were used to produce these traded goods [23]. Therefore, it can be argued that globalization is currently increasing energy and resources consumption.

#### **2.2 Greenhouse gases emission**

Globalization, evaluated in terms of KOFGI, has been shown to increase greenhouse gases (GHG) emission in European Union [24] and Japan [25]. On the other hand, globalization has been found to reduce GHG emission in emerging economies such as Brazil, Russia, India, China, Mexico, Indonesia, and Turkey [26, 27] showing some evidence for Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis. This hypothesis states that an inverted-U-shaped relationship exists between different pollutants and per capita income, i.e., environmental pressure increases up to a certain level as income goes up and then decreases. The KEC hypothesis is based on a notion that environmental quality deteriorates at the early stages of economic development and subsequently improves at the later stages [28]. The hypothesis is that as the economic development occurs at the expense of the environment, average income of the population increases. Once the average income is sufficiently high, a turning point is reached where people start to value and take care of their local environment. Technological solutions and energy efficiency enabled by the economic growth then allow for improvement of the local environment, since people can afford to take care of the environment.

#### **2.3 Pollution**

Impacts of globalization on local pollution other than GHG emission are presented here. International trade has been found to contribute to significant portion of total air pollution, which is negatively impacting human health [29–31]. It has recently been estimated that almost everyone on Earth is affected by air pollution [32]. Likewise, globalization may also be contributing toward land degradation. For instance, clearance of native vegetation and land degradation across much of Latin America and Asia has been linked to agricultural expansion and intensification at a commercial scale for export markets [23]. Likewise, there is also an indication that international trades facilitated by globalization are causing higher water pollution in emerging economies such as China [33].

In the context of emerging economies, there are studies showing support for, as well as against, the EKC hypothesis. For instance, support for EKC hypothesis where environmental quality first degraded due to globalization and then improved after the average income became sufficiently high was reported in several Chinese cities by [34]. Contrarily, continued environmental degradation in China was found by [35]

despite the average income being sufficiently high, thereby showing evidence against the EKC hypothesis.

Plastic pollution may also be affected by globalization. For instance, China banned the import of plastic waste in 2017 to tackle its plastic pollution problem [36]. Although many high-income nations have agreed to place a strict limit on export of plastic waste to poorer nations, American exporters are still exporting plastic wastes to poor nations [37]. This can cause significant plastic pollution in poor nations that import plastic wastes.
