Fall, 1997
Reflections on international environmentalism
by Jing Yang Zhang
My work at SVTC lasted only seven weeks, but the benefits of this experience can be realized on several personal and professional levels. First, I made friends with Ted, LB, Leslee Hamilton, Sue, Carlos, Linda and the many board members and student interns at SVTC, whose care, attention and help I greatly appreciate. Second, while researching the printed wiring board industries and technologies, I was rewarded with a flood of information. More importantly, the experience gave the foreigner that I am clearer understandings of American society, of its conflicts among many interests, and of the philosophy and roles of the environmental movement.
Ted once explained to me that SVTC's philosophy is that if people are informed, they can make decisions accordingly, and the informed decisions they make are more likely to be in their best interests. To live up to this belief, SVTC has made enormous efforts to track the environmental impacts of the high-tech industry and to hold industry and government accountable.
I also had opportunities to learn about SVTC's fifteen-year history. An important strategy used by SVTC to stop industry from polluting the environment has been to publicize facts of the pollution to embarrass the worst offenders. In 1988, SVTC was the first to exercise community right to know and published toxics release inventories of companies in Silicon Valley. Moreover, SVTC has been informing local residents of the facts through the phone canvass and asking people to write industry and government to urge them to change polluting behaviors.
The more I understand environmentalism in the US, the more I think about social and economic questions around the environment in other countries, in particular, China, my homeland. Although SVTC and other groups are successful in implementing their strategies, the underlying ideology of environmentalism is Western and not appreciated in many societies to which, unfortunately, the electronics and other industries have expanded. This gives rise to the question of whether environmentalism can be a universally effective tool in promoting sustainable development.
In China, for example, conformity is considered more important than individualism. Even though the planned economy is being replaced by a market economy, the majority of industry is still under control of, or tied to, the government. Individuals and citizen groups are not given the right to take actions on their own against environmentally unsound behavior. Forces that are binding on industry only come from the government.
Economic growth is considered as the top priority by the government and the average citizen alike. Although on paper China is determined not to repeat the West's mistake of achieving affluence at the cost of the environment, in reality the environment is being sacrificed for "growth" in various places. People in China are probably not alone in this myopia. Discussions with the Costa Rican visitors indicated that in their country many perceive industries relocated from developed countries as economic boosters and hesitate to scare them away by requesting high-standard environmental performance.
In fact, SVTC's experience proves that even in the US, many people believe that the high-tech industry is so influential that it cannot be questioned. If the industry is held up to too strict environmental standards, it will pack up and go somewhere else. And with the industry go many jobs. Another difficulty faced by environmental activism is people's low awareness of the impacts of industry.
I believe that despite the effectiveness of confronting government and industry, environmental groups also need to explore alternative strategies. SVTC is experimenting with this alternative strategy in its closed-loop water project and in advocating substitutions for the electroless copper process through the Design for the Environment project.
This strategy could be of special importance to the international efforts to stop the high-tech legacy of pollution with its globalization. If environmental groups like SVTC are to foster partnerships elsewhere and work towards sustainability on this planet, they should understand and adapt their strategies to the systems of their counterparts' countries. In many cultures in Asia, backup from governmental authorities is the prerequisite to any substantial achievement. For example, the CNCPC (Chinese National Cleaner Production Center) owes its success in getting its ideas across to industry to the fact that it is a quasi-governmental institution.
While this alternative has worked in many cases, I am not saying that it is a panacea. Although many claim that "pollution prevention pays" or even "pollution prevention always pays", it has not been found true by all companies, especially in the time frame focused by corporate management, whose primary job is to make short-term profits. Lack of political power and technical knowledge places environmental groups in a disadvantageous position in the game. In the closed-loop water project in Silicon Valley, usually those facilities that would listen to environmental groups are the small ones; large companies often do not cooperate unless faced with legal and regulatory threats or lured by public relations advantages. In addition, large companies tend to have the kind of hierarchy that hinders effective communications of information. Since environmental groups in general do not have the capacity for scientific and technological research, they need to keep in close contact with governmental agencies, research institutions and universities to obtain information about state-of-the-art technologies so as to be able be effective advocates.
Those are some of the reflections I had on what I heard and observed during my stay at SVTC. I am not here to provide solutions on how the environmental movement should penetrate globally, which could not come out of a seven-week experience. Nonetheless, I do hope that the discussion will continue at SVTC and among other environmental activists, so that one day we will wake in a better, cleaner world.
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