The quest for development and the true cost of externalities in developing countries

Abstract

In an age so aptly described as the ‘age of globalization’, questions persist as to the exact role of the state in the society. Globalization has seen multinational corporations’ criss-cross the globe, some with budgets larger than those of national governments, employing thousands of workers with far reaching implications on their home and host countries. International trade, international capital flows, and ideas make up an increasingly sophisticated global value chain in a trend that is showing no indications of slowing down despite the global crisis that have affected the world in the past two decades. The anti-globalization voices have been crowded out, and economic growth and development policies for most developing countries have become synonymous to enacting policies and creating an enabling environment to facilitate their integration into the global value chain; or to benefit from international trade and foreign direct investment. While current rhetoric at the level of international organizations, states and even the private sector emphasizes the need to focus on sustainable development, recent events in Sub-saharan Africa point to the fact that the quest for economic growth and development, important as it is, has accumulated some negative consequences (externalities) in its wake. The focus of this paper is the negative externalities (negative environmental externalities) that accompany the endless quest for rapid economic growth and development in some of the poorer regions of the world.