The global environmental crisis and the unequal over-use of natural resources: Entry points for global labour struggles?

Abstract

Unequal exchange has an important material dimension. Natural resources are transferred at large scale from the global peripheries to the global centres. Global peripheries are often used as sink and due to low environmental standards as cheap production site for products to be sold to the global North. Consequently, it is companies and consumers from the global core that contribute much more to pollution and global carbon emissions, and hence, to the destruction of ecosystems and climate warming. Workers and peasants in the periphery bear a much larger share of the costs of environmental degradation and climate warming. Working and living conditions are expected to deteriorate for many. However, climate warming will also affect workers in the global core. The paper asks whether these new material conditions of global capitalism, in particular the expected deterioration of living standards, provide new entry points for global labour struggles. On the theoretical level, a critical international global political economy perspective to analyse these developments is adopted. Empirically, the paper focusses on the global level and the role of the European Union therein. The “run” for natural resources has reached a new dimension. A new global rivalry has been emerging and there is the threat that workers will be globally divided even further. The global core is seeking to further expand its access to resources of the global periphery, a strategy in part supported by the global labour aristocracy. The European Green deal states that access to strategic resources from outside the European Union should be secured and a liberal financial system is expected to be helpful for that. A recent example for specific measures are the attempts to finalise the EU-Mercosur trade agreement, and the EU-Chile agreement to facility access to lithium. These measures, despite of chapters on the environmental and social issues, tend to reinforce traditional core-periphery relationships and entail the transfer of natural resources to the global North. However, measures that potentially allow improving labour conditions in the global periphery, such as the due diligence regulation currently proposed at the level of the European Union, might be seen as entry points for global labour solidarity and progressive global labour struggles. Also, the carbon border adjustment mechanism proposed by the EU, while currently rather designed rather as a protectionist measure, potentially may be converted into a progressive tool if the financial resources are redirected to the workers in the global periphery. It is concluded that the worsening of the global climate crisis potentially may deepen existing patterns of global uneven accumulation and lead to increasing opposition between workers in the global core and the global periphery. However, also isolated attempts to increase global solidarity are on the rise that potentially may represent important staps towards increasing global labour solidarity.