National expansion and natural degradation: An environmental extension of lateral pressure theory.

摘要

Within international political economy, there is little mention of how economic development affects the global environment. Yet the degradation of nature can be one of the most pervasive and longest lasting consequences of development. Too often these consequences are simply catalogued without sufficient consideration given to their social--i.e., political and economic--causes.;To understand such causes, this study uses lateral pressure theory to account for politics within and among nations. Whereas lateral pressure has traditionally sought to explain the onset of war (Choucri and North 1975; Choucri, North, and Yamakage 1992), this study extends the theory's initial application to the environment (Choucri 1993a) by specifying additional connections between the social and natural environments.;Global deforestation, this study's litmus of environmental lateral pressure, is tested as a function of (1) domestic GNP, (2) population growth, and a new variable, (3) trade connected GNP, which accounts for the trade effects among nations. This model thus addresses the ongoing debate between economists and environmentalists over the costs and benefits of free trade. Economists defend free trade citing evidence that domestic GNP increases, spurred by the gains from trade, reduce environmental degradation because rich countries can better afford to address such concerns. This study replicates these results, but then it tests trade effects directly finding that they add to rather than detract from global deforestation. Moreover, these trade effects are consistently more significant, stable, and influential than the countervailing domestic GNP effects.