Addressing Environmental Issues in the Black Sea Basin
Volume 2.
There is a mutual interaction between economic activities and the environment, and in this context, the main causes of environmental problems can be said to be caused by the economy.
Cases such as overpopulation, rapid and unbalanced urbanization, industrialization and excessive consumption combine for economic reasons to expand the dimensions of environmental problems. At this point, some reasons such as overuse of some natural resources due to freeness, negative externalities resulting from economic activities, and the advantageous status of monopoly owners in the amounts of production that produce pollution have made environmental problems the focus of a series of local, regional and global discussions today.
Industrialization and urbanization are the main sources of environmental problems and the emergence of environmental problems in today’s sense started with industrialization. The industrial revolution brought with it the concept of dominating nature. Industrialization causes environmental pollution in many areas such as the destruction of forests and other natural resources, destruction of vegetation, extinction of living generations, air pollution, water pollution and noise, especially factory waste.
Industrialization is not only the result of the pollution counted and indirectly the source of many problems (Arslan and Eumen 2006:1041). The approach of unlimited consumption of industrial society in a limited environment has produced a number of results corresponding to the transition from the concept of the environment to the concept of environmental problems in the historical process. The sensitivity and reactions about the environment, which began in the 1960s, continued to increase and gained momentum with the 1972 Stockholm Environmental Conference. The Stockholm Conference was a meeting attended by many countries of the world except the Soviet Union, overcoming developed-underdeveloped, socialist-capitalist or similar distinctions, and revealing the seriousness of the situation on environmental issues. One of the most important aspects of the environment has been the display of the universality or above-systems nature of the environmental issue with its cumulative and cross-border pollution qualities.
Whether environmental problems have different qualities in different economic systems has been one of the topics that has been discussed a lot. The two main opinions on this issue are; they are opinions that do not accept the relationship between environmental problems and economic systems and argue that these two cases are significantly related and intertwined.
According to opinions that do not accept the relationship between environmental problems and economic systems, environmental problems are of the same importance in planned economies and liberal economies and have the same qualities. According to the defenders of this view, economic systems and political regimes have no difference in terms of environmental problems. As a matter of fact, the existence of the problem in both liberal and planned economies confirms this view. Environmental problems can gain different dimensions in countries with different levels of development and industrialization, population density, different geographical and climatic conditions; however, the economic systems, political regimes and dominant ideologies of these countries cannot be a factor in this. In this context, the fact that environmental problems of different sizes and natures are encountered not within the same economic system, but even in the same country, and that public enterprises in most countries have a more effective pollutant quality than private enterprises, reveals that the problem carries an independent dimension from the systems (Eumen 2000: 18-22).
Even H.M. Enzensberger argues that although he adopted a Marxist attitude in solving environmental problems, the environment cannot be put among the issues on which capitalism, that is, the economic system in which the means of production are in individuals, is held responsible. Otherwise, there should have been no environmental problems in the Soviet Union. However, pravda and izvestia newspapers often mention air pollution in the Don Valley and volga water contamination.
Also in the French social scientist H. Chombart de Lauwe, environmental crises are not unique to capitalist countries. Socialism also has to look for new ways,he says. M. Mead, a humanist, explains that different economic and social systems face the phenomenon of environmental degradation; Capitalism, socialism and communism are equally incompetent in protecting the environment (Hamamcı and Keleş 2005:172). These views, which mostly refer to the pre-dissolution of the Soviet Union, were clearly confirmed by the appearance that emerged in the post-1990 disintegration environment.
The newly created environment of freedom revealed the existence of a very wide and frightening environmental problem, ranging from lake Aral to the Caspian Sea, from Chernobyl to various nuclear tests. This shows that environmental problems are as much a problem of planned economies as liberal economies, or that environmental groups stand in our way as an above-systems and universal phenomenon.
Those who argue that there is an absolute relationship between environmental problems and economic systems argue that the importance and dimensions of environmental problems are different in liberal economies and planned economies. In other words, the problem can have different qualities according to the structure and characteristics of the economic system.
According to those who advocate this view, environmental problems arise mostly in countries with liberal economic systems. This is explained mostly by the fact that consumption is at the forefront in liberal economies. However, considering that environmental problems arise more in the production phase than in the consumption stage, it will be seen that this assessment is not an adequate explanation. On the other hand, it is suggested by the proponents of this view that there are some differences in terms of environmental policies pursued, even if it is assumed that there is no difference in the causes of pollution in countries with liberal and planned economies. Again, according to these opinion holders, there is no approach to environmental and urban problems within the framework of future plans in the understanding of liberal economic system. The snow motif at the core of the system makes individual concerns superior to social concerns.
It should be noted immediately that; it is necessary to evaluate these views within the framework of the difference between classical and neo-classical economic understandings. Indeed, the classic economy; production, distribution and consumption of goods and services and/but their quantitative dimensions did not include the required weight. In the neo-classical economy, it has been observed that the quality element is gaining weight and the phenomenon of social welfare is handled more effectively with public and other semi-public goods and services such as air and water, which are subject to environmental pollution.
At this point, it can be said that there is no point in discussing whether environmental problems are related to the economic system. Because environmental problems affect the socialist-capitalist, the developed-underdeveloped, the eastern-western and the whole world by displaying universal qualities. The cross-border and cumulative nature of pollution necessitates effective solutions. The first requirement of this is effective participation at every stage (Eumen 2000: 21-25). If a problem arising from any venue concerns the residents of other regions, participation in the decision to be taken cannot be limited to this region alone. The environmental problems that come to the forefront today are a clear example of this. In this sense, in toffler’s words, no civilization has ever created the means to destroy an entire planet, not a city. Never was the oceans completely poisoned by human greed and sloppyness, and a species of animal did not disappear completely overnight. The earth has never been so riddled with mines, and hairsprays have never damaged the earth’s ozone layer so badly (Toffler 1996:174).
The fact that the environment that has been on our agenda in the last thirty-forty years has become more prominent and billurized in this way is more about its emergence as a problem. Environmental problems, which affect all mankind in the same way and even threaten the whole world, started with the first intervention of humanity in the environment, but after the industrial revolution, it began to intensify with the idea of economic-rational human beings and make itself felt.
Today, it has gained a quality that threatens the whole world with its developed-underdeveloped, oriental-western and socialist capitalist. Discussions and research on this problem, which was previously perceived only as pollution and which covers all areas of social life day by day, are intensifying (See 2003:12). Environmental problems in terms of the effects of the environment created by humans on the natural environment and the negativity that exists in the artificial environment and the problems seen in both environments are the source of many social, economic and cultural problems with their cumulative nature.
Black Sea as a Regional Environmental Problem Area
The continuity of industrialization-urbanization, which intensified and accelerated in the second half of the twentieth century, has brought many problems to us today, regardless of ideological distinctions such as socialist and capitalist. Environmental problems are one of the most important and the most global (Eumen 2001:248).
After 1990, the change in the structure and nature of the former Soviet Union and the process of gaining the independence of the former Republics were seen as the problems of all systems and humanity, not only the capitalist system. Besides the example of Caspian and Aral Lake, especially
The pollution of the Black Sea is a clear proof of this. Surrounded by many countries with its developed-developing and socialist or liberal economy practitioners, the Black Sea stands today with a rapidly increasing environmental pollution. As a whole, the environmental problems of the Black Sea have already exceeded the local level and have become relevant on many regional and global issues.
What is to be done at this point is an understanding of international cooperation and global cooperation, regardless of who is responsible, and the implementation of it. However, as much as these understandings and efforts are implemented, we can be hopeful for our common future (Eumen 2000:18). These efforts range from the administrations of countries in the region to international and regional organizations. Especially in the countries of the region, the efforts of voluntary organizations operating in relation to the environment, both at the local level and in terms of regional cooperation, are very important in terms of the issue.
First of all, environmental problems in the Black Sea can arise in international qualities as well as from countries with these seafronts, both at sea and on the coasts. The Black Sea, which has been attacked by both soil, sea and air pollution, has been wrecked by civil war on one side and is trapped in the middle of one of its biggest political and economic transformations, the world’s dirtiest sea, is dying in agony.
Author: Serdar Yener – Sinop University – Turkey
