Globalization, Consumerism and Unsustainable Consumption

Praveena Rajkobal

IGD Program
SPARC
Colombo University
Background Paper (Final)

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This paper (i) attempts to establish the connection between globalization and consumerism and thereafter (ii) attempts to investigate the impacts of globalization and consumerism on unequal distribution of wealth and (iii) attempts to investigate the impacts of globalization and consumerism on unsustainable consumption and environmental degradation together with climate change.

1. GLOBALIZATION AND CONSUMERISM

A connection between globalization and consumerism could be established within the domain of three main factors which are
1) Access to resources and markets on a global
Within this context, there are trends that have been identified around globalization and consumerism which have made consumerism an issue at present (Shah, 2006). Some of the trends of present consumption are: •

Inequality of consumption (not redistributing from high-income to low-income consumers) •

Use of pollutant goods and production technologies instead of cleaner ones

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Promoting goods that discourage poor producers rather than promoting goods to empower poor producers

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Creating a priority among consumers for consumption to conspicuous display rather than to meeting basic needs

Hence, globalization and consumerism today are accelerating the dynamics of the consumption-poverty-inequality-environment nexus (Shah, 2006). Moreover, two of the major criticisms of globalization and consumerism are unequal distribution of wealth and unsustainable consumption patterns (Shah, 2006). One major problem of consumerism is that consumption patterns today are not to meet everyone’s needs. The system that drives these consumption patterns contribute to inequality as well as unsustainability. Thus, globalization and consumerism creates two important issues viz;
1) Patterns and effects which exacerbates inequalities and
2) Unsustainable consumption and the depletion of the environmental resources
(Shah, 2006).
2. GLOBALIZATION AND CONSUMERISM ON UNEQUAL