The European Dream

by Jeremy Rifkin

  The extension of human empathy to a consideration of the integrity of our fellow creatures marks a watershed event in human governance. If all beings are truly connected in an indivisible web of life, tucked inside the biospheric envelope, then recognizing and safeguarding those relationships is essential to realizing a new, more holistic scientific vision, as well as to promoting sustainable development and a truly global consciousness.

  Reuniting Ecosystems

  Nowhere is this new understanding of nature as an indivisible web of life more in evidence than in the promotion of “transborder peace parks,” a radical new concept that is fast gaining currency around the world, but especially in Europe. The idea is to establish trans-frontier conservation areas to reconnect natural ecosystems formerly severed by nation-state borders. The logic behind these transboundary protected areas was eloquently stated by Dr. Z. Pallo Jordan, then South African minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, in an opening address at the meeting on Transboundary Protected Areas in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1997. Jordan observed that

  the rivers of Southern Africa are shared by more than one country. Our mountain ranges do not end abruptly because some 19th century politician drew a line on a map. The winds, the oceans, the rain and atmospheric currents do not recognize political frontiers. The earth’s environment is the common property of all humanity and creation, and what takes place in one country affects not only its neighbors, but many others well beyond its borders.79

  Transboundary protected areas are first and foremost designed to secure the integrity of regional ecosystems and preserve biodiversity and natural habitats. They also serve two other related functions: to preserve cultural resources and values, especially of transboundary people, and to promote peace among countries. Europe boasts the largest number of transborder parks, some forty-five in all, followed by Africa, with thirty-four transnational parks. There are currently one hundred and fifty-eight such parks around the world, and their numbers have grown rapidly each year.80

  The notion of setting aside valued natural environments and establishing parks is not a new idea. Kings and lords often cordoned off areas as special game preserves to be used exclusively for hunting by members of the royal family.

  The modern notion of national parks was inaugurated on March 1, 1872, when the U.S. government declared the Yellowstone area of Wyoming a “public park and pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people.”81 The national-park movement spread throughout the world in the ensuing century. Where formerly countries saw the environment as a force to tame and harness for productive economic value, the national-park idea introduced the concept of the intrinsic value of nature as something worth preserving, unspoiled, for the aesthetic enjoyment of people. It was only later that national parks were viewed also as a way of conserving natural ecosystems in order to enhance the proper functioning of the Earth’s life-support systems. The Amazon park system is a good example of this second rationale.

  The idea of transborder parks is even more radical in concept and design. Recall that the early science of the Enlightenment was dedicated to enclosing nature and transforming it into private property negotiable in the marketplace and protected inside nation-state boundaries. Nature as resource has been the dominant theme of science for the past several centuries.

  Transborder peace parks are an acknowledgment by governments that nature’s boundaries eclipse state boundaries—that they exist a priori over any political border and deserve to be reconnected and maintained as integral systems. Europe has taken the lead in advancing transborder parks, although African nations have made significant strides of their own. The idea that natural ecosystems are to be reunited and that governments have the responsibility to work together to create a transnational space for managing them would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. Again, as we’ve seen in the case of extending universal human rights, there is a growing awareness in Europe, and elsewhere, that national boundaries are no longer the endgame when it comes to managing both human affairs and our relationship to the natural world.

  Transborder peace parks are managed cooperatively by the countries involved. The objectives include

  supporting long-term co-operative conservation of biodiversity, ecosystem services, and natural and cultural values across boundaries; promoting landscape-level ecosystem management through integrated bioregional land-use planning and management; building trust, understanding, reconciliation and co-operation between and among countries, communities, agencies and other stakeholders; preventing and/or resolving tension, including over access to natural resources; promoting access to, and equitable and sustainable use of natural resources, consistent with national sovereignty; and enhancing the benefits of conservation.82

  The recognition that natural ecosystems need to be managed as integral wholes, and not severed into bits and pieces to conform to arbitrary political boundaries, is a reflection of the extent to which systems analysis has gained a foothold in scientific thinking and public policy. Only by reconnecting the deep network of relationships that allow natural ecosystems to function appropriately can natural environments be preserved in any meaningful way. For example, a large contiguous and unrestricted area is often essential in order to maintain the minimum viable population of specific species—especially large carnivores. Where flora and fauna exist across a political boundary, it is easier to manage their populations and ensure their survival if done cooperatively and jointly. Likewise, research agendas are easier to carry out if knowledge and expertise can be shared between countries. Transborder parks are often managed by a network of interested parties, including states, localities, and regions as well as scientists, CSOs, and the private sector.

  Italy and France established a transborder park in 1992 to better protect the migratory range of the ibex. The wild goats use a summer range in France and spend winters in Italy. The Italians established the Grand Paradiso National Park in 1922, primarily to protect the ibex. Since the ibex was protected only in the winter in Italy, the French finally made the decision to create the Vanoise National Park to ensure a seamless protected zone for the ibex throughout its migratory range. A formal agreement between the two parks to twin came in 1972, leading to an expansion of their common boundary from six to fourteen kilometers. Now the ibex is protected year-round in a transborder park.83

  Poland and Slovakia created a transnational park along their border. The park creates a seamless region in the Tatra Mountains, the highest point in the Carpathian mountain range. The region is rich in biodiversity and includes karst limestone and dolomite scenery, alpine meadows, and temperate forests, lakes, and rocky peaks, and is the home of many endemic or relic species such as the Tatra subspecies of the chamois deer, the marmot, and bear and lynx populations. A number of glacial relic fish also inhabit mountain lakes in the region. The park has become a major tourist destination, with more than eight million people visiting the area each year.84

  The potential of transborder parks to play a peace role while carrying out an environmental mission is brought home in the case of two national parks that bridge the borders between Poland and Belarus. It turns out that the Bialowieza National Park in Poland and the Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park just across the border in Belarus together encompass the last remaining primeval forest in all of Europe. The forest dividing the two countries is also the home of the last remaining herds of rare European bison, the largest land animal on the continent. The creature once roamed all of Europe like its North American counterpart. Now, the five hundred or so remaining animals are separated from one another by an eight-foot-high metal fence. In addition, a thirty-foot-wide security road patrolled by guards cuts through the forest where the bison roam. The fence is a relic of the Soviet era and was constructed to keep Polish dissidents from entering Belarus. Today, the fence still keeps people from enjoying full access to both parks and bison from freely crossing through the forest.

  Conservationists and peace acti
vists have been actively pursuing the idea of creating a transborder peace park as a way to lessen tensions along the border between the two countries and create a common ground for cooperation in managing their shared ecosystems, with the hope that such cooperation might expand to include greater political, cultural, and commercial exchanges. Cross-border cooperation is slowly increasing between the two countries, but they are a long way from creating a formal structure that will make the park management truly seamless. Recently, when Belarus needed bison, Poland provided them, and when the Poles needed rare pines, the Belarusians gave them trees. Still, not until the fence comes down and the bison can roam freely through the primeval forest will the ecosystem be on its way to being truly reconnected.85

  Reuniting ecosystems is a revolutionary idea, especially when it means placing nature’s boundaries above national boundaries. Transborder peace parks also challenge still another fundamental assumption of the modern era—the sanctity of private property. With peace parks, “mine vs. thine” is replaced with the notion of “ours.” Ownership of nature becomes less important than access to it. The utility value of nature is no longer the only measure of its worth. Rather, its intrinsic value comes to the fore and becomes of equal worth. With the reintroduction of intrinsic value, humanity gives credence to the notion that nature, too, has a right to exist and be recognized just like every human being. Transborder peace parks extend the notion of universal human rights to include the rights of the rest of nature.

  IT’S TOO EARLY to say for sure whether Europe is leading the world into a second Enlightenment. Certainly its multilateral agreements, its internal treaties and directives, and its bold cutting-edge initiatives suggest a radical re-evaluation in the way science and technology are approached and executed. The increased reliance on the precautionary principle and systems thinking puts Europe out in front of the United States and other countries in re-envisioning science and technology issues in a globally connected world. Still, a word of caution is in order. The old power-driven Enlightenment science remains the dominant approach in the research, development, and market introduction of most new technologies, products, and services in Europe, America, and elsewhere in the world. Whether the EU government can effectively apply new-science thinking in its regulatory regime to old-science commercial applications in the

  marketplace remains to be seen. In the long run, a successful transition to a new scientific era will depend on whether industry itself can begin to internalize the precautionary principle and systems thinking into its R&D plans, creating new technologies, products, and services that are, from the get-go, ecologically sensitive and sustainable.

  16

  Universalizing the European Dream

  EUROPE HAS BECOME the new “city upon a hill.” The world is looking to this grand new experiment in transnational governance, hoping it might provide some much needed guidance on where humanity ought to be heading in a globalizing world. The European Dream, with its emphasis on inclusivity, diversity, quality of life, sustainability, deep play, universal human rights and the rights of nature, and peace is increasingly attractive to a generation anxious to be globally connected and at the same time locally embedded.

  Although it’s too early to tell exactly how successful the “United States” of Europe will ultimately prove to be, what I think is sure is that in an era where space and time are quickly being annihilated and identities are becoming multilayered and global in scale, no nation will be able to go it alone twenty-five years from now. European states are the first to understand and act upon the emerging realities of a globally interdependent world. Others will follow.

  Exporting the EU Model

  Steps are being taken in various regions of the world to establish free-trade zones and cross-border political alliances. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Mercorsur in South America, and the Organization of African States (OAS) are all attempting to create the beginning of a transnational political model to harmonize their markets and gain some global advantage in developing regional economies of scale.

  NAFTA is least likely among the experiments to develop into a full-fledged political union, at least along the EU lines. The United States is so much more powerful than its two trading partners, Canada and Mexico, that it would be impossible to create anything remotely resembling a partnership among relatively equal players. The U.S. GDP is nearly eight times the size of Canada’s and Mexico’s combined GDP.1 The only way to imagine a regional political union even occurring would be if both Canada and Mexico were to become the fifty-first and fifty-second states, which, though far-fetched, is not entirely impossible. Even though Canadian sensibilities are far more closely aligned with Europe than with the U.S., the economic necessities of a regionalizing world may force Canada to increasingly give up its sovereignty and become an extension of the U.S. There is also the possibility that Canada might eventually join the European Union. After all, Hawaii and Alaska joined the United States of America even though they are not part of the country’s contiguous geography. Mexico, although far poorer than the U.S.—it ranks as the world’s tenth economic power—could potentially be absorbed into the United States as Mexican immigration over the next half century transforms a large portion of America into a Hispanic cultural diaspora, further blurring the lines between the two countries.2

  But the absorption of Canada and Mexico into the United States, creating, in effect, a superstate, would only make the U.S. more of an oddity in a globalized world where other nations are pooling or giving up much of their sovereignty and becoming part of transnational regional political organizations. What’s more likely to happen is that the three countries of North America will move closer toward a free-trade zone but fall short of creating either a superstate or a transnational political space.

  China and India face even greater obstacles in a world where the nation-state model is less able to accommodate global commercial and cultural forces. The very idea that either of these two nation-states could effectively contain and manage more than a billion people, each under the aegis of a singular national identity, is hard to comprehend in a world where crosscutting identities and loyalties are pushing people into more flexible networks of convenience. Chances are that both India and China will at least partially deconstruct into more semiautonomous local regions and that these regions will establish their own trans-regional and global commercial and political networks. Both nation-states could simply disappear altogether under the weight of fractionalization, leaving their respective regions the tasks of reconstituting themselves into transnational political unions, more along the European Union lines.

  The most likely candidate region to follow on the heels of the European Union is the East Asian community, with or without China’s participation. The region has been flirting with the idea of an Asian version of the European Union for more than thirty-five years. In 1967, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand established the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) with the objective of furthering economic and social cooperation in the region and providing a measure of collective security from outside interference.

  In 1976, the countries that make up ASEAN signed the Declaration of ASEAN Accord, which committed the member states to “the early establishment of the Zone of Peace, Freedom, and Neutrality.”3 The parties agreed to “noninterference in the internal affairs of one another” and provided for the creation of a ministerial high council to mediate disputes between member states and recommend measures to resolve conflicts.

  Brunei Darussalam joined ASEAN in 1984, followed by Vietnam in 1995. Laos and Myanmar joined the association in 1997, and Cambodia in 1999, bringing all ten Southeast Asian countries under the ASEAN umbrella.4

  In 1998, the ten member countries of ASEAN joined with the republics of Korea, Japan, and China to form the East Asian Vision Group (EAVG). In 2001, EAVG issued a report entitled “Towards an East Asian Community: Region of Peace, Prosperity and Progress.” The v
ision group made a number of recommendations that, if carried out, would pave the way toward an Asian version of the European Union. The key proposals fall into six categories: economic cooperation; financial cooperation; political and security cooperation; environmental cooperation; social and cultural cooperation; and institutional cooperation.

  The authors of the report called for establishing the East Asia Free Trade Area (EAFTA): promoting development and technological cooperation among the signatory countries; realizing a knowledge-based economy across the region; establishing and strengthening mechanisms for addressing threats to peace in the region; broadening political cooperation with respect to national governing issues; amplifying the East Asian voice in international affairs; institutionalizing multilateral environmental cooperation within the region and on a global level; establishing poverty alleviation programs; adopting programs to provide greater access to basic health-care services; implementing a comprehensive human resource development program focusing on improvement of basic education, skills training, and corporate building; promoting regional identity and consciousness; and cooperating on projects in the conservation and promotion of East Asian arts and culture.5

  The report noted that “in the past, political rivalries, historical animosities, cultural differences and ideological confrontations posed barriers to cooperation among East Asian nations.”6 On the other hand, the report also observed that “East Asian nations share geographical proximity, many common historical experiences, and similar cultural norms and values.”7 The report’s authors said they envision “the progressive integration of the East Asian economy, ultimately leading to an East Asian economic community.”8

  An East Asian economic community would be a formidable economic and political force on the world stage. The combined land area of East Asia (including China, Korea, and Japan) is 50 percent larger than the United States. Its GDP would approach the European Union’s and the United States’. The volume of East Asian trade is already larger than that of the United States, but only 40 percent of the EU’s.9 With a population of two billion, it would represent one-third of the human race.