(ED)Waste Questions

From Environment & Resources 2020

1) How does Frey define World-Systems? How does he define Ecological Unequal Exchange? How are the two related?

Frey defines World-Systems as a three-tiered global economic system of the unequal flow of goods or services that are created for profit through continuous capital accumulation that is required for the system to work. It consists of a core, semi-periphery, and a periphery and exists in nature as energy and materials enter the system and dissipated energy and material waste exit the system. Ecological Unequal Exchange is another phrase to describe the World-Systems and can be thought of as "accumulation by extraction and contamination" in the words of Frey (Pg. 26). It’s primarily worried about the lack of study of human and environmental health and the flow of wealth and anti-wealth among core and semi-periphery nations or regions. They are related since the World-Systems is basically summed up as an Ecological Unequal Exchange of goods, services, and bads across core, semi-periphery, and periphery nations and regions.

2) In the final paragraph on pg. 27 Frey outlines five steps. What are they? Read on and point out the main takeaway from each of the five steps.

From what I can gather, ship breaking core-periphery reproduction steps go as follows; first, the nature and extent of the ship breaking is determined as well as the political and economic forces for transferring the ships to the semi-periphery for breaking. Second, the consequences of ship breaking toward health, safety, the environment, and socio-economics in the periphery is examined. Third, an analysis with the costs and benefits is created to attempt to show that moving ship breaking and other hazardous things to the semi-periphery is beneficial to the core regions, domestic firms, workers, and citizens of the peripheral countries. Then policies and responses are quickly reviewed and discussed that attempt to hold back negative effects of ship breaking. Finally, it’s been argued that conventional attempts and the creation of non-profit organizations that deal with ship breaking and other dangerous exports have had little success because they don’t fully take into account a World-System that’s unequal between core and periphery.

3) What are Frey's key points in pointing out the Flying Dutchman? How does this exemplify global inequality? Expand and explain.

Frey points out that many periphery countries such as Bangladesh and India’s beaches are lined with ships like the Flying Dutchman, and will be broken with negative health, safety, environmental, and socio-economic effects. Instances like this represent the inequality of wealth among countries on the higher and lower end of the world-system. Core countries put the responsibility and burden of hazardous wastes to be broken down and recycled in periphery countries, exploiting and causing harm to them. Core countries use periphery countries as locations to eliminate toxic waste and for certain wastes to get broken down. Since core capitalistic countries control the majority of wealth and periphery countries possess very little of the overall wealth in the world-system, things are unlikely to change anytime soon.