Sustainable globalisation

The recent process of globalisation of international markets has managed to sustain the economic growth of the countries that have actively participated in this process. The available empirical evidence suggests, however, that it has been accompanied by a worldwide increase in environmental degradation and economic inequality. Therefore, there is growing concern that these features of the globalisation process may jeopardise its social and environmental sustainability. In order to clarify to what extent the recent process of globalisation may be considered as sustainable, this paper draws some hints from a critical assessment of the literature on the Kuznets curve and the environmental Kuznets curve. In particular it is argued that the optimistic implications of this literature on the sustainability of globalisation are ungranted and that the Kuznets approach is in principle unable to give reliable answers to the questions raised in this work. These curves, however, may be generalised as Kuznets relations whose analysis allows a clarification of a few basic conditions for sustainable globalisation. We conclude that these conditions can be met by implementing a systematic policy strategy aimed at shifting both Kuznets relations downwards. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.