ABSTRACT
The ‘environment’ is usually looked upon as located outside ourselves; it is the space that we inhabit. This ‘bounded’ quality of the environment is seen as its defining characteristic. In this chapter a rather different view is expressed: the ‘environment’ is looked upon as process rather than form, as the result of a set of relationships between physical space, natural resources and a constantly changing pattern of economic forces. The environment in the international economy is an internationalized environment and one which often exists to serve economic and political interests far removed from a specific physical ‘location’. There is, of course, a history to the process through which the environment has been internationalized. Beginning in most cases with the impact of colonial powers, patterns of resource exploitation emerged which enabled these powers to accumulate capital and assume political hegemony over the subordinate ‘colony’. At the same time, these patterns of resource exploitation incorporated new products and technologies from other areas of the globe. The development of global agriculture dates from the earliest colonial impact, although it finds its most mature expression in the new plant varieties promoted during the 1960s and 1970s by the international agricultural centres and, most recently, in international biotechnology.
