Vanishing Borders: Protecting the Planet in the Age of Globalization

Our world is shrinking fast: goods, money, microbes, pollution, people, and ideas are crossing borders with growing ease. National governments are ill-suited for tackling the problems that result, from climate change, to the soaring trade in limited resource commodities like timber, to the management of regional water supplies. Hilary French argues that the only long-term solution to our environmental problems is a worldwide commitment to strengthening the international treaties and institutions essential for integrating ecological considerations into the still-nascent rules of global commerce. More than two hundred international environmental treaties already exist, but few of them stipulate stringent commitments and effective enforcement; and institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization continue to view environmental protection as a peripheral concern. But at the same time, new communications technologies are making it possible for nongovernmental organizations to mobilize powerful coalitions of private citizens to press for change, and some forward-thinking businesses have begun to support environmental codes of conduct and other international standards. Vanishing Borders provides people concerned about the future of the planet with a clear plan of action for ensuring environmental stability in the wake of globalization.

Vanishing Borders Protecting the Planet in the Age of Globalization is written by Hilary French. French works for the World Watch Institute, where she is the Vice President for Research. World Watch is a nonprofit organization that analyzes global environmental and development issues.
Vanishing Borders is about the problems that the World is facing due to increasing globalization. French goes on to explain that globalization means different things to different people. For some people it means that companies are setting up offices overseas with very little restrictions, for others it means increasing diversity among people and cultures, and yet for others it means communicating easier with others far away through the Internet. In French's book she argues that the globalization that is of most concern to the environment is how companies are able to trade and operate all over the World with very few rules to regulate them. The book goes on too explain that major problems that are effecting natural areas such as, deforestation, mining, and ecotourism. French also talks about how agriculture practices are changing our environment and creating problems such as species reductions. French links these problems together and discusses how they are affecting the biota of the world. She argues that economists have to place a value on the conditions of the planet as well as on consumer goods in the long run they will affect each other. French argues that the World needs more environmental regulations to regulate globalization and its effects in order to maintain our environment and even make it better.
I thought that this book was interesting. Even though I was aware of the situation that the World was in, I did not think it was as bad as French writes. I liked how French showed numerical values to illustrate how trade has become even more globalized in the last decade. In many instances countries are importing and exporting 10 to 15 times more goods than they did 20 to 30 years ago. These numerical values really show that we are a global community. One aspect of the book that I did not like was the agriculture practices that she said needed to change. It is true that some of our agriculture practices need to change in order to reduce environmental pollution, but we can't have a decrease in production because we are all ready have many starving people in the world. After reading the book I think that French succeeded in proving her argument which illustrate that we need more regulations on global trade in order to protect our planet.
April 21, 2003