TRANSNATIONALS- MOPPING UP THE ENVIRONMENTAL MESS

In my last post I dealt with the environmental mess left in the trail of the production of iron pig consumables from extraction to finished products.

Some of the mess that trails production are as follows:

• Disruption and loss of biodiversity
• Releasing waste (tailings) into rivers, killing aquatic life
• Release of chemicals into surface water and groundwater, poisoning source of water for the local people.
• The use of coke in smelting releases carbon monoxide into the air which is not good for the health of people living around the plant.
• In the smelting of the iron ore nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides are released into the air. These gases cause asthma, skin disease, eye injury etc.
• Carbon dioxide emissions occur when pig iron is being processed into steel. Carbon dioxide is an anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) causing global warming.

TRANSNATIONALISM

In this post I am going to focus on the sustained efforts of transnationals to clean up the environmental mess that results from the production process towards a clean and balanced natural environment.

In my last post I indicated that transnationals is synonymous with multinational corporations.

To give a conceptual background to the term transnational I should touch on a variation of the term. The variation of the term transnational is transnationalism. Transnationalism is a noun composed of two affixes and one word. The two affixes are a prefix and a suffix. The prefix is trans-, and the suffix is -ism. The word they prefix and suffix is national. The end result is transnationalism.

Trans means across or beyond. National in this context is an adjective meaning relating to a nation. Ism in this context means idea, concept or philosophy. Synthesizing the pieces into a whole in a simplistic way, it can deduced that transnationalism is the idea of spreading or going beyond the borders of a nation. It is the flow of people, products, institutions etc. across national borders. Transnationalism fosters interconnectivity between people making less relevant economic and social importance of boundaries between nations. Take Coca Cola for example, it started in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, today the product and the company by the same name are everywhere in the world. In my country Ghana, West Africa, as far back as the early sixties we were enjoying Coca Cola as a soft drink- long before the proliferation of the internet. Another example is Ecobank, a Pan African bank, starting from Lome, Togo, West Africa, it is now present in 36 African countries and other countries like London, Paris, Beijing etc. Today, one car produced may be an assembly of components from different countries.

LARGEST TRANSNATIONALS- 2016

NO	COMPANY	COUNTRY	CAPITALIZATION
01	Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd.(ICBC)	China	$ 198 billion
02	China Construction Bank	China	$ 162.8 billion
03	Agricultural Bank of China	China	$ 152.7 billion
04	Berkshire Hathaway Inc.	United States of America	$ 360.1 billion
05	JPMorgan Chase	United States of America	$ 234.2 billion
06	Bank of China	China	$ 143.0 billion
07	Wells Fargo	United States of America	$ 256.0 billion
08	Apple	United States of America	$ 586.0 billion
09	ExxonMobil	United States of America	$ 363.3 billion
10	Toyota	Japan	$ 177.0 billion

MOPPING UP THE MESS

This section is going to look at what the transnationals are doing to clean up the mess their activities generate environmentally. The following are some steps being taken by transnationals to reclaim degraded natural environments:

• Do reclamation research for an informed reclamation
• Filling of pits created as a result of mining
• Re-creation of contours for destroyed land
• Putting back top soil lost in the trail of mining
• Re-vegetating mined areas to attract fauna, and for beautification

GREEN TRANSNATIONALISM

The term is the idea of transnationals conceiving environmentally friendly methodologies and applying them in their operations.  These are to be corrective and futuristic measures to achieve and ensure a clean and balanced natural environment, sustainably. That they are transnationals in itself should be facilitative of the proliferation of the green methodologies. The transnationals ought to have green transnationalism embedded in their psyche. The idea ought to be expressed and manifested in their constitutions, policies, regulations, personnel, and in implementations therefrom. Hence, there must be an aggressive steadily progressive transition from environmentally degrading practices to green practices as follows:

• Investing into and researching green methodologies
• Partnering with conservation groups
• Factor into their plans traditional conservation practices
• Harnessing and applying energy from the wind
• Harnessing and applying energy from the sun
• Using thermal energy
• Using hydroelectric power

SUMMARY

• Transnational operations do leave in their trail environmental mess i.e. loss of top soil.
• Transnationalism is the idea of spreading across national borders.
• The top ten largest transnationals are in China and the United States of America.
• Transnationals are taking steps to mop up the mess created by their operations.  
• Moving forward, transnationals should transition progressively and sustainably into environmentally friendly practices.

PARTING SHOT

Transnationals as a bloc is very powerful. From the list of transnationals I have provided, it is obvious how influential the transnationals are on our everyday lives. Take Apple for example, though the mobile phones they produce are expensive, the phones are highly patronized, and through the phone, social media and emailing which create a global interconnect personally, socially and businesswise. Another example is Toyota. Toyota cars are everywhere in the world. Toyota cars are used in transporting us from one place to another to do business, to visit loved ones etc. The foregoing make it clear that earthlings benefit from the operations of transnationals. If you and I benefit from the services of transnationals, it stands to reason that you and I as beneficiaries should put our shoulders to the wheel to help the transnationals to induce and sustain a clean and balanced natural environmental.

Reference:

http://www.forbes.com/global2000/