Hidden socio-environmental costs of free trade : the case of shrimp pre-processing industry in Kerala, India

Abstract

This thesis examines the relation between free trade and socio-environmental costs, which are due to their less visible character and difficulty to be captured excluded from accounting. On the background of emerging trade liberalization, this paper reviews how the concept of costs that are related to damages to the environment and decreased human well-being evolved during the last century, and how different frameworks made attempt to capture them. Kapp’s framework that strictly distinguishes between social and environmental costs is applied to the case study of shrimp pre-processing industry in Ambalappuzha, small fishery village in Kerala. Using both qualitative methods of interviews and field observations, and quantitative methods for collecting data by questionnaires, the research uncovers the main socio-environmental costs that are born mainly by poor women from low social strata with limited access to information. These women lack power to avoid health problems and damages of air and water pollution caused by the industry. The direction of the shifted costs points at developed countries that have been taking advantage on the less developed ones by systematically incorporating these failures in their economies. The economic system itself is being suspected for its rigidity, the market failure may not necessary be accidental, but intentional as the entire economic system relies on them.