Yet another way to address global warming and other aspects related to nature is by focusing not only on outcomes but also on who creates those outcomes.  This is a different angle that often puts a human face on pollution rather than looking into pollution in the abstract.   This dimension focuses on you and me and all of those who are in different modes of human nature’s interactions.  And, through this approach, one is able to trace back the results of these interactions to specific actors (people) and organizations rather than to see global warming as an output of inanimate entities.  Furthermore, this dimension of global warming also brings about a debate on (a) the nature and scope of decision-making processes, (b) the institutional aspects of consensus building at the national or worldwide levels, and (c) the issues of individual and collective rights and responsibilities.

A few examples may illustrate the importance of these aspects of environmental management.

One: it is well known that water pollution is worse in cities and that, within those cities, the most urgent problem is within low income neighbourhoods, like shanty towns and areas where low income people create their settlements.  Water pollution may come from river-water that is polluted by industries, mining, agriculture or services upstream.  This pollution is now a major source of water-born diseases, like diarrhoea and dysentery.  These preventable diseases are the major cause in child death around the world.  Therefore, industrial owners must become aware that their industries are indeed killing children.  Pollution is not an inanimate entity that someone else is to shoulder and remedy.  It has the mind of an adult (polluter) and the face of a child (polluted)!

Two: it is air pollution that is responsible for many pulmonary diseases and brain cancer (lead pollution) of many people around the world.  This is prevailing in all areas and not only lower income areas of cities in both developed and developing countries.  Industries and urban transport are major causes of such pollution.  And behind those cars there are drivers, there are specific people like you and me who need to take responsibility for standards, maintenance, usage and more.  Air pollution has a face, has a person or a group of people, it has emotional consequences like inner suffering and despair.

Three: it is forest and biodiversity depletion that is responsible for climate change, micro-climate shifts, weak water holding capacity of soils, desertification, genetic degeneration and losses, etc.  If one brings also the disappearance of wildlife species, like elephants and Bengal Tigers, it is easy to understand the major spatial and inter-generational impacts we are experiencing today.  Those who are cutting the forests are people.  Those licensing loggers are people.  Those gaining from that form of destruction are people.  Thus, those people must be held responsible and made visible to the public at large.  National and multi-national corporations are to be identified and programs are to be implemented to correct the situations we live in today.  They are not the only ones! However it is important to understand that everything has a human face — those who seemingly gain and those who lose.

The instruments to address the above-mentioned situations would force us to bring those actors to the forefront, and create the necessary and sufficient conditions so that the situation in question is corrected.  Training, capacity building, education, human resources development and many more are the type of instruments we need to put in place.  In this case, human resources development goes far beyond teaching something, but rather go for increased awareness, consciousness and coherence, both on an individual and collective basis.

In advancing the thinking in these areas, we should mention that the outcomes we see are the result of the decisions we make.  In principle, this is something that may appear to be just a trivial proposition.  But, it is not.  Just to focus on outcomes, and not on the actors responsible for those outcomes, neither reveals nor establishes the grounds to provoke a significant shift to another plane in human transformation.  If the decision-makers are engaged in competition, exclusion, consumerism and materialism, the outcomes will be rather different than if they are engaged in inclusion, cooperation, solidarity, interdependence, and respect for nature, peace, love and compassion.

Finally, we should mention that a move towards the identification of actors in the effort to curve global warming –i.e., global warming with a human face—has created lots of controversy and it has heightened the role that existing power structures play in the creation and the solution of this problem.  These are power structures inside a given country or among nations within the international system.  These power structures are thick filters through which many of the issues are addressed.  The current debate on the Kyoto Protocol is an example of how these power structures work in practice.

Focusing on actors heightens the role of institutions –from where those actors come from—and the role of human consciousness and coherence in addressing the complex issues surrounding global warming.  These may be national or international institutions.  In this regard, special attention is to be given to the corporate world and international corporations.  They are mostly responsible for the global warming we face today.  This approach makes explicit who is to benefit and who bears the costs.