Similarly, while environmentalists often have global concerns, they have neither an effective market through which they can buy conservation abroad nor an effective political voice in foreign environmental practices. Trade measures, either sanctions or incentives, are the default alternative. Third, international trade separates, in a spatial sense, production and consumption activities. Consumption demand in the North for tropical timber, or prawns, or ivory, has an impact on tropical forests in the Amazon, mangrove forests in Southeast Asia and elephant poaching in Africa. Closer to home, California rice exporters are major users of scarce water resources, and environmental restrictions on oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge tend to shunt environmental stress abroad.
Trade casts a long ecological shadow.
Without adequate pollution control and resource conservation measures, trade can result in environmental degradation. The connections between trade and resource conservation have been much neglected, and only recently have trade and environmental agencies started to talk, a dialogue badly needed in this era of globalization. But progress on trade liberalization and strong environmental protection is stalled. Developing countries fear collusion between environmentalists and protectionists in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development markets that will limit their market access. This is the eco-imperialism concern.