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Business Environment and Law-Business And Its Environment

Economic Development And Environmental Issues-Natural Resources And Economic Development

   Posted On :  04.05.2018 05:22 am

Ecologists and environmentalists believe that one principal reason for the existence of the environmental problem stems from the emphasis on the growth by the industrialized nations.

Economic Development And Environmental Issues
 
 
Ecologists and environmentalists believe that one principal reason for the existence of the environmental problem stems from the emphasis on the growth by the industrialized nations. They point out that economic growth has been made possible only at the expense of the environment.
 
Ecologists postulate that growth rates were so high, because of the fantastic increase in population and demands of the society. Increased production and consumption had unscrupulously released wastes and pollutants into the environment without consideration of their effects.
 
Fast growth has resulted in the destruction of the environment, the impairment in the quality of elemental environmental services, the deterioration of air quality and the contamination of seas, rivers, lakes, etc. These were not taken into account in economic calculations. The loss and deterioration of important environmental goods went relatively unnoticed. In short, the social costs of growth were not included in economic analyses.
 
Economists who analyze in a straight jacket always contend that sustained economic growth increases human welfare. These economists base their arguments on international companies in terms of the value of goods and services produced in the economy. To put in shortly, they compare gross national product (GNP) in terms of dollar value to assess the economic growth of nations. Countries feel highly satisfied if their gnp graph shows an ascending tendency, year after year and they proclaim that they are forward.
 
But, the measurement of economic growth in terms of output of goods and services (GNP) is rather faulty. It takes into consideration the national product only. It does not consider the national disproduct in the process of production. Billions of dollars worth of cigarettes produced in the economy have been brought under the calculation of GNP per year. It does not take into consideration the external cost, the pollution it creates, the diseases it spreads in the society among smokers and silent smokers.

These are the disproducts of the nation. Edward F. Denison considers that air and water pollution and also the solid wastes generated in the process of production as the real costs of economic growth. He has suggested that value of the deterioration to environment by these real costs should be deducted from NNP to contain a better. In this context, samuelson’s NEW(Net Economic Welfare) is worth considering as very appropriate, whereby the national disproducts are deducted from the national product. Measure of output.

The role of environment and the need for maintaining the quality of the environment have emerged recently as important issue and has assumed greater importance in the context of several ecological disasters in many parts of the globe in recent times.

Barry commoner has analyzed the interaction of three major factors influencing environmental impact. They are:

  •  Population factor

  •  Per capita availability of goods

  •  Pollution per unit of economic good.


The environmental impact (ei) is given as follows

This enables us to estimate the contributions of the three factors to the environmental impact, viz., The size of the population, per capita production or consumption; and the pollutant generated per unit of production or consumption.
 
Thus, environmental impact represents the environmental cost of a given economic process. By the economic process, agencies external to the eco- system is produced and which tends to degrade its capacity for self-adjustment.

According to kenneth boulding, “the world is finite and the resources are scarce”. Man out of greed exploits this earth, as if its resources are limitless, to enrich himself in his pursuit of economic growth. If this is continued by man who is too much enterprising, soon “we will have a plundered plant”.

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