Chapter Two

Some issues on the environment and

Development
2.1. The environment and emerging development issues
*This new movement was formally articulated in 1987 with
the publication of a book entitled Our Common Future.
*It was in this report that sustainable development was
given its most commonly accepted definition, as
“development that meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet
their own needs”.
*There has been a growing realization in national
governments and multinational institutions that it is
impossible to separate economic development issues from
environmental issue;
* Many forms of development erode the environmental resources
upon which they must be based, and environmental degradation
can undermine economic development.
* Poverty is a major cause and effect of global environmental
problems.
* It is therefore futile to attempt to deal with environmental
problems without a broader perspective that encompasses the
factors underlying world poverty and international inequality.
*Environmental problems are not only linked to
poverty as it exists in the developing countries but also
to inequalities in consumption and production patterns
globally.
*This globalization of the environmental problem was
in fact the driving force for holding the United Nations
Conference on Environment and Development.
* The first world conference on the environment was held in
1972 in Stockholm.
* The second one was held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. It is
also known as the Rio Earth summit.
1. And it was in this conference that the “Agenda 21” was
declared.
2. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCCC)
3. Convention on biological diversity
4. Declaration on the principle of forest management
* Kyoto protocol
It operationalizes the UNFCCC by committing industrialized
countries and economies in transition to limit and reduce
greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions in accordance with
agreed individual targets.
Each one of these global conferences was followed by ambitious
action programs or declarations to be further debated and possibly
implemented at some future dates.
* The unifying theme of these conferences has been sustainable
development, and the specific topic (population, environment, social
and economic equity, gender, human settlements, etc.) of each
conference reflected the particular perspective from which
sustainable development has been pursued.
* It could be argued that there has been a wide gulf between the stated
goals of the global conventions of the above kind and their actual
achievements.
* However, in spite of this, the cumulative effect of these conferences
has been to change the perceptions of the global communities on how
to deal with problems of poverty, population and the environment in
a number of concrete ways
 2.2. Population growth and the environment
No simple relationship exists between population size
and environmental change.
* However, as global population continues to grow,
limits on such global resources as arable land,
potable water, forests, and fisheries have come into
sharper focus.
* Going by statistical relationship, there exists
negative correlation between income level and
population growth rate.
* And the theory of demographic transition is one of
the successful explanations for this relationship.
*In the first stage, populations are characterized by high
birth-rates and high death rates.
*In the second stage, rising real incomes result in
improved nutrition and developments in public health
which lead to declines in death-rates and rapidly rising
population levels. This is the stage of population
explosion.
*As a consequence of population explosion, heavy
migration of people starts from rural area to urban area
and eventually the population density starts increasing
in urban cities.
*This demands and also paves the way for deforestation‖
and industrialization with increasing pollutants in cities.
This is the stage where the environment is deeply
threatened with increasing industrial wastes.
*In the third stage of the demographic transition,
economic forces lead to reduced fertility rates.
*These forces include increasing costs of childbearing
and family care, reduced benefits of large family size,
and higher opportunity costs of employment in the
home.
* In the final stage, economies with relatively high
income per person will be characterized by low, and
approximately equal, birth- and death-rates, and so
stable population sizes.
*The final stage is the stage where ecosystem resilience
develops and the pollution and environment control
appears.
* The theory of demographic transition succeeds in
describing the observed population dynamics of many
developed countries quite well.
* For many developing countries the second stage was
reached not as a consequence of rising real income (as it is
in case of developed nations) but rather as a consequence of
knowledge and technological transfer.
* In particular, public health measures and disease control
techniques were introduced from overseas at a very rapid
rate.
*The adoption of such measures was compressed into a
far shorter period of time in developing countries than
had occurred in the early industrialized countries.
*As a result the mortality rates fell at unprecedented
speed in developing nations.
*The accompanying population explosions created the
potential for a vicious cycle of poverty.
* The resources required for economic development (and
so for a movement to the third stage of the demographic
transition), were crowded out by rapid population
expansion.
* Thus it can be safely recommended that impact of
population explosion, associated with increasing population
density in cities, on environmental degradation can be
controlled by
1. Increasing pace of development
2. Adopting comprehensive population policy.
 Economic growth and the environment
Will there be a trade off between the goals of achieving high
environmental quality and sustainable growth?
*For some social and physical scientists such as Georgescu-
Roegen and Meadows et al., growing economic activity
(production and consumption) requires larger inputs of energy
and material, and generates larger quantities of waste by-
products.
* Increased extraction of natural resources, accumulation of
waste and concentration of pollutants will therefore overwhelm
the carrying capacity of the biosphere and result in the
degradation of environmental quality and a decline in human
welfare, despite rising incomes.
*Furthermore, it is argued that degradation of the
resource base will eventually put economic activity
itself at risk.
*To save the environment and even economic activity
from itself, economic growth must cease and the
world must make a transition to a steady-state
economy.
* At the other extreme, there are those who argue that the fastest road
to environmental improvement is along the path of economic growth
* With higher incomes comes increased demand for goods and services
that are less material intensive, as well as demand for improved
environmental quality that leads to the adoption of environmental
protection measures.
* Some economists believe that economic growth provides a basis on
which sustained environmental improvements can and often do occur.
* As per capita incomes rise, a share of the new wealth can be used to
buy cleaner fuels like natural gas and to develop more energy-
efficient technologies.
* Some went as far as claiming that environmental regulation, by
reducing economic growth, may actually reduce environmental
quality.
*Yet, others have hypothesized that the relationship
between economic growth and environmental quality,
whether positive or negative, is not fixed along a
country‘s development path;
*It may change sign from positive to negative as a
country reaches a level of income at which people
demand and afford more efficient infrastructure and a
cleaner environment.
*The implied inverted-U relationship between
environmental degradation and economic growth
came to be known as the environmental Kuznets
curve.
*At low levels of development, both the quantity and the
intensity of environmental degradation are limited to the
impacts of subsistence economic activity on the
resource base and to limited quantities of biodegradable
wastes.
*As agriculture and resource-extraction intensify and
industrialization takes off, both resource depletion and
waste generation will accelerate.
*At higher levels of development, structural change
towards information-based industries and services, more
efficient technologies, and increased demand for
environmental quality result in leveling-off and a steady
decline of environmental degradation.
* The issue of whether environmental degradation
1. Increases monotonically
2. Decreases monotonically
3. First increases and then declines along a country‘s development
path
has critical implications for policy.
* A monotonic increase of environmental degradation with economic
growth calls for strict environmental regulations and even limits on
economic growth to ensure a sustainable scale of economic activity
within the ecological life-support system.
* Finally, if the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis is supported
by evidence, development policies have the potential of being
environmentally benign over the long run (at high incomes), but they
are also capable of significant environmental damage in the short-to-
medium run (at low-to-medium-level incomes).
2.3. Economic growth and the environment