The Environment and Development.pptVIP

* Lecture 20:The Environment and Development Economics and the Environment * Environment and Development: The Basic Issues The concept of sustainable development, and linkages between the environment Sustainability: a development path is sustainable ‘if and only if the stock of overall capital assets remains constant or rises over time’ Environmental accounting: the preservation or loss of valuable environmental resources should be factored into estimates of economic growth and well-being * NNP* =GNP –Dm –Dn – R –A NNP*: sustainable net national product Dm: depreciation of manufactured capital assets Dn: depreciation of environmental capital: monetary value of environmental decay over a year R: expenditure required to restore environmental capital (forests, fisheries etc.) A: expenditure required to avert destruction of environmental capital * Population, Resources, and the Environment Perception that there is a limited population size which can be sustained with the earth’s finite resources Potential for new technologies may alleviate the strain on the resources Growing populations in the LDCs have led to land, water, and wood shortages in rural areas, and sanitation and water crisis in urban areas Increasing population contributes to accelerated degradation of resources * Poverty and the Environment There exists a relationship between environmental destruction and high fertility which are both out growths of absolute poverty Preventing environmental degradation is linked to providing institutional support to the poor Insecure land rights, lack of credit and inputs and absence of information often prevent poor from marking resource augmenting investments which would help preserve the environment * Growth versus the Environment Question of whether or not it is possible to achieve growth without environmental damage The worst environmental damage by the richest billion and poorest billion of the world Therefore idea that increasing incomes of the poor wo