Whenever we talk about economic development the issue of environment is come in the front. There is a trade-off between economic development and the environment. Now-a-days, globally environmental degradation is becoming a major concern. Now in this 2020, world people claim that economic activities are responsible for environmental degradation. Yes, they may have valid reasons because several economic activities are now polluting the environment and environmental degradation mainly started after huge industrial revaluation. Such as industries and automobiles pollute our water and air by throwing waste water into river and wetlands and emits hazardous pollutants into the air, respectively. Developers make changes to the environment by filling the wetlands for making high-rise buildings. This type of story goes on each and every day.
This is also true that for making any types of economic activities we are fully dependent on environmental resources. According to the first law of thermodynamics- ‘total energy of an isolated system is constant; energy can be transformed from one form to another, but can be neither created nor destroyed.’ So for making any goods and services to our consumptions we need inputs and these inputs are mainly stock of natural resources (oil, coal, timber, gas and so on). These inputs are used in the production sector and the outputs of this production sectors are some goods and services which we consume. Here, production sector represents firms and consumption sector represents household of the economy. The wastes from both sectors are going into the environment. So environment is not only treated as a resource stock but also treated as a passive sink or a receptacle for waste production. The environment has its own assimilative capacity unless or until we cross the carrying capacity of the environment it does not pollute the earth. Thought environment itself is a passive sink and it has its regenerative capacity, so if we do not cross the limit of the carrying capacity of the environment then we can run our economic activities without hampering the environment. Obviously, we have only one earth with certain limits so we should always concern about the ecological footprint of our earth.
For the sake of continuous economic development, following immediate measures are suggested to take to minimize the ongoing environmental degradation related to economic activities.
-we can use renewable resources (solar, wind, fuel cell, biogas, including mineral wave) as a backstop of non-renewable resources, so that we can save our limited natural resources.
– We can start calculating Ecological Rucksack techniques. It is a very useful technique to find out the wastage of natural resources. An Ecological Rucksack is the total quantity (in kg) of materials moved from nature to create a product or service, minus the actual weight of the product. That is, ecological rucksacks look at hidden material flows. Basically, it takes a life cycle approach and signifies the environmental strain or resource efficiency of the product or service.
– Can promote water management system such as ETP for industries, water purification, water reclamation and so on.
– Can also take initiative for managing waste efficiently. We can minimize our waste by recycling, municipal solid waste salvage, sustainable packaging and superfund cleanup.
– Introduction of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) can be a very useful policy to maximize resource efficiency and minimize waste. EPR is a policy tool in which producers are required to be financially or physically responsible for their products after their useful life. Briefly, EPR requires that producers either take back spent products or manage them through reuse, recycling or remanufacturing or delegate this responsibility to a third party, a so called producer responsibility organization (PRO), which is paid by the producer for spent-product management.
– Green buildings (green energy and water efficiency, green products and materials) can be another solution for no to environmental pollution and to save natural resources.
– The government regulation on common resources should be strictly followed by the state and privet property rights also need to be followed to stop environmental pollution.
Other than these initiatives, the government can increase some of the specific taxes which can help to stop environmental degradation as well as can generate revenue for the government to spend on public goods and services to bring a more equal society.
– Government can implement high taxes on extraction of energy, minerals and so on. So that people feel discouraged to extract more natural resources and chose alternative eco-friendly sources.
– It can be also a very good idea for implementing taxes on waste disposal and refundable fees. If government fix the waste disposal level for certain industry keeping in mind about their production capacity than waste disposal fees can be charged. Govt. should also give them tradable or marketable permits. It is a kind of license, when you are using natural resources then your production level has been decided by the government and if one does not need that much production permits then that company can sell it to the other producers. That means the permits are tradable or sellable.
– The state can also explore an ecological tax reform system. Ecological tax reform is that countries should shift their taxation from productive activities such as work and income generation, onto pollution and resource exhaustion. Taxing pollution and resource exhaustion raises the cost of these destructive activities, thus discouraging them. Sweden and Norway have established tax-shift commissions in their ministries of finance to analyze the problems and implications of shifting to more ecological taxation.
– Government can also introduce specific taxes on technologies and products which are associated with substantial negative externalities on market failure. If they use technology which are harmful for the environment, than they have to pay high tax to the govt. and which will may be responsible for the loss of their business. For this kind of tax producers may feel discourage making negative externalities.
– Government should strictly charge green tax or eco-tax to stop environmental degradation as well as to raise revenue for govt. Green tax can also help the economy because it is more people intensive than capital intensive.
Not only taxes but also subsidy can also encourage producers to make eco-friendly products. Already, govt. of the Bangladesh started to lower the tax from green industry, which is a very good initiative for minimizing environmental pollution. For the sake of fulfillment of sustainable development goal 2030 we need to concern on eco-friendly growth. Now it’s a big challenge for the world as well as in Bangladesh to minimize the trade-off between economic development and environmental degradation.
(Sadia Islam is Assistant Professor, Dhaka School of Economics).
