Economic Development and Enviornment

[dimpy.handa]

We have already wasted and destroyed vast amounts of natural resources, and in so doing have put earth at risk. We must preserve the earth for our children and grandchildren. In any case, poverty and environmental damage are often linked. Destroying the rainforest gives native peoples nowhere to go except urban slums. Polluted water can lead to crop failures. Climate change will turn fertile fields into desert and flood coastal areas where hundreds of millions live. Developing countries have to choose sustainable development if they want a future for their people.

 

[dimpy.handa]

By the year 2200 there will be a lot more people living on this planet then there are now. Estimates range anywhere from 15 to 36 billion people. Where will these people live? How will they live? The answer is sustainable development. Sustainable development, "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. " It also, "requires meeting the basic needs of all peoples and extending to them the opportunity to fulfill their aspirations for a better life. A world in which poverty is endemic will always be prone to ecological and other catastrophes." Sustainable development is being ignored in Chile, the Philippines, and Siberia, practiced in Madagascar and in Alaska, and examined in the Lake Baikal region of Russia. These Countries must learn from each other's failures and success to discover what sustainable development involves in their own country.

 

[swatiraohnlu]

To "develop" the economy companies are continually trying to introduce new products and trying to increase their customer base by developing the "undeveloped" countries. This "economic development" is at the cost of the environment. The raw materials have to come from somewhere, that means damaging the environment, there has to be more nasty polluting factories and the products themselves, at the end of their useful lives, will add to the huge waste disposal problem faced by the worlds "developed" nations.

There can be no solution to the environmental problem unless the production and marketing of the unlimited range of consumer products is nationalized. These products can only be produced by exploiting valuable natural resources so increasing their production and protecting the environment simultaneously is not possible.