Subject test variable 1.0

Test #1:

>Jpeg:

Image descriptor test 1.0

Text test 1.0:

Changing variable tested:

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5. Random Error test

>Long sentences test 1.0:

>Examine the claim that economic interests of a country are far more important than environmental ones.

            For the past century, countries all over the world have been actively seeking ways to develop its own countries economy for simple reasons such as ‘the peoples’ interest’. The rapid development involves the massive extraction, heavy and frequent usage of non-renewable and environmentally harmful inputs. Various evidences such as, increasing human life expectancy; the climbing proportion of the world's adults who can read and write; and global food production increases faster than the population grows, shows that these developments are successful and it is important for countries to place importance in its economic interests. But the same processes that have produced these gains have given rise to trends that the planet and its people cannot long bear. These prove to be failures of traditional ways of 'development' and failures in the management of our human environment, which made us realise that environmental interests should also not be completely neglected for the sole purpose of pursuing countries’ development.

 There has been a growing realization in national governments and multilateral institutions that it is impossible to separate economic development issues from environment issues; many forms of development erode the environmental resources upon which they must be based, and environmental degradation can undermine economic development. They also came to see it not in its restricted context of economic growth in developing countries. We came to see that a new development path was required, one that sustained human progress not just in a few pieces for a few years, but for the entire planet into the distant future. Thus 'sustainable development' becomes a goal not just for the 'developing' nations, but for industrial ones as well.

Governments in developing countries often subsidize the use of coal, electricity, pesticides, fertilizers, irrigation, and other inputs that are environmentally harmful. Governments have also subsidized (through free land and cheap credit) land clearing and farming on public forest lands. These policies are not only bad for the environment but are also socially costly because they distort incentives to engage in certain activities (e.g., farming) versus others, and because they distort incentives to use environmentally harmful inputs into production. Reforming these policies could build positive links between the economy and the environment by improving both economic performance and environmental quality. However, attempting to reform these policies can run into strong opposition from politically influential interest groups who benefit from government subsidies. Attempts at reform can also be undercut by corrupt politicians and bureaucrats.         

A good example of how government policy can distort incentives for environmentally and economically sound resource use is the government of India's policies toward irrigation and fertilizer use in agriculture. With respect to fertilizer, the Indian government's fertilizer subsidy program was first introduced after the 1973 oil shock with the objective of encouraging the use of fertilizer in order to capture the maximum gains from the then recently-introduced green revolution seed varieties. Simultaneously, the other objectives of the program were to keep fertilizer imports down and achieve and to maintain a high degree of self-sufficiency in fertilizer production. Abolishing fertilizer subsidies remains controversial. Fears have been expressed that the abolition of price controls on fertilizer will lead to sharply higher prices and reduced fertilizer usage, thereby decreasing yields of food crops. Economic studies of Indian agriculture do not suggest cause for alarm. These studies suggest that while yields would fall if fertilizer subsidies were abolished, they would not fall by much. By reducing fertilizer usage, abolishing fertilizer subsidies would also reduce pressures on the Indian environment and funds previously used on these subsidies could be used to achieve other governmental goals such as alleviate poverty.

Over the past few decades, life-threatening environmental concerns have surfaced in the developing world. Deforestation in Latin America and Asia is causing more floods, and more destructive floods, in downhill, downstream nations. Acid precipitation and nuclear fallout have spread across the borders of Europe. Similar phenomena are emerging on a global scale, such as global warming and loss of ozone. International economic relationships pose a particular problem for environmental management in many developing countries. Agriculture, forestry, energy production, and mining generate at least half the gross national product of many developing countries and account for even larger shares of livelihoods and employment. Exports of natural resources remain a large factor in their economies, especially for the least developed. Most of these countries face enormous economic pressures, both international and domestic, to overexploit their environmental resource base.

The crisis in Africa best and most tragically illustrates the ways in which economics and ecology can interact destructively and trip into disaster. Triggered by drought, its real causes lie deeper. They are to be found in part in national policies that gave too little attention, too late, to the needs of smallholder agriculture and to the threats posed by rapidly rising populations. Their roots extend also to a global economic system that takes more out of a poor continent than it puts in. Debts that they cannot pay force African nations relying on commodity sales to overuse their fragile soils, thus turning good land to desert. Trade barriers in the wealthy nations - and in many developing nations - make it hard for African nations to sell their goods for reasonable returns, putting yet more pressure on ecological systems. Aid from donor nations has not only been inadequate in scale, but too often has reflected the priorities of the nations giving the aid, rather than the needs of the recipients.

Impoverishing the local resource base can impoverish wider areas: deforestation by highland farmers causes flooding on lowland farms; factory pollution robs local fishermen of their catch. Such grim local cycles now operate nationally and regionally. The example of the differing stands of New York and U.S. chamber about the clearing part of the Adirondack forest in Northern America to make way for railroad construction would illustrate this point. The timber and railroad industries stood to make large profits from the destruction of the forest. However, New York chamber took a broad and long view of its members’ economic interests and shun the proposal the chamber focused not on these lost short-term profits but on the potentially devastating long-term economic impacts of Adirondack deforestation for all of its members. Declining stream flows meant that agriculture will suffer, and the great internal waterways of the continent will be rendered useless for commercial interchanges.

While on the other hand, the U.S. chamber appears not to recognize the economic threat posed by climate change. Instead, the chamber’s leadership continues to trot out exaggerated and one-sided claims about how the regulation of greenhouse gases would eliminate jobs and “strangle the economy.” While some companies in the fossil fuel and power sectors will face reductions in profits under a cap-and-trade scheme, the long-term consequences of unchecked climate change will be harmful and expensive for everyone. In fact, as many forward-looking companies recognize, cap-and-trade legislation will be good for business. Among other things, it will provide incentives for U.S. businesses to invest in the next generation of clean energy technologies. This impetus is long overdue, as the country falls behind China and Europe in this area. In an unprecedented show of dissent, corporations such as Apple, Exelon, Johnson & Johnson, Nike, and Pacific Gas and Electric have either renounced their membership in the chamber or expressed dismay at the chamber’s position.

In conclusion, there is no simple relationship between pursuing of economic development and the environment. The impact of economic development on the environment can vary from one country to another, vary over time within a country, and vary depending on the economic sector and environmental issue in question. Wealth may allow societies to deal with pollution in a more efficient manner or transform pollution into a less harmful form, but the idea that all nations can become wealthy by consuming the world's resources yet be pollution-free is antithetical to the laws of thermodynamics. Sustainable global development requires that those who are more affluent adopt life-styles within the planet's ecological means - in their use of energy, for example. Further, rapidly growing populations can increase the pressure on resources and slow any rise in living standards; thus sustainable development can only be pursued if population size and growth are in harmony with the changing productive potential of the ecosystem. Yet in the end, sustainable development is not a fixed state of harmony, but rather a process of change in which the exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development, and institutional change are made consistent with future as well as present needs. We do not pretend that the process is easy or straightforward. Painful choices have to be made. Thus, in the final analysis, sustainable development must rest on political will.