Effects of Pollution on World Economy Essay

Today, the increase in the world population and the fact that improved lives leads to life in the cities could only mean more pollution and a concern for every one. The daily requirements of the humans have created an unrelenting world where human enterprise would not be ignored. The direct or indirect involvement such has been created by the necessity to survive largely as the major reason. Although, at times the basic force behind that, is the human nature to live comfortable lives by making work easier. Human activities on the face of the earth have affected the natural settings leading to major environmental impacts. Damage to the environment through pollution has always been the overriding result rather than improvement and development. In the recent increase in green house gas emissions have been rampant therefore warranting research, analyses and survey. The green house gases include carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons that cause air pollution chemicals responsible for water pollution water and other metals that cause pollution to land and water (Hill, 2004). The analysis of pollution The graph below illustrates the yearly carbon emissions from different regions from 1800 up to 2000 in Million metric tons of carbon per year. From, this graph it is clear that the most leading countries in carbon emissions rank among the most developed countries. Developing countries and the less developed countries like Africa rank the lowest from this graph. It has been explained that less developed and developing countries is that economic costs of environmental regulation and compliance are small in respect to factors of production inclining more to those that influence comparative advantage (Gallagher, 2004) Source: Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Online, n. d. There is evidence that increase in economic growth leads to an increase in pollution has been authenticated by the research in Mexico by the use of Kuznet curve. What Gallagher in his paper says is that pollution surpasses the economic growth thus the industries must come with strong environment strategies to ensure hat the growth of both are at per. Otherwise pollution leads to loss of profits made by an industry. This means that pollution eats back to what has lead to the accumulation of wealth (Gallagher, 2004). Pollution effects from a negative outlook What do we mean by the term environment? The environment is composed of the natural situations that form the human living space. This means that these are the inputs for nature that man has to turn to at one point of his life for survival or to aid in acquisition of an otherwise important need in his or her life. In economic terms the environment is seen as a scarce good that has its own special attributes (Siebert, 2007). The argument is that environment has two conflicting functions, one being a public consumption good and the other a home for deposition of waste from the consumption and production processes. The transformation of the environment on the other hand has affected the humans and the enterprise leading to a cyclic system; a system that works by triggering form one end and the process comes back trough and from another end. One of the major environmental impacts has been pollution thus this research paper will concern on how pollution affects the world economy from all perspectives. Pollution in the world has seen the increase in carbon dioxide and fixation of nitrogen present in air since the start of industrial revolution. The major reason for this increase is due to human activities changing and recoursing the natural law order of making and degeneration of organic and inorganic substances. Fresh water available sources have been put into human use and millions of birds have gone to extinction due to human activities. It is very clear that the rate of degeneration caused by man is much faster than the way natural order would take to replace back or deal with the amount of excretion. This therefore, means we have a cause to worry because in the quest for dominion of the earth and to improve our lives the other side of the balance is getting heavier. The process of natural replacement requires one to a hundred years to be effective therefore if pollution goes on with the same kind of alarming rate then man has to use his own means to replace the depleted materials to their original levels. This is very costly and affects the world’s economy negatively (Ash & Scholes, 2005). It is thus crucial to harmonize the different views on pollution to achieve pragmatism and success in the fight against man’s environment eventual extinction due to his own activities. This statement stems from the fact that pollution rates are different form the position of the country or region in that developing countries have the highest rates of pollution. This is a result of inadequate and many times lack of planning policies for the management of the waste form industries. On the other hand the rampant corruption harbored in these countries contributes immensely to the mismanagement of funds meant for the environment conservation and measures taken to avert the consequences of industrial effluents. However this does not mean that the developed countries are an exempt from this blame. Some of the most developed countries like America have large number of pollution from industries leading to mass destruction of animals especially in rivers lakes. At times these pollutant ranges to national border effects transported by agents like water and wind. Most of the large world economies since 1980’s have adopted the liberalized economy. This involves the right to engage in free trade using the available means of production. This thus, raises the concern of economy from the effect of pollution as a result of different countries applying all their resources to beat their inadequacy. This has translated to pollution taking two major turns. The first is the pollution from production and the second is pollution arising from consumption. In the quest to sustain energy production and sufficient supply of power major economies like China have resulted to using nuclear energy. This source of energy is renewable but has high dangers of leaking emission s to the atmosphere which can be lethal. The fact is that if it is lethal then it upsets the supply of labor if death occurs due to its results (Ash and Scholes, 2005). Labor is a very important factor of production which when terminated can lead to closure of factories besides causing negative growth. A very good example is the Bhopal accident in India that lead to the closure of the pesticide company due to death of 2000 to 8000 workers hours after the accident. Therefore the increased concern in the world environmental management has lead to United Nations concern of a fast fading natural setting world. This can be explained by the Kyoto protocol of 1997 which sought to achieve stabilization of green house gas concentrations in the atmosphere from dangerous levels that cause anthropogenic interference with the climate of the world. Many less developed and developing countries find themselves in situations of lack of enough capital to invest in the business equipment. It is therefore to assign a mammoth task to ask these business firms or industries to assign capital for purposes of preventing pollution. The implication from such kind of scenarios is that the externalities of pollution end up being passed to the society and to the governments indirectly. It is common in these economies to find that strategic industries are exempted from policies that are meant to curb the externalities because governments are not in position to make policies of internalization due to the importance attached (Stellman & Bureau, 1998). Pollution has proved to be very costly to countries in terms of health and safety, waste, and clean up costs. Of most crucial point to be noted is the reduced life expectancy especially in developing nations. When pollution either air, water, land, noise or any other has adverse effects to the humans it becomes a major concern to check and rationalize the existence of such a firm or industry. Human life should be first be respected from any angle of perspective. The United Nations millennium goals state that life is a right that is inalienable. Therefore, the slightest notion that life human life is at risk should not be taken lightly. Gravity lies at the core of issues pertaining pollution and disturbance of human life. The greatest damage to the economy would be to destroy human life emanating from pollution. First it is not easy to diagnose the various signs and symptoms resulting from instances of pollution in the environment. This requires specialized personnel, equipments and a variety of high demanding technology to sort out the problem. Nonetheless, some of the effects to human health are life lasting thus the issues of compensation cannot be avoided. The point here is that a long and time exposure to pollution is an expense to the economy of a country. The expenditure in treating and maintaining health of humans caused by pollution is a major drawback to achieving success in the global development especially if the magnitude of such pollution is very prolonged over a long period of time (Limited, 2001). The other way of looking at the effect of pollution to the economy is the customer relation to pollution. From the point of any organization, firm, or business the ultimate final goal is to make profit. This means that form the management of business affairs all means must be employed to remain in the market for a long time and outdo other rival business or firms. This from the business point of view is very encouraging but to look at the other side of the face it has an ugly look. Pollution being a costly project requires planning for efficiency to balance internalities and externalities of a business. The damage that is done to the economy is that this cost is passed to the consumer. Such an economy where the consumer is robbed of the power to buy is a weak economy that is not driven by the market forces. It results to exploitation of the employer to the employee sine he has the means. The employee only works to achieve the basic needs. There is no pleasure derived from work thus the value of work in such an economy is downtrodden (Driesen, 2003). Pollution had had a myriad of problems and affects the economy of the world in a myriad ways. It is therefore, pertinent to mention that it might not be possible to tackle al of them. However, one major effect of pollution to the economy is international trade. The concept of international trade operates form the point of multinational companies moving to transnational border and trade relations between states. The fact that most of the products are transported from their place of manufacture to heir places of consumption means that they offer employment, so when such goods are found to be below standards or then they might be rejected. This means that the number of people who were working from these firms is laid off. This increases the rate of unemployment of such places in such countries. In this context, if such firms are closed the chances to improve are thwarted thus no chance is given to the possibility of innovation (Driesen, 2003). Conclusion In the light of this research paper it is worth to note that the effects of pollution have also a positive side. Already discussed above are the negative effects thus, the following part will try to look at the positive aspect of pollution. It might sound rather unconvincing but the approach will try to authenticate the concern correctly. Pollution being seen from the international trade of states lens can lead to effective prevention. This is possible from the fact that if a certain state identifies a certain product to be a pollutant then measures to control the production of such a product are put in place. This means that the regulations will apply to other state trading with this nation. This means that the overall economies are focused to have products that are acceptable to them and to other member states. This at he same time means that if pollution prevention measures are put in place the firms and manufacturing companies seek the alternative of innovating other methods to produce better goods that are in lime with the regulations on pollution prevention. This means that the products that arise as a result for this new invention are better placed thus they penetrate markets to leap heavily at the expense of the earlier polluting products. This raises the firm’s reputation as well as the market advantage (Driesen, 2003). At the same time, this new invention lead to offer of new employment thus the once aversive pollution firm now becomes the centre of interest by complete change of ideology and repackaging. If a manufacturing firm changes its products from the polluting ones to the zero or less polluting ones there is an increase in the requirement from the market due to the increase in population. This means that industrialization takes human life and aspects to another level of civilization. Thus, if there is no pollution we might be stagnating with obsolete technology that does not help mankind. Tabb argues that an economy grows from the pollution that emanates from the industries. If workers must die from pollution and in the response economy grows, then pollution is might be justified (Tabb, 1992).