World Bank: Anhropogenic Contamination of Aquatic Resources Reduces Economic Growth

Keskiviikko 4.9.2019 klo 18.16 - Mikko Nikinmaa

Just recently, the World Bank published a booklet: Quality Unknown. The Invisible Water Crisis. What it basically says is that the water resources throughout the world are so much affected by human actions that it causes a significant slowing down of economic growth. Reading through the booklet, there is naturally no big news to us water researchers, but it is a good summary of the things that are anthropogenic problems in our water resources, and how these problems affect agriculture, industry and our everyday affairs. However, I bring the World Bank document forward, because earlier on economy and environment have always been brought forward as opposites. And virtually in every case that economic and environmental considerations have clashed, the environmental one has lost. The World Bank report gives a sad tale of what the result is. Economic growth is slowing down largely as a result of decisions, which have been taken in order to boost economy. This indicates that economic thinking should be changed so that environment (natural capital) is primary and must be maintained in good condition. All economic actions must be done so that if they harm environmental balance in one dimension, they must improve it in another so that the overall status is not affected. It is the path to sustainability.

The Quality Unknown report can be found at www.worldbank.org, where also the ideals of the World Bank are brought forward. Quickly reading through them, I feel that should be the direction that economic thinking in united world goes to.

Growth Economy - Enemy of Habitable Earth

Keskiviikko 22.5.2019 klo 20.29 - Mikko Nikinmaa

Throughout the world politics is centered around maximal economic growth. When the economic growth of a nation is smaller than the average, the politicians and the media are depressed and almost think that the end of the world has come. However, that is not the cause of the end of the world, but growth itself is.

Analogy to maximizing economic growth is a car with no visibility - one does not know what happens if you increase the speed. The earth is the car with no visibility. In the case of driving a car, with decreasing visibility, you decrease the speed to enable you to respond to any problem. You certainly would not increase speed, but that is what is done with economic growth. One does not know what happens to the Earth, but growth must be speeded up. The concepts of growth economy were formulated when the human population was one fifth of what it is now and there seemed to be unlimited space and resources.

This is not the case any more. The human population is so large that it inevitable leads to the use of land, energy and resources in such a way that the future use is affected. As two negaive results of this we have climate change and biodiversity loss. Despite the clear negative effects of growth, both population and economic growth are the primary goals of politics. It seems almost impossible for politicians and other decision makers to realize that they are behind all the problems that the right-wing populists are utilizing. If the resources and space were unlimited, there would be no refugees, no climate change etc. So continuing with the concept of growth is plain silly.

The growth has been possible by taking a loan from nature, i.e. a loan from future generations. This is not sustainable. So the concept of natural capital must be introduced into main focus of political and economic thinking. The outset of any political and economic decision should be that anything done is neutral to the environment (if a decision causes a deterioration of one aspect in environment steps should be made to compensate for it in other environmental features).

If we decide to accept that growth is changed to zero effect on environment, the problem is that many negative effects of growth will continue for a long period of time. If, for example, we are able to decrease the number of children to a level that in the long run will stop population growth, the population increase will continue for the period of time that the present children grow up to fertile age. Similar examples can be found in virtually all aspects of life. However, we must not resort to thinking that the lack of effects in the short term shows that the measure is not effective. What we need to do is putting all our efforts to change from growth economy to sustainable solutions.