In many parts of the world the five elements of environment Sky, Water, Earth, Air and Fire are worshipped. This in itself is an explanation of the complex phenomena called planet Earth. Till such time the mankind nurtures the environment at micro level the world will exist. The understanding of these five elements of nature will help understand the laws of nature which will help mankind to achieve greater health and happiness of the living things on the earth.
GDP measures the monetary value of final goods and services that are bought by the consumers and government produced in a country in a given period of time. A serious question which many environmentalists think of is that why GDP does not account of environmental health. Why the GDP is not reduced by soil erosion, air and water pollution and even though natural resources are depleted, their economic value or costs are excluded in the GDP calculation.
In India the natural capital is poorly categorized in GDP; natural resources are not adequately considered as economic assets; the environmental costs of depletion and degradation of natural resources are not factored in while arriving at economic growth figures. Environmental pollution, water contamination and resource depletion are omitted. Today, we have taken the mother nature for granted because the environmental wealth does not involve transactions. In fact, letting harmful waste of chemicals into water bodies, cigarette smoking, using chemicals and fertilizers for growing soil quality, selling arms for crime, selling party drugs to the rich and celebrities, are calculated in GDP because they generate spending and they show ‘growth’ of GDP.
The business minds are not bothered about the habitat degradation and biodiversity loss which are accelerating fast. Climate disruption is getting worse; we are witnessing more frequent and damaging forest fires, floods, droughts, cyclones and tsunamis. Oceans are heating because greenhouse gases trap more energy from the sun and the oceans are absorbing more heat, resulting in an increase in sea surface temperatures and rising sea level harming the coral reefs and sea life.
Due to water and air pollutions infant health is getting disrupted. Isolating a causal relationship between pollution and health is challenging for many reasons. First, measurement error in pollution levels reduces coefficients and makes a relationship difficult to detect. There are numerous pollutants, many of which are measured infrequently or not at all. A number of baffling elements cannot be ruled out in order to interpret a relationship between environmental quality and health as causal.
Economists term mother nature as a nonexcludable or ‘public good’, thus, the benefits of environmental quality accrue to all citizens. the costs of degradation are borne by entire society other than the polluters. The atmosphere and open oceans are common property and nobody can be excluded from using them. Think of a smoking factory chimney pouring black soot onto surrounding houses, schools, hospitals etc. Here, the polluter has an economic incentive but what about the others who suffer?
In June 2022 a portion of Deepak Nitrite’s chemical manufacturing facility in Nandesari industrial area on the outskirts of Vadodara city in Gujarat was engulfed by a major fire. Seven workers had been hospitalised after inhaling smoke, while some 700 people living in the vicinity of the factory had to be shifted to safer places. We never think about the negative effect borne by the whole neighbourhood.
In May 2016, a blast at Probace Enterprises, a chemicals factory in Dombivli MIDC, had claimed 12 lives and left over 100 injured. The impact was so strong that window panes of Abhinav Vidyalaya, a primary and secondary school nearly 100 metres away from the site of the explosion, were scattered.
Simple prudent fact: to care for humanity, we must care for nature. During the Corona pandemic when the world was locked in house, the mother nature bloomed. The world became a quieter place in the pandemic. Cars, two wheelers and trucks were off the streets, factories closed, offices closed, silent road the air and water pollution reduced drastically. Lots of birds and animals set out from deep woods. Mother nature bloomed.
The presidents of Colombia, Costa Rica and Switzerland, joined by ministers from a dozen other countries recently launched a “High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People”, aimed at persuading governments to agree on a global goal to preserve at least 30% of the planet’s lands and oceans by 2030.
Bhutan is the world’s first carbon negative country. Mainly because of its extensive forests, covering 70% of the land, the Kingdom is able to absorb more carbon dioxide than it produces.
We live in a globalized world where countries are increasingly integrated across a variety of dimension of PESTLE—political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental. While globalization is often credited with increase in economic growth and GDP per capita, it is not without its discontents. Among these, we blindly ignore environmental issues like water and air pollution which sometimes extend beyond national borders to affect neighbouring countries. For example, few years back China’s very serious air pollution has hampered the neighbouring countries India, Pakistan, Nepal etc. Middle East and North Africa’s (MENA) degraded sea and polluted air has bothered the neighbouring countries a lot. Its natural capital is degraded.
I conclude my thought-on GDP calculation: It does not include the environmental sustainability, the standard of health, happiness, security, and mental wellbeing of an individual, a group of people, or a nation. Any outcome from economic activity that creates negative value for society, such as air and water pollution that harms human health and other living things health. The unsustainable economic growth is diminishing the quality of life.
A measure of a nation’s quality of life includes the income and output measured by gross domestic product. This measure subtracts out the costs of negative effects related to economic growth such as crime, environmental degradation, natural resource depletion, and the costs of climate change. Genuine Progress Indicator nets the positives and negatives of economic activity to provide a more accurate measure of a nation’s quality of life than GDP alone.
