• Question: How can the need for increased economic growth to benefit poor and working people be harmonized with environmental necessities?

    Asked by erandavitija to Laura, Lily, Mark, Paul, Sarah on 21 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Sarah Bardsley

      Sarah Bardsley answered on 19 Jun 2010:

      Great question. I think the two things aren’t mutually exclusive. Economic growth and environmental sustainability should go hand in hand. I think its essential for the future to build an economy that does not overly exploit our environment, damaging our land, air, water, biodiversity and our own health. Sustainability offers businesses a new opportunity to generate money, employ people and benefit the natural world. So there’s opportunities there for companies to discover fantastic new waste management technologies that reduces the amount we send to landfill and instead turn unwanted items into valuable resources. Companies which develop new cleaner energy sources that can compete with current dirtier ones could make a fortune! Companies could chose to focus on improving our water efficiency and develop amazing new products and processes that reduces our freshwater use. I could go on but I won’t bore you! If we don’t find a way to link economic growth with environmental protection then the future looks a bit bleak because we really need a healthy planet to ensure we stay healthy.

    • Photo: Laura Maliszewski

      Laura Maliszewski answered on 20 Jun 2010:

      By crafting solutions that are appropriate to the resources of the nation in question. The ways that the US and UK reached economic maturity aren’t going to be the answer in places like Kenya. The trick is to build an infrastructure that can be maintained and surpassed by the community itself.

      ETA: A lady I went to school with, Nina Dudnick, is working on science solutions to sustainable development. She takes donated, working lab equipment and gives it to scientists in need so that they can do the experiments that are interesting and important to their community. You can learn about her and her work at: http://www.seedinglabs.org/

    • Photo: Mark Roberts

      Mark Roberts answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      Wow that’s a tough question!

      I guess in short through good leadership and government. Science can ‘help’ in providing technologies for this – the use of GM crops to allow you to grow crops in places where previously it was impossible is a good example – but anything we do needs to be sustainable.

      To make sure it works for everyone you need good government and probably for this good global government with countries working together

    • Photo: Paul Roche

      Paul Roche answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      It may be that we can’t balance these two things out – the world is an incredibly unfair place, with about half the planet essentially starving whilst the other half starts to suffer an obesity crisis. How can that be allowed to happen? In the “developed world” we have this idea that society depends on the need to grow the economy and “make money” – but most of the money that is traded by stock markets etc. is not real at all, it only exists within computer systems and the spreadsheets of huge banks and corporations. They exist to turn that money into even more money, and sadly the environment is going to take a back seat to money-making for a long time I suspect.

      In order to try and harmonize economic growth and environmental issues, we would need a radical change in how we think about life – it might mean a reduction in the standard of living for many people in order to allow many others to get to the basic survival level. I think that would be a very fair way to redistribute the “wealth” of the planet, as currently a small percentage of the population of Earth account for a vast majority of it’s resources. That is incredibly unfair, and when you look at the enormous responses of western governments to the banking “crisis” (where banks got a lot poorer – as opposed to a real crisis, like a drought where many people die…), you start to realise that we could actually do something significant to help the rest of the planet – but it won’t happen, because banks etc. are interested in making money, and saving the starving millions in Africa is not “profitable”…

      Sorry if that sounds like i’m angry with banks and big corporations and that I’m not in favour of us having a nice easy life, but it does annoy me when the news is full of this “terrible financial crisis” we are suffering in the developed world when you compare it with the enormous suffering that has been going on for decades in the 3rd world.

    • Photo: Lily Asquith

      Lily Asquith answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      Building an enormous airport the size of Wales would create jobs for everyone, but we’re not going to do it because it would wreck the environment. Is this what you mean?

      I guess we need to think local. I think lots of the probelms we are facing in this country are an unavoidable result of trying to get 60 million people to work together as a country. Or more accurately, to work together as a force for creating vast wealth for a small number of people `at the top’.

      Unfortunately the people in this country who are powerful are, of course, the kind of people who seek to be powerful. People who seek to be powerful are often the types of people who don’t care about much else.

      But this is politics, not science, so I should shut up now 🙂

Comments

  • Photo: Andrew

    Andrew commented on :

    Hi,

    I’m moonlighting from the Silicon zone, but couldn’t resist chipping in on such a great question!

    First off, is economic growth necessary, or is this a myth that we’ve been sold over the past 50 – 100 years? I know some would argue that economic redistribution and social/environmental justice are more important than growth. Of course, this isn’t very palatable to scientists, technologies and engineers, whose livelihood depends on people being willing to invest in growth. But sometimes our motives have to be challenges if we truly want to ensure a good quality life for as many people as possible (and that includes living in harmony with the environment).

    However, assuming that technology innovation is going to accelerate in the foreseeable future, we have a real challenge on our hands – supporting a good quality of life for everyone in a world where demands on natural resources are rising exponentially, the global population continues to grow, and the benchmark of “good quality of life” continues to rise.

    The issue here is sustainability – how are we going to reach a point where what we do and how we live is sustainable? I would argue that we will not achieve this by doing business as usual – by churning out new science and new technologies with little forethought, and hoping that everything turns out alright (because it often doesn’t).

    Instead, we need to radically rethink the relationship between science, technology, society and the environment. And we need to learn how to build ideas of responsibility and sustainability into the very process of scientific discovery, technology innovation and economic development. This will mean developing new partnerships between scientists, politicians, businesses and citizens.

    Bottom line – if we are going to have a sustainable future, *everyone* will have an important role in ensuring science and technology are developed and used as wisely as possible!

  • Photo: Daniel

    Daniel commented on :

    In short, if resources are finite, then so will growth. This means that we will have to rethink everything that is related to growth, paying close attention to social and environmental issues.

    A number of possible approaches to this situation have been suggested, and four of them are compared in this interactive graphic (full report here).