Sustainable Development

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Sustainable Development

• Sudarshan Iyengar
• Gujarat Vidyapeeth
• Ahmedabad
• vc_at_gujaratvidyapith.org
• Phone [phone]

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Sustainable Development

• Journey from Soil Economics to Oil Economics
• Environmental changes and Issue of sustainability
• Is the concern of recent origin?
• Roman cities, Victorian London and Malthus
• Economy and Environment Interlinkages
• Environmental services
• Supplier of resources
• Supply of environmental services
• Sink services

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Sustainable DevelopmentE4
R2
R1
Source
Production
Consumption
E4
E4
Sink
En. Service
E4
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Sustainable Development

• Assimilation Capacity of Natural Resource
• Fixed point pollution and Threshold values debate
• S1a F1 - At
• Where F is flow of pollutants
• and A is the amount assimilated in any period.
• For cumulative pollutants the stock in any period
  t will be
• tt
• Sct ? Ft
• ti

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Sustainable Development

• Externality problem
• Externality arises when consumption of production
  decisions of one economic unit enters into
  utility of production function of another
  economic unit without any compensation.
• E3 For people in Europe and America pleasure
  is obtained from the existence of wilderness,
  flora and fauna in nature.

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Sustainable Development

• UA U (X1, X2, .Xn, Q1, Q2, Qm)
• Where UA is utility, (X1Xn) are goods and
  services produced in the production sector and Qs
  are a bundle of environmental goods and services.
  
• Let the utility function of A be the one already
  described above
• UA U (X1, X2, .Xn, Q1, Q2, Qm)
• By buying a car (X1) the utility will go up,
  i.e.,
• ?UA / ?X1 ? 0
• air pollution due to increase in car services
  will reduce the clean air availability say (q1),
  i.e.,
• ?Q1 / ?X1 ? 0

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Sustainable Development

• The issue is whether the increase in utility due
  to car use is higher than the loss of utility by
  reduction in clean air. The reduction in total
  utility UA is thus a product that may be given as
  
• ?UA / ?Q1 ? ?Q1 / ?X1
• The net effect is thus ambiguous.

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Sustainable Development

• Maintenance of an atmospheric composition
  suitable for life. The earths atmosphere is made
  up largely of nitrogen (78) oxygen (21 )
  argon (0.93) water vapour (variable) and carbon
  dioxide (0.035), with numerous trace gases. The
  limits of variability in this mixture, from the
  point of view of continued existence, are small
• Maintenance of temperature and climate. The
  naturally-occurring greenhouse effect warms the
  earth from its effective mean temperature of -
  18?C to the current global average of 15?C.
  Changes in the composition of upper atmosphere
  can change this warming.

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Sustainable Development

• Recycling of water and nutrients. Examples are
  the hydrological, carbon and oxygen cycles.
  Clearly, economic activity operates within this
  environment, and thus is shown as being
  encapsulated by it. The dashed line between E and
  E indicates that emissions can these global
  support services.

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Sustainable Development

• Link between Economic and Natural World
• Laws of Thermodynamics
• Second Law says
• in a closed system, the use of matter-energy
  cause a one-way flow from low entropy resources
  to high entropy resources from order to
  disorder. (Hanley and others 1997, p. 12).

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Sustainable Development

• the major implication of the second law of
  thermodynamics form the point of view of economic
  activity in an economy is that energy cannot be
  recycled in such a way that we get back all the
  capacity of the original energy form. There would
  be some energy loss in the process. The more we
  increase the process, the more will be the total
  loss.
• Since the system is not closed, the impact of the
  second law may or may not be felt so intensely.
  But rate of use and recycling matters. If use
  process is faster than regeneration, entropy may
  set in.

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Sustainable Development

• First law of Thermo dynamics
• The first law of thermodynamics states that
  matter, like energy, can neither be created nor
  be destroyed. (Hanley and others 1997 p. 11).
• It is also known as material balance principle.
• A closed system cannot add to its stock of
  material and energy
• Earth is partly powered by solar energy
• Material is made of photosynthesis, earth uses
  one percent of total sun light
• Solar energy use is also very limited

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Sustainable Development

• So material we are using is of past, a bank
  deposit
• Implications
• 1. More is produced more is consumed more is
  waste,
• 2. Substitution has ultimate limitation
• Y f (N, K, L)
• How does N behave in the long run?

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Sustainable Development

• Sustainability Issues
• Is population a problem?
• Does population rise to environmental crisis? Or
  poverty is due to environmental problems
• Environment Kuznet Curve
• The concept of sustainable development can be
  traced back to Wantrups concept of safe minimum
  standards used with reference to endangered
  species a little above fifty years ago.

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• Within the field of environmental economics, it
  is now widely recognised that the goal of
  sustainable development is principally an equity,
  rather than an efficient, issue.

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Sustainable Development

• Environmental degradation, reversible and
  irreversible, includes vulnerability due to
  deforestation, rangeland degradation,
  biodiversity loss, coastal zone erosion, air, and
  soil and water quality deterioration. It is
  caused by development and growth process, which
  is a direct path, and due to social inequities
  and injustice, which is indirect path.

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Sustainable Development

• Intra generational Issues
• Intergenerational Issues
• The debate on substitution
• The Hartwick-Solow approach in forming
  sustainable rules is now well known. Production
  of goods and services is made possible with
  capital and labour. Capital includes natural and
  man-made. Hartwicks argument is that so long as
  the society is able to maintain capital stock
  required for an agreed level of production for a
  long time to come, there is a possibility of
  non-declined consumption forever.

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Sustainable Development

• Existence value is important and perhaps vital
• The Sustainable thesis of the London school sets
  a rule that reduction in the level of natural
  capital must be prevented below some constraint
  value.
• Weak Sustainability
• Strong sustainability

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Sustainable Development

• Gandhian way of living
• Man the Producer
• Man the consumer
• Man and Ekadash vrat

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Sustainable Development

• THANK YOU