Resource Depletion and Green Economics

Hello friends I am back with a newer post about the depletion of natural resources and introduction of Green Economics. This is first of the serial of posts that I am going to share with you. Our world’s natural resources are depleting due to excessive extraction to feed the needs of the capitalistic giant, and the rate of extraction of resources is increasing day by day and if we will continue to do so sooner the scarcity of resources will become so swear that we will have to pay it at the cost of existence of our future generations. This excessive extraction of natural resources is also disturbing our ecological system. Due to massive carbon emissions on one side the ambient quality of eco-sys is decreased but it has highly reduced its assimilative capacity. So we have to do inter-temporal decisions by trading off between our needs and future generations. So the concept of Green Economics is introduced.

The concept of Green Economics don’t only relates to the survival of environment by drowning the economy. It tells us how we should take our economy along with the eco-system. But it requires a great effort on the part of all of us because the process of transformation of a system always requires the mental and physical efforts of the agents of that system. Green Economics talks about the introduction of positive alternatives in the all areas and each sector of the economy. In economics the concepts of social cost and social benefits are already familiar, for example to reduce the emissions the governments can put emission taxes on the producers as social cost so that the damage done by emissions could be recovered and due to these taxes the producers will also reduce the emissions. On the other hand to some extent reduced emissions also mean reduced resource depletion. This can happen in many ways but I will discuss two of them.

The first concept is that controlled production process may reduce the residuals and losses so raw material consumption reduces. In the other way the producer may integrate an emission controlling mechanism probably a plant to control the emission. It will help in two ways; one is that the residuals will not be emitted so the emissions will not be controlled at the cost of output and the other way the residuals will be reused as input. So in the bigger scenario it leads to slower depletion. Another example is that if a person uses environment friendly fuels then he must be subsidized as to encourage social benefits.

It necessary to mention that when the state plays the role of enforcer the implementation of these transformations becomes difficult. It is the biggest problem in under developed nations and due to this social welfare programs are difficult to complete in these areas of world. When state act as coordinator then these programs or transformations become easy to implement and the enforcement cost is also saved.

Green economics emphasize the creation of positive alternatives in all areas of life and every sector of the economy. Green economics does not prioritize support for either the "public" or the "private" sector. It argues that BOTH sectors must be transformed so that markets express social and ecological values, and the state becomes merged with grassroots networks of Community innovation. For this to happen, new economic processes must be designed and new rules of the game written, so that incentives for ecological conduct are built into everyday economic life. The State can then function less as a policeman, and more as a coordinator. This is a very different kind of "Self-regulation" than current profit- and power- driven market forces. The basis for self-regulation in a green economy would be community, and intelligent design which provides incentives for the right things.

Article By: Muhammad Abubakar Ali