Development and Environmental Concern

The evidence of serious environmental problems is caused by development and industrialisation. Despite the fact that, environmentalists have brought these concerns to the table in foremost debates, the solution towards what it called sustainable development remains unclear amongst policy makers. There are only limited answers to the contradictions between economic development and environmental protection. Most developing countries do not have much choice, they have to choose economic growth as their priority in order to solve the immediate concerns of their people’s needs. Since the majority of people in developing countries live in poverty, governments are forced to choose economic growth over environmental concerns.

Even though there is a well established environmental movement, which has warned the world about environmental destruction, this movement has only chipped away at the surface of this enormous problem. A large number of lives are at risk in developing countries from Brown environmental problems. The lack of an international body to enforce environmental standards around the world makes regulation impossible. The persistency of deep levels of poverty in developing countries, together with the refocusing of attention to the Green Agenda by the developed world, in order to avoid costs with regulations that threaten their competitiveness, may not leave a large number of people alive to see the effects of the global warming.

It is tempting to conclude that Globalisation and Sustainable Development are incompatible; Globalisation is a fundamentally economically driven process backed by the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO, and many MNCs, who are happy to promote blithely optimistic pictures of the effect of Globalisation on the environment. Sustainable Development is the name for diverse and diffuse policies, without effective processes for implementation and enforcement. Sustainable Development policies can claim small successes, as with the CFC international agreement; but Sustainable Development stands the greatest chance of being implemented where concerned individuals and local organisations advance it.