"Environmental degradation is neither the inevitable price of, nor a desirable path for, economic development

The first 200 words of this essay...

"Environmental degradation is neither the inevitable price of, nor a desirable path for, economic development."

(UNDP, et al, 2005)

Introduction

Environmental degradation is now apparent on a global scale. In addition to the deterioration of what were once considered free goods (such as air and water), escalating scarcity of natural resources, deforestation, desertification and threatened bio-diversity are now commonplace across the spectrum. There are certainly no reservations over the scale of this degradation, however there is much controversy concerning the apparent environmental degradation - economic development nexus.

Many have argued that short-term tradeoffs exist in the form of environmental degradation, for superior long-term economic gains. One of the positions put forward is that environmental degradation is the result and inevitable price of economic development. This viewpoint is based on the Environmental Kuznets Curve, regarding environmental degradation as the 'necessary evil' for achieving 'economic development' and suggesting that environmental assets are degraded in the early stages of economic development, only to improve after some income threshold has been passed at a later point.

In the last decade, extensive literature has argued that a direct link between environmental degradation and economic