Environmental Problems of Urbanization
Added on 2021-06-15
8 Pages1559 Words193 Views
|
|
|
Running head: URBANIZATION: ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEM Urbanization: Environmental ProblemName of the StudentName of the UniversityAuthor Note
URBANIZATION: ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEM 1Introduction In economics, the term “market” refers to the place where the buyers and the sellersinteract with each other in order to reach to a mutually agreed price and quantity levels fordifferent products or services. Generally, the market forces, in the absence of any exogenousinterventions tend to reach to an equilibrium situation through inter-dynamics, However,there are many instances when free market operations fail to achieve desired outcome ofmaximized social welfare, one of the primary example of the same being the perpetual issueof environmental degradation (Baumol and Blinder 2015). In this context, the concernedessay tries to view the trends of urbanization as one of the primary environmental problemsin the contemporary period, emphasizing particularly on the urbanization trends of one of themost populous country, China. Market Failure in Environmental Aspects: Conceptual Framework In the theoretical framework of environmental economics, the concept of marketfailure is one of the central concepts. The term “market failure” refers to the problem of lackof efficiency in the allocation of resources by the markets, which fails to generate maximumwelfare for the society as a whole (Knox-Hayes 2015). There are several crucial ways inwhich the market system fails the environmental preservation, which are discussed asfollows: Externalities- In the conceptual domain of economics, externality refers to the phenomenonin which the choice and actions of one person affects other unrelated people, positively ornegatively, often in numerically unaccountable ways. In case of environmental aspectsexternality is one of the primary components and most of the time it is found to be negative,where the Marginal Social Cost of the actions is greater than the Marginal Private Cost(Mäler 2013).
URBANIZATION: ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEM 2For instance, the companies emitting pollution only take into account the costs ofproduction of their commodities and services but cannot take into account the negativeexternalities it is causing in terms of degraded health of the population. This is even moreacute a problem in the urban zones where the environmental degradation is much higher. Public Good- Environmental resources being non-excludable resources are of the nature ofpublic goods which can be utilized by everyone, which in turn leads to inefficiency in theallocation of such resources. However, this leads to the problem of “tragedy of commons”,where the usage of environmental resources by one group leads to the exclusion of the others.Urbanization, in this context, leads to development of industries and accommodations at thecost of environmental resources, which poses as one of the primary threats in the aspect ofenvironmental degradation (Tietenberg and Lewi 2016). Ignorance-Ignorance of the value of sacrifice of the commons, in the domain of whichenvironmental resources fall, creates disbalance in utilization of environmental resources, ascan be seen to be common in the process of urbanization. Intergenerational Disbalance- Overutilization of scarce and limited environmental resourcesin one generation leads to the fall in the availability of the same in the successive generations,thereby decreasing their overall welfare (Tietenberg and Lewi 2016). In this context, the overenthusiasm of urbanization and the over utilization and sacrifice of environmental resourcesin this process is expected to decrease the welfare of the coming generations. Urbanization and Environmental Problem The term “Urbanization” refers to the shift and increase in the population of peoplefrom rural to the urban areas and cities of a region and the changes which the society needs toadopt to accordingly. The process of urbanization however, leads to substantialenvironmental degradation in a region. This is primarily because of the fact that in creating
End of preview
Want to access all the pages? Upload your documents or become a member.
Related Documents