Environmental Policy vs Economic Integration - Literature review Example

NAME : XXXXXXXXX INSTITUTION : XXXXXXXXX COURSE : XXXXXXXXX TITLE : ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY VS. ECONOMIC INTEGRATION TUTOR : XXXXXXXXX @ 2009 Environmental policy has been left behind in the rush for economic integration Introduction According to Field (2006), environment refers to the outside surrounding conditions that manipulate the growth or development of animal or plants and people. These conditions can be both the living and working conditions. The surroundings are the physical attributes. Environmental policy is a course of acts purposely taken to run human activities with a vision to stop, decrease, or alleviate damaging effects on environment and natural resources, and ensuring that artificial changes to the surroundings do not have damaging effects on humans. The importance of deeming simultaneously the environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainable development has been supported since the concept was brought out in 1987 in the “Brundtland Report”. There is a requirement to analyze the social- environmental boundary. OECD’s (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) environmental plan for the 21st century first decade has the analysis of the social-environmental boundary as their main priorities. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (1991) outlines how environmental policies have affected households in a different manner, that is; according to how good they are and other factors like age. However, these policies have been left behind due to a rush for economic integration. This is one of the main challenges facing the European Union resulting to too many negative effects on the environment and people. Also, this has called attention of many organizations, institutions and individuals in trying to improve the environment conditions for better. Indeed, the perceived effects are significant political obstacles to the implementation of environment policies. In addition to considering the implementation of the environment policies, OECD is also examining the impacts of the policy on employment and health as these are also main areas where social and environmental concerns convene There are two kinds of concern connected to environmental policy. Those have a relation to how environmental quality is shared out across various members of society and those connected to the distribution of the monetary effects of environmental policies. Utton (2001) states that “unequal distribution of environmental value arises when some individual live nearer to polluting processing facilities or are exposed to noise pollution due to living below an airline flight route”. It can arise from people living away from parks or are not well supplied with water, waste collection or lack energy services. Mostly, it is hard to differentiate between the environmental and economic effects on a given policy. Environmental policies that targets public community commodities like urban parks and air quality, the experimental evidence shows that a change in the quality of environment possess a significant economic impact locally on elements like housing rates and jobs. Basically, there exist two ways to measure the distinction in impacts; physical components of measurements like emissions, disclosure or danger across households and “preference based” measures which reproduce individual preferences with admiration to the quality of the environment. Many elements contribute to likely inequities in the allocation of the environmental quality. Evidence shows that households with low-income are more exposed to environmental hazards than those that are wealthy. However, evidence is low for Europe and very scarce for the OECD region of pacific. Also, there is scarce evidence on how environmental resources like vegetation and public services related to environment are shared across society according to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2008). Evidence on the effects of the environmental policy cost in the income of individuals focuses on the impact of financial instruments especially taxes. Generally, households with low income spend slightly much proportion of their income on the taxes compared to high income households though they end up spending less in total. Though there is minimal evidence on how environmental policy elements like direct regulation for instance efficiency standards of energy affect high and low income households, what is there suggest that the economic impact will be equally harsh even though the households is slightly aware of it. Alternatively, since environmental taxes raises money, public sector can use the money to reduce the burden on mostly affected associates of the society. Howley (2005) notes that this option is not available for other measures. When reviewing the financial impacts of environmental policy, governments require examining the effect of a broad range of policy measures. Measuring the cost of a certain policy is not simple. A tax of fuel, for instance, has an effect not only to the consumer but also to the cost of goods or services that require a lot of fuel for their production. Therefore, the effects of a tax to an individual household or income category depends not only on their direct expenditure of fuel but also on how much they buy these goods and services. Actually, not all households will have the same reaction to the beginning of a policy. Chall, 2004, argues that a tax on the resident use of energy can make people to invest in energy conservation measures like double glazing or more heating systems and water heaters that are more efficient. This is applicable if only they can afford this kind of an investment. Environmental policy has an effect on the employment. Work on the connection among the environment and employment has a history at the OECD. Analysis shows that long and short term employment effects of environmental policies is relevant in the background of sustainable development. Brabant (1980) states that due to high levels of unemployment, policy makers have rehabilitated their interests in the possibility of planning a strategy in which the environmental policies intended to reduce unemployment can be equally supportive Due to this, the OECD has started to work on the correlation between employment and environment as part of its task on social and environmental policy integration. The OECD has enhanced its analysis with a specific emphasis on the economy-broad employment impacts of environmental policies in common and of climate changes policies in particular according to Pearce (1989). Their major objectives of the work was to keep posted information on employment in environmentally- connected sectors in OECD member countries, to inspect the contribution of environment-connected local proposals to sustainable growth through their impact on employment. Another objective was to talk about economy-broad employment effects of environmental policies deeper, and to examine exactly the potential impact of weather change policies on employment. The outcome indicates that environmentally-related functions in the public, private, tertiary division have become a important source of employment in many OECD countries. Data shows that direct employment impacts in the environmental goods and services (EGS) division alone differ between 0.4% and 3.0% of the entire employment in OFCD countries. Despite the development made in the value of statistics on environment-related employment in these countries, in regions like broader coverage and progressed methods of gathering information, the new study highlights gaps in reliability, accessibility and comparability of data according to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (1991). In general, Garam (1974) argues that environment policy has effects on the employment in short-term and in particular sectors. This is mainly at the detriment of employment in various sectors. However, transition difficulties likely to occur in various sectors or areas should be given attention and addressed thoroughly. Environment has some effects on health particularly on the ageing society and children. This group of people suffer from diseases like asthma caused mainly by air pollution. For instance in Europe almost one of ten school children has asthma and the rate is rapidly increasing. This has led to a increase of epidemiological studies hoping for better understanding and good characterizing the correlation between environmental pollution and the health of the aging society and children. Johnson (2006) argues that having no environmental policy in place, makes it hard for the processing industries to stop air pollution. At the same time, lack of publicity on the importance of conserving the environment has made it hard for both young and old groups in the society to participate in environment conservation. Globalization is a term used in describing the integration of the world wide economy that started with the spread of European colonization five centuries ago. The process has improved over the past 25 years especially due to the development of computer technology, dismantling of trade obstacles and the expansion of political and economic power of worldwide organizations like the transnational corporations (TNC’s). According to Johnstone (2007), globalization has impacts on the environment, social and political systems, on economic development and success and on human well-being in all societies in the world. Change calls to the basic goals of social and economic progress encountered in the European philosophy. The notion is that change, by growth, brings economic success and is therefore a major display of human development. However, social goals of community improvement and provision of primary rights to food, shelter, education, health and sanitation as well as the environmental issues have been left behind in a commercial rush for economic integration to sustain higher profits. Globalisation has led to a free market economy. This calls for an increase in resources so as to meet the increasing demand making the trade to change from a cross cultural exchange to a wealth and power scramble by establishing colonies. Shortle (2001) argues that the rights to the individual property and the lack of environmental policy, has permitted the user to develop the land or resource as they wish. This has resulted to people and companies exploiting the resource to maximize profit. The things that are hard to privatize like water and air are being over used and polluted. With deserter resources like fish and wild animals, ownership is only claimed when they are killed. These resources are exploited near to extinction. Resources like forests and grasslands have been privatized. The establishment of colonies and a free market trade made ancient rights not to be noticed and so people have lost ownership of ordinary property natural resources and are moved elsewhere. This results to overcrowding to these areas they are moved to leading to environmental pollution. To date, most of the world’s environmental pollution originates from the free market economy because rights of the environment and the environmental have been given less attention than economy development. Therefore, the world economy affects all the aspects of the environment surrounding us. According to Johnstone (2007), the effort of the transnational corporations to increase profit by use of the deregulated international trade and processing, calls for an increasing supplies of natural resources to support it, impacts on the life supporting systems of the universe and have effects on the quality of life of every one of us. Lack of environmental policy has led to air pollution. The main sources of air pollution are from steel, iron, and chemical industries, from charcoal burning, from power stations and from planes and cars. This results to degradation of the ecosystems by damaging the plants, trees, and lakes and leads to health problems like respiratory diseases and increase in cancer. Despite all these effects caused by the manufacturing industries the cost is incurred by an ordinary individual especially through paying taxes. These costs should be incurred by the polluter if the environment policy against pollution is in place. This is also a reason why it is very hard to resolve the problem of global warming. Actually, little big American oil transnational possesses a well-built links to an American republic government triumph over the views of the many people and governments worldwide because of the rush of economic integration. Businesses have to grow so as to make profits and if not, the shareholders switch their finances somewhere else. According to Ecological economists, in order to support business growth in consumption of both goods and services, the average individual in the developed countries consumes 4-6 hectares of the land. But the land available for individual is 1.7hectares making such consumption to be possible only in the developed nations. Kraft (1994) states that this makes poor countries to over utilize the little piece they have leading to unsustainable development. This has economic, social, political and social consequences European parliament took a positive initiative in 2004 and launched the EMAS project on Parliament’s Environment Policy. The project has guidelines for its environmental management system. The reduction of the carbon dioxide emissions and promotion of the efficient usage of energy, paper and water and the reduction of waste are some of the guidelines. Others are the incorporation of environmental guidelines into procurement processes and ensuring that fit behaviour and commitment via training and in the increment of awareness. Also, there was a need of taking preventive measures to stop pollution and ensuring compliance with the appropriate requirements. The parliament also considered providing enough resources for its environmental management system and promoting transparent interaction and dialogue according to Lenschow (2002). In 2007, the initial external audit was carried out and the European Parliament got a certificate of ISO 14001. 2004. The European parliament has managed to get the EMAS registration in Brussels. The EMAS project played a main role on how the environmental policy was approached in Europe. There was an addition of the States members and each member had environmental standards and practices well below the existing ones of EU and therefore action was needed. Most of these member countries had gone through an extreme environmental deterioration under the previous Soviet-dominated communist regimes, which had an emphasis in industrial production and paved little or no attention to the impact that these practices had on the environment. Due to their background, it was evident that the new member states needed long transition periods so as to be able to cope with the environmental standards of the Western Europe. However, according to Faur ( 2003), it is not only difficult to amend these changes but also the cost to be incurred is huge because of the high levels of investment required for the development of better technology and infrastructure in both the private and public sectors. One way of solving these problems was to apply a ten year transition period. During the period the CEECs could better their environmental standards and afterward coordinate them with those of the west European countries. There was resistant in implementing the proposal as it could create an unfair competitive advantage for the CEECs over the EU thereby prompt the feared ‘race to the bottom’ in environmental practices. Perl (2004) argues that disputes of this kind were dominant in companies operating in countries with high environmental standards that had concerned that they might loose their jobs to countries with lower environmental standards. This in turn results to overall lower operating costs. A number of these alterations have been prompted by international pressure and the wish of the EU to act a leading role in world wide environmental affairs. For instance, the EU was the first to sign and approve the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) prompting the EC to innovate aspects of its environmental policy-making process. The European Union energy plan for poverty alleviation and sustainable development (EUEI) was started at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg. This is a joint obligation by EU member States and European Commission to consider the importance of role played by energy in poverty eradication and in the achievement of the UN millennium development goals, and to be a catalyst for action. The initiative brings out political awareness between high stage decision-makers, promotes coherence and synergy in activities related to energy. The initiative also draws new resources from financial institutions, private sector, end-users and civil society. Eccleston (2001) states that the implementation of EUEI is done through dialogue and particular partnerships with the developing countries to aid them attain their national economic, social and environmental goals. This is basically through making the energy efficiency to be maximum, use of fossil fuels and ancient biomass and increasing the usage of energy that is renewable. The main outcome of the EUEI is the energy facility (EF) of EU made to assist easier access to services of sustainable energy in the poverty stricken rural areas. According to Welfen (2001), the EF also contributes in putting up investments that give energy services to these rural areas. Furthermore, The EF plays a role in supporting projects, good governance and management in the energy sector and assists investments in inter-borders cross- connections, together with the priorities of the union of Africa NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa’s Development). A need for proposals is planned to take place in June 2006 will lead to demand-driven advance and allowance of high-quality schemes to be co-funded with EF grants. At the WSSD, the European Union started the Johannesburg Renewable Energy Coalition (JREC) in renewable energy via a cooperative effort on the foundation of regional and national timetables and targets. The JREC consist over 90 member countries and it complements and reinforces the multilateral agreements that are in existence, public and/ or private partnerships and initiatives that promotes renewable energy sources. This will help in improving the state of the environment for better in the European countries (Harrington 2004). Conclusion Environmental policy to conserve the environment is very essential and should be put in place. Environmental matters like ozone depletion and global warming, marine pollution, acid rain and biodiversity affects the whole world and should be dealt with international cooperation and efforts. Public should be made aware of the alarming consequences of the environmental degradation because if this will not be done, there will be extinction of life. European countries together with other countries face several environmental challenges. However, some of these challenges have an impact on the economic development, for instance it is hard for people to work in a polluted environment. Therefore, there is need to put in place environmental policy and not only to consider economic development since both are very essential and affect one another. When there is lack of finances it is hard to take care of the environment and on the other hard it is hard to work and raise money in a polluted environment. Thus, withdraw of resources, manufacturing and use of the product should be by harmonized with the ecological series in all arrangements of development. The public acts should also be managed ecologically in order to sustain environment and development. Environmental policies should be put in place and adhered to so as to meet all these factors. 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