Environment and Human Development

(A summary of different articles on the environment and human development)

Summarized by
Preetam Pandey
Civil Engineer

Environment versus human activity today can be called one of today’s dilemmas. On the
one hand, the humanity is concerned with all those environmental problems that we face
today. Global warming, greenhouse effect, air pollution, and so on – all these are the results of
human activity. Human behavior lies at the root of both conservation and environmental
damage. Environment is not always protected by the humans who are rated as poor or nor they
are protected by those who are rated rich. Changes or the degradation of the environment has
been caused due to the human response or the interaction in complex ways between them.
The assumption that environment or nature will always accommodate human needs is a clear
misunderstanding of natural forces. The first Human Development Reports have not explicitly
considered the role of the natural environment in enhancing people’s choices but in more
recent editions, the environment and more broadly sustainable development have been
progressively introduced (UNDP, 1996). In the year 2000, the definition of the Millennium
Development Goals by the United Nations definitively recognized the full integration of human
development and the environment as mutually reinforcing development goals.

For too many of the world’s people, environmental degradation eclipses the hopes of
meeting even the most basic human needs. The world’s poor depend disproportionately on
ecosystem services, and are highly vulnerable to their disruption. With few alternative income
sources, their survival and livelihoods are based on small scale agriculture, grazing, harvesting
and hunting or fishing. In developing countries, one person in five lakhs access to safe water,
1.0 billion people live in dry land damaged by soil degradation and 1.2 billion live on less than $
1 a day (Don Melnick, 2005). Environmental sustainability must be viewed not only as an issue

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for the poor. In fact, considerable evidence suggests that the greatest threats to environmental
sustainability derive from actions taken in the rich countries of the world. Deforestation, for
example, is only partly caused by local demand for agricultural land or construction materials. It
is even more fundamentally driven by the industrialized world’s demand for timber and
growing international trade in forest products. Fisheries, mineral deposits, energy supplies, and
bio-diversity resources are harvested in developed and developing countries alike; however,
the preferences and demands of the world’s richest countries largely determine the scale and
intensity of resource exploitation.

Technology and human knowledge may reduce particular conditions or scarcity and
other consequences, but as long as human survival demands air, water, food produced on the
basis of natural resources, including biodiversity, nature will always have the upper hand. There
is also a clear understanding that with or without human hands upto a point, the environment
is changing in its natural way because environment possesses in-built regulating processes. The
question is upto what extent, significant changes will take place and many of them unfriendly to
human societies. It is therefore upto us (human) to decide how we wish to interact with the
environment – antagonistically or harmoniously. It is also a well known fact that human
dimension towards natural resources has now reached dangerous global proportions.

Environmental impacts are being seen almost everywhere on the planet. The world’s
developed countries have largely driven global climate change, which threatens human well-
being, ecosystem and biodiversity. Although developed countries represent only 20 percent of
the world’s population, they have generated 80 percent of historical GHG emission (Don
Melnick, 2005). Increase in green house gases (GHGs), pollution of water bodies, increased
dependence on pesticides and many other problems now pose dilemmas of most countries.
Human development is leading the environment with significant changes in the ecosystem and
the change in ecosystem cannot be compensated which is leading the planet to a number of
major global problems that did not exist before or were not recognized as such.

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 Agriculture and industrial revolutions aimed at increasing the production of materials
and providing services. Demands for agricultural land has compelled many societies to cultivate
marginal areas, thereby increasing soil erosion, deforestation, and a number of other
environmental degradation. The rapid increase in population is likely to outstrip the capacity of
natural systems to support human needs. Today’s industrial economies consume unsustainable
quantities of energy and raw materials and produce large volumes of wastes and polluting
emission. However, these revolutions has improved the living standard of the people and
contributed to make economic growth faster. These increased resource consumption and
changes in patterns, enhanced employment generation, and meet the essential human needs
of food, cloth, energy, medicine, education, water and sanitation. Rapid population growth,
economic development and international economic integration have intensified resource use;
in every region of the world, human actions have directly or indirectly increased pressure on
the natural environment due to the increase in demand.

Unregulated human activities accelerated unsustainable use of natural resources and

increased pollution level. High level of pollutants than the assimilative capacity of the receiver
(medium such as water and air) is making human life uncomfortable and many people are
suffering from increased pollution load and depletion of natural resources. Physical and
biological resources are greatly affected and human being is continuously suffering due to their
own involvement and act leading the environmental disturbances. Environmental change is
cited as one of the six major factors leading to the emergence or resurgence of many of
malaria, dengue and mosquito- borne encephalitis diseases

Income, a basic indicator for human development, is increasing rapidly and human’s
consumption of natural resources has substantially increased. With increase in income people
are willing to pay for all sorts of resources from different parts of the world. In many cases the
problems created by one part of the world do not take place in the areas where these resources

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are consumed. Abundant use of fossil fuels is raising the earth’s surface temperature. Global
warming caused by emission of Green House Gases is one of the consequences. Conventional
energy production and consumption are closely linked to environmental degradation that
threaten human health and quality of life and affect ecological balance and biological diversity.
Carbon dioxide is the main contributor responsile for 80% of emissions from industrialized
countries. Other GHGs coming from a range of industrial and agricultural activities are
methane, nitrous oxide, hydroflurocarbon, perfluron carbon and sulphur hexafluoride. Human
developed refrigerators and air conditioners which are the main contributors for the depletion
of stratospheric ozone layers and global warming. The global warming is causing the Glaciers
and the snows to melt rapidly and this is devastating the natural phenomenon of the planet.

Human activities do not take into account the true environmental cost for many
reasons, including government subsidies, lack of knowledge about environmental impacts. The
absence of laws and regulations to control environmental damage, undefined access right to
natural resources, poorly developed markets for environmental goods and services and a
lopsided development system that forces large numbers of people to depend on scarce natural
resources for their livelihoods. In many instances, current market system are unable to proce
the outputs or impacts of activities. Disposal of waste, dumping of toxic substances in water
bodies and pollution of atmosphere are some examples of human activities when leading
toward their development and attempting for a luxurious life.

Economic and environmental groups began to think strongly and started publicly airing
the dangers of these consequences. Kyoto Protocal, Montreal Protocal, Stockholm Conference
etc are some examples of human participation to think and act for environmental protection.
Today we have United Nations Environment Programme which inscribes environmental issues
on the international agenda and debates on whether environmental protection could ethically
or practically be indertaken at the expense of economic growth, especially in poor countries.

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 In the present context we talk about sustainable development to bring environment and
development together. Rather than growth and no growth debate about environment and
development, the central issue is what kind of growth. The challenge of Sustainable
development is to find out new production process and technologies which are
environmentally friendly while they deliver the things we want. It also presumed that
sustainable uses of resource by utilizing them to a extent to their capacity for growth and
renewal. Sustainable human development is the human capability to fulfil people’s
requirements without damaging the environment. World Commission and Environment and
Development (WCED) has been continuously supporting for sustainable development. The
WECD defines integrated environment and development: “Development that meets the needs
of the present generation without compromising the need of the future generation”. The WCED
definition highlights equity.

Environmental degradation is affecting the poverty. The relationship between poverty

and the environment is complex. Many rural societies have developed highly sophisticated
community based conservation efforts; others have denuded hillsides and degraded
watersheds. It’s because their reach for basic demand is different. Priorities for the future
should be decided by each society. There should be clear understanding of the effect of how
poverty is affecting the different environmental condition and again how they, in turn, affect
poverty.

Mahbub ul Haq identified the four pillars of human development as equity,

sustainability, productivity and empowerment. Any discussion of environmental issues in
relation to human development must examine them with regard to each of these pillars. Equity
requires improvements in access to environmental assets and their distribution as far as
possible. Sustainability is what we can define as, the satisfaction level of the future generation
in the well being as of the present. Human development requires sustaining physical, human,
financial and environmental capital, and depleting any one of these will compromise the

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potential of sustainable development. Productivity focuses on economic growth as well as the
enabling environment that promotes human productivity. Some has confused human
development with mainly improvements in the skills of human resources but not on the overall
factors contributing towards being a physically, mentally and environmentally sound being.
Empowerment, which deals primarily with participation, requires improving opportunities for
decision- making about environmental matters by every citizen of a country at different levels
and ensuring that they are sufficiently aware and informed.

Finally, we maintain that natural resource endowment could be a source of low

economic growth rates if the institutions in a country do not have the ability to manage the
resources in the right way. Therefore, investment policies geared towards human capital
formation (education and high skilled labor forces) are to be considered the most effective
actions for reaching a higher development level. At the same time, during the first stages of the
development process, a large consumption of natural resources without appropriate
investment policies to replace depleted resources or the exploitation of natural resources -
could produce a development path that is not sustainable in the long run. Human development
should be the first objective of international development policies whereas an increase in
human well-being is necessary to provide a sustainability path. Active participation of
industrialized countries, following the general framework of the Millennium Development
Goals, is one of the necessary conditions for development. Globalization process could be a
source of great advantage even for developing countries, under the necessary condition that
they have adequate instruments to manage this process in a positive direction, enhancing
human capabilities with higher levels of health and education. A higher technological level
would transform such resource-intensive economies into knowledge-intensive ones reducing
depletion and degradation of natural resources and reinforcing the virtuous cycle of economic
growth and human development.

References

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Banskota, M. (n.d.). The environmental perspective on sustainable human development. Readings in

Human Development , 191 - 212.

Melinick, D. (2005). Environment and human well- being: a practical strategy. UN Millennium Project:

Task Force on Environmental Sustainability .

Mukherjee, S and Chakraborty, D (2007). Environment, Human Development and Economic
Growth after Liberalisation: An Analysis of Indian States
Costantini, V. et al (2006). Environment, Human Development and Economic development. Milano.
UNDP, Linking Environment to Human Development: A Deliberate choice. Uganda Human Development
Report 2005.

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