Tag: green economy

GREEN ECONOMY- THE ESSENCE OF PROGRESS

INTRODUCTION

                “What soul is to body, the same is sustainability is to the progress of a nation”
The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) describes a green economy as “one that results in improved human well-being and social equity while significantly reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities” (2010). The concept was first coined in 1989 by the London Environmental Economics Centre (LEEC) in a publication called the “Blueprint for a Sustainable Economy”, authored by David Pearce, Anil Markandya, and Ed Barbier. A green economy aims at converging the environment, society, and economy. However, several encumbrances have obstructed the transition towards a green economy. The foremost being the inefficacy of businesses to invest in the environment. It is mainly due to a myth that it would not yield economic benefits. The investment would generate additional jobs, increase trade and output. A well-framed strategy would facilitate poverty eradication, equity, and growth.

THE COGNITION BEHIND GREEN ECONOMY

A Green Intelligence Report estimated that by 2030, energy-related CO2 emissions in the United States increase to 6.9 billion metric tonnes (MT) under a “business as usual scenario’’. It has been projected that by 2050, the emissions would rise to 42.3 billion MT. According to “Environment Outlook to 2050 “, air pollution has been projected as a major environmental cause of mortality by 2050, ahead of the lack of clean drinking water and sanitation. As cited by The Global Alliance on Health and Pollution, almost 8.3 million premature deaths each year due to air pollution. India and China have the highest number of pollution deaths per year -2,326,711 and 1,865,566 deaths. The reasons for this seem to be their high population and ever-growing industrialization. According to Greenpeace, Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, as a share of GDP, these countries incurred 5.4% and 6.6% of the economic cost of air pollution in 2018. The estimated cost of air pollution was $ 2.9 trillion, equating to 3.3% of the global GDP. These projections indicate the urgent need for action as the cost of damages is exponential and will worsen if not addressed through a strategic framework.

Sweden has been ranked First by The Global Green Index, 2018. At the same time, it was one of the richest countries with the highest GDP per capita, amounting to around 51,615 USD (World Bank). Thus the concept of a green economy provides a potential solution to these problems. According to the study by Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program called “Sizing the Clean Economy, a National and Regional Green Jobs Assessment”, investment in clean energy projects generates 3 times as many jobs as generated by fossil fuel projects. As cited by the report called “Towards a Green Economy: Pathways to Sustainable Development and Poverty Eradication”, governments should spend $1.3 trillion a year to facilitate the shift to a green economy.

GREEN ECONOMY-THE PROSPECTIVE SOLUTION

A green economy recognizes the interdependence between the environment, society, and economy. It tries to reduce pollution and uses resources efficiently while generating employment, reducing poverty, encouraging equity. It seeks systematic, accountable, and transparent governance as a prerequisite for framing and implementing effective policies. A circular economy is a potential sustainable economic model, a solution to the problems associated with a linear economy. In a Circular Economy, materials are reused, recycled, or recovered. It avoids or minimizes waste and prevents greenhouse emissions as well. Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12 on sustainable consumption and production (SCP) and UNEP’s circular economy approach complement each other. SCP is all about producing goods and services responding to basic needs while providing a better quality of life by minimizing toxic materials.

CONCLUSION

We need to understand that the concept of a green economy is not simply about renewable energy or sustainable utilization of resources. On the contrary, it is much deeper than that. Its ambit extends to factors like societal inclusion in terms of Social Equity, Gender Equity, and other factors like quality of life where everyone has access to basic requirements like sanitation or nutrition. It focuses not only on increasing growth in terms of GDP but aims to achieve inclusive growth wherein no section of the society is deprived of development or is left. Due to these reasons, the Green Growth Index gives significance to factors like social inclusion as well. We need a combined effort involving the active participation of civil society. Since the civilians are well acquainted with the needs and priorities of the local people, it would facilitate the initiative. It would also promote equity and poverty reduction, the underlying motives of a green economy. We ought to understand that environment, society and economy are complementary to each other. Hence we need integrated policy-making and effective methodology to move towards a green economy.

What Is Fast Fashion?

Clothes shopping used to be an occasional event—something that happened a few times a year when the seasons changed or when we outgrew what we had. But about 20 years ago, something changed. Clothes became cheaper, trend cycles sped up, and shopping became a hobby. Enter fast fashion and the global chains that now dominate our high streets and online shopping. But what is fast fashion? And how does it impact people, the planet, and animals?

It was all too good to be true. All these stores selling cool, trendy clothing you could buy with your loose change, wear a handful of times, and then throw away. Suddenly everyone could afford to dress like their favourite celebrity or wear the latest trends fresh from the catwalk.

Then in 2013, the world had a reality check when the Rana Plaza clothing manufacturing complex in Bangladesh collapsed, killing over 1,000 workers. That’s when consumers really started questioning fast fashion and wondering at the true cost of those affordable t-shirts. If you’re reading this article, you might already be aware of fast fashion’s dark side, but it’s worth exploring how the industry got to this point—and how we can help to change it.

What is fast fashion?

Fast fashion can be defined as cheap, trendy clothing that samples ideas from the catwalk or celebrity culture and turns them into garments in high street stores at breakneck speed to meet consumer demand. The idea is to get the newest styles on the market as fast as possible, so shoppers can snap them up while they are still at the height of their popularity and then, sadly, discard them after a few wears. It plays into the idea that outfit repeating is a fashion faux pas and that if you want to stay relevant, you have to sport the latest looks as they happen. It forms a key part of the toxic system of overproduction and consumption that has made fashion one of the world’s largest polluters. Before we can go about changing it, let’s take a look at the history.

How did fast fashion happen?

To understand how fast fashion came to be, we need to rewind a bit. Before the 1800s, fashion was slow. You had to source your own materials like wool or leather, prepare them, weave them, and then make the clothes.The Industrial Revolution introduced new technology—like the sewing machine. Clothes became easier, quicker, and cheaper to make. Dressmaking shops emerged to cater to the middle classes.

Many of these dressmaking shops used teams of garment workers or home workers. Around this time, sweatshops emerged, along with some familiar safety issues. The first significant garment factory disaster was when a fire broke out in New York’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in 1911. It claimed the lives of 146 garment workers, many of whom were young female immigrants. By the 1960s and 70s, young people were creating new trends, and clothing became a form of personal expression, but there was still a distinction between high fashion and high street.

In the late 1990s and 2000s, low-cost fashion reached its zenith. Online shopping took off, and fast-fashion retailers like H&M, Zara, and Topshop took over the high street. These brands took the looks and design elements from the top fashion houses and reproduced them quickly and cheaply. With everyone now able to shop for on-trend clothes whenever they wanted, it’s easy to understand how the phenomenon caught on.

How to spot a fast fashion brand

Some key factors are common to fast fashion brands:

  • Thousands of styles, which touch on all the latest trends.
  • Extremely short turnaround time between when a trend or garment is seen on the catwalk or in celebrity media and when it hits the shelves.
  • Offshore manufacturing where labour is the cheapest, with the use of workers on low wages without adequate rights or safety and complex supply chains with poor visibility beyond the first tier.
  • A limited quantity of a particular garment—this is an idea pioneered by Zara. With new stock arriving in store every few days, shoppers know if they don’t buy something they like, they’ll probably miss their chance.
  • Cheap, low quality materials like polyester, causing clothes to degrade after just a few wears and get thrown away.

What’s the impact of fast fashion?

On the planet: Fast fashion’s impact on the planet is immense. The pressure to reduce costs and speed up production time means that environmental corners are more likely to be cut. Fast fashion’s negative impact includes its use of cheap, toxic textile dyes—making the fashion industry the second largest polluter of clean water globally after agriculture. That’s why Greenpeace has been pressuring brands to remove dangerous chemicals from their supply chains through its detoxing fashion campaigns through the years.

Cheap textiles also increase fast fashion’s impact. Polyester is one of the most popular fabrics. It is derived from fossil fuels, contributes to global warming, and can shed microfibers that add to the increasing levels of plastic in our oceans when washed. But even ‘natural fabrics’ can be a problem at the scale fast fashion demands. Conventional cotton requires enormous quantities of water and pesticides in developing countries. This results in drought risks and creates extreme stress on water basins and competition for resources between companies and local communities.

The constant speed and demand mean increased stress on other environmental areas such as land clearing, biodiversity, and soil quality. The processing of leather also impacts the environment, with 300kg of cehmicals added to every 900kg of animal hides tanned. The speed at which garments are produced also means that more and more clothes are disposed of by consumers, creating massive textile waste. In Australia alone, more than 500 million kilos of unwanted clothing ends up in landfill every year.

On workers: As well as the environmental cost of fast fashion, there’s a human cost. Fast fashion impacts garments workers who work in dangerous environments, for low wages, and without fundamental human rights. Further down the supply chain, the farmers may work with toxic chemicals and brutal practices that can have devastating impacts on their physical and mental health, a plight highlighted by the documentary The True Cost.

On animals: Animals are also impacted by fast fashion. In the wild, the toxic dyes and microfibres released in waterways are ingested by land and marine life alike through the food chain to devastating effect. And when animal products such as leather, fur, and even wool are used in fashion directly, animal welfare is put at risk. As an example, numerous scandals reveal that real fur, including cat and dog fur, is often being passed off as a faux fur to unknowing shoppers. The truth is that there is so much real fur being produced under terrible conditions in fur farms that it’s become cheaper to produce and buy than faux fur!

On consumers: Finally, fast fashion can impact consumers themselves, encouraging a ‘throw-away’ culture because of both the built-in obsolescence of the products and the speed at which trends emerge. Fast fashion makes us believe we need to shop more and more to stay on top of trends, creating a constant sense of need and ultimate dissatisfaction. The trend has also been criticized on intellectual property grounds, with some designers alleging that retailers have illegally mass-produced their designs.

Why Skyscrapers are not that great.

The story of early skyscrapers begins in the late 19th and early 20th century America. Between 1884 and 1945 numerous skyscrapers were built American cities of New York City and Chicago. The two cities competed with each other with many subsequent constructions surpassing the earlier one. The growth of the skyscrapers in the 20th century American cities were mainly fueled by dynamic economic growth as the demand for various new office spaces to hold America’s expanding workforce of white-collar employees continued to grow. With better engineering and construction methods it became easier to construct taller buildings.    

Flatiron Building in New York City finished its construction in June 1902. The 22 floors building was one of the first tallest skyscrapers and later in the subsequent decades even taller buildings were constructed.

But the developments of modern skyscrapers have many challenges and questions that need to be cleared. Though the growth of skyscrapers has not subsided, they are not the most ideal form of buildings. According to engineer Tim Snelson, of the design consultancy, a typical skyscraper will have at least double the carbon footprint of a 10-story building of the same floor area. This tells us that skyscrapers are not environmentally sustainable. Also, any additional methods to minimize the environmental impact will require overcoming the fight of the handicap of being a tall skyscraper in the first place. As the majority of the building is made with glass and steel frame, high-rise buildings are subject to the consequence of the substantial amount of sunlight and a lot of wind on their mostly glass skins. Glass is inherently inefficient in keeping excessive heat out of the buildings in summer or keep heat trapped in the colder months. This also leads to the reliance on continuous Air Conditioning.

The modern construction of skyscrapers in the cities of today is no longer driven purely by economic growth or the need for commercial office space, but instead, it is more driven by glamorous architecture construction and many times the dirty money gets funneled into the construction of Skyscrapers.  High rises also separate people from the street and people lose a connection to nature and the outdoors. The occupants in the tall buildings are often isolated from the street of the city and meaningful contact with ground-level events is often disconnected with taller buildings.  

High-rise buildings also lead to gentrification and inequality. It is no surprise that taller buildings often tend to be luxury units as the higher a building rises, it becomes more expensive to construct. This means that high rises also inflate the prices of the adjacent lands and driving out the affordable properties, thus increasing the inequality. The areas near the skyscrapers are often dark and swept under the shadow of these tall buildings.

Contrary to the popular notion, skyscrapers are not the only way to build high-density construction. The mid-rise buildings are often more able to house more amount of people per area compared to the high rises. Mid rises are also more flexible to affordable.  The mid-rises can work as a good middle ground between the taller buildings and low-density buildings. Instead of blindly building taller buildings we will have to look at the construction of our future buildings that are more sustainable, affordable, and efficient.

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Urban Agriculture

Urban agriculture can be described as the agricultural practices to producing fresh food or other agricultural products in urban areas and their surrounding regions (peri-urban). This can function centrally where plants can be grown and animal husbandry, horticulture, and aquaculture can be practiced. It also involves the processing, packaging, marketing, and delivery of food. In purview urban agriculture extends to establish food production sites within the city’s sphere.

As more land area is getting urbanized and larger number of people are coming to the urban areas to reside. It becomes very critical to properly utilize the space in our cities and suburban areas. Research in the last two decades is has proven that Urban agriculture can be a viable option for food production. It can also help in decreasing the effects of climate change and make the food supply chain more efficient.  Proper land use and spatial planning are crucial to practice this effectively. There are various methods to practice urban agriculture including ground-level farming, hydroponic farming, rooftop farming, vertical farming, greenhouses, and other new technologies.

As cities are expanding, this has created new sets of issues like the urban heat island effect, waste management, lack of biodiversity, and high levels of air pollution. With more people moving around the urban space, this has also increased carbon emissions. With urban agriculture, we can try to offset some of the adverse effects of these problems. This kind of agriculture is now being practiced in many cities. Cities like Tokyo, Seoul, and Sao Paulo have their own urban agriculture initiatives. But one of the cities is betting on urban farming in Singapore. The city-state currently imports 90 percent of its food. This also means that any kind of geopolitical tension or a global crisis can severely affect the food supply of Singapore. This means that growing own food becomes critical and essential. Due to this, the Singaporean government has envisioned an ambitious goal to produce 30 percent of its food in the city itself by 2030. This is a special challenge in Singapore’s care due to its tiny land area and highly urbanized population. The city has almost non-existent agriculture land and this is why the focus of food production is on the unutilized urban spaces, on top of shopping malls, hotels, schools, homes, rooftops in parking lots across the city, etc.

In 2009 Singapore government launched a program that incentivizes injecting greenery into development projects across the nation The program was aptly named ‘Landscaping for Urban Spaces and High-Rises’ (LUSH). Their current initiative to build urban food-growing areas within the city will be built upon this program.

Some of the benefits that Urban farming enjoys are immunity from water pollution, a better-controlled environment from the physical forces, and minimal to no use of pesticides and insecticides. But there are some limitations as well. This type of farming can be quite energy-intensive and the outputs can be comparatively lower than traditional farming. This also makes it more expensive.

To make Urban farming more effective governments will also need policies that will make use of the maximum amount of land across the city. Hydroponic farming can be a very effective way to rapidly scale the production where plants are grown with the help of water and the additional nutrients and minerals are added to the water to substitute soil. Additional Urban farming can also help in reducing carbon emissions and making cities cooler. Private firm involvement can also help in stepping up the scale of this kind of farming. This will be the step towards sustainable food production in the cities of the future but to make this happen greater involvement across the citizens and sectors will be needed.

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Sustainability In India

Pollution is not just an undesirable outcome that causes environmental deterioration in India; it is also a major roadblock to growth and development in the country. It would have a negative effect on economic growth if it is not addressed properly and managed.

This resulted in a major shift in people’s attitudes and political will. Significant advances in clean energy technologies have opened the path for commercial possibilities arising from the ‘green economy transformation.’ Clean technology will be in high demand. Countries that adequately upskill and establish industry sectors to manufacture it stand to benefit greatly. They may earn profit from clean technology exports and earn access to global markets.

While India already is trying to make tremendous progress in the field of sustainability, there seems to be an imperative need to involve our country’s youth in order to fulfil our sustainable development goals.

Sustainability became one of the most defining terms of the twenty-first century, and for valid reason: the contemporary world is now struggling with the consequences of unrestricted consumption and production tendencies. Simply stated, even as our population grows and technology advances at a breakneck pace, our quality of life is progressively deteriorating. India, which is on the verge of a new age of growth, is at an important crossroads in terms of its approach to sustainability. While our nation has some of the lowest per-capita emissions in the world, we are the third-largest emitter globally. The two most significant hurdles to our approach to sustainability are our population and the swift pace of our economic progress.

India, though, has made significant progress as an aspiring change-maker in addressing climate change and developing development plans which are in line with the Sustainable Development Goals, that were implemented in September 2015 and encapsulate the social, environmental, and social dimensions of sustainability, as well as the abolition of all forms of poverty.

To that aim, attempts have been made to include all stakeholders – public and private – in the development of successful guidelines, implementation methods, and best practises. For example, in February 2018, a nationwide seminar on capacity building was organised with the objective of localising the SDGs. In December 2018, the NITI Aayog released the SDG India Index — Baseline Report 2018 to monitor the progress the  states and union territories have made on the strategies and initiatives launched by the central government.

The country was also a significant participant in formulating the Paris Agreement and has implemented a variety of energy-efficiency initiatives. Sustainability is also an important aspect of Indian culture, thought, and beliefs. Rural areas, which accounted for about 70% of the nation’s population in 2011, maintain a modest and inexpensive way of living. According to Greendex, an international study on sustainable living which analyses how individuals respond to environmental issues in their housing, transportation, food, and products choices, India ranks first among 18 countries, including China and the United States.

India has also  had one of the most effective programmes in terms of eliminating single-use plastic and promoting the Swachh Bharat campaign, an initiative launched by the central government. This has aided in increasing awareness beginning in primary school, with children asking their parents about their right to cleanliness.

That being said, as the economy develops and grows, there is a noticeable change in socio-economic patterns. The nation still has to confront several  significant environmental challenges, particularly in terms of building sustainable communities.

Being one of the world’s youngest countries — 42% of India’s population is between the ages of 15 and 35, and this estimate is expected to rise to 55% in the coming 30 years — the youth in our country should be encouraged to develop environmentally friendly economic solutions.