Initially, many people thought that the growth of the economy and industry is the crucial matter in the market. The perception has changed because most people now believe that the environment is the main imperative issue that people should put into consideration. Within diverse centuries, the consideration of people on the environmental subject or development problem has always changed (Peet 23). Is it because the environment problem affects the development issue or the development influence the environment problem?
The establishment of the accurate notion of development and the connected development sculpt is central in economical creation. In the past years, people talked of economic growth; which is the ultimate growth of riches. The growth of wealth entailed: development of material, improvement of the living standards, improvement of civilization, among other means. Although focus is on the growth of political and spiritual civilization, its position is still far much better than the expansion of riches and the economy. When one remembers the account the development of human beings, particularly the growth of private enterprise, and the history spins about 100 years (Peet 26). There has been vivid economic development in wealth civilization since the social life if people have undergone massive transformations. However, with the up-and-coming issues like the environmental tribulations and the subject of population, capital and social subjects are the reasons for the tension in the life of human beings. With much focus on development by human beings, it is clear that people shall one day destroy the creation and civilizations. The burning question is how should people allow the material wealth they produce to become of benefit to them? In order to solve this question, individuals ought to build a human-centered scientific model of development and the pleasant society should provide guidelines on solving the problems (Hufschmidt 34). The paper addresses the connection between economic development and the environment.
After the industrial revolution, many Western Countries such as Britain, Germany, and America, among others, had developed their economies rapidly. This implies that the industrial revolution era is regarded as a marvel to many countries. The period created the fastest development during the century. In the words of Karl Marx in the “Communist Manifesto”, the rule by the bourgeoisie in less than a hundred years led to the creation of productivity. The use of chemistry in different sectors of the economy contributed largely to the realization of civilization and globalization. For instance, Chemistry was used in: ship travel, industry and agriculture, river navigation machinery, railways, among others. Such productive forces had great impacts on the social life of the society (Hufschmidt 54). The Western countries have much development because they were the first to get the developments. But these countries majors only on economic growth, disregarding the environmental safety. Ignoring the environmental concept of development blueprint has resulted to severe troubles. In the few years, for instance, every state had grave environmental contamination issues, among them: Mass River Valley air pollution incident, Donora air pollution events, the Los Angeles photochemical smog event, Minamata disease events, Chernobyl nuclear accident, London smog event, Yokkaichi asthma event, rice bran oil event, and the event pesticide plant in Bhopal, India. The pollutions are as a result of release of industrial waste products such as waste-water, waste gas and other toxic material. The pollution not only jeopardizes the health and wellbeing of people, but also results to a lot of deaths (Stern 1152). These pollutions also affect the natural ecological environment.
These major pollution occurrences have left a lot of lessons on the developed countries. It cautions people that in the current highly developed industrial, construction and development of production, we should make all attempts to preserve the environment so that the development can be of much assistance to human beings, or else it will result to a catastrophic result. This means that these nations will have to discover the means of growth and place ahead the notion of "sustainable development" within its directive. In 1980, the UN provided petitions to the whole world: "Research must be natural, ecological, economic relations and the use of basic natural resources in the process of ensuring the sustainable development of the global community." Three years later, the UN set up a World Commission on environment development (WECD). In 1987, the United Nations presented a report to the Commission. The name of the report was "the common future". The report anticipated a replica of sustainable growth, which focused on the growth of the economy and protection of the environment harmonized to reinforce national environmental security in contact. In 1992, the United Nations Environment and Development Conference adopted the "Agenda 21" which combined the contemporary theory of sustainable development which furthered the understanding of crystallization (Zhang, 2076). States which practiced environmental protection had formed their own rules. French police controlled air pollution in urban areas; EU member states also prohibited pollution; German brew bottles duty and so on. These countries completely established the significance of environmental matters and the remedy the situations. It is still not late to solve the issues, although there are great efforts to solve environmental problems.
China has an extraordinary economic development since its GDP continues to demonstrate an expansion pattern. However, its ecological subjects are regularly not addressed. There is desertification in China; massive dust storms raging in the spring. The environmental issues not only affect the life of many individuals, it also obstructs fiscal maturity. There is no proper working and income environment in China. The economic progress has therefore lost its ultimate goal, which in turns hinders economic growth. In the first quarter of the year, Gansu Province has experienced a wide range of drought, frozen rain, high temperature, dust storms and other natural tragedies (Stern 1165). This has resulted to the province losing a lot of money in trying to combat the catastrophes. In the few years, China's harsh green troubles have become the compromise of the study responses. In the "Environment 2005 Green Paper", the editor came up with this statistics: In April 14, a newspaper testified that China loses about 11.3 billion Yuan trying to address pollution; In August 2, "Guangming Daily" reported that cars exhaust was the main source of air pollution; In November 29, Xinhua news in China stated that farmers are in distress over water, soil, and bio. This is a full three-dimensional atmospheric contamination; In December 27, another news agency reported that China’s 90% of city groundwater pollution has different amounts of poisonous and unsafe natural and non-living contaminants. They range from the air, to water and soil. China's environmental issues have regularly transformed from 'local probable to 'full-blown'. The survey also established the extensive municipal anxiety on environmental matter and anxiety. The study states that the public is mostly worried about water contamination because about 87.1% of people believe it to be the greatest impact on life (Zhang, 2080). Water pollution is followed by air pollution then industrial waste and finally food pollution.
The process of sacrificing the ecology for development is an extremely painful experience. Severe environmental issues have stalled the growth of China's market and culture. It is the reason that the economic growth has appeared stagnant. Now, the environmental issues are caused by a number of concerns. In the process of economic development, people should remember that the environment is supposed to be preserved. Marx argued that the natural reflection of human nature should be addressed. The impact of human beings on the growth of utilitarian importance on environment and the illogical human depletion of the environment has resulted in much pressure. When hunting for the economic growth, people should learn how to conserve the nature and live in peace with it (Arrow 520). The development blueprint of nature by Bhutan provides an inspiration to the people.
Bhutan focuses on the model of objective progress for the spiritual and material being. It also addresses the subject of environmental protection and the protection of traditional cultures which are concerned with economic growth. The development of values is a determinant of Gross National Happiness (GNH), instead of what was commonly referred as Gross Domestic Product. GNH was first introduced in 1970s by the King of Bhutan. He stated that administration policies are supposed to put more emphasis on happiness (Arrow 520). The happiness, in turn, is supposed to be the focus in achieving the goals. He argued that that the main challenge of life is to know how to uphold equilibrium between the spiritual life and material life. Under the course of this thought of authority and creativity brought up by Bhutan Gross, National Happiness index by the government transformed to good governance, economic growth, cultural development, and environmental protection. The government Bhutan seeks to exploit the GNH ultimate growth objectives. Results in the practice are now over 700 US dollars per capita GDP of Bhutan and the people live a happy life (Zhang, 2080).
Bhutan's development model is an environmentally friendly path of development priorities. When developing a good environment for the development of the economy and environmental protection, it is important to sacrifice the economic value of tourism resources offered in order to have a limited tourism policy. The policy effectively limits the number of tourists and thus the environment is protected. The model demonstrates a strong advantage; it has sustained a high economic growth rate and India is now more than other countries in South Asian. India is the highest per capita income countries in the World Bank's rankings which is also much higher than other developing countries. Bhutanese people enjoy the economic development of grace because they are not confused by materialism (Arrow 520). Instead, they maintain a calm and apathetic state of mind.
There exists a melodious society which is in agreement with nature, rooted in the people. Human nature affects the values touching on the ecological development. Therefore, a primary precondition for social development is not the annihilation of nature. The final analysis addresses the kind of development required to deal with the relationship between man and nature. The focus is only on the substance of the notion of development which is to increase expenses of the environment which has sounded the alarm on people. The advantage of this concept of development has been increasingly breakdown and insufficiency (Liu 1180). Therefore, to build a strong concept of scientific development and tuneful society reminds people to pay much attention to the protection of human development and the environment.
While it is important to have a development of the economy, it is also crucial to have a developed education system which promotes a comprehensive development of man. In the process of economic development, our concept of development should revolve around our development, but also affect our pace of development. We propose to build a harmonious society in the four civilizations: material civilization, political civilization, spiritual civilization, and ecological civilization. The most important of these is the ecological civilization because it is the basis of the four civilizations. A country's largest high-level security is not only their military facilities but also their ecological civilization. The highest level of ecological civilization is to achieve China's ancient culture emphasized the realm of Heaven. People are not supposed to dominate nature; because nature is the basis and institution upon which human survive and develop and that people should live in harmony with it (Liu 1182). The scientific concept of development clearly presents the harmony between man and nature in the harmonious society.
Faced with the worsening global environmental problems, it is crucial to take into account the urgent need for environmental technology and eco-conscious professionals in the accomplishment of sustainable development strategies. The Tsinghua University, which is based on existing environmental education and research, proposed the construction of "green University" program and it has been approved by the State environmental Protection Administration as a national demonstration project. The so-called "Green University" building focuses on education as the core and the implementation of sustainable development. The core content of the “green university” includes green education, green technology and green campus (Liu 1186). To pursue an undergraduate course, the university has added a number of compulsory units on sustainable development and environmental protection. It has also added elective courses and actively promoted student extracurricular practices in "green education." The strengthening of environmental pollution control and environmental quality improvement are the aspects of scientific research in the course. The course talks about clean production in line with the principles of the new technology. The course also accelerates the development of major scientific and technological achievements in the work environment. It also focuses on strengthening scientific research soft environment and to provide a scientific basis for decision-making related countries and regions (Goodland 4). The phased campus greening projects have given much attention to plant diversity, and gradually improving the campus green coverage while protecting green areas in order to make the campus more organisms.
The constructions and Tsinghua's history together with its culture and architecture is in harmony with the theme of environmental sustainability. The areas are: the auditorium area, environmental College Area School District and the North of landscaping. The university is using sound technologies to control and regulate environmental pollution. It makes use of measures such as the construction of water treatment and reuse projects, smoke and pollution control engineering, and garbage collection and treatment systems. Also, the campus ecological environment monitoring network works to ensure that pollution is minimized. Green University and qualified college students requires environmental awareness in order to combat environmental degradation (Goodland 6). Some other universities have been also proposed building a green university slogan.
In addition to college students, people have all kinds of social knowledge to conduct environmental awareness education. The use of the mass media to promote the importance of environmental conduct is used to enhance the people's awareness of environmental protection. Focus should be put on the development of education, which is mainly to improve the overall quality of citizens from starting. In addition to the ideological teaching of Marxist theoretical viewpoint, it is also important to promote traditional culture (Goodland 9). It is also significant to succeed and carry forward the traditional culture of good things, such as the traditional culture of Heaven. Traditional culture is deeply rooted in our blood; something that people should not lose is the traditional spiritual homes. However, people lost direction in the pursuit of extreme materialistic view of the world in order to establish the correct concept of development (Deegan 54).
In order to have economic growth and improve people’s lives, it is necessary to reduce the expense of the environment on the expense of economic growth. Such a step aims at realizing sustainable development. Individuals should not only pay attention to the immediate interests of a sustained development, but also to focus on the long-term interests of the developed countries in order avoid after the rapid economic development. It is important to pay attention to the tuneful developments and to improve the advantage of China's economic development. To do so, it is important to pave way for faster economic growth, which can truly benefit all people (Goodland 20). This is done to make sure that all people enjoy economic development which brings in a happy and harmonious environment for the realization of a happy life. Unlike animals, human beings carry their source of happiness through material enjoyment and spiritual achievement. Like Bhutan pattern which appears as focusing on environmental protection than the economic development, the results did not delay economic development. As a matter of fact, it showed a good drive of economic development because GDP growth is the leading position in the world. We can learn from Bhutan model that the environmental indicators are the primary indicators of the work done. This is important in the evaluation of cadres, which is to measure the development of a region. People should give main concern to environmental indicators rather than the essential indicators. The National Development and Reform Commission put indicators into economic and social development around the comprehensive evaluation and annual examination system (Liu 1186).
Central Organization Department also gave a document which is clearly lower. The energy consumption indicator is one of 22 official indicators of appraisal system. In November 7, the National Development and Reform Commission issued by the various regions "during" the State Council approved a plan to reduce energy consumption indicators. According to the plan, "Eleventh Five-Year" period, the level of China's energy consumption per unit of GDP than the "15" end cut by 20% (Zhang 2708). In April this year, the State Environmental Protection Administration Zhou Shengxian told the "Beijing News" reporter that people who do not pay attention to pollution prevention and work control and who do not complete the annual task of leading cadres, will not be promoted. Therefore, in China's economic construction, scientific outlook on development as a guidance to build economic and social development in harmony with nature, society, though long way to go, but with the right development concept as a guide, is bound to have a bright future (Zhang 2710).
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