GREEN ECONOMICS

What is Green Economics ?

Green economics is an approach to economics in which the economy is considered to be a component of, and dependent upon, the natural world within which it resides and of which it is a part.

Takes the widest possible view of stakeholders of a transaction to include impacts to nature, non-human species, the planet, earth sciences, the biosphere.

Includes and builds on environmental economics and ecological economics, and includes principles of social equity at the core of its concerns.

Three Axioms of Green Economics

It is impossible to expand forever into a finite

space.

It is impossible to take forever from a finite

resource.

Everything on the surface of the Earth is

interconnected.

Subsets of Green Economics

Environmental Economics

Resource Economics

Sustainable Development

Environmental Economics

Environmental Economics undertakes

theoretical or empirical studies of the

economic effects of national or local

environmental policies around the world.

Particular issues include the costs and benefits

of alternative environmental policies to deal

with air pollution, water quality, toxic

substances, solid waste and global warming.

Resource Economics

The field of resource economics includes the study of environmental economics, agricultural production and marketing, bioeconomics, community economic development, resource utilization, and environmental policy.

It has evolved as the idea of "natural resources" and "human resources" were challenged by the ideas of "natural capital" and "human capital" and is now hard to characterize as a separate field of its own. It was a major influence on the theory of Natural Capitalism and of eco-villages.

Sustainable Development

Sustainable development is defined as balancing the

fulfillment of human needs with the protection of the

natural environment so that these needs can be met

not only in the present, but in the indefinite future.

The field of sustainable development can be

conceptually broken into four constituent parts:

environmental sustainability, economic sustainability,

social sustainability and political sustainability.

Concerns of Green Economics

Global Warming

Pollution and Waste Disposal

Depleting Resources

Water

Energy

Global Warming

Global warming refers to the increase in the average

temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans

in recent decades and its projected continuation.

An increase in global temperatures is expected to

cause sea level rise, increased intensity of extreme

weather events, changes in agricultural yields, glacier

retreat, species extinctions and increases in the ranges

of disease vectors.

Pollution and Waste Disposal

Pollution is the introduction of pollutants (whether chemical substances or energy ) into the environment which result in deleterious effects of such a nature as to endanger human health, harm living resources and ecosystems, and impair or interfere with amenities and other legitimate uses of the environment.

Waste management is the collection, transport, processing, recycling or disposal of waste materials, usually ones produced by human activity, in an effort to reduce their effect on human health or local aesthetics or amenity. A subfocus in recent decades has been to reduce waste materials' effect on the natural world and the environment and to recover resources from them.

Depleting Resources

Water resources

Water quality has become a critical issue as ground

water depletion has worsened over the years.

Biological contamination of fresh water resources has

severely impacted availability of fresh water.

Lowest availability of fresh water in the world by

2025: World Bank Report.

Need for Rainwater Harvesting, Reuse and

Recycling.

Depleting Resources

Energy

Non judicious use of non renewable sources of

energy like fossil fuels have made it imperative to

look for alternative sources of energy.

Renewable energy sources such as wind power, solar

power, tidal power, geothermal power, hydropower,

methanol, ethanol and biodiesel, which do not suffer

from finite energy reserves, but do have a finite

energy flow have to be explored.

Sources %age usage

Oil 37.3

Coal 25.3

Gas 23.3

Nuclear 5.7

Biomass 3.8

hydroelectric 3.2

Solar heat 0.5

Geothermal 0.2

Bio fuels 0.2

Solar PV .04

Wind 0.3

INITIATIVES TAKEN BY THE

GOVERNMENT

The U.S. government has recently shifted subsidies

worth $16b from big oil to renewable sources of

energy.

Germany provides substantial subsidies for installing

solar electricity.

The U.K. government uses company car tax and road

tax to keep a tab on Carbon-di-oxide emissions.

Indian government has proposed tax rebates on using

CFL’s.

INITIATIVES TAKEN BY

CORPORATIONS

Compared to 1990,energy consumption by

industry has fallen by 5%.

Climate change levy, EU emission trading

scheme.

The government recently launched the Energy

Conservation Building Code (ECBC) for the

construction sector with an aim to increase the

energy efficiency of new buildings.