1-2 How Can Environmentally Sustainable Societies Grow Economically?

　
　
exponentially　﹥以指數方式
millennium　﹥千年期
strain　﹥濫用
strategies　﹥策略、對策
destitute　﹥缺乏的、貧困的
scarcities　﹥缺乏、稀少、罕見
survival　﹥幸存、殘存
equipped　﹥使有能力、使有資格

　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
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1-2 How Can Environmentally Sustainable SocietiesGrow Economically?

CONCEPT 1-2　　Societies can become more environmentally sustainable through economicdevelopment dedicated to improving the quality of life for everyone without degrading theearth’s life-support systems.


There Is a Wide Economic Gap between Rich and Poor Countries
　　Economic growth is an increase in a nation’s outputof goods and services. It is usually measured by thepercentage of change in a country’s gross domesticproduct (GDP): the annual market value of all goodsand services produced by all firms and organizations,foreign and domestic, operating within a country.Changes in a country’s economic growth per personare measured by per capita GDP: the GDP divided bythe total population at midyear.
　　The value of any country’s currency changes whenit is used in other countries. Because of such differences,a basic unit of currency in one country can buymore of a particular thing than the basic unit of currencyof another country can buy. Consumers in thefirst country are said to have more purchasing powerthan consumers in the second country have. To helpwith comparing countries, economists use a tool calledpurchasing power parity (PPP). By combining per capitaGDP and PPP, for any given country, they arrive at a percapita GDP-PPP—a measure of the amount of goodsand services that a country’s average citizen could buyin the United States.
　　While economic growth provides people with moregoods and services, economic development has thegoal of using economic growth to improve living standards.The United Nations classifies the world’s countriesas economically developed or developing based primarilyon their degree of industrialization and their percapita GDP-PPP (see Figure 2 on p. S8 in Supplement 3).The developed countries (with 1.2 billion people) includethe United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, NewZealand, and most of Europe. Most are highly industrializedand have a high per capita GDP-PPP.
　　All other nations (with 5.5 billion people) are classifiedas developing countries, most of them in Africa,Asia, and Latin America. Some are middle-income, moderatelydeveloped countries such as China, India, Brazil,Turkey, Thailand, and Mexico. Others are low-income,least developed countries where per capita GDP-PPP issteadily declining. These 49 countries with 11% of theworld’s population include Angola, Congo, Belarus,Nigeria, Nicaragua, and Jordan.
　　According to the United Nations, such destitute countriesare in a desperate cycle of steadily worsening extremepoverty, disease, scarcities of key resources (suchas water, cropland, firewood, and fish), dysfunctional government, violence, and social chaos. To survive,many of these counties are cutting down trees, depletingtopsoil, and consuming natural resources they needfor future survival. This competition for increasinglyscarce resources can lead to civil violence, which canfurther impoverish a country. Figure 2 on p. S8 in Supplement3 is a map of high, upper middle, lower middle,and low-income countries.
　　Figure 1-5 compares some key characteristics of developedand developing countries. About 97% of theprojected increase in the world’s population between2007 and 2050 is expected to take place in developingcountries, which are least equipped to handle suchlarge population increases.
　　We live in a world of haves and have-nots. Despite a40-fold increase in economic growth since 1900, more than half of the people in the world live in extreme poverty andtry to survive on a daily income of less than $2. And one of everysix people, classified as desperately poor, struggle to survive onless than $1 a day. (All dollar figures are in U.S. dollars).
　　Some economists call for continuing conventionaleconomic growth, which has helped increase food supplies,allowed people to live longer, and stimulated massproduction of an array of useful goods and services formany people. They also see such growth as a cure forpoverty as some of the resulting increase in wealthtrickles down to countries near the bottom of the economicladder.
　　Other environmental and ecological economists,call for us to put much greater emphasis on environmentally sustainable economic development. This involves usingpolitical and economic systems to discourage environmentallyharmful and unsustainable forms of economicgrowth that degrade natural capital, and to encourageenvironmentally beneficial and sustainable forms ofeconomic development that help sustain natural capital(Concept 1-2).