Question

Environmental Ethics question.

Industrialized wealthy nations overwhelmingly use resources much more than poor nations. However, it is the poor nations that will receive the most harm due to global climate change. This seems to be an injustice. One common response is that those who are harmed by the effects of pollution. But the question is how is the compensation justly distributed. Who would pay, and how should it be calculated? What problems do you envisage? (Ignore various problems such as whether various nations prefer not to compensate. Rather I want to focus on issues of justice and not whether people want to compensate. After all, many criminals should compensate their victims even if they do not want to.) Answer this question in 300-500 words thanks.

Answer 1

Ans.

It has been evident that most of the resources are being used by the developed world while on the other hand, developing world has seen huge inequality among its population. To prove this, let's use some statistics.

Research says that per capita consumption of water in US is about 3000 cubic meters per year (300 gallons per day or 1120 litres per day) while on the other hand, in a developing country like India, per capita use of water is 135 litres per capita per day. Hence you can easily see the wide gap. It is also important to know that most of the water and other resources in the developed countries are for industrial works.

A study done by University of California said that Americans waste around 1 pound of food per person per day which is a very big amount while on the other hand, in a country like India, poor people do not have enough to eat and some people sleep empty stomach.

A study done by International Labour organisation said that there will be more than 80 million loss of jobs due to climate change by 2030 of which 35 millions are in India or about 63 million are in the tropical region.

Per capita CO2 emission in US is also high which is about 16.50 metric tonnes while it is only 1.7 metric tons in India and hence the picture is clear who consumes more and who consumes less.

Now, for this, the distribution of compensation should be evenly distributed for which many schemes are brought by the developed world. One of them is Carbon trading in which every country will be given credits on the basis of decrease in their carbon emission which they can sell to those countries whos carbon emission is more. There are also given money to countries like Brazil which have rich Amazon forest and maintain it as it is instead of cutting them for industries. These all money are given as compensation but it is not enough since it increases the inequality among developed and developing world and is not a long term solution. Hence developed world should instead work in better technologies to reduce their consumption and carbon emission causing global warming. Example - Use of more solar, wind and other renewable sources of energy, use of less water, reduce the consumption of pork and meat (University of California did a research and conclusion was that eating more pork and meat causes more release of Methane which is 80% more harmful than carbon since growing fodder for these animals need more fertilisers, their dung release methane hence if we switch over to veggies and fishes, we can reduce this methane emission.

Conclusion

The compensation amount given by developed world to the developing world for unregulated use of resources is not acceptable since it will widen the wealth gap and will force the developing world to remain poor by not industrially develop and hence instead of this, it must be made mandatory for every country to cover 33% of its area by forest. Also there should be some laws regulating consumption of resources by these countries instead of putting and transferring the burden to the developing ones.

Hence those who have contributed to pollution, they should pay. Even the industries causing pollution should be bind to reduce the pollution as well by adopting measures that are helpful in contributing the reduction in emissions and making environment more healthy.

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