Environmental Deficit

The concept of environmental deficit is not dissimilar from other sociological and economic concepts of deficits: one side draws a disproportionate share of the benefits from what is ideally considered a symbiotic bilateral relationship. Put simply, environmental deficit is a concept that refers to the relationship between society and the natural environment, suggesting that the former pursues short-term benefits from the latter but in fact creates long-term negative consequences. This essay will explore the concept of the environmental deficit, taking an in-depth look at the relationship between modern society and the natural resources it requires for prosperity. The reader will glean a better understanding of the need for equilibrium between industrialization and sustainable resource management.

Keywords Acid Rain; Clean Water Act; Ecological Footprint; Equilibrium; Environmental Deficit; Pollution; Sustainable Development

Population, Urbanization & the Environment > The Environmental Deficit

Overview

Three centuries ago, the undeveloped island of Hispaniola was a lush paradise, filled with deep forests and beautiful vistas. When France absorbed that nation into its protectorates, one half of that island, which would later be known as Haiti, was considered a jewel of the French empire (Johnson, 2007). However, Haiti's reputation would change over a relatively short time. Political instability and rebellions throughout the next two centuries created a heritage of poverty and social upheaval, and in the process, those lush jungles slowly but consistently whittled down to a fraction of what they once were. In fact, 90 percent of those forests are now gone, chopped down to provide wood for fuel and jobs to the impoverished population. Thirty million trees each year are brought down but not replaced due to insufficient funds. In 2013, the Haitian government announced plans to plant more than fifty million trees per year in order to rectify this imbalance, which has exacerbated soil erosion and nutrient degradation. This initiative requires a huge investment by the government, but the costs of inaction are greater, as soil erosion and nutrient loss have led to decreasing agricultural yields (Roshan Lall, 2013).

The relationship between human society and the natural environment is one that has existed throughout the history of the former. Humans have always needed natural resources for survival. Then again, as humankind has grown in population and developed new technologies, the imbalance between what humanity needs from the environment and what the world can provide has grown significantly. This "environmental deficit" has become an important issue among academics, activists, and lawmakers.

Balancing Society with the Environment

The concept of environmental deficit is not dissimilar from other sociological and economic concepts of deficits: one side draws a disproportionate share of the benefits from what is ideally considered a symbiotic bilateral relationship. Put simply, the environmental deficit is a concept that refers to the relationship between society and the natural environment, suggesting that the former pursues short-term benefits from the latter but in fact creates long-term negative consequences (Macionis & Plummer, 2005). Indeed, the dire nature of this imbalance has generated considerable debate around the globe.

Throughout its history, humanity has always relied on natural resources for its survival. Without crops, wood, animals, and water, human society cannot persist. The need for natural resources has increased exponentially with economic development, especially during the twentieth century. Draws on water resources, fish stocks, crops, and other food needs are but part of the picture—the need for land, fossil fuels, and even waste management all fall under the umbrella of natural resource management and, in the modern era, these needs are paramount for virtually every society.

In a budget deficit, the implications of the imbalance between expenditures and revenues are the loss of jobs, cutting of services and programs, and even insolvency. The same can be said of environmental deficits—the potential repercussions for allowing such an imbalance between economic and technological development and a country's natural resources to occur are extremely harmful. Acid rain, air pollution, depleted animal populations, and global climate change are all among the potential implications of environmental deficits.

It can be said that at the center of the idea of an environmental deficit is the issue of sustainable development. This term refers to development that occurs that uses natural resources in such a way that those resources are not unnecessarily depleted. Sustainable development is best demonstrated by analyzing the combination of a given society's ecological "footprint" (how many natural resources are used and how much pollution is produced) and the capacity the nation has for maintaining its population (Lane & Ersson, 2003).

There are two general issues that can contribute to a society's environmental deficit. The first is the society's technological advancement and pursuit of a return on such advancements. The second is the size of a society's population and the rapidity with which it grows within the confines of its country's borders and resources.

Further Insights

Technological Advancements & Subsequent Pollution

Humanity has achieved extraordinary technological accomplishments over the last two centuries. The steam engine made manufacturing much easier, more productive, and time-efficient. The automobile ushered in a new era of transportation, as did the advent of aviation. Constant evolutions in medical research have saved countless lives that might have been lost in previous generations. Even in the last fifty years, telecommunications, television, computing, and the Internet have linked virtually every corner of the world.

Then again, the development of modern technologies has had a negative impact on the natural environment in a number of ways. In 1969, the United States saw a glaring example of this. In a bizarre, seemingly paradoxical situation, the Cuyahoga River, which runs through the heavily industrial city of Cleveland, Ohio, caught fire. A Time magazine article cast an international light on this surreal scene, as oil, logs, debris, and household waste that had been introduced to the river for generations burst into flames. Amazingly, although people around the globe saw the images of this conflagration for the first time, Cleveland residents had seen the Cuyahoga catch fire at least twice before in the twentieth century, causing far greater damage than the 1969 fire. The river had traditionally been allowed to be a dumping ground for waste, as leaders had given priority to industrial development, rather than environmental protection, since the mid-nineteenth century. Then-mayor Carl Stokes, when asked about the 1969 fire, placed blame on state government, saying, "We have no jurisdiction over what is dumped in there … the state gives [industry] the right to pollute" (cited in Thomas, 2000, "Concern About").

A positive development that came of the Cuyahoga River fire of 1969 was the passage of a major set of federal regulations known as the "Clean Water Act." Still, decades after the passage of the Clean Water Act In 1972, there remains a large number of heavily polluted rivers that coincidentally flow through areas whose chief economic outputs are manufacturing and heavy industry. The nation's longest, the Mississippi, which runs through farmlands (which employ an enormous quantity of chemical fertilizers), St. Louis, Memphis, and many other urban centers, is also one of the most polluted rivers. The Delaware, which runs through Philadelphia and several industrial Delaware cities, suffers a similar Plight. The Ohio River, however, remains the number-one waterway in the United States for total toxic discharges.

As the rivers and water resources adjacent to industrial areas suffer in the name of technological progress, thereby contributing to the environmental deficit, so too does another vital natural resource. As industrial output continues to increase around the world, so do the by-products of that progress. Air pollution has long been a major issue, not just for those who reside in urban centers such as Los Angeles and New York. In fact, thanks to the jet stream, air pollution created by factories and manufacturing facilities impacts areas great distances away.

In 2004, an American hockey player was hospitalized with symptoms of mercury contamination. Surprisingly, the source of the mercury was not naturally occurring but had traveled thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean from an industrial plant in China. In fact, many scientists believe that 30 percent of the mercury that settles into ground soil and waterways now comes from foreign sources and, in particular, China (Pottinger, Stecklow & Fialka, 2004). This significant example is not alone, however. In truth, a great many rural, wooded areas with little to no major industrial facilities are suffering from acid rain, mercury contamination, ozone depletion, and exposure to smog.

The Cost of Pollution Cleanup

The examples of air and water pollution discussed above demonstrate an important series of issues surrounding the environmental deficit. To undo the damages caused by air and water pollution, namely, removing toxins from soil and water resources as well as enabling the repopulation of fish and other animals destroyed or relocated by such pollution, takes a tremendous amount of work, money, and time. To undo heavy pollution in a small stretch of the Mississippi River in Minnesota, caused by a manufacturing plant owned by industrial giant 3M, involved dredging deeply into the river bottom, costing millions of dollars and lasting over a decade. Similarly, cleaning toxins that settle into topsoil and water resources as the result of air pollution takes enormous expenditure and time (time that does not include lawsuits to attempt to stop polluters in distant regions to halt emissions).

The environmental deficit is not easily rectified. The damage caused by long-term environmental degradation in the examples shown above may take decades or even generations to completely reverse, and efforts to reverse pollution do not even include efforts to halt ongoing pollution, which would take significant amounts of time and financial investment in and of themselves. The issue that is raised pertinent to the concept of the environmental deficit is that there has long been an assumption that any impact caused by technological activities such as manufacturing would be short-term and contained, when in fact such impacts are potentially devastating and extensive in terms of time and money. There is also an assumption that the environment may in fact be able to absorb pollution and that natural resources are far more vast and resilient, when in fact they are fragile and slow to recover from long-term exposure to the by-products of technological development.

Indeed, the technologies created and employed by society for the purposes of increasing production, enhancing efficiency, and making life easier in general have in fact greatly served humanity. Then again, in terms of the environmental deficit, such technologies also have a negative impact on the resources on which society relies.

Expanding Populations

This paper has thus far focused on the effects of modernization on the ever-widening environmental deficit. There is, however, another major element that contributes to this gulf: the rapid and sustained growth of the human population.

Many of the revolutionary technological advancements that occurred in the last two centuries are in the field of modern medicine. Indeed, more and more people are living longer lives as a result of this development. There is a negative side to this, however—with more people living longer, in addition to the births of more and more people, the growing human population poses a risk of broadening the environmental deficit even wider.

Around the globe, populations are growing at varying speeds. According to the United Nations and the US Census Bureau, the total world population was estimated to be about 7.12 billion people in 2013. This population growth is not uniform among nations, however. In fact, the wealthier nations of the world see only a relatively modest population growth rate, while less developed countries (LDCs) are seeing a far greater explosion in their populations. For example, the United States population currently rests at 314 million; by 2050, that number is projected to reach 438 million, an increase of a little more than 30 percent. The Democratic Republic of Congo, which has a current population of 75 million, is projected to experience an explosive increase by more than 280 percent, reaching a projected 203 million by 2050, according to 2013 data from the United Nations and Pew Research.

To put this growth into perspective, it took all of human history up to 1830 for the global population to reach one billion people. The second billion threshold was reached only a century later. The global human population took only thirty years after that point to reach three billion, and took fifteen years afterward to reach the four billion mark, proceeding to the five billion threshold twelve years later.

As stated earlier, humanity has always relied on natural resources, such as water, agricultural products, and oil, for its very survival. The same statement can be made today as it has been throughout history, but on a much grander scale, as the population continues to grow. In fact, as population growth continues to explode, particularly in LDCs (a larger percentage of whose populations live at or below the poverty level of one to two US dollars per day), the quantity of resources available is greatly strained. As population increase, so does the demand for auto fuels, energy, food and water, and even more living space. These needs are exacerbated as the population becomes denser. In many places around the globe, development is occurring at an unsustainable rate, causing a major strain on natural resources and a breakdown of these regions’ ecological and economic systems (Quammen, 2005).

Sustainable Development

Such rapid growth in populations, given their inevitable draw on resources, has created a brand of infrastructure-building known as sustainable development. In essence, sustainable development is an effort to bridge the widening divide known as the environmental deficit. Its adherents promote development that meets the resource needs of a given population without overstretching those resources so that future generations will be able to draw on them. This movement has become so powerful in the modern era that the United Nations has created a section dedicated to its promotion, focusing on such critical environmental themes as agriculture, rural development, land management, drought policy, and desertification. The UN Commission has issued an international call upon nations to instill in their own economic development activities a recognition of the scarcity and fragility of natural resources.

In some cases, such sustainable development is not simply an advisable policy but an absolute imperative. The growing population represents an extraordinary issue in places where food and water are scarce. In sub-Saharan Africa, countries of this region have diverted rivers, drained aquifers, and even constructed large desalinization plants in order to help maintain the agricultural industry when demand for food is high. Of course, by redirecting their already scarce water supplies, water has become less available. The countries of the Sahara, in light of this situation, have become increasingly reliant (in some cases, 90 percent) on importing food supplies (Martin, 2008).

While the sub-Saharan situation is an extreme example of population growth exceeding natural resource capabilities, the countries surrounding the Sahara are not alone in their experience, nor are they the only ones looking to imports to offset their depleted local natural resource supplies. According to the World Wildlife Fund, Europe is currently on the negative side of a 220 percent environmental deficit. With the majority of its natural resources, such wood, metal, and fish stocks, down to minimal levels, Europe looks to other regions around the globe to import them. The European Union contains about 7 percent of the world's population but uses about 17 percent of the world's natural resource supply.

Clearly, the rapidly growing global population is having a substantial effect on the natural resources on which it relies. Sustainable development programs are appearing in greater frequency, but as shown here, there remains considerable work to be done to correct this increasingly critical issue.

Conclusions

There remains a consistent misconception among social systems that natural resources are in such plentiful volumes that they will not be exhausted. There is also an assumption that the environment will be able to withstand both an increased amount of by-products of modernization and the increased demand put on it by an ever-growing population. However, the nearly barren country of Haiti and the overpopulated Saharan and sub-Saharan regions to the fully modernized and industrialized United States and European Union, provide evidence contrary to these sets of assumptions.

Indeed, the environmental deficit is a figure that is based on the misconceptions and realities of the relationship between society and the natural resources on which it relies. The forces that create an environmental deficit may be more egregious in the cases of LDCs, but they are manifest in fully developed nations as well.

The global effort to close the environmental deficit centers on the implementation of effective sustainable development practices and programs. The implications of the failure to adopt such practices are manifest — a continued widening of this environmental deficit inevitably leads to an unmanageable drain on resources and a negative impact on a society's way of life.

Terms & Concepts

Acid Rain: Precipitation containing industrial pollutants that are released into the atmosphere from other areas.

Clean Water Act: A federal law in the United States that sets guidelines and regulations for industrial output into water supplies and waterways.

Ecological Footprint: Designation outlining the difference between natural resource consumption by a given society and supplies of those resources.

Environmental Deficit: Sociological concept that refers to the relationship between society and the natural environment, suggesting that the former pursues short-term benefits from the latter but in fact creating long-term negative consequences.

Pollution: Waste and/or industrial by-products released into the public environment.

Sustainable Development: Practice of balancing infrastructural needs with long-term environmental concerns.

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Suggested Reading

Ahmadi, F., & Toghyani, S. (2011). The role of urban planning in achieving sustainable urban development. OIDA International Journal of Sustainable Development, 2, 23–26. Retrieved October 25, 2013 from EBSCO online database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=74120361

Gomiero, T., Paoletti, M.G. & Pimentel, D. (2008). Energy and environmental issues in organic and conventional agriculture. Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences, 27, 239-254. Retrieved September 29, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=33372365&site=ehost-live

Lacy, P. & Pickard, S. (2008). Managing risk and opportunity. Journal of Corporate Citizenship, 30, 139-146. Retrieved September 29, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Premier http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=buh&AN=34265647&site=ehost-live

Walsh, B. (2008). The planet's human limits. Time Canada, 171, 42.

Water, water everywhere. (2008). Business and the Environment with ISO 14000 Updates. 19, 1-4. Retrieved September 29, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Premier http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=buh&AN=33764569&site=ehost-live

Wen, Z. & Chen, J. (2008). A cost-benefit analysis for the economic growth of China. Ecological Economics, 65, 356-366.