The links between the economy and the environment are seemingly clear: The environment provides resources to the economy, and acts as a sink for emissions and waste. When poor environmental quality occurs, this affects economic growth and wellbeing by lowering the quantity and quality of resources or due to health impacts. Despite this conundrum, many nations embark on seemingly self-destructive economic strategies and, at the same time, the actions by individual nations can reduce some of the impact of climate change.
It may be argued that unless there is a global solution, it matters little what individual nations do (even if one of the larger economic giants was to adopt a change in approach). This reasoning may be fatalistic. There are researchers who argue that national approaches can impact the environment for the better, and this does not necessarily mean no economic growth. We look at three different examples.
Local approaches in the big world
While the economy clearly impacts on the environment, as two decades of satellite images reveal, it is possible for individual nations to affect the balance, according to new research. It may remain that a global approach is best, but some of the worst effects of human activity can be decoupled at the national level.
This proposition comes from Penn State University researchers. The scientists drew on data relating to carbon dioxide emission estimates, taken from the Open-Data Inventory for Anthropogenic Carbon (ODIAC) platform. These data were used to determine anthropogenic emissions on continental and national scales.
ODIAC is a global high-spatial-resolution gridded emissions data product that distributes carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion. By anthropogenic, this refers to environmental pollution and pollutants originating in human activity.
The patterns indicate that countries that adopt an industrial strategy can grow their economies while slowing emissions. The scientists showed this by comparing and contrasting different countries and regions within different nation states.
The researchers also produced a filter that enabled them to focus on cities and other areas where emissions result from human activities.
The analysis appears in the journal Environmental Research Letters, titled “Country-scale trends in air pollution and fossil fuel CO2 emissions during 2001–2018: confronting the roles of national policies and economic growth.”
Flying example
An example of how nations can work together is with flight. In a new study, scientists discovered that flights between London and New York could have used up to 16 percent less fuel. This can occur if aircraft more accurately follow jet stream tailwinds and avoid headwinds.
By adopting this, the approach could occur at just a fraction of the cost of other emissions-cutting technologies. All that is needed for this approach to work is for two countries to work together in terms of flight scheduling and agreeing routes.
The proposal comes from University of Reading scientists, writing in Environmental Research Letters (“Reducing transatlantic flight emissions by fuel-optimised routing”).
To arrive at their conclusions, the researchers analysed some 35,000 flights traveling in both directions between New York and London. The researchers compared the fuel used during these flights with the quickest route that would have been possible at the time by flying into or around the eastward jet stream air currents.
International collaboration to review elemental risks
There is a need for international regulation, according to a new report, in relation to cross-border environmental issues. This not only concerns protecting the environment, and ensuring that neighbouring countries do not pollute each other, it also extends to disease control. This alter point is of significance in the light of the coronavirus pandemic.
With disease factors, circulating winds can carry bacteria, fungal spores, viruses and pollen over considerable distances. Here national borders have little meaning. Despite this risk factor, a major industrialized economy like the U.S. is not ready to confront future disease outbreaks or food-supply threats.
To address such risks different countries must share intelligence. The weakest approach would be isolation. Even this is not sufficient should the work of agencies internal to the country be too fragmented and under-resourced. One criticism levelled at the U.S. is with the lack of coordination and information-sharing can effectively.
The alternative strategy is set out in the journal Ecological Applications, in a paper titled “Unifying atmospheric biology research for the U.S. scientific community”.
Essential Science
This article forms part of Digital Journal’s long-running Essential Science series, where new research items relating to wider science stories of interest are presented by Dr. Tim Sandle on a weekly basis.
Last week we learned that the European Union has taken a major step, whatever your individual feelings, in declaring mealworms as ‘safe to eat’ and hence as a sustainable source of protein that can be used to replace meat within a diet.
The week before, looking at COVID-19 from an environmental perspective, we asked what has been the effect of the pandemic upon the environment? The results, we found, were mixed, depending upon which aspect of ecology is examined.
