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Assess the View That Economic Development Is Not Possible Without Causing Environmental Degradation – 15 Marks.

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Assess the view that economic development is not possible without causing environmental degradation – 15 marks.

Overall, I feel that it is mainly large scale economic development projects that are not possible without causing some environmental degradation. Construction is one of the main reasons for this, for any development to take place an area must be used efficiently to maximize space for development. A great example of this is the 3 Gorges Dam in China; this cost over $25 billion to build. Yes, it was financially positive, however a lot of land was taken, which led to huge disruptions in local ecosystems.

Also china has a huge demand for Iron; this is in order to build the buildings and also for the growing demands of the car …show more content…

16 of the top 20 air polluted cities are located in China; this is due to rapid development in many what were rural areas of China. A massive 30% of china suffers from acid rain, also because air quality is so poor, 400,000 premature deaths from air polluted causes in 2003. Leaking water pipes contaminated drinking water, which caused illness throughout China; resulting in 70% rivers/lakes are polluted.

As well as environmental concerns, there are also social concerns, such as the rural population are not seeing the positives of the economic boom, which is not fair as they work just as hard. Also it’s the rapid development that is taking their farm land to either convert it to homes for the county’s fast growing population and taking land in place of factories for the also fast growing industries – housing is regularly demolished and in 2007 300,00 people were evicted from their homes; to create space. 20% of the Chinese population live on less than $1 per day, also in China, child labour is not uncommon, and this is in order to keep up with the rapid growth within industries.

On the other hand, there are many other schemes that promote economic development without having negative environmental impacts. However, these tend to be small-scale aid projects as they usually help improve people’s quality of life and standard of living more directly. For example, Practical

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