Economics and environmental issues Civ 227

 

Course Code: Civ 227                                     Course Title: Economics and environmental issues

Course Instructor: Alok Sharma                                                         

Academic Task No.: 02                                             Academic Task Title: Questions/Answers

Date of Allotment:                                                      Date of submission: 22-04-2020

Student’s Roll no: A16                                                Student’s Reg. no:   

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I declare that this Assignment is my individual work. I have not copied it from any other student’s work or from any other source except where due acknowledgement is made explicitly in the text, nor has any part been written for me by any other person.

Student’s Signature: Rajinder Singh

 

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Q1. Define the terms:

Ans. A) Environmental Accounting: Environmental accounting refers to the identification, measurement and communication of the data on environmentally responsible performance of a business entity to help economic decision-making. It identifies the resources used by a business to measures and communicates costs of its impact on the environment.

In another words, it is the process of accounting for any costs and benefits that arises out of the resulting change in environment due to the change to a firm’s product and processes of production. The costs include costs to environmental fines, clean up or remediate contaminated sites, penalties and taxes, purchase of pollution prevention technologies and waste management costs.

B) LEED: Leadership in energy and environment design is internationally recognized green building certification system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) to encourage the construction of energy and resource-efficient buildings that are healthy to live in.

It provides a clear picture of water efficiency by evaluating that how much water used in a building. LEED buildings save energy, resources, water, generate less waste and support human health.

 

C) Renewable Energy: It is a non-conventional source of energy which we can use again and again. Renewable energy is energy that is collected from renewable resources, such as wind energy, sunlight is solar energy, tidal energy, waves, Biomass energy and geothermal heat energy. This energy produces no greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels and reduces some types of air pollution.

 

D) Environmental marketing: Marketing Environment is the combination of external and internal factors and forces which affect the company's ability to establish a relationship and serve its customers. The marketing environment of a business consists of an internal and an external environment.

The customer pays more attention to the environmental properties of goods and services like environmental labelling, environmental claims and environmental declaration.

 

 

E) Economics of Natural Resources: Natural Resources Economics is divided into two parts:

1) Natural resources: These are those resources that exist in the earth without any interfere of human beings.

2) Economics: Economics means how to utilize scarce resources in an optimum manner.

Thus, Natural Resources Economics seeks to the value of natural resources to aid the optimization of the production of goods and services from agricultural lands while protecting the environment. It focuses on the supply, demand, and allocation of the Earth’s natural resources. Its goal is to gain a better understanding of the role of natural resources in the economy.

 

Q2. Discuss the various benefits of environmental design?

Ans. Environmental design is a technique in which we design a building such a way that it will not affect the environment and redesign the building. Environmental designers create human spaces with the best welfares of the community and natural environment in mind. These are available at all levels and often lead to careers in local government agencies and environmental organizations.

 

The various benefits of environmental design are as follow:

Ø  It reduced the environmental impact through material and resource conservation.

Ø  It will increase efficiency of heating and cooling systems.

Ø  It reduced operating and utility costs.

Ø  Its increased daylight accesses.

Ø  Its enhanced occupant comfort and health.

Ø  It increases product marketability.

Environmental design can make a building more attractive inside and out, improving the comfort and quality of the indoor environment, improving community and global citizenship, and increasing occupant health.

Environmental design targets opportunities for cost-reduction at all stages of a product's life and ensures the greatest reduction in environmental effects.

This results in reduced production costs, increased product quality, increased return on environmental investments and elimination of compliance costs.

 

 

 

Q3. What are Environment Taxes? What is the need of such taxes?

Ans. A tax which is imposed on the environment polluting goods or activities, to discourage people from anti-ecological behavior and make them sensitive towards the environment. Environmental taxes are known as green taxes, pollution taxes are a wide range of legislative charges on businesses and private individuals aimed at reducing practices which cause damage to the environment.

 

Environmental taxes have many important advantages that is environmental effectiveness, economic efficiency, the ability to raise public revenue, and transparency. Even environmental taxes have been successfully used to address a wide range of issues including waste disposal, water pollution and air emissions.

There are many types of environmental taxes i.e.,

1)      Carbon emissions Tax

2)      Energy use tax

3)      Tradeable emission quotas

4)      Industrial pollution taxes and many more

 

We have a major need to impose these taxes because if we really want to control pollution, then only method is left that to impose taxes on such types of sectors which produces lots of pollution. These taxes help in such a way that the prices of lots of pollution generating equipment will increase, when prices increase only those people buy it who really need it and other refuse it.

 

Secondly, when taxes imposed, the amount collect from taxes is used for installing pollution control devices and planting more trees. Government may have to build a moment which is 100% environmentally design. So, that lots of people were attract to watch it and influence to build there house same in that way. Suppose, if one person builds their house environmentally friendly by influence the government eco-friendly moment other will do the same. By giving a little spark will turn into a fire. Then our mother earth will become a pollution free universe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Q4. Write a Note on Environmental costs and benefits. Include real life example in your discussion.

Ans. Environmental Cost allocates costs incurred in order to comply with regulatory standards and reduce or eliminate releases of hazardous substances as well as environmental impacts, and costs associated with the failure of addressing these issues. Environmental costs are costs connected with the actual or potential deterioration of natural assets due to economic activities.

These costs can be viewed from two different outlooks, namely as

(a) Costs caused: that is, costs associated with economic units actually or potentially causing environmental deterioration by their own activities

(b) Costs borne: that is, costs incurred by economic units independently of whether they have actually caused the environmental impacts.

Environmental costs are having many types are as follow

1.)  Assessment costs for baseline studies, environmental impact analysis and the preparation of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) study.

2.)  Prevention costs incurred in operations which prevent environmental impacts, i.e., tailings dams for mining operations.

3.)  Mitigation costs for both new and existing facilities or activities for example control of emissions, effluents and discharges.

4.)  Reclamation costs for returning the site of activity and surrounding affected areas to a state ‘agreed on’.

5.)  Compensation costs to affected parties for irrecoverable damage to the environment badly.

These costs are come under the direct environmental cost, while indirect costs are difficult to measure and to integrate into overall economic evaluation and planning. They are represented in the standard measures of economic growth such as Gross national products (GNP). Indirect costs include the depletion of natural resources, environmental components on water, soil, and habitat and conservation or efficiency of resource utilization.

For example: There is one hotel in Jammu (Lemon Tree Hotel) due to covid-19, they have to sanitize their hotel every day-night and each table after customer exist. This increase their expenses more because they use sanitizing machine which is run by the means of electricity. The energy used to run the sanitizing machine is an environmental cost. 

The person who operate the machine do sanitize each table whether customer is sit or not. This process increases the cost because the person who operate the machine sanitize in different floor of the hostel, it would difficult for him to recognize each and every customer table. So, hostel manager decide that they will sanitize each table at a fixed time proper 3 pm whether customer visit or not. This process saves their cost. And they ask the customer before siting the table that if you want to sanitize the table again, some minimal charges will apply and services is done in front of you. Even they also provide a small packet of sanitizer to each customer which increase the reputation of the hotel also and environment friendly cost is include.