6.

The Socioeconomic Challenges

Introduction

In this mission we will focus on some of the major socio-economic challenges that we are
facing and their connection to a number of environmental problems.

Learning outcomes

After this mission, you should have gained a better understanding of the interconnection
among social, economic and environmental problems. Socio-economic topics such as poverty,
health, population growth and urban sprawl, and the topic of human rights are presented in
this mission. Moreover, you will be familiar with the concept of public goods that will allow you
to reflect on the challenge of allocating and using natural and environmental resources that
are of a common or open access type.

The planet consists of ecological systems in which humans interact with each other and with
nature. We have learned to transform natural resources found in diverse ecosystems in order
to create and support our lives in urban and rural areas. We have learned to transform nature
into products that we sell and buy within one country or between different countries through
exporting and importing them.
Let us start by focusing on some of the major current socio-economic challenges and their
connection to the environment.

Poverty

Poverty implies more than having a low income. It is a condition in which people experience
hunger, malnutrition, lack of safe drinking water, lack of sanitation, health problems,
inadequate shelter, and lack or limited access to basic education and information, and
discrimination.
Extreme poverty is currently defined as living on less than 1.25 US dollars per day. The United
Nations (UN) has reported that 1.4 billion people in developing regions (21% of the world
population) lived in extreme poverty in 2005.
People living in a state of poverty are more vulnerable to economic recessions. According to
the World Bank, about 40 million more people became hungry in 2009. And by the end of
2010 about 64 million more people were living in extreme poverty. Both 2009 and 2010 were
years of global economic recession.
People living in a state of poverty also tend to live in areas and conditions that make them
more dependent on natural resources. These make them more vulnerable to environmental
degradation and natural disasters. For example, they live in shacks in coastal areas exposed to
hurricanes, or they live in areas susceptible to floods, and in places where the quality and the
price of land is low.
Furthermore, the disparities between rich and poor in the world in terms of income, access to
basic needs, and impact on the environment, continue to expand rather than to narrow. The
following statistics illustrate this:

According to the UN approximately 16% of the people in developing countries suffer from
hunger, starvation and malnutrition.

About 1.5 million children under the age of five die each year because of water and
sanitation-related diseases.

The richest 20% earn approximately 75% of world income. While, the poorest 40% of the
worlds population earn only 5% of global income.

The wealthiest 10% of the worlds people (about 500 million people) are responsible for
50% of the worlds carbon dioxide emissions and the poorest 3 billion are responsible for
just 6%, as reported by the Worldwatch Institute in 2010.

A lot of efforts have been made by different organisations regarding poverty reduction during
the last decade. However, as you can see, there is still a tremendous need for improving the
living conditions for a large number of the worlds population.

Health

There is a strong connection between poverty (to be poor, to have no or very little money)
and poor health (to be sick). Poor health is more common among poor people than rich
people. People with poor health have a higher risk of becoming poor than healthy people. This
is one more reason why fighting poverty is so important.
Many diseases are linked to a lack of clean water or a lack of household energy. Pollution, lack
of sanitation, poor food, and smoking are other reasons why people get sick and die at a
young age. But health related diseases are not unique to poor people. Currently, in major

developed and developing economies, unhealthy diets and sedentary lifestyles are becoming a
major cause of chronic diseases.
In most countries, people are on average living longer than before. But the life expectancy at
birth (LE at what age newborns are projected to die on average) differs between countries.
The World Health Organization indicates that in 2010, in Japan and Iceland LE is more than 80
years, but in some African countries, like Guinea-Bissau and Zambia, it is less than 49 years. In
many countries, the increasing numbers of old people, who are not working, are becoming a
big challenge. In countries with a strong pension system, this means that, too few young
persons are working and creating wealth for too many people that are retired. This is the case
for many European countries.
How are all these issues connected to the environment? Well, some things that humans have
created to live a better life have at the same time put our own health at risk. Water pollution,
air pollution, climate change, pesticides, heavy metals in food, water, air, traffic accidents, and
more sedentary lifestyles are some of the side effects of getting a better life.
By overexploiting and degrading ecosystems we are also having negative impacts on our
health. Well, it seems that we are not only biting the hand that feeds us, we are also affecting
ourselves! Is it worth it? How can we do it differently?

Population growth

By now, you have probably figured out that it is not only our environment we need to be
concerned about. One of the main reasons why we experience so many problems is that there
are so many of us about 7 billion.
Think about this number for a moment. If you clap your hands once every second to count
each person, and you clap all day, all month, all year, non-stop, you have to clap for 217 years
to count the number of people on Earth.
For thousands of years, the Earths population was almost the same, but at the end of the
1600s, and beginning of the 1700s, the population began to increase. The population began to
grow because of several reasons, including that people began to control diseases, have
technical breakthroughs, and that cultivation of plants such as corn and potatoes spread to
new parts of the world.
By 1750 the world population was about 700 million, by 1930 the world population reached 2
billion. The United Nations has projected that by year 2050 the world population will reach 9
billion.
Now humanity is using the resources and services of 1.3 Earths. If we continue growing in
numbers like we do today, and if we continue consuming as we do now, the human population
will need even more food, clean water, energy, houses, schools, cars, paper, and many other
resources. But, if we succeed to fight poverty, and if the pattern of over consumption
continues, people will probably consume more per person on average, which means that we
would need to use perhaps five or ten times more resources in total. Would this be possible?
Another concern related to population growth is urban sprawl. As the population grows, cities
begin to expand, merging with the surrounding rural areas. Also people from rural areas tend
to move to urban areas, forcing cities to expand in a process called urbanization. Unmanaged
urbanization brings in new economic, social, and environmental challenges.

How can we handle the implications of population growth without destroying the environment
we all depend on?
It seems that it is time to rethink our behavioral patterns towards the Earth!

Human rights

Human rights refer to the concept of human beings as having universal rights, or status,
regardless of laws, ethnic background, and nationality. The world's oldest recorded charter of
human rights was engraved on the famous Cyrus Cylinder, written and confirmed by the
Persian emperor Cyrus the Great in 538 BC. However, because a formal concept of human
rights has not been accepted globally it can mean different things in countries around the
world.
For many, human rights refer to standards of behavior as accepted within their respective
countrys laws and include the right to life, the right to a satisfactory standard of living, the
prohibition of genocide, freedom from torture and other mistreatment, freedom of expression,
freedom of movement, the right to education, and the right to participate in cultural and
political life.

In many countries people suffer from lack of respect of their basic human rights.

They are denied education, or freedom of religion is not allowed.

People are mistreated or might not have a fair trial.

People do not have the right to a healthy environment and their cultures are
compromised in one way or another.

Many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) take it upon themselves to publish information

about these problems, which helps to highlight the problems for the government and the
public.
You have just learned about some socio-economic challenges we face regarding poverty,
health, population growth and human rights, and how they impact on the environment. In the
next, and final, section you will be introduced to another challenge, which relates to the nature
of our environment and the fact that much of it cannot be owned by one person, but instead
we must share it.
We will now look at public goods. But before you click next, you may like to stand up and
stretch your body. Ready?
Think about the air that you are breathing. Now think about free to air TV. Think about the
middle of the Atlantic Ocean. These are examples of public goods or common resources.
These goods or services have two main characteristics. One is that if someone consumes such
a good or service, it does not become less available to others (non-rivalry).The other
characteristic is that no one can be excluded from using it (non-excludable). Think of the air
you breathe. When you breathe, the air does not become less available to others (it is nonrival) and people cannot be excluded from using the rest of the air if you are breathing it (it is
non-excludable). Think about watching TV. If you watch free to air TV, it does not become less
available to the rest of the country and no one is excluded from it (if they own a TV set)!
Another example of public goods are the oceans. Try to think why.

The oceans will not cease to exist even if a large number of people use them and it is not
likely that someone can claim ownership to a part of the ocean and exclude others from the
recreational benefits that they receive from it.
So, why do we introduce this in relation to environmental issues? Well, in contrast to private
goods, that are exchanged in a market with buyers and sellers agreeing on a price and
exchanging ownership rights, many of our natural resources fall into the public goods
category. What has happened when the common resources are scarce?
In the worst cases many conflicts, and sometimes even wars, have been fought to gain access
to scarce common resources like water. The Jordan River (Israel and its neighboring
countries), the Danube (Slovakia and Hungary), the Parana River (Brazil, Paraguay and
Argentina) are just three out of hundreds of examples of this kind of conflicts. Experts predict
more disputes over commonly owned resources, because of the world's growing population,
increasing contamination through pollution, and global warming.
Open access to public or common goods like the atmosphere and outer space may prevail
without problems, as long as the common resource is unlimited. If the resource is scarce this
causes rivalry, free-riders and what is called the tragedy of the commons.
When someone consumes a good or service and it becomes less available to others, these can
lead to some kind of rivalry. The free-rider problem is getting the benefit of a good or service
without paying for it. This problem arises when the goods or services, or the benefits from
them, are divided equally among the owners, regardless of how much each one contributes to
have or produce such goods or services. For example, if a fisherman decides to buy and use a
technology that catches less fish per day, but protects the seafloor and other species, others
will benefit from the fishermans environmentally friendly technology by getting more fish to
catch without having to make any effort.
The tragedy of the commons was explained by Garrett Hardin in 1968. Think about the trees
in a forest, the fish in a gulf, or the water running in a river. When these kind of resources do
not have only one owner, but instead the resources belong to everybody, they become
common goods. The motivation to take care of the common resources is not as high as when
there is just one owner. Ways in which this issue has been solved historically is that strong
members appropriate a portion of the resource, and control its use, or through regulation
based on some form of common ownership of the scarce resource.
There are other areas of socio-economic and environmental concern. For instance, the
migration of refugees from countries where the environment is so mistreated, that there are
no longer any possibilities for fishermen to catch enough fish or for farmers to get a living from
producing crops. These tragedies can be triggered by events in nature (such as earthquakes,
extreme weather events and climate trends) or caused by humans (such as forest clearing,
industrialization, urbanization, mining, erosive agriculture, and warfare).
Finally, there are many reasons for conflicts (and we will not look into them in this course).
However, it is interesting to see that the world spent more than $1000 billion on arms for war
in 2004, and at the same time spent only $78.6 billion on aid to the world's most needy
countries.

You have read about many challenges. But even when all of these are problematic, progress
has also been made in finding and applying solutions to contribute to tackle these major
problems. And still more work is left to do. As you will read in further missions.

Learning activity
Group discussion
You have just read about poverty eradication, health, population growth, urban sprawl, and
human rights. Now have a discussion in your group and decide which of these issues you see
as the most important in your country. Give a reason why this is important and an example or
statistic to support your answer.
Offline activity and group discussion
Focus on one of the topics introduced in this mission. Find an organisation in your country,
province or city that is working to help solve one of these issues. What is the name of the
organisation? What is their mission, goal or mandate? How are they working to help solve the
challenge?
Interview and group discussion
Contact the organisation you listed in Task 2. Interview a member of staff either by telephone,
skype, e-mail or in person. Take good written notes when you interview them so you can refer
back to those notes. Ask any questions that you are interested in but be sure to cover: what
the persons role is; and what sort of work they do (practical examples) in order to address the
challenges you discussed in Tasks 1 and 2. Post your interview notes, or a summary of them,
in the box below.

Feedback
1. Effort
The group has put in a lot of work in fulfilling this assignment. Do you agree?

2. Insight
The answers show that the group has a good understanding of the questions asked. Do you
agree?

3. Communication
The answers given by the group were clear, understandable, and well presented. Do you
agree?