Worldwide, governments subsidize agriculture at the rate of approximately 1 billion dollars per day. This figure rises to about twice that when export and biofuels production subsidies and state financing for dams and river basin engineering are included. These policies guide land use in numerous ways, including growers’ choices of crop and buyers’ demand for commodities. The three types of state subsidies that shape land use and the environment are land settlement programs, price and income supports, and energy and emissions initiatives. Together these subsidies have created perennial surpluses in global stores of cereal grains, cotton, and dairy, with production increases outstripping population growth. Subsidies to land settlement, to crop prices, and to processing and refining of cereals and fiber, therefore, can be shown to have independent and largely deleterious effect on soil fertility, fresh water supplies, biodiversity, and atmospheric carbon.
Article
Agricultural Subsidies and the Environment
Heather Williams
Article
Environmental Economic Ethics
Roldan Muradian
Environmental economic ethics refers to the moral philosophy underlying the interaction between economic processes and the natural environment. The ethical foundations shaping the way the economy interacts with nature vary greatly, depending on culture and the historical period. Nonetheless, current economic thinking and practice is dominated by utilitarianism, a philosophical stream consolidated in Western culture in the late 18th century. A utilitarian way to conceive and deal with the natural world and other humans can be identified as the ultimate cause of the current global environmental crisis. Even though ecological economics, as a field, has tried to overcome some of the drawbacks of utilitarianism when applied to the study of sustainability problems from an economic perspective, this school of thought remains essentially within the utilitarian paradigm. However, recent changes in social values, moving away from utilitarianism, are creating new opportunities for changing the philosophical and ethical foundations of ecological economics thinking and practice. The global movement for the rights of nature is an example of such a societal shift. An overhaul of the current allocation of rights can be a first step toward less suffering among humans, as well as a more peaceful relationship between humans and the natural environment. The economic implications of adopting the rights of nature paradigm are vast and wide. They include the thriving of new forms of property rights, new ways of allocating responsibilities and liabilities among social groups, and the acknowledgement of the territory as a key dimension for caring about in human economic development.
