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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | We Need to Rethink our Economics to Avoid Future Epidemics -Debanjana Dey & Taposik Banerjee

We Need to Rethink our Economics to Avoid Future Epidemics -Debanjana Dey & Taposik Banerjee

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published Published on May 28, 2020   modified Modified on May 29, 2020

-Vikalp.ind.in

During the late 1950s when villages near the Kyasanur Forest in Karnataka started to become crowded, farmers began to clear the forest to find new land for agriculture as well as for construction of houses and roads. This brought them to close contact with the primates in the forest. When Kyasanur Forest Disease (KFD) outbreak took place among monkeys, the virus did not take much time to jump species and infect humans[i]. The disease which originated in Shimoga district in Karnataka in 1957, since 2012 has spread to other areas of Western Ghats in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Goa and Maharashtra, infecting around 500 people each year and killing several. Expansion of agricultural and industrial activity, mining and infrastructure development are some of the economic activities that are responsible for massive deforestation which in turn facilitates animal to human transmission of diseases.

Exploitation of nature to make profit is not new. But the ease with which economic concern almost always wins over environmental concerns is remarkable.  The answer to this lies in the reasoning with which the institution of market operates. Market evaluates economic activities on the basis of pecuniary gains. If the monetised value of benefits from an activity is found to be higher than the monetised value of damages then it is considered to be efficient to carry on with such an activity.  Many important functions of environment, however, have no market and hence have no economic value. As a result damages to the environment is often severely undervalued and degradation of environment is considered more profitable than preserving it. As a consequence, the model of economic development that is predominantly followed across the world causes serious damages to environment, biodiversity loss and habitat destruction for a large number of species. There is no dearth of example for such cases. The Environmental Justice Atlas (ejatlas.org) which is a project that maintain a repository of instances related to socio-environmental conflicts has more than 3000 cases reported globally among which more than 300 cases were reported from India. These conflicts are linked with a wide range of economic activities that include mining, dams, fracking, infrastructure construction, tourism recreation, water management, waste management, alternative uses of biomass and land etc. Surely this is not an exhaustive set of cases and there are many more cases around the world where we would find ecosystems getting threatened and damaged to promote economic activities. All such activities however, are considered to be value-creating according to the principles of market.

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Vikalp.ind.in, 28 May, 2020, https://vikalp.ind.in/2020/05/we-need-to-rethink-our-economics-to-avoid-future-epidemics/?fbclid=IwAR2r5rdonTeXZ5U-SLURrEr-Gn_RqWweRNPtAcHvZmbJlalCzCAJcRTHGK8


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