Industrialization and Environment Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

This Industrialization and Environment Essay example is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic, please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.

Industrialization is a process that introduces new technologies of production in a region or a country to increase the output of goods. Industrialization is strongly associated with the Industrial Revolution in England in the 19th century, where capital and resources from colonial expansion, technological innovations like steam power, and labor dispossessed from land or access to markets combined to create large-scale factory production. The shift from handmade manufacturing to machine production yields major changes in the societal division of labor in two ways. Increased use of machinery tends to make homogenize the types of labor performed by each worker (deskilling), and alter the gender division of labor by incorporating women into the paid workforce. Industrialization under capitalism affects relations between owners and workers by generating a supply of labor that is employed according to market forces, mobile within a nation-state, and often restricted in terms of international mobility.

Environmental Impacts

Intensification of production generates pollution-including increased emissions, water and soil contamination-as well as unsustainable resource extraction. While industrial production is commonly evaluated in terms of growth and increased efficiency, the environmental cost is considered a secondary spillover effect, referred to in mainstream economics as a negative externality. Proponents of environmental regulation argue that the cost of pollution should be internalized, either through incentives that reward cleaner industries or punitive fines for polluters.

Mainstream environmental economists have constructed powerful models like the Environmental Kuznets Curve to assert that industrial growth and environmental protection are not opposite processes. They argue that while environmental damage is inevitable in the “take off” period of industrialization (low-wage, low-technology, polluter phase), once a certain level of per-capita income is reached, economic growth can be channeled toward cleaner industrial technologies (high-wage, high technology, “cleaner” industrial period). This view assumes that poor countries are primarily polluters, the market is capable of self-regulation, environmental regeneration is guaranteed, and the effects of environmental damage on the livelihoods of affected populations are reversible. This assumption is facilitated by a strong link between the concept of industrialization and key ideas like progress, development, and modernity in Western thinking.

This idea of stage-like industrial development works poorly when considering economic development in former colonies, often referred to as the global South. Colonial capitalism fostered both dependency on primary products (natural resources and cash crops) and a global economic system that devalued so-called “primary” products. This colonial production-including resource extraction and plantation agriculture-was in many cases industrial, involving expensive technologies, capital investment, as well as a complex division of labor, both free and slave.

These industries were part of a system that extracted wealth exclusively for local elites and the “mother” country, in turn creating conditions for industrialization in Europe. For many former colonies, shifts in global production as a result of decolonization were associated with deindustrialization, capital flight, and a more informal economy. Oft-cited examples include the Zambian copper belt in southern Africa and the Caribbean plantation system.

In the post-World War II period, industrialization became synonymous with development policy dominated by a debate between two strategies: import-substitution industrialization (ISI) and export-oriented industrialization (EOI). In both cases, industrialization refers to shifting economic activity from agricultural production to manufactured goods. Both strategies face the challenge of generating or attracting capital investment, technology, and business organization – a process that often leads to dependence on foreign banks and multinational corporations. The difference between the two approaches lies in their market “orientation.” ISI encourages domestic production for the national market through industrial subsidies and protective trade barriers to reduce the level of imports. EOI subsidizes domestic and foreign investment in sectors that can produce goods for foreign markets with more purchasing power, like the United States and Europe. Struggles over EOI versus ISI generally do not address the question of environmental impacts of industrialization.

Another use of the term “industrialization” in post-World War II development policy refers to the promotion of “scientific” or “industrial” agriculture in the global South, a strategy referred to as the Green Revolution. New technologies-such as hybrid seed varieties, fertilizers, pesticides, and mechanization-were introduced with significant negative impacts on the environment, patterns of land tenure, and women’s central role in small-scale agricultural production.

Bibliography:

Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, V 1 (International Publishers, 1967);
Sydney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (Penguin Books, 1985);
Philip W. Porter and Eric Sheppard, A World of Difference: Society, Nature, Development (Guilford Press, 1998);
R. Kerry Turner, “Markets and Environmental Quality,” in Clark et al., eds., The Oxford Handbook of Economic Geography (Oxford University Press, 2000);
Richard York, Eugene Rosa, and Thomas Dietz, “Footprints on the Earth: Environmental Consequences of Modernity,” in American Sociological Review (v.68, 2003).