To What Extent Should Economic Planning Be Influenced By the Need of Environmental Conservation?

Successive existence, survival and growth of human-kind primarily depend on how habitable is the environment they dwell in. It is almost impossible for human beings to live without depending on the environment that is the other living things including plants and animals. This is because humanity depends on plants and animals for food in order to survive. Human-kind depends on other non-living things within the environment for survival including water, air and other inorganic materials necessary to sustain life. Therefore there is great need to conserve the environment since its sustainability is a crucial determinant factor to the life of humanity (Tisdell, 2005). Furthermore, we all depend on the environment for social and economic productivity.

Food and water for instance is the most important necessity for human survival and no country would boast of any economic prosperity if she wouldn’t first and foremost adequately manage to feed her citizens. That being the case, the need for all the stakeholders to extensively and exclusively plan for this commodity is inevitable. The growth of food crops is subject to certain environmental conditions including climatic conditions, pollution-free environment, clean water, clean air among others, and this call for the need to plan on how to conserve environment in order to realize economic productivity. For instance, the issue of human activities such as manufacturing industries, and the impact the industries have on the environment especially air pollution and proper waste disposal, call for effective economic planning so as to minimize the pollution menace.  Therefore, proper planning in terms of ensuring proper disposal of the waste products is very necessary if this crucial objective of environmental conservation is to be realized. In addition, proper legislation must be put in place and proper polices enacted towards environmental conservation if at all any economic growth is to be realized (Petts, 2009).

Environmental conservation is important and very necessary especially to the economic productivity of a nation especially in agricultural sectors, fishing, and industries among others since they need to get continuous supply of raw materials. For all these reasons and more, environmental conservation is a crucial factor of consideration during economic planning (Petts, 2009).