Effect of Deforestation According to John M Sandra
Before discussing the effect of deforestation to human economy, the context beforehand is equally important to know. It is important to know the context since it shows us the reason behind deforestation.
According to John M. Sandra, “ Structural adjustment programs usually require deep cuts in government spending to correct for budgetary imbalances (Barbosa 2001). This often results in a reduction in the budgets and staffs of environment departments, which hampers enforcement of environmental regulations (Peet 2003)”(2007). In other words, Sandra is conveying that in the future, the expansion and growth of human economy will inevitably bring the sacrifice of environment. This is very problematic because in our current state of economics, many countries like China are still developing, and therefore will use tons of natural resources. As a result, they will be less willing to stop the use of these resources compare to already developed countries like the United States of America, and this will lead to lesser involvement towards the reduced use of natural resources.
According to Sandra, one policy that humans can present to stop deforestation is the “recognition of labor unions” (2007). Workers can band together and form labor unions in the interest of a common goal: to stop companies from using a large amount of natural resources. One effect of labor unions is that they can increase wages for factory and lower class workers. Factory and lower class workers have the ability to restrict labor, and they can also slow down the overall economic growth with protests and strikes. Another effect labor unions is the increase in unemployment rate. Because of the increase in wage for each employee, companies will have no choice but to fire a number of employees due to budget reasons.
All in all, one solution to stopping deforestation is the rise of labor unions. As a result of increasing in labor unions, minimum wage for lower class workers will increase; as a side effect of that, firms will start losing workers because they cannot afford to pay every worker an increased wage.
Citation: World Bank. (1997). Advancing sustainable development: The World Bank and Agenda 21. Washington, DC: World Bank.
