Pollution as an economic, much less a moral problem

Aug 29, 2016

NEMA together with UMA can develop a “Green Star” labeling system for products.

Dr. Eng. Lammeck Kajubi

Over years of designing solutions for industrial pollution, I unreservedly posit that pollution is much less a moral than it is an economic problem.

If the question was to be about what must be done for Uganda to reduce industrial pollution and have a cleaner environment, I would say paying for it in less of other things would be a premier solution to softer, but equally useful ones, such as increasing environmental awareness or disciplining ourselves not to pollute.

Whichever way viewed, industrial pollution is itself an economic activity or a result of some economic activities. It should then be looked at as a failure of the price system rather than a result of moral depravity.

If markets do not provide adequate and useful information to industrialists who then consequently fail to take into account the cost of their polluting activities, they will produce goods at a price level that omits the social cost of their externalities.

This social cost is in terms of everybody paying taxes part of which is used to cover high municipal water treatment costs, public healthcare for a myriad of pollution-induced infirmities such as cancers, respiratory ailments, to mention a few.

In these cases the producer's private cost of production is less than the total cost (including social cost) and consumers respond by consuming too much of the good in question just because they are not paying its full cost. If polluters were to be taxed, the environmental tax levied would be a difference between the social cost and the private cost the industrialists produce at.

To reduce pollution, we must either consume less of goods whose production causes environmental pollution or producers must invest in pollution control equipment such as wastewater treatment units. Clearly, reducing pollution will require paying the cost of having less of other things.

NEMA together with Uganda Manufacturers' Association (UMA) can develop a "Green Star" labeling system for products to indicate a producer's level of environmental pollution in the period a given good was manufactured based on an environmental audit conducted during that production year.

A rating system can be developed to have star categories ranging from 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 with a single star representing the least environmentally-responsible producer. This star rating can be one of the mandatory conclusions of every annual environmental audit. Absence of a star on a product would connote "Zero" regard to pollution-prevention by a producer in that production year.

Consumers will then punish products from such a company with rejection on shop shelves! The reasoning is if manufacture of a given good pollutes the only river your septuagenarian parents drink water from, making them chronically ill hence eroding your savings every month in perpetual hospital expenses you incur to treat them, why would you reward this company by buying its products! This economic punishment will force polluters to sober up or close shop.  

Environmental pollution levels will plummet if every producer scrambled to have their products get the highest Green Star rating so as to appeal to environmentally-conscious consumers.

NEMA's role in fanning up this self-regulation would then be to turn everybody into an environmentally-conscious consumer though continual sensitisation.  This way, no culprit would blame the "system", the market would be the regulator.

The writer is an environmental engineer and MBA scholar of Edinburgh Business School.

 

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});