Poverty and Pollution

Akinade Olaopa

Strayer University

School of Business Administration

Bus 309, Business Ethics.

Professor: Lisa Crawford

Summer, 2012
Submitted: Aug 26, 2012

Determine the ethical implications of businesses polluting in a third world countries. Explain your rationale
Business as a moral agent has so much she owns to the society; this I mean, business responsibilities. This is not only limited to the fact that they have to produce quantity goods and services at a fair prices. They also own a responsibility to keep the environment clean and safe of all toxic materials that emanate from production activities.
Business is expected to preserve the environment from degradation through the production of goods and services. It is moral and ethical for businesses to protect the environment from harmful gases release to the air and chemical release to the water during production activities. The issue of pollution without control is not so much pronounced in the developed countries because of firm governmental regulation on pollution. The government constitutes/ forms agency to enforce the law, e.g. EPA- Environmental Protection Agency is saddles with environmental pollution control in the USA. On the other hand, some third world countries don’t have any regulation as per controlling pollution in place, and even when they do have it, there is no enough machinery to enforce it. This is more reason businesses in the third world could afford to dirty and pollute the environment at will. This of course brings me to ethical implication of business polluting in the third word. Certain problems that can result as business engage in behavior that pollutes the environment:
1. Health risk: the health of the people is at risk. Many health related problems have been linked to both air and water pollution. When this occurs, we have a sick community, which causes high rate of absenteeism at work place, reducing productivity which would in turn reduce business revenue, which at large will affect the gross domestic product of the nation.
2. Law suit this is another implication of business polluting the environment. A good example is the case of BP petroleum. BP has to settle out of court. The company is not delivered yet from the huge penalty he has to pay
3. When no regard is given to natural world by polluting the environment, certain plants and animals die; these plant and animals could be a source of raw materials for some industries, therefore causing scarcity of such materials, reducing the quantity that can be produced. (Shaw,2010).

Suggest the reason a business may conduct operations in a third world country and disregard any standard of pollution control.
According to Lawrence Summers he emphasized three main reasons why he felt that businesses may conduct operation in a third world country:
1. He stresses that it is more beneficial economically to operate in a poorer nations, since it is cheaper to do so. The cost of keeping pollution down also adds up to give the total cost per unit. In his argument he believed that if we can save cost by producing in the poorer countries, businesses should do so to bring their cost per unit down.
2. He argues that since poorer nations have cleaner and purer air, businesses should move from heavily polluted areas to less polluted areas too. And lastly he believed that producing goods from poorer nation would make businesses to achieve low cost per unit goal and maximize profit for their businesses. (Shaw,2010) Outside these points, I believe that businesses in third world countries are having a free ride as regard to not been fully responsibility for cleaning the environment of the mess they discharge during production activities. This of course is not far from the fact that majority of these countries, where these businesses operate from have little or no regulation in place as per setting standard for companies operating in their countries. Most times government of those nations is ignorant of the effect of pollution on their air and water; and the devastating effect it has on the citizens. Some times when they do have laws and regulation and they have set a standard of what they intend to achieve from controlling the pollution in the environment, they lack machinery to implement this regulation. Should we also talk about the bribery and corruption going on in all of these nations which affect the workability of the policy and laws?(Sharp, Register & Grimes,2004).

It has been said that pollution is the price of progress. Assess the connections between economic progress and development, on the one hand, and pollution controls and environmental protection on the other.
If the concept of global warming is true, which simply means that the earth is becoming heated up as a result of too much demand on it, it is therefore true that the price of progress is pollution. The more populated a country is the more pollution that will be generated. The world needs population growth to provide workforce for industries and so forth; as population growth is a blessing and beneficial, but not without associated cost of pollution. Let us remember that more goods and services are needed to keep the population growth we desire, hence more gases are released into the air likewise more chemicals are channeled to canals, rivers and even oceans. The more technical advanced a nation is, the more the degree of pollution released. We live in the era of great technological advancement: gas production, cars production, iron melting, gold mining and so forth. All of these production activities, which afford better standard of living, create great economical and technical advancement comes with it associated degree of pollution. It simply means that the opportunity cost of economic progress is the forgone alternative of pollution we more tolerate. Nations of the world aspire to better their lots financially, which means that the gross domestic product must increase, boosting the national income and finally increase the per capital income of the nation. For this to happen, more goods and services would be produced. This apparently increases the level of pollution release into the air and water.
On the other hand, measure must be taken to control the level of pollution that we allowed for the purpose of growth and development, so as not to seek economic development to the detriment of the nation or world’s health. This is the reason many countries have set up regulations and agencies to monitor and control the environment al pollution. Government determines the quality of air and water that is needed, legislating policies and programs, constituting agencies to enforce the laws and setting penalty for deviance.(Sharp, Register & Grimes,2004).

Support the argument that human beings have a moral right to a livable environment regardless of the country they live in.
It has been said and supported that human beings have a moral right to a livable environment. Whether in the third world countries or developed countries, every human being has a right to an environment clean of pollution. This right is universal! Any attempt therefore by anyone to pollute the environment is a way of infringing in other people’s right to a livable environment. It is in the atmosphere of quality air and water that man/woman (human beings) can be healthy. Without good health, man cannot fulfill his purpose. It is in the same atmosphere he can fulfill his purpose. The government is responsible therefore to promulgate law as to preserve the environment from pollution and degradation, constitute agency who will be saddled with the enforcement of the law, this way the pure and clean environment given to man is preserved. Companies and industries that violate this law are brought to judgment, Individuals and homes that violate the cleanliness law of the land is fined or charged to the court. Conclusively, everybody is expected to do his or her best to keep the environment from pollution for his/her benefit and for the benefit of others.(Shaw, 2010)

Take a position on whether wealthy nations have an obligation to provide poorer nations with, or help them develop, greener industries and sources of energy. Explain your rationale.
The question is, is it morally ok for wealthy nations to be their brothers’ keeper? Is it good to for the Have to help the Have-not? Another question is, do the wealthy nations transact business of any kind with the poor nations? If we answer yes to all of these questions, then the wealthy nations are obliged and socially responsible to help poor nations to develop greener industries and source of energy.
Here is the benefit; if poor nations’ industries become efficient in the production activity and have regular energy supply, the wealthy nation would pay less for goods and raw materials they depend on poorer nations for, since production efficiency would cause the unit per cost to come down and reduce overhead on production, hence reduces the unit per selling price.
When poorer nations are helped by wealthy nations their quality of live is improved, hence better global health is achieved. This means that stronger global workforce is enhanced. But when wealthy nations do not get involve in develop greener industries, global clean climate cannot be achieved, hence global warming is the result. This apparently is the mission of United Nations to see that wealthy nations help and aids poorer nations.
Finally, some thinker advocate that wealthy countries have duty to help poor nations because every human being should be given same right of livelihood, since all men are created equally.

Propose a plan for uniform global pollution control standards and how you would enforce them
Before a workable plan is implemented for controlling pollution globally, we must able to determine first and foremost the amount of pollution that is tolerated in different regions of the world. We can achieve this through a global summit (meeting with all the nation’s leaders), this is necessary since not all the nations discharge the same amount of pollution. The amount of pollution a nation will produce will be based on their level of development technologically. Consensus has to be reached by the leaders to determine the amount of pollution.
Once this is done, a standard of measurement is determine through which actual pollution produce is compare with the standard of control, law enforcement agents will be of a great benefit in making sure that businesses comply with regulations. There must be a way to monitor the activities of these law enforcement agents so that they don’t begin to compromise with businesses by taking bride.
Lastly, we must establish a way to bring violators to correction, either through the use of fines, sanctions or both. This way we can keep our climate clean of pollution. (Hill & Jones, 2008).

References

Hill, C., & Jones, G. (2008). Strategic Management an Integrated Approach. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Shaw,H. W.(2010) Business Ethics. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning
Sharp,A.,Register,C.&Grimes, P. (2004) Economic Problems and Issues New York, NY: McGraw-H
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