Thinking about "Being Good for the Environment"

2020/05/21

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were presented at the 2015 UN Summit. The importance of preserving the environment and building a sustainable society is now a common understanding among many people. However, thinking about what actions are truly good for the environment is surprisingly difficult. For example, plastic waste has recently become a global issue, and the use and development of alternatives are being promoted. However, it has been pointed out that some of these could actually worsen environmental problems. One example is the replacement of plastic beverage containers with glass bottles. While glass bottles have an environmentally friendly image because they can be washed and reused, they are heavier than plastic containers, which can reduce transport efficiency and increase the environmental burden.

In this way, a gap often occurs between "what seems good" and "what is actually good" regarding environmental issues. The background to this is that the goods and services people create affect the environment through various channels in the process from production, distribution, consumption, and reuse to disposal, making it difficult to grasp the full picture. Due to the complexity of these channels, it is also difficult to communicate the details clearly and accurately. Furthermore, while it is desirable that many people are interested in environmental issues, there is an aspect where this conversely complicates the problem. Because of this interest, attention is easily drawn to images of what seems good for the environment, but sometimes the image takes on a life of its own, discussions about what is truly good for the environment are overlooked, and actions that lead to unintended consequences are chosen.

Although I am still in the process of trial and error, since joining an environmental economics seminar as an undergraduate, I have been working on research that explores, from a social science perspective, the incentives for people to take actions that have a negative impact on the environment and the effectiveness of countermeasures. However, to actually solve environmental problems, it is necessary to integrate professional views from various perspectives, such as fields that scientifically verify the mechanisms and impacts of their occurrence, fields that approach people's cultural and historical nature, and the knowledge of people working in related fields. To that end, it is also essential to engage in dialogue and create a platform for disseminating and sharing the views derived there. Solving environmental problems requires detailed analysis of the issues, the dissemination and sharing of those results, and the calm judgment and action of each and every one of us based on them.