14 Economic Growth
Zhuojun Wang
Throughout these chapters, we are going to explore how protecting the forest effect the economics situation in the society. They will be mainly focused on the economics cost of protecting forests, the term I will use during this chapter is “opportunity cost”, which refers to “the value of the next-best alternative when a decision is made; it’s what is given up”[1]. There are various types of opportunity cost of protecting forest that can lead to a change to the economic growth, such as time, labor, land, and natural resources.
Time
One way of protecting the forest is planting trees, which will extend the area of the forest, absorb carbon and generate oxygen. The method of planting trees can be referred to the chapter of Tree Planting. However, planning trees is very time-consuming, the government and the environment protection organizations will have to spend plenty of time on planting trees. Even though the cost of time can not be counted as the cost of money, but it is also a spending on the resources in the market. For more information about this aspect, please refer to the chapter Time and Labor.
Labor
Doing protective behavior to the forest, as planting trees, requires the worker to complete this task. As the increasing demand for protecting trees, there are more workers are needed for planting trees and protect the forest. In contrast, due to the protectionism policy, the logging industry is allowed to cut fewer trees. Since the demand of logging has decreased, the supply of the logging also decrease. As a result, there is a decrease in the amount of workers needed in the logging company. It’s possible that the logging company fire some workers, since less of them are in needed. This creates a need for new employments for the workers who have been fired from the industry. For more information about this aspect, please refer to the chapter Time and Labor.
Land
By planting more trees and expanding the area of the forest, or even just for not logging trees or taking the space of trees for building, there is a cost of the land. The area of the amount of land on earth is fixed, as the forest takes a bigger portion of land, there are less land left for the future investment. For more information about this aspect, please refer to the chapter Land.
Nature resources
Planting more trees will use more water and soil. Even though the plant is useful for protecting the environment, they need natural resources for growing up. Most nature recourses being used are renewable resources. Thus, the nature resources may not be a factor of the cost. For more information about this aspect, please refer to the chapter Nature Resources.
As a result of the research about the different aspects of economic growth, protecting the forests may result in a slower economics growth in the society. The reason is that, there is less logging due to the protective policy, less wood is being used for trade or as the raw material for the production of other goods. Since there is a decrease in the supply of the wood, the price of the wood and the wood-related products increase in the market. This causes a slower economic growth.
- Fagan, Doreen. “Real-Life Examples of Opportunity Cost.” Saint Louis Fed Eagle, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 12 Dec. 2021, https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2020/january/real-life-examples-opportunity-cost#:~:text=%E2%80%9COpportunity%20cost%20is%20the%20value,education%20specialist%20at%20the%20St. ↵
