Dangers of bypassing ecology for economic gains

Economic history shows that rapid development generates remarkable prosperity and improves living standards.

Yet when pursued without environmental safeguards, it also creates systemic risks that threaten to undo decades of progress.

Between 1900 and 1950, industrial expansion helped global GDP grow nearly three times, yet this growth often occurred alongside severe environmental degradation. The World Bank estimates that environmental degradation costs some developing countries between 5 percent and 10 percent of their annual GDP through health impacts, productivity losses, and ecosystem damage. These figures highlight a growing scientific consensus: development and environmental protection are not competing priorities but interdependent pillars of long-term economic stability.

When environmental limits are ignored, short-term growth can evolve into long-term economic vulnerability.

For much of the 20th century, development was measured primarily through industrial output, agricultural expansion, and urban growth, while environmental considerations were secondary concerns. Yet scientific foresight suggests that this separation is ultimately dangerous. As early as the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius warned that industrial activity could alter the Earth's climate by increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Arrhenius argued that economic expansion pursued without regard for environmental limits could produce far-reaching consequences, a warning that history has repeatedly confirmed.

History across both developed and developing economies offers multiple warnings about the risks of separating development from environmental protection. The Dust Bowl disaster of the 1930s in the United States was one of the earliest examples.

Driven by rising wheat prices and technological optimism, millions of hectares of native grasslands were converted into intensive farmland. By the early 1930s, approximately 100 million acres (about 40 million hectares) had been severely affected by soil erosion, and between 1934 and 1935, an estimated 1.2 billion tons of topsoil were lost to wind erosion.

Around 2.5 million people were displaced, and thousands suffered from respiratory illnesses related to dust. This crisis showed how agricultural expansion without ecological foresight could quickly reverse economic gains.

Several decades later, beginning in the 1960s, another major environmental miscalculation unfolded in Central Asia. The diversion of rivers feeding the Aral Sea for large-scale cotton irrigation triggered one of the largest ecological collapses of the 20th century.

By the early 2000s, the sea had lost nearly 90 percent of its volume, destroying fisheries that once produced more than 40,000 tons annually and severely affecting regional livelihoods. This episode highlighted how poorly planned resource management could undermine both local economies and long-term regional development.

In 1984, the Bhopal gas disaster in India underscored the human and economic costs of insufficient environmental oversight in industrial development. A toxic gas leak from a pesticide plant exposed more than 500,000 people, resulting in thousands of immediate fatalities and tens of thousands of additional deaths over time. A large number of survivors still suffer from chronic health conditions.

Considered together, these cases, from early scientific warnings to industrial and ecological disasters, reveal a consistent pattern: when environmental limits are ignored, short-term economic gains are often temporary, and the long-term social, economic and ecological costs can be immense. Preventive environmental management, as opposed to reactive remediation, is almost always more effective and less costly, a lesson that remains relevant for contemporary development planning.

This insight finds resonance in Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization. Guided by 10 overarching principles, the concept integrates environmental protection into development policy, recognizing that long-term prosperity depends on maintaining the integrity of natural systems. It advocates anticipatory environmental risk management, pollution reduction, ecosystem restoration, and low-carbon industrialization.

Rather than treating environmental safeguards as constraints, ecological civilization sees economic growth and ecological stewardship as mutually reinforcing objectives.

This approach aligns strongly with major international frameworks, including the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the Paris Agreement and the Global Plastic Pollution Treaty. By positioning natural capital as a core component of national development planning, ecological civilization shows that environmental protection is not a constraint but a strategic enabler of resilient and sustainable socioeconomic growth.

Ultimately, environmental policies and regulations are not obstacles to development; they are essential instruments for ensuring that growth pathways are resilient, sustainable and able to withstand unforeseen ecological, social or economic shocks.

By embracing frameworks such as China's ecological civilization and aligning with global commitments, societies can pursue a model of development where economic progress and environmental stewardship reinforce one another, securing enduring benefits for both people and the planet.

The author is a climate science specialist in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

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