What is meant by environmental degradation?

Question

in relation to economics

Answer 1

i guess it would refer to the economic losses accrued through some sort of physical damage caused to a specific area of land.
for example: wind soil erosion occuring on agriclutural land caused by the removal of hederows would reduce the economic value of the fields, because the soil quality of the land has been reduced thus you cant grow as many or as high quality crops on it.

On a larger scale i guess it would mean the economic impact which issues such as deforestation, pollution and 'global warming' have on world economics. How on earth this can be measured ( by traditional economic models)is the big problem though!
Can a specific economic really be placed on the environment?....

It's priceless

Answer 2

Environmental degradation is measured by the amount of species that are supposed to be there and then the actual situation.If you do this year after year you will see decline never recovery anywhere.In the best case you find stability of an environment.There are also other phenomena lik erosion,soil degradation,dehydration and microclimatological changes.
All these contribute to disasters; sickness and disease coming from pollution,plagues due to imbalanced ecosystems,flooding and these are the bills we have to pay in the end

Answer 3

Environmental degradation will bring with it far reaching ill-effects affecting the economy as a whole - its direct bearing on human health which in turn will affect productivity in many fields!