Effluent Gases Emission from Brickfields in Bangladesh: Policy Guidance Underpinning Bioethical Grounds Mitigating Emission Levels

Abstract

Recent years’ rapid urbanization and then rural to urban migration have created increasing demands of bricks usages in Bangladesh. However, brick industry has been largely using inefficient, dirty technology and burns woods-coal. It injects huge volume of effluent gases namely CO_2, SO₂, NO_x, CH₄, CO etc., in atmosphere. Governments, particularly developing countries have lost the ability to effectively regulate environmental issues, while at the same time corporations have gained unprecedented influence over many facets of society. On this aspect, Bangladesh is no exception. For policy guidance underpinning ethical grounds on the issue, this study analyzes the basic issues of CO₂ emission from brickfields in terms of marginal damage (MD) analysis. Findings show that the marginal social costs are higher than marginal private (producer of bricks) costs where brickfields are benefiting with the expense of Bangladeshi society as a whole. As time passes by, rises of brick-prices have been causing upward trends of welfare losses where producers’ surpluses are dominating in the total surplus. This economic situation has been causing higher deadweight loss year after year. Addressing the issues, national strategies and policy actions underpinning bioethical grounds are needed. Reforestation efforts can be achieved in multi-faucets: brick-fields’ charity, government policies on planting trees and policies on motivational efforts inspiring citizens of Bangladesh. Bioethics responsibility trainings in multi-faucets are needed where government’s roles in designing program(s) can be instrumental. Motivational policy can be: i) inspiring celebration individual’s “Birthday, having 1^st child in family and Event of marriage” by planting trees, ii) forcing to utilize green tech in brick kilns and iii) policies conducting academic research where financial supports are in need.