Band 6+: Some people believe that governments should prioritize economic growth over environmental concerns, while others argue that environmental protection should take precedence, even at the expense of economic growth.

Governments globally have many goals to accomplish, environment, education, health care, and economic prosperity are a few examples. Hence it is important for governments to have priorities when it comes to making decisions in order to keep the right balance for development. One of the biggest discussion topics about government priorities is to decide whether environmental sustainability should trump economic growth. This essay aims to provide the importance of both categories with the suggestion that economic development should be slightly higher emphasised.

Over the past couple of decades, the world has learned that human activities affect the environment greatly. Severe weather as a result of increasing greenhouse gases in our climate, and poor air quality that reaches a level causing permanent harm to human health are just two of the examples of how environmental negligence affects quality of human life. These examples are also not issues that can be tackled by individuals or sporadic actions from private sectors. Hence, it requires effective government polices.

However, active participation and compliance from the people are important in implementing those polices. To achieve that, the world also requires economic growth and prosperity. There are numerous studies that prove the higher level of attention to the environment from individuals once a certain level of economic level is reached. Citizens who are living below means and lacking basic infrastructure like energy and safe road access suffer greatly from other issues such as hunger and healthcare. Lifting the economy would then elevate the standards of living for a vast amount of people, resulting in increasing the number of global population that would help protect our environment.

Therefore, by putting emphasis on economic expansion, the government can help both its constituents to live a higher quality of life, as well as increasing participation in environmental policies. With that reason, it is recommended that while environmental policies should always be considered and implemented, economic policies are slightly higher in the balance of priorities.