Students:Michaela Trávníčková: Difference between revisions

We were asked to write an assignment on the topic we found interesting during the spring school in Týnec nad Sázavou. Well, I was personally impressed by the topic of decoupling.  

I am from the field of economics (European studies in business economics and management), and honestly, we do not really speak about sustainability (and side effects some projects might bring) a lot. However, I think it is very important, as the economics and sustainable development must go hand in hand in order to make the project effective an efficient. Therefore I really wonder that such topics are not discussed much at economic faculties.

I have never heard about the decoupling before and it impressed me a lot, because I find it very important in terms of measuring the dependence of two contra-factors in terms of sustainability. In my opinion, increasing the total world product (GDP) is inevitable as the population in the world increases. The question is how it influences the environment and our surroundings. With decoupling we might compare such effect in the time series which I, as an economist, see as really helpful indicator in analysing some area for the project design and predicting of the effects one indicator can have on another one. Well, on the other hand, we must consider whether we should keep increasing one country´s GPD or not if the population of given country stagnates of even decreases. We must also pay high attention on which data we use for calculating the results. First of all, the nominal/real value of the money should be taken into consideration (inflation) as well as amount of people living in the country (GDP/capita), etc.

In my opinion, the regional, national and global governance should pay more attention to decoupling of crucial indicators which influence us and achieve absolute decoupling if possible. Of course, nothing can be changed in a year; therefore long-run plans must be stated and followed by all the actors.