Growth style of the Panamanian economy, since it was integrated into the world market, it took on a transit character. It consists of a concentration of activities within the transit region, which are specialized in the creation of services related to goods traffic and financial flows.
There was no shortage of those from a neoliberal concepts of the economy, to argue that it is a form of international insertion that benefits the environment. This point of view is based on the idea that services generate less output than the production of goods. This is a well-known hypothesis that to the extent that the global economy moves towards the tertiary sector, there is an effect of dematerialization of production. This approach has been widely criticized by Ecological Political Economy by Paul Burkett and Joan Martínez Alier from perspective Political ecology.
Therefore, it is important to show how The Panamanian reality shows that the growth style is transitist It is far from the idea of dematerialization.
This is possible using the data he published University of York in relation to the biocapacity and ecological footprint of various countries.
According to this information, availability of global hectares of Panamanian biocapacity it decreased between 1961 and 2018 by 22.5%, while the ecological footprint, i.e. the use that can be assigned to the land, increased by 383.3% during that period. This meant that Panama it moved from a surplus position of 11,020,360 global hectares in 1961 to a deficit of 1,709,3011 global hectares in 2018.
It is important to emphasize that the above is not solely a consequence of population growth, because in the same period the population grew by only 257.9%, so the difference between 383.3% and this last figure is a consequence of the intensification of the use of the nature of persons. In fact, the ecological footprint per person increased by 35.0% during the analyzed period. This, together with reduction of total biocapacity, meant that Panama which in 1961 had a per capita surplus of 9.4 hectares of global biocapacity, in 2018 showed a deficit of 0.4 hectares of global biocapacity. A key element to understanding the error in the position of those who defend transitism in the name of dematerialization is to understand how the calculation works ecological footprint attributable to a country.
It is equal to that generated internally by its production plus can be attributed to its importation, which in Panama they are mainly goods, except for exports, which are mainly services. In this sense, it should be noted that for every hectare of global biocapacity generated by our exports, we import elements that have a 1.57 times greater effect. This practically destroys it thesis on dematerialization by transitism.
An additional problem, which is related to global warming, is the behavior shown in the analyzed period of biocapacity that comes from forests and uses nature represented by carbon emissions from production. In the case of biocapacity from forests, it was reduced by 38.8% between 1961 and 2018, while the use for
carbon emissions will increased between those years by 86.6%. This means less carbon absorption capacity, you’re togetherSignificant increase in needs perform this absorption. No doubt, as the open pit progresses, this phenomenon will increase.
Source: Panama America
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