Leapfrogging Possibilities For Sustainable Consumption and ...

African countries face the challenge of meeting basic needs in a sustainable manner.
Sustainable consumption should aim at meeting basic needs while protecting the
environment and also allows finding new market opportunities and hence better
employment opportunities, e.g. markets for organic food, fair trade, sustainable housing,
renewable energy, etc 47 .
If Africa is to follow the conventional economic model of growth, it will be a long and
inefficient way where at the beginning of an economic growth path, increase in GDP
corresponds with high environmental degradation. This will be evident in the absence of
environmentally friendly technologies. The increase in environmental degradation with
an increase in GDP will continue up to a certain point beyond which environmental
quality is enhanced by higher GDP per capita, increased environmental awareness, better
technologies in industries and services as well as enforcement of environmental
regulations 48 . This relationship can be shown in an inverted U-shaped curve known as the
Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). With proper composition of economic activities
and the use of better technologies, a tunnelling through the EKC becomes a possibility
(Figure 10).
Figure 10: Tunnelling through a bell-shaped EKC 49
The tunnelling scenario, for which leapfrogging is an important contributor, delinks
economic growth from environmental degradation. Instead of following A-B-C-D-E
leaping into the A-B-D-E path saves a lot in terms of future cost of environmental
degradation. Following the former will be far from being beneficial from ecological,
47 Zacarias and Aprilia (2005)
48 Stagl (1999)
49 Jackson and Roberts (2000)
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