Excerpt from our latest isssue of International Affairs Forum: International Affairs Forum: What overall effect has BRIC countries growth had on their pollution, environmental degradation, and environmental sustainability issues? And the effect of environmental issues on their GDP? Professor Smita Brunnermeier: There is a bi-directional linkage between economic growth and environmental degradation in these emerging economies. For example, China’s GDP has grown twenty fold between 1990 and 2010. This remarkable rise has been fueled in large part by rapid growth in China’s natural resource and energy consumption. As a result, greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion in China have quadrupled during that same time period. As their economies and population continue to grow, India and China are both facing significant air and water pollution challenges leading to deleterious effects on public health and worker productivity in all sectors. Their agricultural sectors are uniquely vulnerable because of poor air and water quality, falling water tables, soil erosion and climate change induced droughts. It is a major concern since 53 per cent of India’s labor force and 37 percent of China’s labor force still works in the agricultural sector. Thus, pollution problems caused by growth do have a feedback effect on the economy as well. The challenge is to de-couple economic growth from environmental degradation. While environmental issues have started moving up the “priority chain” in both countries, I expect that we still have a long way to go before emissions of local pollutants (like SO2 and Particulate Matter) will start to decline. The mitigation of global stock pollutants (like CO2) is significantly more challenging. See the rest in the latest issue of International Affairs Forum Taylor & Francis.