Rational choice for development

The Rational choice for development and conservation

There have been heard broadly about the natural resources conservation and development trade off, with that many governments agencies, International Organizations, Non-government Organizations, private agencies  including individual have been strongly supporting and encouraging the wise use and management of all natural resources  for the healthy sustainable environment and economy of the world and its citizen. Many governments, donors have been pouring money into uncountable numbers balancing development and conservation projects around the world. Unfortunately, majority of those projects themselves are not sustainable, because once the project funding over, everything is also over, leaving the term of sustainable development or balancing the use of natural resource for development in the myth that no any agency and individual has disclosed. The fact of development is contradictory to the conservation concept, it is rather an opportunities cost that we have to lose something in order to get another, for example in order to get a hydropower dam built we have to forego numbers of ecological species and lose many river ecological functions. Therefore, development and conservation is never coming to the win-win situation, but the choice has to make.

Numbers of government, decision makers’ advisers always come up with different rational suggestions on whether a development project should be taken place or not when concerning about environmental or biodiversity conservation. For example, a mining project, this project will contribute 30 % to the National Gross Domestic Products, but according to the Social and Environmental Impacts Studies, the project will affect 200 families surrounding the project site, since there will be resettlement of those communities to a newly place. In additional to that, the Environmental Impacts Assessment suggests that number of wildlife species will evacuate to others areas due to disturbance from the project, worsen than that there will be huge change on ecological function in that areas. The question here is what would be the most rational choice for the government?. Government advisers suggest different alternative development plan, event some of them suggests not to go ahead with the development due to social and environmental impacts from this project. My opinion is that the government should consider the national development by authorizing the project operation and mitigate social and environmental impacts caused from this project. Having decided on operating the projects, it is for sure that the government will be criticized by many environmentalists and social activists, since some ecological function and social value cannot be determined by material value and some ecological function will be forever lost. However, I am sure that every government officers, decision makers, advisers, all have common sense of protection and conservation, but when it comes to making a choice in development; many governments and developers are forced to focus on the wider benefits from development rather than focus on small group of people and unpredictable change of ecological functions. The decision on developments are always made base on national interest rather individual need. There is always choice to make whether you will go for development (change) or keeping the whole nation undeveloped with unchanged of ecological function. So, sustainable use of resource and development is something far behind the reality of development. It is depending on what target a country does focus on.

In conclusion, development caused degradation of natural resource and impacts to society are inevitable. There is no win-win situation for the development world, all are opportunity costs and trading off, everything is connected to everything. However, decision on development project operation is always made for the sake of national benefits. And human being is forced to accept the fact that nothing is forever in this planet.

Cognitive biases that prevent you from being rational

I have heard the word ”Bias“ for long, but I did not know that there are different types of bias. Recently I have read an article, called ” the 12 cognitive bias that prevent you from being rational“.

Cognitive bias is an appropriate judgment of people toward given circumstance due to missing information, social attribution, cultural and believe. This kind of bias sometimes leads us to make some arbitrarily decision or action. For the further details of the article you can see the link below.
http://io9.com/5974468/the-most-common-cognitive-biases-that-prevent-you-from-being-rational 




Last week, I read though those 12 cognitive bias, but I am interested in “Bandwagon Effect”. In the Bandwagon Effect- people tend to decide and act on something regardless to their own preference and believe, but based the majority because they do not to feel alone. For example, Mr A, before going to meet his friends, he prefers to see an action movie, but once he meets his friends, majority of them prefer to see romance movie, then he would say, Ok! Romance movie is fine. This is to tell us that his decision for going for the romance movie against his own preference and desire. Another example is when you are in a company yearly staff promotion meeting, the meeting facilitator asks all participants to vote for a colleague to be promoted, when majority of participants vote for him/her because they believe he or she is nice, then you also vote for him even though you found that he is not nice to you. You have to vote for him even though you do not like him but because you do not want to be alone.

In my opinion, the kind of effect has major impacts to society; sometimes it becomes society trend, for example, when majority of people believe that drinking beer helps to improve your social connection,  then an individual who wants to make wider networks start to drink. In fact, it is not always true, sometimes without drinking beer you still can make wider networks or connection in society.

In conclusion, bandwagon effect is rational in some circumstance, since it helps you to be saved from being isolated person, but when it comes to unnecessary circumstance, it is better to carefully consider and be honest to your own heart and judgment rather than flow into the crowd.