CO2 Emission from Brickfields in Bangladesh: Can Ethical Responsibility by Doing Reduce Level of Emission?

Abstract

Recent years’ rapid urbanization and then rural to urban migration have created increasing demands of bricks usages in Bangladesh. However, brick industry has been largely using inefficient, dirty technology and burns woods-coal. It injects huge volume of CO2 in atmosphere. For policy guidance on the issue, this study analyzes the basic issues of CO2 emission from brickfields in terms of marginal damage (MD) analysis. Findings show that the marginal social costs are higher than marginal private (producer of bricks) costs where brickfields are benefiting with the expense of Bangladeshi society as a whole. As time passes by, rises of brick-prices have been causing upward trends of welfare losses where producers’ surpluses are dominating in the total surplus. This economic situation has been causing higher deadweight loss year after year. Addressing the issues, national strategies and policy actions are needed. Reforestation efforts can be achieved in multi-faucets: brick-fields’ charity, government policies on planting trees & policies on motivational efforts inspiring citizens of Bangladesh. Motivational policy can be: i) inspiring celebration individual’s “Birthday, Having 1st child in family and Event of marriage” by planting trees, ii) forcing to utilize green tech in brick kilns and iii) conducting academic research where financial supports are in need. Keywords: brickfields, effluent gases emission, causes social costs & deadweight loss, reforestation, motivational efforts of government policies