Business Studies and the Environment

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Photo credit: online pic.

Do colleges and universities have an environment factor in Business Studies? I must go back to school and find out. Wait. I can study online. I don’t have to sell land or livestock to send kids to universities in Britain, U.S. or Canada, like some parents.

My guess is that the environment is an after thought in Business Studies. Before the advent of data as a commodity, coal, silver, gold, diamonds and oil exploration formed the top of the exploitation of natural resources’ pyramid.

They still are. Check the Stockholm Stock Exchange, Paris, Tokyo, London, Toronto, New York or NASDAQ Dubai, if you can decipher the ticker tape.

Students are in college to understand how this financial system works, not how it affects the air people breathe, water they drink or the rainbow of fish on the sea bed. 

They are not there to learn about how deforestation affects indigenous people who have lived there since the beginning of time or how mining leaves permanent scars on miners’ health. It also leaves physical scars on the land, big holes can never be filled again, after investors have relocated to Miami, Chicago or Golders Green.

Colleges don’t teach students that there’s a limit to what the environment can take, because of maximization, to make more, to maximize profit. Take a piece of land. You can think it is the ideal spot to build a house. Business will think of maximizing it by building two 12-storey condominium buildings. That is the stuff students learn in Business Studies.

The day is long, but it finally ends. Exploiting natural resources to make products that will end up in the garbage bin tomorrow, affects the environment. COVID-19 is a case in point, where the air is foul, deadly. Even industrial billionaires, perpetrators of climate change, wore masks in 2020.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang. 

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