Environmental damage cost on urban India

Urbanisation is considered as one of the indicators of economic growth. It is said that, greater the urbanisation then higher the economic growth and vice versa. It is a fact that we found the concentration of the economic growth in the urban areas, especially in the developing countries like India. Nevertheless, the centralisation of the economic growth along with the availability of economic and social infrastructures results in the rapid growth of the cities and metropolitan cities. There population growth coupled with migration of the population from rural and semi urban areas leads to urbanisation and thereby the rapid growth of cities and metropolitans, which over crowded them day by day. Urbanisation contributes in several ways to the environmental problems and consequently environmental damage. Urbanization is very closely related to environmental deterioration and put forth environmental bad effects and environmental damage cost, which is an important but less attention paid component in the Economics of Environment. This demands to examine the relationship between urbanisation and environmental degradation, and thereby the environmental damage cost to be borne by the society as a whole. We found rapidly growing urbanisation in general in India and Maharashtra in particular. The present study examines the extent of urban environmental problems in the state of Maharashtra in India, it calculates the cost of environmental damage taking into consideration some attributes of environmental degradation with special reference to Urban Maharashtra in India, which has industrially and agriculturally developed districts. The study brings forth the economic losses due to deterioration of the environment. It is against this backdrop, undertaking of the present study is very much essential and urgently needed. The foregoing analysis reveals that environmental damage cost on urban Maharashtra in India is huge, which is calculated by adopting both the methods, i. e. impact pathway approach, as well as the contingent valuation method. But the estimates of the contingent valuation method indicate higher environmental damage cost on Urban Maharashtra in India than that of impact pathway approach. Further it is higher for estimates based on willingness to accept than willingness to pay. It is of significant level in comparison with the GSDP of the Maharashtra state in India.