Department of Development Economics of Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta (UMY) always seeks to enhance students’ and lecturers’ critical thinking particularly about analyzing economic development and the impacts.

The department collaborates with Bradford Center for International Development of University of Bradford to conduct a public lecture on ‘From Vulnerability to Sustainability Environment and Human Development’. It was organized on Thursday (1/11) at Building of K.H. Ibrahim E6 of UMY.

A reader in Environmental Economics and Public Policy P.B. Anand, Ph.D. talked about environmental issues and economic development through an environmental economics approach. He presented his research done with UNDP “Economic growth and development of countries with abundant natural resources are slower than those of countries with limited natural resources.”

On a release on Friday (2/11), Anand stated that Mongolia has similarity to Indonesia. Rapid growth can escalate vulnerability in social, economic and environmental aspects. The valuation of reserves or savings in Mongolia is low because GDP is reduced by environmental pollution. On the other words, the savings were low due to the mineral reduction in Mongolia. Climate change is the foremost factor effecting the decreasing of GDP of a country. A country’s resilience to cope with the climate change should be a concern.

Anand added, “Huge scale disasters also bring impacts on not only physical damages but also economy as what happened in Haiti and Japan. Thus, resilience to face disasters denotes reliance to maintain the economy of a country.

Anand recommended that university members be more critical of issues of disaster management and its impacts on economy. University members play roles in proposing notions to government as quality infrastructure providers for people.

Besides, Anand and Dean of Faculty of Economics and Business of UMY Rizal Yaya, Ph.D. appreciated the department to carry out the public lecture as a concern on environmental economy. Not only students but also lecturers, Vice Dean of the faculty, and Secretary of the department attended the lecture.