LESSON 11: ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Environmental Crisis - define as a dramatic, unexpected, and irreversible worsening of

the environment leading to significant welfare losses.

Sustainable development - development that meets the needs of the present, without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. (Peeters, 2011)

THE WORLD’S LEADING ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS

The Conserve Energy Future website lists the following environmental challenges
that the world faces today.
1. Depredation caused by industrial and transportation toxins and plastic in the
ground.
2. Changes in global warming patterns and the surge in ocean and land
temperatures leading to a rise in sea levels plus the flooding of many lowland areas
across the world.
3. Overpopulation
4. Exhaustion of the world’s non-renewable resources from oil reserves to minerals to
potable water.
5. A waste disposal catastrophe due to the excessive amount of waste unloaded by
communities in landfills as well as on the ocean; and the dumping of nuclear
waste.
6. The destruction of million-year-old ecosystem and the loss of biodiversity that have
led to the extinction of particular species and the decline in the number of others.
7. The reduction of oxygen and the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
because of deforestation, resulting in the rise in ocean acidity by much as 150% in
the last 250 years.
8. The depletion of the ozone layer protecting the planet from the sun’s deadly
ultraviolet rays due to chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the atmosphere.
9. Deadly acid rain as a result of fossil fuel combustion, toxic chemicals from
erupting volcanoes and the massive rotting vegetables filling up garbage dumps or
left in the streets.
10. Water pollution.
11. Urban sprawls that continue to expand as a city turns into a megalopolis,
destroying farmlands, increasing traffic gridlock, and making smog cloud a
permanent urban fixture.
12. Pandemics and other threats to public health arising from wastes mixing with
drinking water, polluted environment that become breeding grounds for
mosquitoes and disease-carrying rodents and pollution.
13. A radical alteration of food systems because of genetic modification in food
production.
MAN MADE POLLUTION

Man-made pollution - generally a byproduct of human actions such as consumption,

waste disposal, industrial production, transportation and energy generation.

Pollutants can enter the surrounding environment in various ways, either through the
atmosphere, water systems or soil, and can persist for generations if left untreated.

Humans exacerbate other natural environmental problems.

 Sandstorms combined with combustion exhaust from traffic and industrial waste.
o In Saudi Arabia, WHO declare Riyadh as one of the most polluted cities in
the world.
 Coal fumes coming out of industries and settling down in surrounding areas.
o 20% of China’s soil, with the rice lands in Hunan and Zhozhou found to
have heavy metal from the mines, threatening the food supply.
 Air pollution coming from the emission of aerosols and other gases from car
exhaust, burning of wood or garbage, indoor-cooking, and diesel-fueled electric
generators, and petrochemical plants are projected to quadruple by 2030.
o 94% of Nigeria’s population is exposed to air pollution
o Gaborone, capital of Botswana, is the 7th most polluted city in the world.
 Waste coming out of coal, copper and gold mines flowing out into rivers and
oceans is destroying sea life or permeating the bodies of those which survived with
poison (mercury in tuna, prominently).
o Malanjkhand in India discharges high levels of toxic heavy metals into water
streams.
o In China, the “tailings” from the operations have caused pollution and safety
problems.
 Aerosol is tagged the culprit in changing rainfall patterns in Asia and the Atlantic
Ocean.
o Pollution in West Africa has affected “the atmospheric circulation system”
o Asian monsoon, in turn had become the transport of polluted air into
stratosphere
 People’s health has been severely compromised.
o In Indonesia and Malaysia, the link between forest fires and mortality had
been well-established.
 The poor are the most severely affected by these environmental problems.
 Urban pollution
“CATCHING UP”

“Governments believe that for countries to become fully developed, they

must be industrialized, urbanized, and inhabited by a robust middle class with
access to best of modern amenities.”

Developed society, accordingly, must have provisions for the poor – jobs in the
industrial sector, public transport system and cheap food.

 Model of this ideal modern society is the US, which, until the 1970s was a global
economic power with a middle class.
 US is “the worst polluter in the history of the world,” responsible for 27% of the
world’s carbon dioxide emissions.
 Countries like China, India and Indonesia are now in the midst of a frenzied effort
to achieve and sustain economic growth to catch up with the West.
o “Desire to develop and improve the standard of living of their citizens, these
countries will opt for the goals of economic growth and cheap energy.”
o It would “encourage energy over-consumption, waste and inefficiency and
also fuel environmental pollution.”
 “Extractive” economies are “terminal” economies
o Their resources, which will be eventually depleted, are also sources of
pollution.
o In Nigeria, Niger Delta oil companies have “caused substantial land, water
and air pollution.”
o Nigeria is caught in a bind. If it wants “to maintain its current economic
growth path and sustain its drive for poverty reduction, [the very polluting]
oil exploration and production will continue to be a dominant economic
activity.”

CLIMATE CHANGE

Climate change - change in the pattern of weather, and related changes in oceans, land
surfaces and ice sheets, occurring over time scales of decades or longer

Global Warming – the result of billion of tons of carbon dioxide (coming from coal-
burning power plants and transportation), various air pollutants and other gases
accumulating in the atmosphere.

Greenhouse Effect – responsible for recurring hear waves and long droughts in certain
places, as well as for heavier rainfall and devastating hurricanes and typhoons in others.

 California experienced its worst water shortage in 1,200 years due to global
warming.
  India and Southeast Asia, global warming altered the summer monsoon patterns,
leading to intermittent flooding that seriously affected the food production and
consumption as well as infrastructure networks.
 Category 4 or 5 typhoons, like the super Typhoon Haiyan that hit the central
Philippines in 2013, had “doubled and even tripled in some areas of the (Southeast
Asian) basin. Scientists claim that there will be more [of such] typhoons in the
coming years.
 Eastern United States, the number of storms had also gone up, with Hurricane
Katrina (2005) and Hurricane Sandy (2012) being the worst.
 Glaciers are melting every year since 2002, with Antarctica losing 134 billion
metric of ice.
 There is coastal flooding not only in the United States eastern seaboard but also in
the Gulf of Mexico.
 Coral reefs in the Australian Great Barrier Reef are dying, and the production
capacities of coral farms and fisheries have been affected.
 Flooding has allowed more breeding grounds for disease carriers like the Aedes
aegypti mosquito and the cholera bacteria.

Since human-made climate change threatens the entire world, it is possibly the greatest
present risk to humankind.

COMBATING CLIMATE CHANGE

More countries are now recognizing the perils of global warming.

 In 1997, 192 countries signed the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouses gases,
following the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit where a Framework
Convention for Climate Change was finalized.
o Protocol set targets but left it to individual countries to determine how best
they would achieve these goals.
o Some countries have made the necessary move to reduce their contributions
to global warming; the United States – the biggest polluter in the world- is
not joining the effort.
o 2010 World Bank report thus concluded that the protocol only had a slight
impact on reducing global emissions, in part because of the non-binding
nature of the agreement.
 Follow up treaty is the Paris Accord, negotiated by 195 countries in December of
2015.
o It seeks to limit the increase in the global average temperature based on
targeted goals as recommended by scientists.
o It provides more leeway for countries to decide on their national targets.
 o It largely passed as international legislation because it emphasizes
consensus-building, but it is not clear whether this agreement will have any
more success than the Kyoto Protocol.
 In South Africa, communities engage in environmental activism to pressure
industries to reduce emissions and to lobby parliament for the passage of pro-
environment laws.
 In El Salvador, local officials and grassroots organizations from 1,000
communities push for crop diversification, a reduction of industrial sugar cane
production, the protection of endangered sea species from the devastating effects
of commercial fishing, the preservation of lowlands being eroded by deforestation
up in rivers and inconsistent release of water from a nearby dam.
 University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute sent teams to India to work with
government offices, businesses and communities in coming up with viable ground-
level projects that “strike a balance between urgently needed economic growth
and improved air quality.”
 In Japan, population pressure forced the government to work with civil society
groups, academia, and political parties to get the parliament to pass “a blizzard
laws – 14 passed at once – in what became known as the Pollution Diet of
1970.” These regulations did not eliminate environmental problems, but today,
Japan has some of the least polluted cities in the world.

When governments still hesitate in fully committing themselves to fight pollution and when
the international organizations still lack the power to enforce anti-pollution policies, social
coalitions that bring in village associations, academics, the media, local and national
governments and even international aid agencies together may be the only way to reverse
this worsening situation.