LESSON 11: ENVIRONMENTAL

CRISIS AND SUSTAINABLE

DEVELOPMENT
LEARNING OUTCOMES

AT THE END OF THIS LESSON, YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO:

1. D I S C U S S T H E O R I G I N S A N D M A N I F E S T A T I O N S O F
GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CRISES;
2. R E L A T E E V E R Y D A Y E N C O U N T E R S W I T H P O L L U T I O N ,
GLOBAL WARMING, DESERTIFICATION, OZONE
DEPLETION AND MANY OTHERS WITH A LARGER
PICTURE OF ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION, AND;
3. E X A M I N E T H E P O L I C I E S A N D P R O G R A M S O F
GOVERNMENTS AROUND THE WORLD THAT ADDRESS
THE ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS.
 The World’s Leading
Environmental Problems
 Environmental Challenges

According to the Converse Energy Future:

1. The depredation caused by industrial and

transportation toxins and plastic in the ground; the
defiling of the sea, rivers and water beds by oil spills
and acid rain; the dumping of urban waste
 Environmental Challenges

2. Changes in global weather 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. The exhaustion of the world’s natural non-

renewable resources from oil reserves to minerals to
potable water
 Environmental Challenges

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 ecosystems and

the loss of biodiversity that have led to the extinction
of particular species and the decline in the number of
others
 Environmental Challenges

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 as much as
150% in the last 250 yrs

8. The depletion of the ozone layer protecting the

planet from the sun’s deadly ultraviolet rays due to
the chlorofluorocarbons (CFC’s) in the atmosphere
 Environmental Challenges

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 on the street

10. Water pollution arising from industrial and

community waste residues seeping into underground
water tables, rivers, and seas
 Environmental Challenges

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 environments that become breeding
grounds for mosquitoes and disease-carrying rodents
and pollution
 Environmental Challenges

13. A radical alteration of food systems because of

genetic modifications in food production

Many of these problems are caused by natural

changes. Volcanic eruptions release toxins in the
atmosphere and lower the world’s temperature.
“Catching Up”

PREPARED BY:

KHEYZEL C. PLATA
Massive environmental problems...

are difficult to resolve because

governments believe that for their countries
to become fully developed, they must be
industrialized, urbanized, and inhabited by a
robust middle class with access to the best of
modern amenities.
 A developed society.......

 must have provisions for the poor --- jobs in the

industrial sector, public transport system, and cheap
food.

 food depends on a country’s free trade with other

food producers.

 relies on a “modernized” agricultural sector in which

toxic technologies and modified crops ensure
maximized productivity.
 United States
 model of ideal modern society
 until the 1970s, was a global economic power, with a middle
class that was envy of the world
 did not reach this high point without serious environmental
consequences
 to this very day, it is the “worst polluter in the history
of the world”, responsible for 27% of the world’s carbon
dioxide emission
 60% of the carbon emission comes from cars and other
vehicles plying American highways and roads, the rest from
smoke and soot from coal factories, forest fires, as well as
methane released by farms and breakdown of organic
matter, paint, aerosol, and dust.
 China, India and Indonesia

 ecological consequences are far from the mind of the

countries like them
 they are now in the midst of a frenzied effort to achieve
and sustain economic growth to catch up with the West
 in the “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”, which in
turn, would “encourage energy over-consumption,
waste and inefficiency and also fuel environmental
pollution”
 with their industrial sector still having a small share
of the national wealth, these countries will be using
first their natural resources like coal, oil, forest and
agricultural products, and minerals to generate a
national kitty that could be invested in
industrialization.
 these “extractive” economies are “terminal”
economies.
 their resources, which will be eventually depleted,
are also sources of pollution
 In Nigeria......

 Niger Delta oil companies have “caused substantial

land, water and air pollution”.

 Nigeria is caught in a bind.

 If it wants “to maintain its current economic

growth path and sustain its drive for poverty
reduction, oil exploration and production will
continue to be a dominant economic activity”.
 If the United States lets its environment
suffer to achieve modernity and improve the
lives of its people, developing countries see
no reason, therefore, why they could not
sacrifice the environment in the name of
progress.
How is environmental sustainability
ensured while simultaneously
addressing the development needs of
poor countries?
“Climate Change”
Governments have their own environmental
problems to deal with, but these states’
ecological concerns become worldwide due
to global warming, which transcends
national boundaries.
 Global Warming

 Result of billion of tons of carbon dioxide, various

air pollutants, and other gases accumulating in the
atmosphere.

 These pollutants trap the sun’s radiation causing the

warming of the earth’s surface.

 With the current amount of carbon dioxide and other

gases, this “greenhouse effect” has sped up the rise in
the world temperature.
 The “greenhouse effect”....

responsible for recurring heat 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
 This changed recently when storms brought rain in
the drought-stricken areas.
 The result is that the state is having some of its
worst flash floods in the 21st century.
 In India and South Asia,

global warming altered the summer monsoon

patterns, leading to intermittent flooding
that seriously affected food production and
consumption as well as infrastructure
networks.
 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 farm
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 risk to mankind.
“Combating Global
Warming”

PREPARED BY:

MARY GRACE S. PANGANIBAN

 In 1997, 192 countries signed the
Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gases,
following the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit
where a Framework Convention for Climate
Change was finalized.
 Kyoto Protocol

 It is an international agreement that aimed to
reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and the presence
of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere. 

 The protocol set targets but left it to the individual

countries to determine how best they would achieve
these goals.
 While some countries have made the necessary move to
reduce their contribution to global warming, the United
States - the biggest polluter of the world-is not joining
the effort.
 Parris Accord

 follow-up treaty to Kyoto Protocol

 negotiated by 195 countries in December 2015
 it seeks to limit the increase in the global average
temperature based on targeted goals as
recommended by the scientists
 unlike the Kyoto Protocol which has predetermined
CO2 emission limits per country, the Parris Accord
provides more leeway for countries to decide on their
national targets
 Social Movements

have had better success working

together, with some pressure on their
governments to regulate global
warming
 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.
 Across the Atlantic, 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.
 Universities also partner with governments
in producing attainable programs of
controlling pollution.

 When these local alliances between state,

schools, and communities are replicated at
the national level, the success becomes
doubly significant.
 Conclusion

 The imperative now is for everyone to set up

these kinds of social coalitions on a global
scale to reverse the worsening situation of our world.

 In the fight against climate change, one cannot afford

to simply care about his/her own backyard. The CO2
emitted in one country may have severe effect on the
climate of another. There is no choice but to find
global solutions to this global problem.