Case Study 1 Introduction to Global Environmental Issues

1
Case Study 1 Introduction to Global
Environmental Issues

• 1 Environmental Framework
• 2 Environmental Transition
• 3 Environmental Issues

2
Framework
1

• Context
• Understand the relationships between population,
  the quantity and availability of resources and
  the quality of the environment.
• We are notably concerned about impacts
• Population on resources.
• Population on the environment.
• One concept used to express those impacts is the
  one of resource and environmental pressure.
• The intensity of consumption of energy, water,
  land and material and the emission of pollutants
  and waste.

3
Framework
1
Resources
Population
Pressure
Environment
4
Framework
1
Demographic Processes
Population
Goods and services
Resources and services
Resources and services
Environment
Capital Stock
Economic Processes
Natural Processes
Leakage
Wastes
Waste flows
Recycling
5
Environmental Transition
2

• Environmental transition
• Developed countries
• At some point of economic development, the level
  of resource and environmental pressure is
  starting to go down.
• Not known yet to what extent the pressure will
  decrease.
• Several events have facilitated this process in
  developed countries.
• Pollution control
• Several legislation were put forward to reduce
  environmental impacts, notably in the industrial
  sector.
• The handling of hazardous materials is strictly
  enforced.

6
Environmental Transition
2

• Process changes
• Industrial processes generating high pollution
  levels were changed because of legislation and
  increasing efficiency.
• CFCs are no longer permitted as coolants.
• Pulp making rely increasingly on a mechanical
  process instead of a chemical one.
• Using oil, natural gas and nuclear energy,
  instead of coal, have proportionally reduced
  environmental pressures.
• Structural economic changes
• Pollution intensive industrial activities have
  been relocated in developing countries.
• This strategy has reduced environmental pressures
  in developed countries.

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Environmental Transition
2

• Simply a relocation of the problem.
• Emergence of the information economy lies mainly
  on immaterial resources.
• Will it contribute to alleviate environmental
  pressures?
• Telecommuting.
• Immaterial life.

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Environmental Transition
2
Developing countries
Developed countries
Pollution control
Process changes and efficiency increases
Level of Environmental Pressure
Structural economic changes and dematerialization
of consumption patterns
Level of Development
9
Environmental Issues
3

• Land
• Greatest concern in regions where food security
  is a priority, notably in Africa and West Asia.
• Land availability and efficient land management
  are driven by the food security demands of
  growing populations.
• Expansion of cultivation into marginal lands.
• Forests, woodlands, or grasslands are destroyed
  or degraded and natural ecosystems are
  fragmented.
• Poor land management increases susceptibility to
  erosion and accelerates leaching of nutrients.
• Degradation feeds back into a cycle of declining
  productivity, desertification or the irreversible
  degeneration of marginal lands.

10
Areas of Desertification
3
11
Tombouctou, Mali, 1976 and 1985
3
12
Environmental Issues
3

• Forests
• Decline of natural forest in developing regions
  has been considerable between 1980 and 1990.
• Losses have been greatest in Latin America and
  the Caribbean, followed by those in Africa and in
  Asia and the Pacific.
• Industrialization, population growth and
  agricultural expansion, and forest product trade
  are the main forces in reducing forest cover.
• Remaining forests are under great pressure from
  agricultural expansion.
• Use of wood as fuel.
• Pressure likely to increase with rising
  population and an absence of alternatives to wood
  as fuel.

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North American Forest
3
14
Environmental Issues
3

• Biodiversity
• Protect and conserve natural habitats and related
  biodiversity.
• Competition for scarce land resources and the
  rising demand for food production represent
  important constraints.
• Habitat loss caused by development pressure and
  the overexploitation of fisheries, ground-water
  depletion, and hunting are threatening
  biodiversity.
• Fish stocks in parts of North America and Europe
  have been seriously depleted.
• Effects world-wide of deforestation is
  fragmentation of habitats and the negative effect
  this has on biodiversity.

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Environmental Issues
3

• Water
• The problem of water is more a case of
  distribution and quality than one of quantity.
• All regions have some problems related to either
  ground-water or surface water resources.
• Transboundary problems associated with water
  resources.
• Access to adequate quantity and quality of water
  will soon become problematic.
• Overexploitation of ground water lowers water
  tables.
• Damage wetlands, cause ground subsidence, and
  induce salt-water intrusion in coastal aquifers.
• Many cities depend on ground water as the primary
  water supply.
• Problems caused by the deterioration of water
  reserves.

16
Available Water, Selected Countries, 1990-2025
(cubic meters per capita)
3
17
Aral Sea, 1973 and 1987 (Landsat Images)
3
18
Environmental Issues
3

• Marine and Coastal Environments
• A high proportion of the worlds population
  resides in coastal areas.
• Many derive benefit from marine resources such as
  food, employment, or tradable commodities.
• Marine coastal ecosystems are particularly
  vulnerable to land-based sources of
  contamination.
• Eutrophication in the Baltic, Black, Aral and
  North seas is also a problem.
• Overexploitation of marine fisheries.
• Impacts of climate change on sea level.
• Climate change may also affect ocean mixing and
  circulation patterns.

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Status of Coral Reefs, by Region, Mid-1990s
3
20
Environmental Issues
3

• Atmosphere
• Polluted air has many adverse impacts
• Human health.
• Damaging biotic and ecosystem functions.
• Accelerated deterioration of building materials
  (acid rain).
• Inducing climatic disturbances.
• Burning of fossil fuels for industry and
  transport.
• Transboundary effects of air pollution is
  increasingly of global concern.
• Concentration of people and activities close to
  urban and industrial areas.
• Large cities in Asia and the Pacific, Latin
  America, and North America experience problems of
  local air pollution.

21
Sulfur Dioxide Emissions from Fossil Fuel
Burning, 1980-2010 (in millions of tons)
3
22
Environmental Issues
3

• Urban and Industrial Environments
• Developing and rapidly industrializing regions.
• Urbanization in Asia, Latin America, and Africa
  has been accompanied by the proliferation of
  squatter settlements.
• Deterioration of urban environments.
• Poor urban and solid waste management.
• Increasing number of single-person households.
• Increased demands on energy resources and the
  management of wastes.