Topic 8 Environment and Society

1
Topic 8 Environment and Society

• A Environmental Perception and Concern
• B Environmental Impacts of Human Activities

2
Conditions of Usage

• For personal and classroom use only
• Excludes any other form of communication such as
  conference presentations, published reports and
  papers.
• No modification and redistribution permitted
• Cannot be published, in whole or in part, in any
  form (printed or electronic) and on any media
  without consent.
• Citation
• Dr. Jean-Paul Rodrigue, Dept. of Economics
  Geography, Hofstra University.

3
A. Environmental Perception and Concern

• 1. Historical Changes
• 2. Environmental Movements (1960s and 1970s)
• 3. Environmental Retreat (1980s)
• 4. Environmental Globalism (1990s)
• 5. Current Perspective Reality Check

4
1. Historical Changes

• Western perspective
• Nature as adversary, something that had to be
  overcome.
• Pronounced man/nature dichotomy.
• Attitudes towards unrestrained exploitation of
  natural resources.
• No sense of limits in terms of capacity.
• Often supported by religious beliefs,
  particularly Christianity.
• Non-Western societies
• Lower technology levels and different attitudes
  prevailed.
• Man / nature symbiolism.
• Modernization changed the relationship.

Nature
Nature
5
Technological Changes and Environment
Relationships
6
Climate Change and the Collapse of Civilizations
7
1. Historical Changes

• Preservation vs. conservation dichotomy
• Preservation
• Focused on the maintenance of wilderness.
• Any use of the resources contained therein would
  negate the continued existence of the wilderness
  itself.
• Low impact tourism often permitted.
• Conservation
• Favors resource management.
• Preventing rampant exploitation but allowing some
  development to occur.
• Difficult to assess the right level of resource
  exploitation (non-renewable resources).

Preservation
Conservation
8
1. Historical Changes

• Early conservation movements
• In Europe, early conservation movements were the
  preserve of the elite.
• Mainly hunting grounds in large private estates.
• Helped to preserve many species in Europe that
  would otherwise have disappeared.
• National parks
• First was Yosemite (1864).
• Protection of one or several ecosystems from
  human exploitation or alteration.
• Protected by the highest authority in the
  country.
• Visitors must respect a set of rules and
  regulations.

9
2. Environmental Movements (1960s and 1970s)
10
2. Environmental Movements (1960s and 1970s)

• Legislations
• Regulatory laws were passed in the USA and
  elsewhere.
• Enforcement agencies were created
• EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) in the USA
  was created in the early 1970s.
• Most states created their own environmental
  protection agencies.
• Legislation was passed to help correct
  environmental hazards already created.
• Prevent additional problems from arising.
• Air quality improved in many areas cleaner water
  reappeared.

11
2. Environmental Movements (1960s and 1970s)

• Environmentalism and the global crisis
• Carried the roots of environmentalism beyond
  local and national scales to the global scale.
• Transnational dimensions of many environmental
  problems
• Many environmental problems do not recognize
  boundaries.
• Acid rain in Western Europe (Sweden) and North
  America.
• First UN Conference on the Human Environment
• Stockholm, 1972.
• Creation of the UN Environmental Programme.
• Rise of the neo-Malthusian perspective
• Rising concern over population growth.
• Formation of the Club of Rome (1968).
• Publication of the Limits to Growth (1972) First
  Oil Shock (1973).
• Emergence of ZPG approach.
• All those concerns turned out to be unfounded.

12
3. Environmental Retreat (1980s)

• Retreat
• Retreat for the environmental movement in the
  USA.
• The Oil Shocks (1973, 1979) helped weaken public
  support for environmental programs.
• Conservative agenda of de-regulation.
• Shift to a conservation approach
• National Forests.
• Clearcutting regulations were weakened.
• Easier exploitation by timber companies,
  especially in the Pacific Northwest.
• Expand drilling into several protected areas.

13
3. Environmental Retreat (1980s)

• Creation of a sustainable development ideology
• Carbon Dioxide was found to cause global warming
  (1983).
• A hole in the ozone layer was found over the
  Antarctic (1985).
• Brundtland Report Our Common Future
• Sustainable is used for the first time.
• Maintenance of life support systems.
• Working to reduce the threats to those systems
  represented by erosion, pollution, deforestation,
  etc.
• Preservation of genetic diversity.
• Providing us with insurance for the future by
  guarding against the ravages of crop diseases.
• Investment for future crop-breeding or
  pharmaceutical development.
• Sustainable development of species and ecosystems

14
3. Environmental Retreat (1980s)

• Environmental ethics
• We have not inherited the earth from our
  parents we have borrowed it from our children.
• Development is often viewed in materialistic
  terms.
• Focusing on resource utility through
  conservation.
• Environmentalism as an elitist attitude intended
  to prevent development in the South.

15
4. Environmental Globalism (1990s)

• UN World Conference on Environment and
  Development
• Rio de Janeiro (1992)
• Largest such gathering ever (100 heads of state).
• Placed the environmental agenda at the center of
  the world stage.
• Development made possible by the end of the Cold
  War.
• Establish Agenda 21, a blueprint for action.
• Europe and Japan
• World leaders in environmental affairs.
• USA
• Role of obstructionist.
• Objected to any negative references concerning
  consumption patterns in the developed countries.
• Had the most to lose.

16
Average Temperature at the Earth's Surface and
World Carbon Emissions From Fossil Fuel Burning,
1880-2002
17
4. Environmental Globalism (1990s)

• Factors of global change
• Changes in the earths orbit
• Ice ages linked with orbital changes and the
  earths tilt.
• Changes in the suns intensity
• Slight fluctuations.
• Volcanic eruptions
• Carbon Dioxide and aerosols into the atmosphere.
• Changes in greenhouse gas concentrations.
• Changes in ocean currents.

18
Estimated Climate Factors Change, 1850-2000 (in
watts/m2)
19
4. Environmental Globalism (1990s)

• The Rio Declaration (1992)
• development must occur on a sustainable basis to
  meet the needs of present and future
  generations.
• Lack of detail and no operational aspects are
  considered.
• Have relatively little meaning.
• Global Warming Treaty
• Stabilization of the amount of greenhouse gases
  in the atmosphere at a level which would prevent
  dangerous interference with climate systems.
• Lacks a specific timetable for decreasing
  emissions.
• No mandatory maximum levels for emissions.
• Most countries endorsed guidelines to reduce CO2
  emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000.

20
4. Environmental Globalism (1990s)

• Biodiversity Convention (1992)
• Guarantees the protection and conservation of
  plant and animal species threatened with
  extinction.
• Declares who has the right to develop and market
  products based on such species.
• The USA opposed this treaty (biotechnology
  sector).

21
Countries Having Ratified the Biodiversity
Convention, 2004
22
4. Environmental Globalism (1990s)

• Agenda 21(Blueprint for Action)
• Commitment to sustainable development through a
  set of four program areas.
• 1) Promoting sustainable development through
  trade.
• 2) Making trade and environment mutually
  supportive.
• 3) Providing adequate financial resources to
  developing countries
• Committed to 0.7 of GNP.
• Currently stands at around 0.5 of GNP for most
  European countries, Canada, and Japan.
• Just 0.25 for the USA.
• 4) Encouraging economic policies conducive to
  sustainable development

23
4. Environmental Globalism (1990s)

• Kyoto Protocol (1997)
• The Global Warming Treaty was not working.
• 2000 goals would not achieved.
• High profile meeting in Kyoto in 1997.
• 160 nations formally adopted the protocol
• Legally committing industrial countries do reduce
  Carbon Dioxide emissions.
• Reduce climate-altering gases by 5.2 below 1990
  levels between 2008 and 2012.
• Developing countries, mainly China and India,
  objected
• Meeting the target would cripple their economies
  leaning on coal.
• Developing countries were thus exempted.
• Seriously undermines the potential effectiveness
  of the protocol.

24
Countries Having Ratified the Kyoto Protocol, 2004
25
Characteristics of the Kyoto Protocol
26
Total Carbon Emissions, 1900-1999 (in millions of
tons)
27
Anthropogenic CO2 Emissions, 1995
28
4. Environmental Globalism (1990s)

• Major environmental treaties
• 1959 Washington Antarctic Treaty
• 1963 Moscow Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
• 1971 Ramsar Wetlands of International Importance
• 1972 London Ocean Dumping Biological Weapons
• 1973 Washington Trade in Endangered Species
  (CITES)
• 1978 London Pollution from Ships (MARPOL)
• 1979 Bonn Migratory Species
• 1982 Montego Bay Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)
• 1985 Vienna Ozone Layer
• 1987 Montreal Ozone Layer
• 1989 Basel Transboundary Hazardous Waste
• 1992 Rio Climate Change Biodiversity
• 1997 Kyoto Climate Change

29
5. Current Perspective Reality Check

• Perspective
• Low or over valuation of the environment
• Consumers and environmental radicals.
• Maximization of wealth and risk taking.
• No limits to growth and problems can be overcome
  by technology.
• Short term perspective.
• Ostrich's approach?
• Environmental divide
• Between developing and developed countries.
• Between Europe and the United States.
• Economic growth becomes the dominant paradigm.
• Clashes Seattle (1999).

30
5. Current Perspective Reality Check

• Dependency
• Societies are caught in the requirements they
  have created
• Economic growth.
• Standard of living.
• Mobility.
• Shift of emphasis
• Adaptation, more than prevention.
• Cope with the consequences of GW instead of
  dealing with the sources.

31
Environmental Perception Who Cares?
Very Important
World
Global Warming
Some Importance
Nation
Little Importance
No Importance
Air pollution
Community
Hazardous materials
Family
Week
Year
Lifetime
Next Generation
32
5. Current Perspective Reality Check

• Environmentalism Fascism?
• Irrationalism and fear mongering
• Self-righteousness and hatred of different ideas.
• Moral decay use of violence, deception and
  bio-terrorism to achieve goals.
• Science is less part of the agenda
• Replaced by ideology and dogmatism.
• Environmentalism vs rights and freedom
• Takes away private property rights and freedom.
• The goal is socialism / communism and control of
  the population.
• They know best and you should be coerced to adopt
  their strategies.

33
5. Current Perspective Reality Check

• Biocentrism
• Assume an intrinsic value to nature.
• Human beings are less important (no or less
  intrinsic value) than nature.
• Humans as evil and vermin (cancer) that
  implicitly should be exterminated (for the sake
  of significant reduction in numbers).
• Undermines human rights, freedom and dignity.
• Issues
• Should we follow the policies of those whom at
  start have an implicit hatred of human beings and
  technology?
• The environmental movement as the philosophic
  enemy of the human race?

34
B. Environmental Impacts of Human Activities

• 1. Driving Forces
• 2. The Vicious Circle
• 3. The Ecological Footprint

35
1. Driving Forces

• Context
• Demographic growth.
• Growing size (scale) of societies and
  communities.
• Urbanization.
• Technological development.
• Development failures.
• Larger levels of personal consumption.
• Higher generation of wastes
• Several are difficult to be absorbed.
• Growing impacts on the environment

36
1. Driving Forces

• Population change
• A world of 6.3 billion consumers.
• Each addition of consumers generate more
  pressures on
• Food.
• Water.
• Energy.
• Raw materials.
• Space.
• Comparable negative impact on the environment.
• What will be the impacts of about 9 billion
  consumers by 2050?

37
1. Driving Forces

• Promotion of economic growth
• Market economies are based on economic expansion
• Growth of production (supply).
• Growth of consumption (demand).
• Issue reinforced by globalization.
• Governments try to reinforce economic growth
• Elected for such a purpose.
• Reversed if they mismanage the economy.
• Consequences
• Depletion of nonrenewable resources.
• Overuse of renewable resources.
• Between 1995 and 1998 the worlds economic output
  exceeded the output from the beginning of history
  to 1900.

38
1. Driving Forces

• Culture and belief systems
• Consumerism incarnates materialistic values in
  human behavior.
• Fulfillment derived from the accumulation of
  goods.
• Becoming the dominant global social paradigm.
• Positive outcomes
• Expands the demand side of the market economy.
• Forces constant innovations by entrepreneurs to
  satisfy the market.
• Improve standards of living (luxuries becoming
  staples).
• Negative outcomes
• Cultural vacuum.
• Wants become needs (keeping up with the
  Joneses).
• Misallocation of capital.

39
Fulfillment Curve
Other means
Luxury
Comfort
Fulfillment
Extravagance
Survival
Consumption
40
1. Driving Forces

• Technology
• Population growth, economic growth and
  consumerism existed, to various degrees, before
  the industrial revolution.
• Multiplying effects
• Technological growth often the result of resource
  depletion.
• More efficient technologies also a factor of
  accelerated resource depletion.
• So far, technology as been more a factor of
  resource depletion and environmental destruction
  than of conservation.

41
2. The Vicious Circle

• Era of superdisasters
• Climate change.
• Deforestation.
• Poverty.
• Crowding.
• Collision to create larger hazards
• 1 billion people are living in shantytowns.
• Several of the largest cities are at risk by
  earthquakes.
• 50 of the global population lives along the
  coastline.
• 10 million are at high risk of being flooded.
• 96 of all causalities from natural disasters are
  in the Third World.

42
2. The Vicious Circle
Population
Poverty
Environment
Instability
43
2. The Vicious Circle
44
3. The Ecological Footprint

• System processing inputs to produce outputs
• Inputs
• Energy and raw materials.
• Processes
• Energy and raw materials with labor and
  infrastructure.
• Outputs
• Products, services and wastes.
• Offers conditions (opportunities) to support its
  working conditions and insure its growth.
• Fast growth can be seen as a disease (cancer).
• Sustainability achieved through the reduction of
  inputs and outputs.

Energy Raw materials
Inputs
Processes
Outputs
Products Services Wastes
45
Material Flow Cycle
Resource supply
Production and manufacturing
Consumption
Waste or losses
Post-consumer discards
Recycling
Recycled flow
Landfills, impoundments, Deep wells and
ocean disposal
Releases to air, land and water
Sink
Renewable and Nonrenewable resources
46
3. The Ecological Footprint

• Environmental sink
• The environment is a sink.
• Rate at which it can accumulate (and often
  transform) wastes.
• Each component of the environmental system has a
  different capacity and rate of accumulation.
• Consideration of physical measures of
  environmental damage.

Sink
Lithosphere
Hydrosphere
Atmosphere
Ecosphere
47
3. The Ecological Footprint

• Impacts
• Possible to measure the general impacts of human
  activities on the environment.
• Requires two basic measures
• Biocapacity (supply).
• Ecological footprint (demand).
• Becomes a matter of balance between biocapacity
  and ecological footprint.
• The ecological footprint must be lower than the
  biocapacity of the world.

Bioproductivity
Area
Biocapacity
Population
Consumption
FootprintIntensity
Ecological Footprint
48
3. The Ecological Footprint

• Calculating biocapacity and ecological footprint
• Biocapacity
• Inventory of the biologically productive land and
  its yield.
• More intensive management can boost yields, but
  if additional resources are used this also
  increases the footprint.
• Footprint
• Keep track of most of the resources consumed and
  the wastes generated.
• Consumption from cropland, grassland and pasture,
  fishing and forest.
• Area required to absorb the CO2 released.
• Converted to a biologically productive area
  necessary to provide these functions.
• The footprint is not a continuous
• Due to international trade, the land and water
  areas used by most global citizens are scattered
  all over the planet.
• Deficit areas can import from surplus areas.

49
Worlds Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity,
1961-2003
50
Ecological Balance, 1993
51
Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity for Selected
Countries, 2003 (in ha/person)