ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS,

THEIR CAUSES, AND

SUSTAINABILITY
•1.1 What are some principles of sustainability?
•1.2 How are our ecological footprints affecting
the earth?
•1.3 Why do we have environmental problems?
•1.4 What is an environmentally sustainable
society?
 1.1 What are some principles of sustainability?
• Dependence on solar energy
The sun provides warmth and
fuels
Produce Nutrients / Photosynthesis
Indirect forms of solar energy (wind
and flowing water
• Biodiversity
Astounding variety and adaptability
of natural systems and species
• Chemical cycling/ Nutrient cycle
From the environment to organisms
and then back to the environment
Ecology and environmental
science reveal that
interdependence, not
independence, is what sustains
life and allows it to adapt to a
continually changing set of
environmental conditions. Many
environmental scientists argue
that understanding this
interdependence is the key to
learning how to live more
sustainably
 Sustainability Has Certain Key Components
• Natural capital: keep species
alive
Natural resources: useful
materials and energy in nature
that are essential to human
Natural services: important
natural processes such as the
renewal of air, water, and soil
• Ecosystem services
Processes are provided by
healthy ecosystems that support
life and human economies at no
monetary cost to us.
• One essential ecosystem service is chemical, or nutrient cycling, it
helps to turn wastes into resources. An important component of
nutrient cycling is topsoil—a vital natural resource that provides us
and most other land-dwelling species with food. Without nutrient
cycling in topsoil, life as we know it could not exist on the earth’s
land.
• Natural capital is also supported by energy from the sun- Thus, our
lives and economies depend on energy from the sun, and on natural
resources and ecosystem services (natural capital) provided by the
earth.
• The second component of sustainability (BIODIVERSITY) is to
recognize that many human activities can degrade natural capital by
using normally renewable resources such as trees and topsoil faster
than nature can restore them and by overloading the earth’s normally
renewable air and water systems with pollution and wastes.
• This leads us to a third component of sustainability:
Solutions
The search for solutions often involves conflicts. For example,
when a scientist argues for protecting a long undisturbed
forest to help preserve its important biodiversity, the timber
company that had planned to harvest the trees in that forest
might protest. Dealing with such conflicts often involves
making trade-offs, or compromises
Other Principles of Sustainability Come from the Social
Sciences
• Full-cost pricing (from economics)
• Include harmful health and
environmental costs of producing and
using goods and services in their
market prices.
• Win-win solutions( from politics)
• Benefit people and the environment
• Responsibility to future generations
(from ethics)
• We should leave the planet’s life-
support systems in at least as good a
condition as that which we now enjoy,
if not better, for future generations.
Resources Are Inexhaustible, Renewable, or Nonrenewable
• Resources
• Anything we obtain from the environment to meet our needs and wants
• Some directly available for use: sunlight, surface water, trees, and plants
• Some not directly available for use: petroleum, minerals, and underground water
become useful to us only with some effort and technological ingenuity.
Sustainable yield
The highest rate
at which we can
use a renewable
resource without
reducing the
available supply
 Countries Differ in Resource Use and Environmental
Impact
• More-developed countries
• Industrialized nations with the high average
income
• 17% of the world’s population includes the
United States, Japan, Canada, Australia,
Germany, and most other European
Countries.
• Less-developed countries
• 83% of the world’s population
• most of them in Africa, Asia, and Latin
America.
• Some are middle-income, moderately
developed countries such as China, India,
Brazil, Thailand, and Mexico.
• Others are low-income, least-developed
countries including Nigeria, Bangladesh,
Congo, and Haiti
1.2 How are our ecological footprints affecting
the earth?

As our ecological footprints

grow, we are depleting and
degrading more of the
earth’s natural capital.
 We Are Living Unsustainably
• Environmental
degradation:
wasting, depleting, and
degrading the earth’s
natural capital
• Happening at an
accelerating rate
Pollution Comes from a Number of Sources

• Sources of pollution
• Point sources
Single, identifiable
source
• Nonpoint sources
Disbursed and difficult
to identify
 What are some strategies for pollution?
• One approach is pollution
cleanup, which involves
cleaning up or diluting
pollutants after we have
produced them.
• The other approach is
pollution prevention,
efforts focused on greatly
reducing or eliminating
the production of
pollutants.
We Are Degrading Commonly Shared Renewable
Resources: THE TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS

• Some renewable resources,

known as open-access
renewable resources, are not
owned by anyone and can be
used by almost anyone
 Examples are the atmosphere,
the open ocean and its fishes,
and the earth’s life-support
system
• Other examples of less
open, but often shared
resources, are grasslands,
forests, and streams.
Many of these renewable
resources have been
environmentally degraded.
• Degradation of shared or open-access renewable resources
occurs because each user reasons,

“The little bit that I use or pollute is not enough to matter, and
anyway, it’s a renewable resource.”

• When the number of users is small, this logic works. Eventually,

however, the cumulative effect of large numbers of people
trying to exploit a widely available or shared resource can
degrade it and eventually exhaust or ruin it. Then no one can
benefit from it. That is the tragedy.
 Our Ecological Footprints Are Growing
• When people use renewable
resources, it can result in natural
capital degradation pollution, and
wastes
We can think of this harmful
environmental impact as an:
• Ecological footprint
• Amount of biologically productive
land and water needed to provide a
person or area with renewable
resources, and to recycle wastes
and pollution
• Per capita ecological footprint
• is the average ecological footprint of an
individual in a given country or area.
• Ecological deficit
• The footprint is larger than the
biological capacity for replenishment of
its renewable resources and absorb the
resulting wastes and pollution, it is said
to have an ecological deficit.

In other words, its people are living

unsustainably by depleting natural capital
instead of living off the renewable supply
of resources and ecosystem services
provided by such capital. Globally we are
running up a huge ecological deficit,
IPAT Is Another Environmental Impact Model
In the early 1970s, scientists Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren
developed a simple model showing how population size (P),
affluence (A), or wealth, as measured by rates of resource
consumption per person, and the beneficial and harmful
environmental effects of technologies (T) help to determine
the environmental impact (I) of human activities.
Impact (I) = Population (P) × Affluence (A) × Technology (T)
THANK YOU!!!