Environmental Science

Chapter 1

Environmental Problems,
Their Causes, and
Sustainability

Presented by Nguyen Thi Hoang Hai

Outline
1. What Are Some Principles of Sustainability?
2. How Are Our Ecological Footprints Affecting the Earth?
3. Why Do We Have Environmental Problems?
4. What Is an Environmentally Sustainable Society?

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Sustainability Defined

▪ The ability of ecosystems and human cultural systems to

survive, flourish, and adapt together to constantly
changing environments over long periods of time.

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1.1 What Are Some Principles of Sustainability?

▪ Life on the earth:

• Has been sustained for billions of years by solar energy,
biodiversity, and chemical cycling
• Depends on energy from the sun and natural capital provided by
the earth
• Can been preserved by shifting towards full-cost pricing and win-
win solutions

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Environmental Science Is a Study of Our Interactions
With the World
▪ What is the environment?
• Everything around us, living and nonliving

▪ Environmental science
• An interdisciplinary study of how humans interact with the living
and nonliving parts of their environment.
• It integrates information and ideas from the natural sciences, the
social sciences and the humanities.

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What Are the Goals of Environmental Science?
▪ To learn how life on the earth has survived and thrived
▪ To understand how we interact with the environment
▪ To find ways to deal with environmental problems and live more
sustainably

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Key component of environmental science is ecology

▪ Ecology
• the biological science that studies how living things interact with
one another and with their environment.
• These living things are called organisms. Each organism belongs
to a species.

▪ Ecosystem:
• Group of organisms in a defined geographic area (terrestrial or
marine) that interact with each other and their environment

▪ Environmentalism:
• A social movement dedicated to sustaining the earth’s life-support
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Three Scientific Principles of Sustainability
▪ Dependence on solar energy
• Supplies nutrients, directly and indirectly

▪ Biodiversity
• Provides ecosystem services and adaptability

▪ Chemical/nutrient cycling
• In nature, waste = useful resources

Interdependence, not independence, is what sustains life

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Lessons From Nature

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Sustainability Has Certain Key Components

▪ Natural capital
• Natural resources
• Ecosystem services

▪ How do humans degrade natural capital?

• By using renewable resources faster than nature can restore them
• By overloading natural resources with pollution and waste

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Natural Capital = Natural Resources +
Ecosystem Services

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Sustainability Solutions
▪ Solutions cross disciplines
• Scientific versus economic and political solutions

▪ There are trade-offs and compromises

• Corporate subsidies can encourage sustainability
• Daily individual and local contributions matter

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Other Principles of Sustainability
from the Social Sciences

▪ Full-cost pricing
(economics)
▪ Win-win solutions
(political science)
▪ A responsibility to future
generations (ethics)

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What is a Resource?
▪ A resource is anything we obtain from the environment
• Can be readily available for use
• Or – can require technology to acquire

▪ Sustainable solutions for resource use

• Reduce
• Reuse
• Recycle

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Resources Are Inexhaustible, Renewable, and
Nonrenewable
▪ Inexhaustible resources
• Perpetually available and expected to last

▪ Renewable resources
• Replenished by natural processes within their sustainable yield

▪ Nonrenewable/exhaustible resources
• Available in fixed quantities that can be renewed, but only through
long-term geologic processes

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Countries Differ in Resource Use and
Environmental Impact
▪ Industrialized countries
• 17% of world’s population (United States, Canada, Western
Europe)

▪ Developing countries
• 83% of world’s population
❖ Middle income, moderately developed countries (China, India, Brazil)
❖ Low income, least developed countries (Nigeria, Bangladesh, Haiti)

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1.2 How Are Our Ecological Footprints Affecting
the Earth?
▪ Over time, growth of ecological footprints depletes and
degrades earth’s natural capital (natural resources and
ecosystem services)
• Environmental degradation

▪ Is there any good news?

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Pollution Comes From a Number of Sources

▪ Pollution: contamination of the environment by polluting

substances (pollutants) such as chemicals, noise, and
heat
• Naturally occurring (volcanoes)
• Contributed by humans (burning of fossil fuels)

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Point Sources
▪ Single, identifiable origins (e.g., smokestacks)

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Nonpoint Sources
▪ Dispersed and difficult to identify sources (e.g.,
pesticides, trash in streams)

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How Are We Dealing With Pollution?
▪ Pollution cleanup (post-production)
• Cleanup: dilution/reduction of pollutants

▪ Pollution prevention (before pollution occurs)

• Reduces or eliminates the production of pollutants

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We Are Degrading Commonly Shared
Renewable Resources
▪ The tragedy of the commons
• Cumulative degradation due to the overuse of:
❖ Open access, renewable resources (atmosphere, open ocean, fish)
❖ Shared resources (grasslands, forests, streams)
• The individual (incorrectly) believes that:
❖ “The little bit that I use or pollute is not enough to matter, and anyway,
it’s a renewable resource”

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What is an Ecological Footprint?
▪ An ecological footprint
• The amount of land and water needed to supply a population or
geographic area with renewable resources, as well as the ability
to absorb/recycle wastes and pollution produced by resource
usage

▪ The growth of ecological footprints

• Leads to degradation of natural capital
• Results in the creation of pollution and waste

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Our Ecological Footprints Are Growing
▪ An ecological deficit:
• Occurs when the ecological footprint is larger than the biological
capacity to replenish resources and absorb wastes/pollution

▪ In an ecological deficit, people are living unsustainably

• This creates adverse environmental impacts, which can be
mitigated by upcycling

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IPAT Is Another Environmental Impact Model
▪ In the early 1970s, a new environmental model called the IPAT model
was developed to determine the environmental impact of human
activities

Impact I =
Population P × Affluence A × Technology (T)

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1.3 Why Do We Have Environmental
Problems?

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Our Environmental Worldview
▪ Our own worldview determines whether we live sustainably or
unsustainably.

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The Human Population Is Growing at a Rapid
Rate
▪ Unchecked population/ecological footprint growth results in natural
capital degradation
▪ Can we slow down this degradation by reducing the rate of population
growth?

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Exponential Growth

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Affluence Has Harmful Environmental Effects
▪ High levels of consumption and waste of resources
▪ More air pollution, water pollution, and land degradation
▪ Acquisition of resources without regard for the environmental effects
of their consumption

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Affluence Has Beneficial Environmental Effects
▪ Better education
▪ Scientific research
▪ Technological solutions resulting in improvements in environmental
quality (e.g., safe drinking water)

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Poverty Can Have Harmful Environmental and
Health Effects
▪ Harmful effects
• Short term requirements for survival can lead to degraded forests,
topsoil, grasslands, fisheries, and wildlife populations

▪ Health effects
• Malnutrition, limited access to sanitation/clean drinking water,
outdoor and indoor air pollution

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Prices of Goods/Services Rarely Include Their Harmful
Environmental/Health Costs
▪ Consumers are unaware of the damage caused by their consumption
▪ Current government subsidies often increase environmental
degradation
• To live sustainably, government subsidies must become beneficial to the
environment by:
❖ Taxing pollution and waste
❖ Shifting from environmentally harmful to environmentally beneficial
subsidies

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We Are Increasingly Isolated From Nature
▪ More than half the world’s population lives in urban
environments technological isolated from nature
▪ We are unaware of:
• The origins of our food, water and other goods
• The pollution and waste generated by the production of these
goods and services

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What is Your Environmental Worldview?
▪ Each individual has his or her own environmental
worldview
• A set of assumptions and values reflecting how one thinks the
world works and what one’s role in it should be

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People Have Different Views About Environmental
Problems/Solutions
▪ Three major types of world views:
• Human-centered
❖ Planetary management world view
❖ Stewardship world view
• Life-centered
• Earth-centered

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The Rise of Environmental Conservation and Protection
in the United States
▪ The preservationist school (John Muir)
• Leave wilderness areas on some public lands untouched

▪ The conservationist school (Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford

Pinchot)
• Manage all public lands wisely and scientifically, primarily to
provide resources for people

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1.4 What Is an Environmentally Sustainable Society?

▪ In order to live sustainably, one must live off the natural resources
without depleting or degrading the natural capital that supplies these
natural resources.

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We Must Protect Our Natural Capital and Live Off of Its
Income
▪ Earth’s natural capital provides natural income
• Renewable resources such as plants, animals, soil, and clean
water and air

▪ By living only on the natural income and not depleting the

natural capital, society moves from an unsustainable
lifestyle to a sustainable one.

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A More Sustainable Future Is Possible
▪ Given enough time, most degraded environments can
recover – but many will take hundreds and even
thousands of years to recover
• Time is our most scarce resource
• However, 5-10% of a population that changes can make a
difference
• Changes can occur in a shorter time than previously thought

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