(Module 59) Sustainable Development

Sustainable Development: Development that meets present consumption needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their consumption needs.

Resource Depletion: The consumption of natural resources faster than they can be replenished.

  • Mining for fossil fuels & minerals

  • Deforestation

  • Soil Erosion

  • Aquifer Depletion

  • Overfishing

Environmental Pollution: The contamination of the physical (air, water, earth) and biological components of the environment to the point that normal functions are negatively affected.

Point Source Pollution: Any single identifiable source from which contaminants are discharged such as a pipe or smokestack.

Non-Point Source Pollution: Contamination originating from multiple diffuse sources.

Climate Change: A long-term shift in global or regional climate patterns.

  • The most significant of human-influenced change is the steady rise in average global temperatures from the mid-twentieth century to the present.

Conserving Natural Resources:

  • One way to think about slowing natural resource depletion is to follow the 4 R’s: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Rethink.

Cogeneration: Producing two forms of energy from one fuel.

  • When one fuel is combusted, some of the energy is released into the environment as heat.

  • Cogeneration facilities capture that heat and use it to warm building or to power machinery.

Reducing Pollution:

  • In the United States, the most important regulations were the Clean Air Act (1963) and the Clean Water Act (1973).

  • Industrialization does not necessarily lead to environmental harm. However, some rapidly developing countries have not adopted and enforced the necessary regulations and continue to harm the environment.

Carbon Neutrality: Achieving zero CO2 releases through a combination of emissions reduction and carbon removal.

Carbon Offsets: Processes that remove or sequester (store) carbon from the atmosphere to make up for CO2 emissions elsewhere.

Ecotourism: Travel to natural areas of ecological values in support of conservation efforts and socially just economic development.

  • Natural landscapes, such as tropical forests and coastal marine ecosystems, can bring sustained economic growth if they are protected rather than exploited.

  • Tourists should come away enriched by a better understanding of the people, the place, and its environmental.

UN Sustainable Development Goals:

  • In 2000, the United Nations established eight Millennium Development Goals (MGDs), specifying targets for all countries to achieve by 2015 in areas such as environmental sustainability, gender equality, and poverty reduction.

  • The 2015 Sustainable Development Summit resulted in the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were created.