Sustainable Development Notes

Sustainable Development

• Technological development impacts natural and social components.
• Development should benefit all, present and future generations.
• Sustainable development: "Meeting present needs without compromising future generations' ability to meet their own needs."
• Principles: Improving human life quality, economic growth, environmental development.
• Objectives: Protect biodiversity, increase forest cover, prevent pollution, reduce waste, design eco-friendly technology, control population.
• Key aspects:
  • Intergenerational equity: Minimize adverse impacts, handover a healthy environment.
  • Intra-generational equity: Minimize wealth gaps, technology for developing countries.

Measures for Sustainable Development

• Using appropriate technology:
  • Locally adaptable, eco-friendly, resource-efficient, culturally suitable.
  • "Design with Nature" concept.
  • Use fewer resources, produce minimum waste.
• Adoption of 3 R's (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle):
  • Minimizes resource use, reduces waste and pollution.
• Promoting Environmental Education & Awareness:
  • Changes people's attitude towards the earth.
• Resource Utilization as per carrying capacity:
  • Consumption should not exceed regeneration.

Urbanization

• Movement from rural to urban areas for better education, communication, health, and employment.
• Causes:
  • Job and income opportunities.
  • Efficient delivery of education, healthcare.
  • Women's empowerment and social mobilization.
  • Relief of pressure on biodiversity.
  • Foreign money flow.
  • Entertainment availability.
• Drawbacks:
  • Slums lacking access to housing, water, sanitation.
  • Increased crimes.
  • Growing poverty in urban areas.
  • Dependence on importing resources and waste production.
  • Urban Heat Island: Higher temperatures in cities due to absorbed energy.
  • Pollution and traffic congestion.

Urban Problems Related to Energy

• Urban centers use enormous quantities of energy.
• Urban sprawl: Spreading of cities into sub-urban or rural areas.
• Urban people consume more energy and materials, generate more waste.
• Examples of energy-demanding activities:
  • Residential and commercial lighting.
  • Transportation.
  • Industries.
  • Modern lifestyle with electrical gadgets.
  • Pollution control.
• Optimal usage of renewable and non-renewable energy sources.
• Encourage biomass energy tapping, solar cookers, solar water heaters, and solar photovoltaic cells.
• High population growth and energy demanding activities magnify urban energy problems.

Water Conservation

• Strategies:
  • Decreasing runoff losses: Contour cultivation, conservation bench terracing, water spreading, chemical wetting agents, surface crop residues.
  • Reducing evaporation losses: Horizontal barrier of asphalt, super slurper.
  • Storing water in soil: Wetting soil to field capacity, leaving soil fallow.
  • Reducing irrigation losses: Lined canals, irrigation timing, sprinkling or drip irrigation.
  • Reuse of water: Treated waste water for ferti-irrigation, grey water for gardens and washing cars.
  • Preventing wastage of water: Closing taps, repairing leakages.
  • Increasing block pricing: Higher bill with higher water use.

Rain Water Harvesting

• Objectives: Reduce runoff loss, avoid flooding, meet water demands, raise water table.
• Methods:
  • Storage of rainwater on the surface: Artificial lakes, ponds.
  • Recharge of Ground Water: Hand pumps, pits, dug wells, roof-top and road-top collection.
• Components:
  • Catchment, Conveyance system, Filter, Tanks and recharge structures.

Advantages of Rainwater Harvesting

• Less cost, reduces water bill, decreases water demand, reduces the need for imported water, promotes water and energy conservation, improves groundwater quality and quantity.
• Technology is simple, easy to install and operate.
• Reduces soil erosion, storm water runoff, flooding, and pollution.
• Excellent water source for landscape irrigation.

Disadvantages of Rainwater Harvesting

• Unpredictable rainfall, unavailability of proper storage system, requires maintenance and technical skills, limited rainfall can limit the supply of rainwater. It may attract mosquitoes and other waterborne diseases.

Watershed Management

• Geographic area of land that collects, stores, and releases water.
• Objectives:
  • Pollution control, minimizing over-exploitation, water storage, flood control, checking sedimentation, wildlife preservation, erosion control, recharging groundwater.
• Components:
  • Soil and water conservation, plantation, agronomical practices, livestock management, renewable energy, institutional developments.
• Action Plan: Tree and grass planting, constructing trenches and mounds, making dams.
• Need (MUD): Misuse, Unsustainable, Damage.

Advantages of Watershed Management

• Reduces water shortage during summers, provides wildlife habitat, protects stream and river banks from erosion, reduces flood chances, provides good quality water and food for human use.

Wasteland Reclamation

• Land that is abandoned, degraded, ecologically unstable, incapable of producing material or service of value, eroded, unfit for cultivation or grazing, saline, waterlogged, not being utilized to its potentials.
• Classification:
  • Cultivable Wastelands: Cultivable but not cultivated for more than five years.
  • Uncultivable or Barren Wastelands: Cannot be brought under cultivation or economic use except at a very high cost.
• Wasteland Reclamation: Converting sterile wasteland into fertile land.

Wasteland-Reclamation Practices

• Changing Agricultural Practices: Crop rotation, mixed cropping, plantation crops.
• Mulching: Protective cover to stop sand shifting.
• Topography Management: Strip farming, contour ploughing, tied ridges, terracing.
• Leaching: Providing drainage to prevent salinity; leaching with water to recover salt-affected lands.
• Afforestation: Growing forests over culturable wastelands.
• Reforestation: Growing forests over lands where they existed earlier and were destroyed.
• Protecting River Banks: Pitching or plantation.
• Controlling Gullies: Constructing dams, diversion drains, bounds.
• Soil Erosion Protection: Ground cover, ecological succession.
• Drainage: Removing excess water from waterlogged soil.

Resettlement and Rehabilitation

• Development projects often displace native/tribal people.
• Problems:
  • Big river valley projects (dams).
  • Mining.
  • Creation of national parks.
  • Poverty, family disruption, loss of cultural identity.
• Rehabilitation concerns:
  • Keep community intact.
  • Provide essential infrastructure.
  • Govern displacement with laws.
  • Relocate to preferred locality.
  • Provide employment opportunities and improve living standards

Environmental Ethics

• Ethics: Moral duty and obligations; values to judge behavior.
• Issues (ACNE):
  • A: Reduced atmosphere purification.
  • C: Increased $CO_2$ concentration.
  • N: Depletion of natural resources.
  • E: Deteriorating environment quality.
• Consequences: Greenhouse effect, global warming, acid rain, ozone layer depletion.
• Solutions: Environmental ethics for growth and sustainability.

Climate Change

• Climate: Average weather over 30 years.
• Weather: Atmospheric humidity, temperature, rainfall.
• Changes:
  • Earth warmed by $0.3$ to $0.6°C$ since late 19th century.
  • Temperatures to rise by $1$ to $3.5°C$ by 2100.
  • Sea levels to rise by $15$ to $95 cm$ by 2100.
• Causes: Changes in heat entering/leaving the Earth system, greenhouse gases.
• Ill effects: Cyclones, floods, dry/wet spells, temperature extremes.
• Impacts:
  • Positive: Reduced deaths from cold, higher agricultural output in northern regions.
  • Negative: Submergence of islands, tourism industry decline, wildlife behavior changes, poverty exacerbation.
• Solutions: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions, use renewable energy, use energy efficient technologies.

Mitigation Technologies

• Industry: Heat recovery, recycling, green technology, efficient equipment.
• Buildings: Solar design, efficient appliances, improved cooking stoves, efficient lighting.
• Transport: Public transport, cycling, fuel-efficient vehicles, biofuels, transport planning.
• Energy supply: Renewable energy, improved efficiency.
• Agriculture: Improved fertilizer application, rice-cultivation techniques, livestock management, energy corps, crop and grazing-land management.
• Waste: Recycling, waste minimization, compositing, incineration, waste-water treatment, landfill methane recovery.
• Forests: Reduced deforestation, forest management, afforestation, reforestation, harvested wood-product management, bio-energy.

Environment Security and Climate Change

• Global community at risk from pollution; economic activities cause environmental changes.
• Cooperation needed to reduce environmental degradation through limiting GHG emissions, conserving resources, and sharing technology.

Global Warming: The Greenhouse Effect

• Greenhouse effect: Radiations from the sun are absorbed by the greenhouse gases and not reflected back into space.
• Greenhouse Gases: Gases that absorb infrared radiations and create a greenhouse effect (e.g., carbon dioxide and chlorofluorocarbons).
• Causes: Burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, farming, industrial waste and landfills.
• Effects:
  • Global Warming: Increase in the average temperature of the Earth's atmosphere.
  • Melting of polar ice caps, flooding of low-lying land, less water vapour, extremes of weather.
• Remedial Measures: Enhance energy efficiency, reduce transport emissions, promote renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, methane emission recovery, afforestation, reduce energy consumption.

Depletion of Ozone Layer

• Ozone (O3) is an allotropic form of oxygen (O2).
• Ozone Layer: Stratospheric pool of ozone known as the ozonosphere helps sustaining life on earth by filtering out the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation.
• Ozone Hole: Stratosphere falls below $200 DU$, it is considered Ozone hole.
• Causes: nitric oxide, chlorine, hydroxyl radicals
  $CCl₂F2+ hv\rightarrow CICCIF₂$
  $0, + C\rightarrow O₂+ CIO^<em>$$CIO^</em>+0^<em>\rightarrow Cr+O₂$ Net reaction: $O3 + 0^</em> \rightarrow 2O2$
  Major cause is Chlorine radicals.
• Problems: Swelling of skin and skin cancer;; Death of phytoplanktons in marine environment; immune suppression; impairs DNA replication; visual impairments.
• Remedial Measures: Avoid fire extinguishers, refigerators, purchasing aerosol cans that contain chlorofluorocarbons, freons.

Acid Rain

• Precipitation with pH below approximately 5.2, primarily from sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions from burning fossil fuels.
• Causes corrosion of building materials; chemistry reaction
  $SO2 + H2O → H2SO4 \leftrightarrow H^* + HSO4 \leftrightarrow 2H^* + SO4²$
  $NO2 + H2O → HNO3 → H^* + NO3$
• Causes of Acid Rain
  • Sulphur and Nitrogen particles which get mixed with the wet components of rain
• Clean rain= pH 5.6
• Acid Rain= pH 4.2-4.4

Effects of Acid Rain

• Acid rain affects agriculture by washes away all nutrients which are required for the growth and survival of plants, respiratory issues in animals and humans.
• Acid rain also causes the corrosion of water pipes, deteriorates the water quality.

Nuclear Accidents and Holocaust

• Types of Nuclear Accidents: Nuclear test, Nuclear power plant accidentsImproper disposal of radioactive waste; Accident during transport,Core melt down
• Radiations may break chemical bonds such as DNA in cells, exposure to low dose of radiation (100-250 rads), affects bone marrow, exposure at very high dose kills the organisms by damaging the tissues of heart, brain.
• Examples: Tokaimura Nuclear Accident,Chemobyl Nuclear accident, Three Mile Island accident.

Consumerism and Waste Products

• Consumerism: Chronic purchasing of new goods and services, with less attention to their true need, durability, origin of
  the product or the environmental impacts during manufacture and disposal.
• Causes of consumerism:
  • Artificial beauty.
  • Mega shows.
  • Greed of industry.
  • More money, less time.
  • Advertising.
  • Politics.
    # Drawbacks of Consumerism
  • Causes more pollution, creates more waste products, causes
    wasteful use of material and energy leads to societal suicide
• Measures to Prevent Excess Consumerism
  • Pigouvian Taxes reduce the cost of recycling or waste disposal
  • Better Ecolabelling products that they are
    environmentally friendly.
  • Environmental friendly promoting self awarness and self control!

Acts for Environmental Protection

• Government, industry, public and law must have only one goal, viz. environment protection.
• Government increased intervention b/c facing very serious environmental challenges.
• Increased government intervention is a must for solving environmental problems due to global
  warming, water pollution, air pollution
• Ministry of Environment and Forests Administrative framework with role of various Govt and Non-govt Institutions.