AICE Environmental Management Study Guide

Food Security

• Definition: Availability of sufficient, safe, nutritious food for all people at all times.

• Causes of Food Insecurity:

  • Population growth

  • Unsustainable food production

  • Price setting

  • Land degradation

  • Agricultural diseases

  • Climate change

  • Water shortages

  • Poverty

• Biofuels:

  • Derived from sugar crops, starch crops, and oilseed crops.

  • Advantages: Renewable, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, easy to source.

  • Disadvantages: High production costs, monoculture, food shortages, reduce dependence on fossil fuels.

• Impacts of Food Insecurity:

  • Nutritional deficiency and malnutrition

  • Poverty, forced migration, conflict, famine, death.

• Management Strategies:

  • Subsistence agriculture (family farm for themselves only)

  • Increase food production via intensification (higher yields) and extensification (clearing more land).

  • Improved agricultural techniques (aquaculture, GM crops).

  • Reduce food waste.

  • Pest resistant crops with a higher yield

• Modified Organism (GMO’s)

  • Advantages: Advance the quality of food, transported easily, reserve energy, soil, and water

  • Disadvantages: Contribute to a rise in allergic reactions, antibiotic resistance, can cause cancer (in some cases)

Energy Resources

• Types:

  • Renewable: Biofuels, solar, wind, geothermal.

  • Non-renewable: Fossil fuels (oil, coal), nuclear.

• Energy Security: Reliable and affordable energy availability.

  • Long-term: Aligns with economic developments and environmental needs.

  • Short-term: Ability to react to supply-demand changes.

• Causes of Energy Insecurity:

  • Fossil fuel depletion, climate change, population growth, and supply disruptions.

• Impacts of Energy Insecurity:

  • disrupted electricity supply to homes and industry

  • increasing prices for energy resources

  • increasing costs for industry

  • job losses, economic recession

  • increased levels of poverty and low standards of living

  • reliance on imported sources of energy

  • civil disruption and conflict

• Management Strategies:

• increasing energy efficiency

• increasing energy production:

• reducing reliance on fossil fuels;

• investing in renewable resources and carbon neutral fuels

• development of alternative energy technologies: wind power, geothermal, biomass

• investment in local energy projects

• Rationing

• Sustainable building design: Decreasing the amount of energy required to build larger buildings &

heat/cool them:

Waste Management

• Definition: Waste = any unwanted material from human activity.

• Landfills:

  • Advantages: Produces energy (methane), volume reduction, safe if lining doesn’t fall.

  • Disadvantages: Greenhouse gas emissions, groundwater contamination, methane emissions.

  Storage of Waste/Disposal:

  • Surface impoundments- shallow depressions lined with plastic and an

    impervious material such as clay.

  • Deep-well injection- a well is drilled deep beneath the water table into

    porous rock and wastes are injected into it.

  • E- Waste- toxic waste such as lead, mercury, and cadmium.

    The U.S. produces almost half of the world’s e-waste but only recycles

    about 10% of it.

  • Incineration- Burn garbage at high temp (creates ghg, fly ash)

• Hazardous Waste: Solid, liquid, or gas that is ignitable, corrosive, reactive, or toxic

  Sources- industry, mining, households, businesses, agriculture, utilities, etc.

• Industrial Waste: waste from factories, mining, agriculture, petroleum extraction.

• Impacts of Waste Disposal:

  • contamination of soil leading to leaching and contamination of ground water

  • build-up and release of the greenhouse gas methane (CH4) with a danger of explosions

  • visual and noise pollution and unpleasant odor

  • risk of spread of disease

  • release of toxic substances

  • bioaccumulation and biomagnification

  • plastics and microplastics in oceans

• Reducing Impact Strategies:

  • reduce, reuse and recycle

  • biodegradable plastics

  • food waste for animal feed

  • composting

  • fermentation

  • use of waste to generate energy

  • education

  • financial incentives and legislation