Climbing Emissions and Global Warming- A Threat to the Sustainable Economic Development
-
Upload
amit-radha-krishna-nigam -
Category
Documents
-
view
215 -
download
0
Transcript of Climbing Emissions and Global Warming- A Threat to the Sustainable Economic Development
-
8/14/2019 Climbing Emissions and Global Warming- A Threat to the Sustainable Economic Development
1/6
-
8/14/2019 Climbing Emissions and Global Warming- A Threat to the Sustainable Economic Development
2/6
like ecological exploitation, knowledge-less agricultural practices,
deforestation, uncontrolled emissions of green house gases and global
warming that now holds a rigid grip needs new technological avenues to be
sought and implemented.
The Sustainability Concern:
Norwegian prime minister and director WHO, G.H Brundtland exemplify
sustainable development as meeting the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generation to meet their own needs.
The notion to project an economy for sustainable development came in 92
during a UN conference on environment and development (UNCED),
popularly known as Earth summit, held at Brazil. Out of its five significant
conclusions, Agenda 21 proposes global initiatives and policies on
sustainable development in social, economic and practical context for the
21st century. It elegantly summarizes objectives, various conditions and
ways to achieve sustainable developments but sadly missed out relevant
issues of environmental ethics and implementation details of such ethical
decisions. Should we continue to chop off forests and land to supplement
urbanization and industrialization? What environmental obligations we
need to hold in context of using fossil fuel powered vehicles and green-
house-emission industrial processes? What moral we owe to species that
-
8/14/2019 Climbing Emissions and Global Warming- A Threat to the Sustainable Economic Development
3/6
are near-extinct and whether we need to check our energy and food
consumption for the sake of future generation are some of the eco-centric
views we need to follow and that are missed in the Agenda, partially or
completely.
Global Warming has become a challenge: Climate change has
become one of the major global environmental challenges facing humanity
today with implications for food production, natural ecosystems, freshwater
supply, health, etc. The earths climate system has demonstrably changed
on both global and regional scales since the pre-industrial era. Evidences
shows that most of the warming (of 0.1 degree Celsius per decade) observed
over the last 50 years, is attributable to human activities. The
intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects that the global
mean temperature may increase between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees Celsius by
2100. This unprecedented increase is expected to have severe impacts on
the global hydrological system, ecosystems, sea level, crop production and
related processes. The impact would be particularly severe in the tropical
areas, which mainly consist of developing countries, including India.
Causes: Prime cause as explicitly endorsed by the national science
academics of G8 nations in 2005 include emissions of astronomical
volumes of green house gases like CO2, Methane etc released by burning of
-
8/14/2019 Climbing Emissions and Global Warming- A Threat to the Sustainable Economic Development
4/6
fossil fuels, land clearing and agriculture and other human activities.
Emission of such greenhouse gases is one of the major sources of pollution
in the world. Table below shows the 2007 emissions statistics of different
countries with India standing on 4th position. US continue to be at the top of
the list despite several prolonged measures to stabilize the industrial
emission rate.
CO2 Emission by top 10 nations
Source: NASSCOM Survey 2007.
Implication: The rise in global temperature tend to bring disastrous
changes such as producing new patterns and extremes of drought and
rainfall, unsettling of food productions, adversely affecting ecosystem and
biodiversity, etc. Ozone depletion is another consequence of our lack of
environmental concerns, perhaps more perilous than global warming and
acid rains.
Rank Nation ('000 M.T. of CO2)1 United States Of America 15801752 China (Mainland) 11311753 Russian Federation 4075934 India 3475775 Japan 3361426 Germany 2197767 Canada 1543928 United Kingdom 152460
9 Republic Of Korea 12445510 Italy (Including San Marino) 121608
-
8/14/2019 Climbing Emissions and Global Warming- A Threat to the Sustainable Economic Development
5/6
Sustainability how far?: The current phenomenon to achieve
sustainability, as visioned by numerous conferences world wide, seems to
virtually house a cold war between the emission statistics of the developing
countries and those with of developed. Clearly, the consumption of the
latter is more and so forth their emission rates. However, as seen in various
surveys, emissions rate in the developing countries also seems to climbing
as industrialization rapids and their government plans to boosts their
economies respectively. Poor efficiency products, quest to rapidify progress
are amongst other factors that cause a growth rate of emissions in
developing countries to rise unexpectedly.
Our obligations towards sustainability: In the face of above
concerns, there a few things that we need to understand on a broad
spectrum. Firstly, that we can not afford to neglect environmental issues in
face of economic development or poverty alleviation, rather, environmental
pressures are themselves related to socio-economic issues like population,
literacy and awareness. This relation needs to be exploited to achieve
sustainability in its truest sense. Secondly, the economic activities must be
conducted using environment conserving and resource saving technologies.
Managing environment though better urban designs, improvement in
-
8/14/2019 Climbing Emissions and Global Warming- A Threat to the Sustainable Economic Development
6/6
transportation infrastructures and creative use of information technologies
needs to be considered seriously. Thirdly, policies for environmental
governance should include priorities of law enforcement, providing
economic incentives, maximum peoples participation, institutional reforms
and innovative use of technical know-how.
It is pity that we have forgotten that the environment we have inherited was
sustainable but our activities and carelessness towards it, the carelessness
thats now returning to us in a disastrous shape have put it as a subject of
grave concern globally, despairing thousands of environmentalist and
biologists.
Of course, its a difficult but an obligatory goal, for the world to accomplish
sustainability but, as pointed out in the preambles of every conference or
convention we have seen on environmental issues so far, with a firm
determination of the government, private sector, NGOs, and people, and
well definitely achieve an economy thats based on the principles of
sustainable development in its truest sense and vitality.