Rethinking Sustainability to Meet the Climate Change Challenge (original) (raw)
Related papers
Is Climate Change the "Defining Challenge of Our Age"? Energy & Environment 20(3): 279-302 (2009).
Climate change, some claim, is this century's most important environmental challenge. Mortality estimates for the year 2000 from the World Health Organization (WHO) indicate, however, that a dozen other risk factors contribute more to global mortality and global burden of disease. Moreover, the state-of-theart British-sponsored fast track assessments (FTAs) of the global impacts of climate change show that through 2085-2100, climate change would contribute less to human health and environmental threats than other risk factors. Climate change is, therefore, unlikely to be the 21 st century's most important environmental problem. Combining the FTA results with WHO's mortality estimates indicates that halting climate change would reduce cumulative mortality from hunger, malaria, and coastal flooding, by 4-10 percent in 2085 while the Kyoto Protocol would lower it by 0.4-1 percent. FTA results also show that reducing climate change will increase populations-at-risk from water stress and, possibly, threats to biodiversity. But adaptive measures focused specifically on reducing vulnerability to climate sensitive threats would reduce cumulative mortality by 50-75 percent at a fraction of the Kyoto Protocol's cost without adding to risks from water stress or to biodiversity. Such "focused adaptation" would, moreover, reduce major hurdles to the developing world's sustainable economic development, lack of which is the major reason for its vulnerability to climate change (and any other form of adversity). Thus, focused adaptation can combat climate change and advance global well-being, particularly of the world's most vulnerable populations, more effectively than aggressive GHG reductions. Alternatively, these benefits and more -reductions in poverty, and infant and maternal mortality by 50-75%; increased access to safe water and sanitation; and universal literacy -can be obtained by broadly advancing sustainable economic development through policies, institutions and measures (such as those that would meet the UN Millennium Development Goals) at a cost approximating that of the Kyoto Protocol. However, in order to deal with climate change beyond the 2085-2100 timeframe, the paper also recommends expanding research and development of mitigation options, reducing barriers to implementing such options, and active science and monitoring programs to provide early warning of any "dangerous" climate change impacts. 279 1
Environmental Sustainability and Climate Change
The paper deals with the inner mind of the respondent about climate change, using Mind Genomics. Respondents evaluated different combinations of messages about problems and solutions touching on current and future climate change. Respondents rated each combination on a two-dimensional scale regarding believability and workability. The ratings were deconstructed into the linkage between each message and believability vs. workability, respectively. Two mind-sets emerged, Alarmists who focus on the problems that are obvious to climate change, and Investors who focus on a limited number of feasible solutions. These two mind-sets distribute across the population, but can be uncovered through a PVI, personal mind-set identifier. Year Global Warming Global Cooling Weather Storms Global Weather Change 2000 Table 1a: Number of 'hits' on Google Scholar for different aspects of climate change. Question A: What climate impacts do people see today? A1 Sea Levels are rising and flooding is more frequent & obvious A2 Hurricanes are getting stronger and more frequent-just look at the news A3 Heat Waves are damaging crops and the food supply A4 Wildfires are more massive and keep burning down neighborhoods Question B: What are the underlying risks in 20 years? B1 Coastal property investments lose money B2 Children will live in a much lousier world B3 Governments will start being destabilized B4 People will turn from optimistic to pessimistic Question C: What are some actions we can take to avoid these problems? C1 Right now, implement a global carbon tax C2 Over time, transfer 10% of global wealth to an environment fund C3 Create a unified global climate technology consortium for technological change. C4 Build a solar shade that blocks 2% of sunlight Question D: What's the general nature of the system that will mitigate these risks today?
University of Nairobi, 2016
CHAPTER ONE 1.1. BACKGROUND The world’s climate is changing at a fast rate, weather phenomenon and their changes have made the weather patterns more unpredictable today as opposed to decades ago. These climatic changes are attributed to global warming. Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of the earth’s surface. To understand this, one has to understand the concept of the greenhouse effect. Greenhouse effect is the process that occurs naturally and results in the warming up of the earth’s surface. This process helps to maintain earth’s temperatures at certain levels to the effect that earth can support life. Without this process, earth would have been too hot or too cold like Mercury and Venus. This process is facilitated by greenhouse gases, which retain heat from the sun. Such gases include Carbon dioxide, Methane and Nitrous Oxide. Today earth is experiencing enhanced greenhouse effects; this is due to high levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which retain a lot of the sun’s heat and thus global warming. Climate change effects are caused by man and most specifically through the burning of fossil fuels which produce a very high percentage of greenhouse gases as end products. Scientists record that during the period before the industrial revolution, climate change still occurred, however, its causes could be traced to natural occurrences such as the eruption of volcanoes, which released greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. However, the period of the industrial revolution to date has seen drastic changes in global temperatures and these trends cannot be attributed to natural causes alone. Human activities contribute a large portion of it. Today, carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere have increased by about 40% since the period before industrialization. Human activities release up to 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. Carbon dioxide tends to remain in the atmosphere for longer before it is used up and thus compounding to the effects that have resulted in climate change. Global climate change has been an environmental problem for so long. It is hinged to every aspect of human life, has far-reaching effects on the international economy with social issues such as migration and loss of livelihood, and ultimately would threaten international peace and security. This would be so due to the loss of livelihoods. With migration in effect, people would find themselves in search of new jobs. With increased movement towards certain areas, there would be increased pressure on the economy due to lack of adequate opportunities to accommodate these migrating people. This would in turn result to people turning to crime to sustain themselves. For climate change, the challenge has been to persuade the world's most industrialized and powerful countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions despite the fact that these industries are the source of most of the riches that these countries enjoy. Rich countries contributed the larger share of greenhouse gas emissions in the period of industrialization; however, this does not mean that climate change in its entirety is caused by rich countries. With states pursuing their respective national economic goals, both rich and poor countries tend to indulge in activities that result to high emissions of greenhouse gases. This is witnessed in countries such as Brazil as witnessed in the rapid deforestation of the Amazon forest and in India and China from the industrialization seen in the recent years. This shows that the dynamics have substantially changed since the period of industrialization. Poor states in their pursuit to develop and compete economically with rich countries have contributed a fair share of the greenhouse gases that result in climate change. Therefore, each state has to take responsibility for its contributions to climate change. The major concern that arises from the climate change problem is that of human rights. Climate change is set to have far-reaching effects on the human rights. This will see more climate change suits brought to court under the realms of humanitarian law. This has been so witnessed from recent trends. In the case of Lopez Ostra v Spain, the European Court on Human Rights held that the consequences of environmental degradation may so affect an individual's well-being to deny her the right to enjoy her private life and her family. In the Gabcikovo v Nagymaros project case, the court noted that protection of the environment is a vital part of the contemporary human rights doctrine, for it is sine qua non for numerous human rights such as the right to life itself. The process of coming up with climate change legal instruments started in the 20th century. The establishment of the United Nations Environmental Program in 1972 further enhanced it. In 1985, The Vienna Convention on Protection of the Ozone Layer was agreed followed in 1987 when the Montreal Protocol to the convention was agreed. Its aim was to reduce the production and consumption of ozone depleting gases. In 1992, the United Nation Framework Convention on climate change was adopted. The Kyoto Protocol followed some years later in 1997. Of the two, Montreal is regarded as most effective. Most recently, in 2015, the Paris agreement was agreed. It has however not come into force. The process of formulating policies has been slow with a number of skeptics slowing the drive to bring an efficient legal regime to deal with global warming. This research paper seeks to examine the legal instruments and to discuss their adequacy in dealing with the climate change menace. It also seeks to identify issues that are setting back the eradication of climate change. Finally, it will engage to identify legal solutions that can be adopted to improve the adequacy of the legal regime.
Key Questions on Climate Change and Sustainability: Towards the Make-or-Break Years
2021
We owe our deep gratitude to Mrs. Yulia Herus-Behen for her willingness to translate part of the text to English and to Mrs. Olena Plotnik for assistance with the Book's design. This Class Book is meant to be a practical guide for the Readers. The authors have used a numerous number of literature and web-pages sources which are listed at the end of this book. To make the text more readable and easier to understand in many cases the quantitation marks were not used when data or expressions from these sources were referenced.
New Visions for Addressing Sustainability (published in Science, 2003)
Attaining sustainability will require concerted interactive efforts among disciplines, many of which have not yet recognized, and internalized, the relevance of environmental issues to their main intellectual discourse. The inability of key scientific disciplines to engage interactively is an obstacle to the actual attainment of sustainability. For example, in the list of Millennium Development Goals from the United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg, 2002, the seventh of the eight goals, to " ensure environmental sustainability, " is presented separately from the parallel goals of reducing fertility and poverty, improving gains in equity, improving material conditions, and enhancing population health. A more integrated and consilient approach to sustainability is urgently needed. For human populations, sustainability means transforming our ways of living to maximize the chances that environmental and social conditions will indefinitely support human security, wellbeing, and health. In particular, the flow of nonsubstitutable goods and services from ecosystems must be sustained. The contemporary stimulus for exploring sustainability is the accruing evidence that humankind is jeopardizing its own longer term interests by living beyond Earth's means, thereby changing atmospheric composition and depleting biodiversity, soil fertility, ocean fisheries, and freshwater supplies (1). Much early discussion about sustainability has focused on readily measurable intermediate outcomes such as increased economic performance, greater energy efficiency, better urban design, improved transport systems, better conservation of recreational amenities, and so on. However, such changes in technologies, behaviors, amenities, and equity are only the means to attaining desired human experiential outcomes, including autonomy, opportunity, security, and health. These are the true ends of sustainability—and there has been some recognition that their attainment, and their sharing, will be optimized by reducing the rich-poor divide (2). Some reasons for the failure to achieve a collective vision of how to attain sustainability lie in the limitations of, and disjunction between, disciplines we think should be central to our understanding of sustainability: demography, economics, ecology, and epidemiology. These disciplines bear on the size and economic activities of the human population, how the population relates to the natural world, and the health consequences of ecologically injudicious behavior. Sustainability issues are of course not limited to these four disciplines, but require the engagement and interdisciplinary collaboration of other social and natural sciences, engineering, and the humanities (3). Neither mainstream demography nor economics, for the most part, incorporates sufficient appreciation of environmental criticalities into their thinking. They implictly assume that the world is an open, steady-state system within which discipline-specific processes can be studied. Although
ETH-PhD-Academy on Sustainability and Technology 2008
Business sector has a major role to play in combating climate change. In recent years, it has taken a more consultative approach in influenceing the course of climate policy. Some newly formed business groups have been engagging in constructive negotiation process with other players. For all players in the policymaking to be able to engage in an informed negotiation, the complexity and uncertainty surrounding the policy issue need to be understood and made transparent. This paper presents a framework in which both the ...