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Newsletter and Technical Publications
<Technical Workbook on Environmental Management Tools for
Decision Analysis>
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Overview |
WORLD ENVIRONMENTAL SITUATION
| "But the closing of a century is always a time
for reflection, for reviewing where we have been and considering where we might
be going. People will be asking themselves what the next hundred years - indeed,
on this occasion, perhaps, the next thousand years will hold for the planet upon
which we all depend."
"The Lonely Planet" by Claude Martin, President, World Wildlife Fund. |
The above-cited quote is a fitting statement of what this Publication strives
to achieve by discussing key environmental decision-making tools against the
backdrop of world environmental trends and fundamental environmental management
and eco-logical realities. The Publication supports training and the eventual
application of these decision-making tools. It may be viewed as a modest
contribution and a fitting closure to this century's environmental regime on one
hand even as it helps shape future developments in environment as the tools,
properly understood and applied to future decisions about our environment,
become useful for the betterment of lives somewhere in the planet _ in a
community, a factory, an industry, a local government unit.
The latest UNEP Global Environmen-tal Outlook report, GEO 2000, shows both
hopeful as well as distressing developments in the world's environ-mental
situation. The hopefulness is in view of heightened action on current and
prospective problems in many fronts and levels within individual societies as
well as among countries acting as one. The distress is from continuing physical
degradation of various ecosystems at rates that are still alarming and that will
take long periods of time to be reversed.
The GEO 2000 report notes that the global system of environmental management
is moving in the right direction but much too slowly.
Over the past few years, environmental laws and institutions have been
developed in industrialized and in some developing countries. The strengthening
of institutions is largely due to such policies as deregulation, increased use
of economic instruments and subsidy reform, reliance on voluntary action by the
private sector, and more public and NGO participation. These developments are
also seen to have been affected by increasingly complex costs of regulation and
high control as well as private sector demands for more flexibility,
self-regulation and cost-effectiveness.
Multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) have become powerful tools for
addressing environmental problems at the regional and international levels .
Each region has its own regional and sub-regional agreements, mostly relating to
the common management or protection of natural resources, such as, coral reefs
and river basins and to such issues as climate change and transboundary air
pollution. At the global level, agreements are being adopted by governments,
e.g., the l992 UNCED agreements on climate change and biodiversity .
Among the most notable environmental challenges that have reached crisis
proportions are the following:
- Current and prospective demands on the world water cycle: Increasing
population densities in many developing areas like Asia and the Pacific where
there is rapid economic growth and industrialization have further heightened
environmental stress. It is said that if present consumption patterns continue,
two out of every three persons on Earth will live in water stressed conditions
by the year 2025.
- Reduction of fertility and agricultural potential due to land
degradation: Some 20 per cent of the world's susceptible drylands are said
to experience human-induced soil degradation, putting livelihoods of more than
1,000 million people at risk.
- Irreversible forest destruction attendantly destroying cultures and
various species. Noted particularly are more frequent and more extensive
forest fires due to unfavourable weather conditions and indiscriminate land use
that make susceptible areas more prone to burning.
- Loss and extinction of species, reducing the earth's biodiversity: In
1996, 25 per cent of the world's approximately 4, 630 mammal species and 11 per
cent of the 9,675 bird species were at significant risk of total extinction.
- Depletion of coastal and marine resources, especially fisheries and coral
reefs due to over exploitation.
- Unabated global warming due to increased greenhouse gas emissions.
Global emissions of CO2 heightened to 23,900 million tonnes in 1996 _ about four
times the 1950 total. Levels of ozone depleting substances would have been five
times higher than present levels by 2050 without the Montreal Protocol.
- Urban air pollution in megacities impairing health of urban dwellers.
Major causes of concern include: human activities now outsizing the contribution
of the global supply of fixed nitrogen vis-a-vis natural processes; increased
frequency and severity of natural disasters, where, for example, losses from
natural disasters over the decade 1986_95 were eight times higher than in the
1960s; climate change problems, with l998 registered as the warmest year on
record; and, wars and attendant refugee problems placing havoc on environments
not only of warring parties but their neighbours as well.
In view of these environmental challenges that seem to persist, it is clear
that, in spite of what has already been done, much work by everyone on the
environmental front is still called for.
Perspectives from Ecological and Environmental Management Fundamentals
Environmental management and decision making operate within certain
fundamental truths that govern the earth, upon which a myriad of activities
leave their mark _ for better or worse. Such fundamental truths are the objects,
the raison d'etre for the development and application of the science and
tools of environmental management and decision making.
These could be summed up as follows:
- The existence of natural and unnatural ecological systems
Ecosystems, being basic functional units of nature, provide the habitat for
living and non-living elements of the earth and the principal source of energy
movement that supports its life systems. It is at the ecosystem level that
environmental impacts of various activities create changes in natural states,
the magnitude of which depends on how various environmental decision making and
management tools provide for mitigative, rehabilitation, restoration measures.
Thus, applications of these tools on activities conducted in varying ecosystems
will have to factor in inherent distinctions and characteristics of different
ecosystems as well as their interactions. More importantly, application of
environmental tools in so-called unnatural ecosystems such as urban and
agro-ecosystems should be able to support the continuing adaptation of natural
ecosystems' ecological processes to realize sustainability.
- The cyclical pathways of the earth's matter and the crucial roles these
play on the earth's environment
Cycling of materials (e.g. oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, water, phosphorous,
etc.) enables the earth to sustain itself without much need for human
intervention. By deriving their basic energy from the sun, transformations of
one material form into another across air, water and land, creating new
functions and uses for already utilized material, regenerating life at various
levels, maintaining equilibrum and healthy existence across ecosystems. These
cycles, however, also become the media for transporting environmental pollution,
as in the case of acid rain from urbanization activities.
Environmental decision-making tools promote sustainable environments by
maintaining and enhancing both the existence as well as purity of such material
cycles.
- The existence of limiting factors for various species
Plant and animal species, including human beings, have lower and upper
limits of tolerance for environmental factors such as temperature, oxygen, food
energy and resistance to disease.
Pollution from vehicular or industry sources can only be tolerated by a
community at a certain level beyond which diseases and death can occur.
Environmental assessments determine such levels of tolerance and limits as a
function of ecosystem characteristic; environmental management systems provide
mitigative and preventive measures to address them as well as rehabilitation and
restoration measures where necessary.
- The recognition of carrying capacities and thresholds of ecological
systems and their components.
Ecosystems are able to accommodate only a certain level of population of
organisms without destroying their long term ability to supply food, space,
energy and other needs. Recognition of various ecosystems' carrying capacities
is vital in distributing population and other resource inputs. Again,
environmental assessments provide the diagnostic tool for such efforts and
environmental management systems provide the programs to ensure adherence to
carrying capacities.
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