6 Environmental science Social Issues part 2
Rehabilitation should be collective
In the villages, almost each’ family depends on the other. The social and moral obligations
towards each other bind them into one cohesive whole. The authorities are rehabilitating
individual families and not the village as a whole.
Monetary Compensation
Mere payment of cash is not rehabilitation. Moreover, the amount of cash paid as
compensation is insufficient to buy land in other places because of the high rates. The
oustees being basically farmers lack the business acumen needed to set up a viable commercial
alternative. Since they are not accustomed to having such large sums (relative to their
usually small incomes) in a lump sum, they are ignorant as to how they should spend it.
Mismanagement
The project authorities estimated the total affected population in 1981 as 46,000. Using
the Census Office figures, the total number affected for 1981 is act 70,000.
Lack of Public Relations
The majority of populace to be displaced consists of advises, tribal, scheduled castes
that have a unique lifestyle. The traumatic experience of shifting to new areas and new
occupations involving drastic changes in their lifestyle weighs heavily on these people. The
absence of any public relation efforts has further aggravated the situation.
Housing compensation: It is necessary to highlight a major flaw in the procedure for
fixed immovable property like houses, well, barns fence, cattle-stalls, etc. The present
procedure evaluates the “current worth” or “value after depreciation” for determining the
amount of compensation. This concept is faulty. He should be paid an amount for his house
etc., equivalent to the cost of reconstructing a dwelling place equal to the plinth area lost
under submergence. This amount (i.e., replacement cost) will obviously be more than the
“current worth” of his old dwelling.
Environmental Ethics
The Earth is unique among all the planets in our solar system. It is endowed with
plentiful resources. Man’s greed to raise his standard of living compels him control and tap
natural resources. Many. rivers throughout the world have been “controlled” to provide
power, irrigation, and navigation for the people at the expense of the natural world. If such
gifts of nature are not tapped for resource generation, many people think it to be wastage
of resources. The capitalists want to use the forests for timber production and not doing so
is closely linked to economical hardships. Removing the trees would destroy something that
took hundreds of years to develop and may never be replaced. Efforts to manage the
interactions between people and their environment are an age-old practice. At one time,
pollution was a local, temporary event, but today, pollution problems have crossed
international borders and have become global. The seminars over chemical and radioactive
waste disposal witness the increasingly international nature of pollution.
Ethical issues dealing with the environment are no different from other kinds of problems.
The concept of an environmental ethics could encompass differing principles and beliefs.
Ethics is one branch of philosophy, which fundamentally attempts to define what is right,
and what is wrong, regardless of cultural differences. Environmental ethics are formulated
on the basis that human beings are also a part of nature and nature has many interdependent
components. In any natural ecosystem, the well being of the individual and of each species
is linked to the well being of the entire community. In a world increasingly without
environmental borders, nations, like individuals, should have a fundamental ethical
responsibility to respect nature and to care for the Earth, protecting its life-support systems,
biodiversity, and beauty, caring for the needs of other countries and future generations.
Environmental ethicists argue that to consider environmental protection as a “right” of the
planet is a natural extension of concepts of human rights.
Although there are many different attitudes about the environment. Three types of the
ethics are identified as (a) the development ethic, (b) the preservation ethic, and (c) the
conservation ethic. Each of these ethical positions has its own appropriate code of conduct
against which ecological mortality may be measured.
The development ethic is based 011 actions. Development in any sector is inevitable.
. But the development should not crop up at the cost of environmental failure. This philosophy
is strengthened by the idea that, “if it can be done, it should be done.”
The preservation ethic considers nature special in itself. Some preservationists have
an almost religious outlook regarding nature. They believe that nature is beautiful place to
live in and it should be maintained for feeding, breeding, enjoyment and peace. On the other
hand scientific outlook argue that the human species depends on and has much to learn
from nature. Rare and endangered species and ecosystems, as well as the more common
ones, must be preserved because of their known or assumed long-range, practical utility.
The third environmental ethic is referred to as the conservation ethic, It recognizes
the desirability of decent living standards, but it works towards a balance of resource use
and resource availability.
Economic growth and resource exploitation are attitudes shared by developing
societies. As a society, we continue to consume natural resources as if the supplies were
never ending. All of this is reflected in our increasingly unstable relationship with the
environment, which grows out of our tendency to take from the “common good” without
regard for the future.
Global Environmental Ethics
This new sense of urgency and common cause about the environment is leading to
unprecedented cooperation in some areas. Ecological degradation in any nation almost
inevitably impinges on the quality of life in others. For years, acid rain has been a major
irritant in relations between the United States and Canada.
Conclusion
Will the nations of the world be able to put aside their political differences to work
towards a global environmental course of action? Out of that international conference was
born the U.N. Environment Programme a separate department of the United Nations that
deals with environmental issues. Through organizations such as this nations can work
together to solve common environmental problems. Deep ecologists, on the other hand, see
humankind itself as the main problem. They believe that the earth is a complex organism
with its own needs, metabolism; and immune system and that humankind’s relationship
with the earth is increasingly parasitic. In the book Deep Ecology: Living Nature. As If
Nature Mattered, proponents Bill Devall and George Sessions, clearly state their principles:
(1) Humans have no right to reduce the richness and diversity of life except to satisfy vital
needs: (2) the quality of human life and culture is compatible with a substantial decrease
in the human population; and (3) the flourishing of non-human life requires such a decrease.
To secure for current and future generations a safe and healthy environment, a sound
and prosperous economy should aim at:
1. Ensure that citizens today and tomorrow have the clean air water, and land essential
to sustaining human health and the environment.
2. Protect and enhance, the quality of water resources and promote the wise and
efficient use of water.
3. Maintain and enhance the health and diversity of the wildlife and planets.
4. Develop an environmentally literate society.
Climate Change
Introduction
The recent interest in global warming and sustainable development has become a
global talk. The most important global environmental topics as chosen by a panel of about
12 world experts were as follows: human population growth, bio-diversity and conservation,
climate change, forest decline, hazardous wastes, land degradation, human pathogens, urban
environment, work environment and resource depletion. Man is as closely related to nature
as he is to himself, because he is a part of it. An outright dependence on nature has been
a striking feature of man’s progress through the centuries of his struggle.
Climate has from the very beginning regulated man in practically every aspect of life
and has played a very important role in the development of civilizations all around the
world. Man’s impact on climate began 5000 to 9000 years ago, as he was able to alter the
environment by burning and felling forest and tilling the earth. The most extensive change
wrought by man prior to our own times was the gradual conversion of most of the temperate
forest zone to crops that is an artificial steppe or savanna. Thus until the industrial revolution
and probably until the present century, man had little effect on the climate except on a very
local scale.
Presently global warming has emerged as one of the most important environmental
issues ever to confront humanity. This concern arises from the fact that our everyday
activities may be leading to changes in the earth’s atmosphere that have the potential: to
significantly alter the planet’s heat and radiation balance, and thereby lead to a warmer
climate in the next century and thereafter. International efforts to address this problem
have been on for the last decade, with the Earth Summit at Rio in 1992 as an important
launching point and the Conference of Parties in Buenos Aires. In 1998 as the most recent
step. Although India as a developing country does not have any commitments or
responsibilities at present for reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon
dioxide (CO2) that lead to global warming, pressure is increasing on India and other large,
rapidly developing countries such as China and Brazil to adopt a more pro-active role.
What is Climate Change?
Climate change is a newcomer to the international political and environmental agenda,
having emerged as a major policy issue only in the late 1980s and thereafter. It has emerged
since the 19th century that CO2 in the atmosphere is a ‘greenhouse gas’, that is, its presence
in the atmosphere helps to retain the incoming heat energy from the sun, thereby increasing
the earth’s surface temperature. Of course, CO2 is only one of several such greenhouse gases
in the atmosphere. Others include methane, nitrous oxide and water vapour. However, CO2
is the most important greenhouse gas that is being affected by human activities. CO2 is
generated by a multitude of processes. Since the Industrial Revolution, when our usage of
fossil fuels increased dramatically, the contribution of CO2 from human activities has grown
large enough to constitute a significant perturbation of the natural carbon cycle.
The concentration of CO
2 in the Earth’s atmosphere was about 280 parts per million by
volume (ppmv) in 1750, before the Industrial Revolution began. By 1994 it was 358 ppmv
and rising by about 1.5 ppnw per year. If emissions continue at the 1994 rate, the
concentration will be around 500 ppmv, nearly double the pre-industrial level, by the end
of the 21st century.
Rising Concentrations
The effect is that the atmosphere retains more of the Sun’s heat, warming the Earth’s
surface. While the pattern of future warming is very much open to debate, it is indisputable
that the surface of the Earth has warmed, on average, 0.3 to 0.6 °C since the late 19th
century when reliable temperature measurements began. Under the existing scenarios of
economic growth and development leading to greenhouse gas emissions, on a worldwide
average, temperatures would rise by 1 to 3.5 °C by the year 2100, and global mean sea level
by about 15 to 95 cm. It is likely that changes of this magnitude and rapidity could pose
severe problems for many natural and managed ecosystems. Indeed, for many low-lying and
deltaic areas and small islands, a sea level rise of one meter could threaten complete Joss
of land and extinction of habitation.
Extreme Weather Events
In addition, most of the ill effects of climate change are linked to extreme weather
events, such as hot or cold spells of temperature, or wet or dry spells of rainfall, or cyclones
and floods. Predictions of the nature and distributions of such events in a changed climate
are even more uncertain- to the extent that virtually no authoritative predictions exist at
all. While there are costs as well as benefits associated with climate change, the scientific
consensus is clearly that the overall effects are likely to pose a significant burden on the
global community. Unlike many other environmental issues, such as local air or water
pollution, or even stratospheric ozone depletion caused by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), global
warming poses special challenges due to the spatial and temporal extent of the problem
covering the globe and with decades to centuries time scales.
Analysis and assessment of just what steps needed to be taken to limit greenhouse gas
emissions. This process resulted in the negotiation’ of a protocol, the final details of which
were completed at the third meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Framework
Convention held December 1-12, 1997, in Kyoto, Japan. The Kyoto Protocol to the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change commits industrialized nations to specific,
legally binding emission reduction targets for six greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane,
nitrous oxide, hydro fluorocarbons, per-fluorinated compounds and sulphur hex fluoride.
First, although India does not currently have any obligations under the Convention to
reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. It is important for us to develop a clear understanding
of our emission inventory. We also need to document and analyze our efforts in areas such
as renewable energy, wasteland development and a forestation - all of which contribute
towards either reducing CO2 emissions or increasing CO2 removal from the atmosphere.
Considering that these efforts may often be undertaken for a variety of reasons not directly
related to global warming, but yet has benefits as far as climate change is concerned, we
may be able to leverage such efforts in the international context. The Research community
could contribute substantially in this regard. We need to significantly improve our ability
to plan and adapt to extreme events such as floods, droughts, cyclones and other meteorological
hazards. Any robustness that we build into the system in this regard will always stand us
in good stead no matter what climate change actually transpires.
Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect
In the late 1900’s researchers realized that the world may be getting warmer. The last
two decades of the 1900’s witnessed some warm and cool years. However, not enough
evidences were available to support the theory of global warming. But this a well-known fact
that accumulation of several green house gases can lead to a rise in temperature (global
warming). If a global warming phenomenon sets in this would result in major changes in
world’s climate. The increase in temperature might lead melting of snow on poles, which
In the villages, almost each’ family depends on the other. The social and moral obligations
towards each other bind them into one cohesive whole. The authorities are rehabilitating
individual families and not the village as a whole.
Monetary Compensation
Mere payment of cash is not rehabilitation. Moreover, the amount of cash paid as
compensation is insufficient to buy land in other places because of the high rates. The
oustees being basically farmers lack the business acumen needed to set up a viable commercial
alternative. Since they are not accustomed to having such large sums (relative to their
usually small incomes) in a lump sum, they are ignorant as to how they should spend it.
Mismanagement
The project authorities estimated the total affected population in 1981 as 46,000. Using
the Census Office figures, the total number affected for 1981 is act 70,000.
Lack of Public Relations
The majority of populace to be displaced consists of advises, tribal, scheduled castes
that have a unique lifestyle. The traumatic experience of shifting to new areas and new
occupations involving drastic changes in their lifestyle weighs heavily on these people. The
absence of any public relation efforts has further aggravated the situation.
Housing compensation: It is necessary to highlight a major flaw in the procedure for
fixed immovable property like houses, well, barns fence, cattle-stalls, etc. The present
procedure evaluates the “current worth” or “value after depreciation” for determining the
amount of compensation. This concept is faulty. He should be paid an amount for his house
etc., equivalent to the cost of reconstructing a dwelling place equal to the plinth area lost
under submergence. This amount (i.e., replacement cost) will obviously be more than the
“current worth” of his old dwelling.
Environmental Ethics
The Earth is unique among all the planets in our solar system. It is endowed with
plentiful resources. Man’s greed to raise his standard of living compels him control and tap
natural resources. Many. rivers throughout the world have been “controlled” to provide
power, irrigation, and navigation for the people at the expense of the natural world. If such
gifts of nature are not tapped for resource generation, many people think it to be wastage
of resources. The capitalists want to use the forests for timber production and not doing so
is closely linked to economical hardships. Removing the trees would destroy something that
took hundreds of years to develop and may never be replaced. Efforts to manage the
interactions between people and their environment are an age-old practice. At one time,
pollution was a local, temporary event, but today, pollution problems have crossed
international borders and have become global. The seminars over chemical and radioactive
waste disposal witness the increasingly international nature of pollution.
Ethical issues dealing with the environment are no different from other kinds of problems.
The concept of an environmental ethics could encompass differing principles and beliefs.
Ethics is one branch of philosophy, which fundamentally attempts to define what is right,
and what is wrong, regardless of cultural differences. Environmental ethics are formulated
on the basis that human beings are also a part of nature and nature has many interdependent
components. In any natural ecosystem, the well being of the individual and of each species
is linked to the well being of the entire community. In a world increasingly without
environmental borders, nations, like individuals, should have a fundamental ethical
responsibility to respect nature and to care for the Earth, protecting its life-support systems,
biodiversity, and beauty, caring for the needs of other countries and future generations.
Environmental ethicists argue that to consider environmental protection as a “right” of the
planet is a natural extension of concepts of human rights.
Although there are many different attitudes about the environment. Three types of the
ethics are identified as (a) the development ethic, (b) the preservation ethic, and (c) the
conservation ethic. Each of these ethical positions has its own appropriate code of conduct
against which ecological mortality may be measured.
The development ethic is based 011 actions. Development in any sector is inevitable.
. But the development should not crop up at the cost of environmental failure. This philosophy
is strengthened by the idea that, “if it can be done, it should be done.”
The preservation ethic considers nature special in itself. Some preservationists have
an almost religious outlook regarding nature. They believe that nature is beautiful place to
live in and it should be maintained for feeding, breeding, enjoyment and peace. On the other
hand scientific outlook argue that the human species depends on and has much to learn
from nature. Rare and endangered species and ecosystems, as well as the more common
ones, must be preserved because of their known or assumed long-range, practical utility.
The third environmental ethic is referred to as the conservation ethic, It recognizes
the desirability of decent living standards, but it works towards a balance of resource use
and resource availability.
Economic growth and resource exploitation are attitudes shared by developing
societies. As a society, we continue to consume natural resources as if the supplies were
never ending. All of this is reflected in our increasingly unstable relationship with the
environment, which grows out of our tendency to take from the “common good” without
regard for the future.
Global Environmental Ethics
This new sense of urgency and common cause about the environment is leading to
unprecedented cooperation in some areas. Ecological degradation in any nation almost
inevitably impinges on the quality of life in others. For years, acid rain has been a major
irritant in relations between the United States and Canada.
Conclusion
Will the nations of the world be able to put aside their political differences to work
towards a global environmental course of action? Out of that international conference was
born the U.N. Environment Programme a separate department of the United Nations that
deals with environmental issues. Through organizations such as this nations can work
together to solve common environmental problems. Deep ecologists, on the other hand, see
humankind itself as the main problem. They believe that the earth is a complex organism
with its own needs, metabolism; and immune system and that humankind’s relationship
with the earth is increasingly parasitic. In the book Deep Ecology: Living Nature. As If
Nature Mattered, proponents Bill Devall and George Sessions, clearly state their principles:
(1) Humans have no right to reduce the richness and diversity of life except to satisfy vital
needs: (2) the quality of human life and culture is compatible with a substantial decrease
in the human population; and (3) the flourishing of non-human life requires such a decrease.
To secure for current and future generations a safe and healthy environment, a sound
and prosperous economy should aim at:
1. Ensure that citizens today and tomorrow have the clean air water, and land essential
to sustaining human health and the environment.
2. Protect and enhance, the quality of water resources and promote the wise and
efficient use of water.
3. Maintain and enhance the health and diversity of the wildlife and planets.
4. Develop an environmentally literate society.
Climate Change
Introduction
The recent interest in global warming and sustainable development has become a
global talk. The most important global environmental topics as chosen by a panel of about
12 world experts were as follows: human population growth, bio-diversity and conservation,
climate change, forest decline, hazardous wastes, land degradation, human pathogens, urban
environment, work environment and resource depletion. Man is as closely related to nature
as he is to himself, because he is a part of it. An outright dependence on nature has been
a striking feature of man’s progress through the centuries of his struggle.
Climate has from the very beginning regulated man in practically every aspect of life
and has played a very important role in the development of civilizations all around the
world. Man’s impact on climate began 5000 to 9000 years ago, as he was able to alter the
environment by burning and felling forest and tilling the earth. The most extensive change
wrought by man prior to our own times was the gradual conversion of most of the temperate
forest zone to crops that is an artificial steppe or savanna. Thus until the industrial revolution
and probably until the present century, man had little effect on the climate except on a very
local scale.
Presently global warming has emerged as one of the most important environmental
issues ever to confront humanity. This concern arises from the fact that our everyday
activities may be leading to changes in the earth’s atmosphere that have the potential: to
significantly alter the planet’s heat and radiation balance, and thereby lead to a warmer
climate in the next century and thereafter. International efforts to address this problem
have been on for the last decade, with the Earth Summit at Rio in 1992 as an important
launching point and the Conference of Parties in Buenos Aires. In 1998 as the most recent
step. Although India as a developing country does not have any commitments or
responsibilities at present for reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon
dioxide (CO2) that lead to global warming, pressure is increasing on India and other large,
rapidly developing countries such as China and Brazil to adopt a more pro-active role.
What is Climate Change?
Climate change is a newcomer to the international political and environmental agenda,
having emerged as a major policy issue only in the late 1980s and thereafter. It has emerged
since the 19th century that CO2 in the atmosphere is a ‘greenhouse gas’, that is, its presence
in the atmosphere helps to retain the incoming heat energy from the sun, thereby increasing
the earth’s surface temperature. Of course, CO2 is only one of several such greenhouse gases
in the atmosphere. Others include methane, nitrous oxide and water vapour. However, CO2
is the most important greenhouse gas that is being affected by human activities. CO2 is
generated by a multitude of processes. Since the Industrial Revolution, when our usage of
fossil fuels increased dramatically, the contribution of CO2 from human activities has grown
large enough to constitute a significant perturbation of the natural carbon cycle.
The concentration of CO
2 in the Earth’s atmosphere was about 280 parts per million by
volume (ppmv) in 1750, before the Industrial Revolution began. By 1994 it was 358 ppmv
and rising by about 1.5 ppnw per year. If emissions continue at the 1994 rate, the
concentration will be around 500 ppmv, nearly double the pre-industrial level, by the end
of the 21st century.
Rising Concentrations
The effect is that the atmosphere retains more of the Sun’s heat, warming the Earth’s
surface. While the pattern of future warming is very much open to debate, it is indisputable
that the surface of the Earth has warmed, on average, 0.3 to 0.6 °C since the late 19th
century when reliable temperature measurements began. Under the existing scenarios of
economic growth and development leading to greenhouse gas emissions, on a worldwide
average, temperatures would rise by 1 to 3.5 °C by the year 2100, and global mean sea level
by about 15 to 95 cm. It is likely that changes of this magnitude and rapidity could pose
severe problems for many natural and managed ecosystems. Indeed, for many low-lying and
deltaic areas and small islands, a sea level rise of one meter could threaten complete Joss
of land and extinction of habitation.
Extreme Weather Events
In addition, most of the ill effects of climate change are linked to extreme weather
events, such as hot or cold spells of temperature, or wet or dry spells of rainfall, or cyclones
and floods. Predictions of the nature and distributions of such events in a changed climate
are even more uncertain- to the extent that virtually no authoritative predictions exist at
all. While there are costs as well as benefits associated with climate change, the scientific
consensus is clearly that the overall effects are likely to pose a significant burden on the
global community. Unlike many other environmental issues, such as local air or water
pollution, or even stratospheric ozone depletion caused by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), global
warming poses special challenges due to the spatial and temporal extent of the problem
covering the globe and with decades to centuries time scales.
Analysis and assessment of just what steps needed to be taken to limit greenhouse gas
emissions. This process resulted in the negotiation’ of a protocol, the final details of which
were completed at the third meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Framework
Convention held December 1-12, 1997, in Kyoto, Japan. The Kyoto Protocol to the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change commits industrialized nations to specific,
legally binding emission reduction targets for six greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane,
nitrous oxide, hydro fluorocarbons, per-fluorinated compounds and sulphur hex fluoride.
First, although India does not currently have any obligations under the Convention to
reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. It is important for us to develop a clear understanding
of our emission inventory. We also need to document and analyze our efforts in areas such
as renewable energy, wasteland development and a forestation - all of which contribute
towards either reducing CO2 emissions or increasing CO2 removal from the atmosphere.
Considering that these efforts may often be undertaken for a variety of reasons not directly
related to global warming, but yet has benefits as far as climate change is concerned, we
may be able to leverage such efforts in the international context. The Research community
could contribute substantially in this regard. We need to significantly improve our ability
to plan and adapt to extreme events such as floods, droughts, cyclones and other meteorological
hazards. Any robustness that we build into the system in this regard will always stand us
in good stead no matter what climate change actually transpires.
Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect
In the late 1900’s researchers realized that the world may be getting warmer. The last
two decades of the 1900’s witnessed some warm and cool years. However, not enough
evidences were available to support the theory of global warming. But this a well-known fact
that accumulation of several green house gases can lead to a rise in temperature (global
warming). If a global warming phenomenon sets in this would result in major changes in
world’s climate. The increase in temperature might lead melting of snow on poles, which