Ana - Environmental Awareness P2

Question 1

What is the great acceleration? Opportunities/Challenges?

Answer 1

Followed on from the industrial revolution, population increases as people get healthier and richer.
Opportunities:
fossil fuels = large amount of energy
fertilisers and pesticides = the green revolution, increased crops and yields
chemicals and medicines = increased life-expectancy
Challenges;
oil and energy dependency
increased waste production
ecological consequences of chemical spread
air emissions and water pollution stress

Question 2

What are ecosystem services?

Answer 2

A number of regenerative, cycling processes taking place in ecosystems and that mitigate the impact of human resources and sustain it with vital resources. Mitigation comes with buffering and remediating some of the negative impacts of pollution, e.g water bodies such as lakes and rivers, and the associated river banks, sediments and vegetation are often able to treat, retain or absorb a certain level of anthropogenic pollution, such as heavy metals from mining activities or nutrients from intensive agriculture. These services provide us with food, shelter, energy, biodiversity, and cultural/social resources.
By recognising them as services/natural capital and not just our environment, we recognise they have a value that is vital to our well-being and we can quantify how much we depend on them, use them and what would be the consequences if we destroy them. This provides a framework for the protection and sometimes
even the restoration of ecosystems.

Question 3

What is environmental management all about?

Answer 3

Balancing r1, r2 and r3. The rates of: at which we
produce waste, the rate at which we are able to treat this waste and convert it into resources and the
rate at which we consume our resources.

Question 4

What is the anthropocene?

Answer 4

The age of man, a new name for the current geological epoch defined by our own massive impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems.

Question 5

What is biodiversity?

Answer 5

The variety of all form of life on Earth, including the variability within and between species and within and between ecosystems.

Question 6

What is the biosphere?

Answer 6

The sphere of all land, air and water on the planet in which all life is found; the global ecological system integrating all living beings and their relationships.

Question 7

What is ecosystem?

Answer 7

All the organisms in a given area, along with the physical environment with which they interact.

Question 8

Ecosystem services quick def

Answer 8

The benefits people obtain from ecosystems e.g provision of clean water, regulation of climate, pollination of crops, fulfilment of people’s cultural needs.

Question 9

Planetary boundaries quick def

Answer 9

A concept developed by researchers in 2009 to describe the nine safe biophysical boundaries outside which the Earth system cannot be pushed without disastrous consequences.

Question 10

What is resilience?

Answer 10

The capacity of a system - be it a forest, city or economy - to deal with change and continue to develop; withstanding shocks and disturbances (such as climate change or financial crises) and using such events to catalyse renewal and innovation.

Question 11

What is social innovation?

Answer 11

An innovative product, process or programme that profoundly changes the basic routines, resources and authority flow of beliefs of any social system.

Question 12

What are the 9 planetary boundaries?

Answer 12

• Phosphorus flow - Climate change (surpassed) - Ocean acidity - Freshwater consumption - Ozone depletion - Atmospheric aerosol load (not yet measured) - Chemical pollution (not yet measured as difficult to quantify) - Agricultural land use - Biodiversity lost (surpassed) - Nitrogen flow (surpassed)

Question 13

Nitrogen flow in depth example

Answer 13

Haber-Bosch process (1910) is the driving force behind the ‘Green Revolution’. We could overcome nutrient limitation in farming and mimic the natural pathways for nitrogen fixation occurring by microbial communities in plant roots and synthetically produce ammonia from nitrogen gas. 450 mil tonnes of nitrogen fertiliser produced per year. Ammonia + pesticides have quadrupled the productivity of land and agriculture, but excess nitrogen availability puts a dramatic burden on the natural nitrogen cycle as the rate of production of ammonia is several orders of magnitude higher than the rate of nitrification (NH3 to NO3) and denitrification (NO3 back to N2). Accumulation of ammonia and nitrates is toxic and provides nutrients that can lead to eutrophication of aquatic bodies. Requires wastewater treatment processes but these use up a lot of energy.

Question 14

Ocean acidification in depth example

Answer 14

Approx 40% of anthropogenic CO2 dissolves in the oceans. CO2 reacts with water and forms carbonic acid -> led to decrease of 0.1 in pH and 30% increase in H+ ions with damaging consequences on all sorts of aquatic organisms and microbial processes that have enzymatic processes that rely on a very specific pH range. Possible solution is to sequester carbon using carbon capture and utilisation or storage.

Question 15

Brundtland report our common future sustainable development definition

Answer 15

Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs

Question 16

Sustainability actors

Answer 16

• UN and UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme)
• NGOs
• IPCC
• Research
• OECD (organisation for economic co-operation and development)
• Citizens
• Governments
• Business and Industry

Question 17

Minamata

Answer 17

Was caused by the release of methyl mercury in the industrial wastewater from the Chisso corporations’s chemical factory (1932 - 1968)

Question 18

Silent Spring

Answer 18

Account of large scale impact of pesticides and insecticides in particular, on the environment. DTT use was widespread by governments, industries, and communities the combat mosquitos to control diseases such as malaria. Had severe consequences particularly on bird populations with cancerous effects and the thinning of egg shells leading to a drop in bird populations.

Question 19

The precautionary principle

Answer 19

Need to prove lack of harmful impacts in order to use a certain technology or implement a certain action instead of:
-lack of scientific evidence of harmful impacts allows the use of a certain technology or the implementation of a certain action

Question 20

The role of innovation

Answer 20

• Evolutionary/incremental innovation (continuous or dynamic evolutionary innovation): brought about by many incremental advances in technology or processes
• Revolutionary innovations (discontinuous or disruptive): disruptive and new e.g self-driving cars = change in transportation paradigm
  Extended:
  Cars are driven just 4% of the time, automobile is 2nd most expensive asset that people will ever buy. Vehicles cruising the street looking for parking spots account for 30% of city traffic. 90% reduction of vehicles would reduce the overall emissions by 15.9%.

-In addition to technological innovation, there is also increasingly a trend of considering organisational and systems innovation, where a benefit is achieved by changing the way an organization runs, the way parts of a system are integrated etc. One specific example of this is the smart energy networks and grids or the way google revolutionised its company structure and the working environment of its employees to stimulate creativity and well being.