Environmental Change Part 1 Flashcards
What is an externality?
A consequence of economic activity, the cost of which is not reflected in the market price
What is an example of an externality and what is being externalised?
Textiles, which are cheaper to produce in Indonesia because waste is dumped directly into rivers, externalising the cost to others in the form of lost food and water sources
What does the private profit and public loss refer to?
When a profit-making enterprise reduces the function of ecosystem services in order to make money
What is an example of private profit public loss?
When people suffer from poor air quality because a small number of factories create pollution
What is a response or policy?
How non-government or government organisations do something as a result of environmental change
Why are we interested in studying environmental change?
Because the changes occurring in our world are threatening the ability of humans to survive on the planet
What are some examples of environmental change?
Air pollution from climate change, food shortages linked to declining populations of pollutants and physical pollution in rivers
What do human activities cause change to?
Chemical, physical and biological variables
What do these changes in turn affect?
The functioning of our ecosystem services
What are ecosystem services?
The outputs of ecosystem processes that enable human life to exist now and into the future
What are the four ecosystem services?
Sources, sinks, services and spirituality
What are sources also known as?
Provisioning functions
What are sinks also known as?
Regulatory functions
What are services also known as?
Supporting functions
What is spirituality also known as?
Cultural functions
