Environmental Cycling, Environmental Impacts, sustainability Flashcards
Define an Environment
The complex of physical, chemical, and biotic factors (such as climate, soil, and living things) that act upon an organism or an ecological community and ultimately determine its form and survival.
The concept of environment includes all the biotic and abiotic variables or descriptors in which an organism lives and with which it interacts during its existence.
Biotic vs abiotic environment
The biotic environment consists of the living component such as terrestrial (e.g. vegetation and fauna) and aquatic biomasses (e.g. freshwater and marine algae).
• The abiotic environment consists of the non-living component of the environment (e.g. nutrients, oxygen dissolved in water, micro-elements present in soils, etc.)
Anthropocene
The biologist Eugene Stoermer coined the informal term Anthropocene in the early 1980s, referring to the impact of human activities on the planet.
In 2000, together with the Nobel Prize for Chemistry Paul Crutzen, the term was officially proposed to indicate a new “geological age” characterized by the influence of human activities on the biosphere.
Anthropic action
The anthropic action acts on all the forms of life housed in the biosphere,
thus interfering with a complex system in dynamic equilibrium with the other
components of the Earth.
Human activities have substantially changed both the quantity of elements in circulation and the mode of presence and diffusion of these elements in ecosystems. CONSEQUENCES: higher than average levels of certain elements can be toxic to organisms or cause environmental changes.
EFFECTS AT THE LOCAL LEVEL: Eutrophication
EFFECTS AT THE REGIONAL LEVEL: Acid rain
EFFECTS AT THE GLOBAL LEVEL: Global climate change
Environmental impact
The term environmental impact indicates the modifications of individual components of the environment (atmosphere, water environment, soil and subsoil, vegetation, flora, fauna, ecosystems, landscape, health) or of an environmental system as a whole caused by human activities and in particular from the realization and / or exercise of a specific work.
The impact can be negative if the environmental conditions have worsened
due to the increase in environmental pressures (introduction of substances
into the environment or withdrawal of resources) or positive if these pressures decrease and there is an improvement in the reference environmental quality parameters.
Types of environmental impacts
Negative / Positive Direct / Indirect Continue / Discontinue Immediate / Postposed over time Reversible / Irreversible
Sustainable development
Sustainable development “is the way in which development is defined that should satisfy the needs of those who live on the planet today, without jeopardizing the needs of future generations”.
IT MUST BE CONSIDERED THAT:
• Resources are limited, especially fossil fuels, and they are not enough.
• The alternative, biomass, does not regenerate at the same speed with which it is taken
The concept of sustainable development stems from the recognition that the problems of environmental policy cannot be tackled separately from economic and social development, but that a unitary approach is instead necessary.
Sustainable development requires a long-term transformation of the structure of our economic and social system with the aim of lowering the consumption of resources and the environment to a sustainable and lasting level, ensuring economic efficiency and social cohesion.
Sustainable development vs growth
Sustainable development is frequently confused with sustainable growth.
• to grow means to increase in size, mainly by adding matter;
• to develop means to expand or realize the potential to bring oneself to a better condition.
Hence, growth is a quantitative increase, while development is qualitative improvement.
Rule of output
One of the rules of sustainability.
The waste emissions from a project should be contained within the
assimilative capacity of the local environment to absorb, without
unacceptable degradation of its future capacity to absorb waste or other
important services.
Rule of input
One of the rules of sustainability:
Renewable resources: the collection rates of renewable input resources
should remain within the regenerative capacity of the natural system that generates them.
Non-renewable resources: the consumption rates of non-renewable resource inputs should be equal to the rate at which renewable substitutes are developed by human invention and investments. Part of the proceeds from the use of non-renewable resources should be allocated to the search for sustainable substitutes.
Different meanings of sustainability
HUMAN: Maintenance of human capital understood as the well-being of
individuals, rather than between individuals or companies.
SOCIAL: Maintenance of the share capital, understood as investments
and services that constitute the basic structure of the company.
ECONOMIC: Maintenance of capital through the consumption of added
value (interest) rather than capital.
ENVIRONMENTAL: Maintenance of human well-being through the protection of the
natural capital made up of resources such as water, land, air,
minerals and ecosystems.
The importance of biodiversity
Biodiversity: The variability between living organisms within a single species (genetic diversity), between different species (abundance and taxonomic diversity) and between ecosystems.
Biodiversity increases the stability, functionality, efficiency and production of
ecosystems:
▪ Structural: number of species and their relative importance
▪ Functional: role played by the species
▪ Redundancy: more species perform the same function (therefore the impact of a loss of biodiversity is less)
Damage caused by the loss of biodiversity
▪ Ecological: involves a degradation of the functionality of ecosystems, productivity, resistance and resilience to change, resistance to invasions. The Planet has lost 600,000 of its 10 million species since the 1950s (Myers, 1999)
▪ Cultural: human knowledge and traditions linked to biodiversity are lost;
▪ Economic: reduces genetic resources with their potential economic exploitation.
Effects of insane consumption
➢ greenhouse effect
➢ hole in the ozone layer
➢ acid rain, deforestation
➢ extinction of animal and plant species (biodiversity)
➢ pollution and many diseases of the human species
Which depend on the energy-consuming methods that we use to
produce resources and on our consumption of goods and services.
