Sustainability and the Environment

Question 1

What is ecology?

Answer 1

the household i.e. concerned with the relationships between things, a systems approach to the natural and social worlds

Question 2

What is the WCED’s definition of sustainability?

Answer 2

“Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”

Question 3

What is strong sustainability?

Answer 3

assumes the need to maintains consumption within the parameters of existing resources

Question 4

What is weak sustainability?

Answer 4

assumes the capacity to always find resource substitutes

Question 5

How are social factors bound into sustainability? (Empacher and Wehling, 2002)

Answer 5

1. Provision of basic needs for all members of society
2. Maintenance and development of social resources
3. Equal opportunities with regard to access to resources
4. Participation in social decision processes

Question 6

What are humans reliant on?

Answer 6

Nature

Question 7

What framework is the economy within?

Answer 7

Societal

Question 8

What is the relationship between Humans and the Environment?

Answer 8

Humans have capacity to adapt environment to needs rather than having to adapt to environment

Question 9

What is an ecological footprint? Wackernagel & Rees (1996)

Answer 9

“An accounting tool to help estimate resource consumption and waste assimilation requirements of defined population or economy in terms of a corresponding land area”

Question 10

What can the ecological footprint be used for?

Answer 10

Considering relative resource consumption

Question 11

What is an advantage of the ecological footprint?

Answer 11

Enables us to understand ecological inequality as aspect of social inequality

Question 12

What is the ecological contradiction of global sociology?

Answer 12

there are simply not sufficient resources for everyone to live the lives of the global bourgeoisie