ENV

Course instructor: Dr. Kamal Uddin Ahmed

Name: Sarowar Jahan

ID: 1725377676
Subject Code: ENV-501
North South University
Human populations

 What is more important: the quality of life of a person alive today or the
quality of life of future generations?

Answer: The environment affects the quality of life people enjoy. Environmental conditions
affect human health and well-being, both directly, for instance through pollution, and
indirectly, for instance through adverse effects on ecosystems, biodiversity or even natural
disasters and industrial accidents. People increasingly value their rights to have access to
environmental resources and services. These range from basics, such as clean water, to more
elaborate amenities, such as open-air recreational spaces and noise-free space in which to
live and work. People take such environmental factors into account in their choices, for
instance, when deciding where to live. They may decide to pay more for a house in a pleasant
environment, or live out of town to enjoy a good environment, though this involves higher
commuting expenses. Environmental factors indirectly affect other quality of life aspects,
including economic prosperity and inequality. For instance, they directly affect the price of
housing and other property.

An increasing number of people believe that we owe it to future generations of people not to
undermine their opportunities for a truly human life. When asked how it can be that we have
moral duties to those who will be living in the future, the plain answer is that they
are people. Persons have human worth and human rights, and actions of ours that undermine
their opportunities for fulfilling lives, wrong them, – whether they live today or tomorrow.

I believe this common sense view is correct. However, it is faced with a number of
philosophical, or conceptual, problems, – futurity problems they are called. Futurity problems
stem from primarily two facts about future people: (a) that they do not yet exist, and (b) that
their existence depends upon what we do now. In particular the second fact generates a hard
philosophical problem.

Our duties to future people will of course depend upon how we can affect them by what we
do now. This we can do in three interconnected areas of policy: by ruining the environment,
by changing the size and composition of the population, and through policies relating to
various aspects of culture.

We have today become increasingly aware that our destruction of the environment
eventually has serious impacts upon the quality of life in the future. Moral duties to future
people therefore contribute to the justification of conservationist environmental policies.
Exactly what natural resources we owe it to the future to conserve, is a further issue.

But clearly we cannot attribute to all future generations a right to a fair share of non-
renewable resources, like oil. First, just as we cannot determine the fair share of a cake unless
we know how many there are to share it, we cannot determine the share of the natural
resources that we may justly spend, unless we know how many people there will be in the
future. Since we do not know that number, we cannot determine the content of such a right.
And secondly, even if the notion of a fair share had made sense in this context, the number of
future people will be vast, to say the least, unless a catastrophe, like a total nuclear war,
wipes mankind off the surface of the planet. The share allotted each will be extremely small:
next to nothing. These two considerations show that future people cannot in general have a
right to non-renewable resources. Still, we owe it to those in the near future, whose economy
and technology we may assume will resemble ours, to save something, and even to channel a
part of our surplus into the research for replacements.

Sustainability
 What is more important: Abundant resource today- as much as we want and
can obtain- or the persistence of these resources for future generations?

Answer: Must be persistence of these resources for future generation. When natural
resources are managed for sustainable development, managers recognize that they cannot
manage all components, processes, and interactions of the ecosystems. Rather, they are
manipulating particular aspects of the ecosystems, with a view to sustaining desirable
characteristics and by taking into account, as far as possible, inputs, processes, interactions,
and outputs of the ecosystems. For example, they can find out what ecosystem composition
and structure is needed for producing wanted commodities, wildlife conservation, erosion
protection, water quality, or recreation and try to intervene accordingly, keeping the
principles for managing natural resources for sustainable development in mind. Therefore I
prefer to think in terms of ecosystem-based management, rather of ecosystem management.
An important advantage of this formulation is that it can be used with all types of natural
resource management issues: ecosystem based land- use management, ecosystem based
management of forest resources, ecosystem based management of water resources, and
ecosystem based wildlife management.
So, its important the persistence of these resources for future generation.

Global perspective:
 What is more important: the quality of your local environment or the quality of
the global environment- the environment of the entire planet?

Answer: The most important thing is that the quality of global environment – the
environment of the entire planet.
 Clean air, water, plants, and food supplies are essential for our personal health and
wellbeing. The relationship between the environment and humanity is one of
interdependence—each affects the other. Therefore, just as our actions and choices affect
the environment, the health of the planet influences our own personal health and wellbeing,
as well as our communities, families, and economies. The environment affects human health
Humans have an innate connection to nature. Research indicates that just being around
greenery can boost mood and lower blood pressure, as well as improve attention and the
ability to reflect upon a problem.

In 2013, scientists reported that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had reached its
highest peak in at least three million years. This alarming number, due to human fossil fuel
emissions, can cause climate change.

The Center for Climate Change and Energy Solutions says that human activity:

 Has increased the temperature of the earth 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit in the last century
 Will increase the temperature up to another 11 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100

The effects of this temperature increase will raise the sea level, increase coastal storms,
erode beaches, harm wildlife, and cause draughts and flooding. The World Health
Organization estimates that even as early as 2004, there were 140,000 deaths annually
caused by climate change. These causes ranged from malnutrition after crop production was
affected by global warming, to fatal heat stroke, to increased prevalence of diseases like
malaria.

Urban world:

 What is more important: Human creativity and innovation, including arts,

humanities, or science, or the persistence of certain endangered species? Must
this always be a trade-off or are there ways to have both?

Answer: Does nature know best, so that we never have to ask what environmental goal we
should seek, or do we need knowledge about our environment, so that we can make the best
judgments given available information--When natural resources are managed for sustainable
development, managers recognize that they cannot manage all components, processes, and
interactions of the ecosystems. Rather, they are manipulating particular aspects of the
ecosystems, with a view to sustaining desirable characteristics and by takinginto account, as
far as possible, inputs, processes, interactions, and outputs of the ecosystems. For example,
they can find out what ecosystem composition and structure is needed for producing wanted
commodities, wildlife conservation, erosion protection, water quality, or recreation and try
to intervene accordingly, keeping the principles for managing natural resources for
sustainable development in mind (section 3.2). Therefore I prefer to think in terms of
ecosystem-based management, rather of ecosystem management. An important advantage
of this formulation is that it can be used with all types of natural resource management
issues: ecosystem based land- use management, ecosystem based management of forest
resources, ecosystem based management of water resources, ecosystem based wildlife
management, ecosystem based wetland management, and ecosystem based watershed
management, and so on.-Ecosystem-based management can be seen as a systematic process,
based on good judgment and sound science, and aiming, for a defined area, at the
sustainable use of natural resources, by increasing the ecological sensitivity and content of
management practices, and by integrating economic, ecological, social, and technological
considerations, over both the short and long terms, from the site to the landscape-scale
ecosystem.-Ecosystem-based management will help people to use natural resources and
simultaneously to maintain productivity for the benefit of future generations, to protect
particularly valuable ecosystems, to restore degraded habitat, or to rehabilitate altered
ecosystems.-Despite the argument in favor of the term ecosystem-based management, we
should not forget that the main issue for sustainable development is how natural resources
are managed, and not the terms we use. The next section describes briefly the main
instruments of ecosystem-based management and some aspects of its implementation.

So, summary is that both ways to trade off Human creativity and innovation, including arts,
humanities, or science, or the persistence of certain endangered species by the ecofriendly
way.

People and nature:

 If people have altered the environment for much of the time our species has
been on earth, what then is “natural”?

Answer: Determining Earth’s carrying capacity for people and levels of sustainable harvests of
resources is difficult but crucial if we are to plan effectively to meet our needs in the future.
Estimates of Earth’s carrying capacity for people range from 2.5 to 40 billion, but about 15
billion is the upper limit with today’s technology. The differences in capacity have to do with
the quality of life projected for people – the poorer the quality of life, the more people can be
packed onto the Earth.

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