Environment and

Sustainability
Environmental Problems

Biodiversity Depletion
1. Habitat Destruction
2. Habitat degradation
Air pollution
1. Global Climate Change
2. Stratospheric ozone depletion
3. Urban air pollution
4. Outdoor pollutants
5. Indoor pollutants
 Causes of Environmental
Problems
 Population growth
 Wasteful and unsustainable resource use
 Poverty
 Failure to include environmental costs of goods and
services in market prices
 Too little knowledge of how nature works
 People with different environmental worldviews often
disagree about the seriousness of environmental
problems and what we should do about them
Percentage of Worlds
Harmful Results of Poverty
 Solutions

Understand our environment

Practice sustainability
What is Environment
 Environment is every thing that effects
living organisms
 Ecology is biological science that
studies relationship between living
organisms and their environment
What is Sustainability
 In ecology, sustainability is how biological
systems remain diverse and productive.
Long – lived and healthy wetlands and
forests are examples of sustainable
biological systems.
 Inmore general terms, sustainability is the
endurance of systems and processes
Resources

Perpetual
Renewable Resources
Non - Renewable Resources
Perpetual Resources

Renewed continuously on human

scale.
1. Solar Energy
2. Wind Energy
Renewable Resources
 SustainedYield: the highest rate at which a
renewable resource can be used without
reducing its suppl.
Example : Over – farming the land leading
soil erosion, clear - cutting forests.
Environmental Degradation: when we exceed
the natural replacement rate of the
resource.
Example: groundwater depletion, water
pollution
Non – Renewable Resources

Exist only in fixed quantities on

earth
Metallic resources
Non – metallic resources
Energy Resources
Saving non – renewable
resources
Reduce: Use less resource
Reuse: to use the resource more
than once to conserve
Recycle: collecting resource,
processing it into new products
What is an Environmentally
Sustainable Society
 Ourlives and economies depend on energy
from the sun and natural resources and
natural services provided by the earth.
 Living
sustainably means living off earth’s
natural income without depleting or
degrading the natural capital that supplies
it.
How an environmentally sustainable
society grows economically

Societies can become more

environmentally sustainable
through economic development
dedicated to improving the quality
of life for everyone without
degrading the earth’s life support
systems
Four Scientific principles of
Sustainability
Nature has sustained itself for
billions of year by using solar
energy, biodiversity, population,
regulation and nutrient cycling –
lesson from nature that we can
apply to our lifestyles and
economies
THANK YOU!

PREPARED BY:
CRISEL A. EDNAVE
BSED – Biological Science