Sustainability: The Path Forward

Sustainability: The Path Forward

• Sustainability focuses on balancing three key areas: environmental, social, and economic.

Environmental Sustainability

• Preserving natural ecosystems, biodiversity, and resources.

Social Sustainability

• Ensuring equity, access to resources, and quality of life for all.

Economic Sustainability

• Developing economies that benefit people while minimizing environmental harm.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

• In 2015, the UN adopted 17 SDGs for the 2030 agenda.
• SDG goals address global challenges such as poverty, inequality, climate change, and environmental degradation.
• Some key goals related to environmental sustainability are: climate action, life below water, life on land, and affordable and clean energy.

Strategies for Achieving Sustainability

• Transitioning to renewable energy sources like solar, wind, and hydro.
• Reducing reliance on chemical inputs in agriculture.
• Conserving water resources, and promoting biodiversity in farming.

Circular Economy

• Minimizing waste by designing products for reuse, recycling, and longevity.

Conservation and Restoration

• Protecting endangered ecosystems and restoring degraded landscapes.

Education and Awareness

• Raising environmental awareness and empowering individuals to take action.

Individual and Collective Action

• Both individuals and societies have roles in promoting sustainability.
• Small changes in personal behavior, like reducing waste and conserving energy, can contribute to larger systemic changes.

The Environment

• The total of our surroundings (living and non-living things).
• Includes animals, plants, forests, fungi, and non-living aspects like continents, oceans, clouds, soil, rocks.
• Our built environment: buildings, human-created living spaces.

Humans and the Environment

• Humans completely depend on the environment for survival.
• Enriched lives come from increased wealth, health, mobility, and leisure time.
• But natural systems have been degraded due to pollution, erosion, and species extinction.
• Environmental changes threaten long-term human health and survival.

Environmental Science

• The study of how the natural world works and how the environment affects humans (and vice versa).

Natural Resources

• Substances and energy sources needed for survival.

Renewable Resources

• Continuously available resources like sunlight, wind, wave energy, water, timber, soil.
• Renew over short periods.

Non-renewable Resources

• Resources that can be depleted like oil, coal, minerals.

Why So Many Humans?

• Agricultural revolution and stable food supplies

Industrial Revolution

• Urbanized society powered by fossil fuels, sanitation, medicines, food availability, population growth)

Thomas Malthus

• Population growth must be controlled, otherwise it outstrips food production.

Neo-Malthusians

• Population growth has disastrous effects.

Resource Consumption Impacts

• Paul and Anne Ehrlich's The Population Bomb (1968) - Agricultural advancements only delayed widespread crises.
• Garrett Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons" (1968) - Unregulated exploitation of resources leads to depletion.

This quiz explores the key components of sustainability, including environmental, social, and economic aspects. It also delves into the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) established by the UN and the strategies necessary for achieving a sustainable future. Test your knowledge on how these areas interconnect and impact global challenges.