ENST100 Final Study Guide PDF

October 15 Freshwater and Marine Resources Identify the drivers of fisheries overexploitation Demand, growing population, technology (lack of feedback), incomplete knowledge, lack of regulation of the open seas, illegal, unreported fishing Define and discuss the role of aquaculture, marine p...

October 15 Freshwater and Marine Resources Identify the drivers of fisheries overexploitation Demand, growing population, technology (lack of feedback), incomplete knowledge, lack of regulation of the open seas, illegal, unreported fishing Define and discuss the role of aquaculture, marine protected areas, and community-based fisheries in conserving fish populations Aquaculture - Aquaculture is the farming of aquatic organisms in both coastal and inland areas involving interventions in the rearing process to enhance reproduction. It is used for shrimps, salmon mussels, etc. Marine protected areas - Areas designated and effectively managed to protect marine ecosystems. Catalina island. Community based fisheries - Community-based fisheries work by empowering local communities to manage marine resources through collective decision-making, sustainable fishing practices, and habitat protection. Actually working with the local govt, together make decisions, identify trends Identify the contributions of Garrett Hardin and Elinor Ostrom to our understanding of how to manage common resources Garrett Hardin - Published tragedy of the commons paper. Showed how individuals acting in their self-interest can overexploit shared resources, like fisheries, leading to depletion and collapse. His work highlighted the need for collective management or external regulation to sustainably manage common resources. Elinor Ostrom - Challenged the inevitability of the tragedy of the commons. Elinor Ostrom famously argued that "there are no panaceas" for managing common-pool resources, emphasizing that solutions must be tailored to the specific ecological, cultural, and institutional contexts of each case. Application of Ostrom’s design principles to fisheries in the South Pacific Principles- 1. Boundaries- resource has clearly defined boundaries 2. Collaborative management - local users participate in the design and modification of rules governing the resources 3. Monitoring and enforcement - local users are responsible for monitoring and enforcing. Benefits of improved resource productivity outweigh costs.  4. Shared responsibility - local users have a shared interests and share benefits from the resources Application to the South Pacific - 1. In the South Pacific, customary marine tenure systems are widely practiced. These systems establish clear boundaries around fishing areas, such as lagoons or reefs, often controlled by specific local communities. These defined boundaries help prevent overfishing by limiting access to outsiders and ensure sustainable use within the community. 2. Many South Pacific nations implement co-management strategies where local fishing communities collaborate with governments and NGOs to design and modify fishing rules. For example, seasonal bans, gear restrictions, or no-take zones are agreed upon based on traditional ecological knowledge and scientific insights, blending local customs with formal governance. 3. Local fishers and community leaders often play a central role in monitoring fishing activities. Traditional practices, such as village councils, and modern tools, like community surveillance programs, ensure compliance with established rules. The cost of enforcement is minimized as communities take responsibility, and the benefits of maintaining fish stocks outweigh these costs. 4. Communities in the South Pacific typically view fisheries as a shared resource that supports collective well-being. Revenue from fisheries or increased fish stocks from marine protected areas (MPAs) benefits the entire community, reinforcing shared interests and cooperation in resource management. Discuss the benefits of small-scale & community-based fisheries Food security - contribute significantly to local food supplies Employment - offers jobs to the local community supporting the economy and creating jobs like fishers traders etc Sustainability- traditional low impact fishing techniques that respect the environment and reduce overfishing and habitat destruction List the contribution of marine fisheries to the UN SDGs No poverty, zero hunger, good health, life below water, gender equality October 17 Conservation of Endangered Species Introduce and describe the Endangered Species Act Passed by Congress in 1973. Purpose is to recover imperiled species and the ecosystems upon which they depend.“Endangered” means a species is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range. “Threatened” means a species is likely to become endangered within the foreseeable future. Including listing criteria, extinction prevention and recovery actions, and constraints on success Criteria The present or threatened destruction, modification, or curtailment of its habitat or range; 2. Overutilization for commercial, recreational, scientific, or educational purposes; 3. Disease or predation; invasive species 4. Inadequacy of existing regulatory mechanisms; 5. Other natural or manmade factors affect its survival. Actions 1. Extinction prevention - ESA makes it unlawful for a person to take (kill/capture an animal). Regulations around habitat and animal harm. 2. Recovery actions - Develop a recovery plan that aims to recover the population, restore habitat, engineered or assisted solutions. Aiming for the three ‘R’s: Resiliency, Redundancy and Representation. Constraints on success - Uneven distribution of funding. From 1998 to 2012, over 80 percent of all government spending went to support 5 percent of all listed species. Less than 2% of threatened and endangered species have been delisted. Delisting can happen through either recovery or extinction. Describe endangered species conservation as a “knapsack” problem. There are insufficient funds to fund all species recovery plans. Small group + whole-of-class discussion on prioritizing endangered species for recovery funding  Describe current and cutting-edge approaches to resource allocation for endangered species Conservation Decision support tool to allocate resources. Optimizes species based on benefit, probability of success, cost, decision weights. October 22 Environmental Justice Highlight the history of the Environmental Justice Movement Environmental justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. This goal will be achieved when everyone enjoys: 1. The same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards, and 2. Equal access to the decision- making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work. Differentiate between distributive, procedural and corrective justice Distributive - No group should bear a disproportionate burden of negative environmental consequences Procedural - People have an opportunity to participate in decisions about activities that affect their environment/health, and their concerns are heard. Corrective - Protects the right of victims of environmental injustice to receive full compensation and reparations for damages as well as quality health care Discuss and provide examples as to why climate change is considered an EJ issue Climate change is considered an environmental justice (EJ) issue because its impacts disproportionately affect marginalized and low-income communities, who often contribute the least to greenhouse gas emissions yet bear the brunt of its consequences. For instance, Indigenous communities in the Arctic are facing rapid loss of their traditional lands and livelihoods due to melting permafrost and ice. Highlight examples of current EJ issues Air pollution, flint water crisis, pm2.5 concentration Introduce the EJAtlas, find an example of a current EJ conflict The Environmental Justice Atlas (EJAtlas) is an online platform that documents environmental justice conflicts worldwide, highlighting struggles against environmental degradation and its impacts on marginalized communities. It serves as a resource for activists, researchers, and policymakers to understand and address the systemic inequities tied to environmental exploitation. A current example listed on the EJAtlas is the Zambia Black Mountain mining conflict. This dispute involves artisanal miners and local residents opposing corporate mining operations that pollute their environment and threaten livelihoods. The toxic waste from mining activities has contaminated local water sources, harming both community health and agriculture. This conflict underscores how resource extraction disproportionately affects vulnerable populations and their access to clean water and safe living conditions. Class Example 1: Clean water access in the San Joaquin Valley, California Distributive (in)Justice: contaminated drinking water and water shortages affect low-income and minority communities (primarily Hispanic & Latino) in the San Joaquin Valley (agriculture is primary source of contaminants) Procedural Justice: limited examples in this case, but communities and community-based groups are mobilizing to demand stronger regulations on agricultural chemicals, advocating for sustainable groundwater use, participating in groundwater monitoring Corrective Justice: limited examples in this case, but the EPA is providing grants to communities working on improving water safety and access October 24 & 29 Agriculture and Food Systems, Part I Define food security & UN SDG 2 Food security is the ability to obtain sufficient healthy food on a day to day basis. UN SDG2 is zero hunger which aims to end hunger and achieve food security maybe by ending malnutrition and increasing agricultural production. Identify and describe the social and environmental negatives (externalities) associated with modern food production. Social negatives: Food insecurity and hunger; food deserts - geographical areas that lack access to healthy food, usually low income, high unemployment areas.  Changes in farm size and number - Peaked in 1935, declined ever since. Smaller and fewer farms. This shift often pushes small farmers out of business, leading to the loss of rural jobs and weakening local communities. Larger farms also prioritize industrialized practices, which can harm the environment and reduce the connection between people Loss of crop and livestock diversity - The loss of crop and livestock diversity in modern farming makes communities more vulnerable to problems like pests, diseases, and climate change because there are fewer options to adapt. Growing the same crops or raising the same animals reduces food variety, increases the risk of failures, and harms small farmers who rely on traditional plants and animals. It also takes away important parts of culture and limits healthy food choices. Describe the causes and consequences of: Soil loss (erosion), soil degradation (salinization)- Caused by water erosion when layers of soil are washed away by runoff, and this runoff can deepen into gullies eroding the soil more. Sheet to channel to stream bank erosion. Wind can also cause soil erosion when you remove plants from land as wind removes the exposed soil particles, known as desertification. Leads to the loss of fertile topsoil, siltation of water bodies, release of stored carbon Water withdrawal (irrigation) - Agriculture uses large amounts of freshwater. Causes waterlogging, making plants die from lack of oxygen and excess water, causes salinization leaving soil crusty, nutrient and sediment pollution in aquatic systems Fertilizer use (cultural eutrophication) - Used to ensure plants get sufficient nutrients. Helps increase, almost double, crop yield. Excess fertilizer contaminates drinking water and can destabilize ecosystems because of excess nitrogen. The food system in the United States consumes about 16% of the total energy we use. Our foods require more energy to produce, process, and get to market than they yield when we eat them. Each hectare of corn produced in the U.S. consumes the equivalent of 800 liters of oil (5 barrels of oil) Pesticide use (resistance, insect ‘Armageddon’, loss of honeybees): Biological pests can destroy up to half of harvested crops in some areas, leading modern agriculture to rely heavily on toxic pesticides. However, indiscriminate pesticide use has caused issues like killing non-target species, creating new pests, and increasing pesticide resistance among pests. Genetic engineering (with a caveat): Genetic engineering involves inserting a gene from one organism into another to create genetically modified organisms (GMOs), often called "transgenic" organisms. Concerns about GMOs include corporate control, potential escape into the wild, unknown health and environmental impacts, and the need to apply the precautionary principle. Loss of terrestrial habitat: forest, grassland, wetland October 29 Agriculture and Food Systems, Part II  What do we want from our food system? Define Food Sovereignty and differentiate from Food Security Food sovereignty is the right of people to access healthy, culturally appropriate food produced sustainably and to shape their own food systems. It prioritizes the needs of food producers and consumers over market and corporate interests.Food sovereignty focuses on people's right to control their food systems, emphasizing local, sustainable, and culturally appropriate production that prioritizes the needs of producers and consumers over corporations and markets. Define regenerative agriculture and differentiate between organic agriculture, permaculture, and agroecology. Regenerative agriculture restores soil health, biodiversity, and ecosystems while capturing carbon to combat climate change, reverses climate change. Organic agriculture avoids synthetic inputs but doesn’t focus on ecosystem restoration. Permaculture mimics natural ecosystems, emphasizing self-sufficiency and closed systems. Agroecology integrates ecological science and traditional practices, focusing on sustainability and social equity. Identify strategies and approaches for transforming the food system, with real world examples. Goals: Reduce food waste, Shift diets away from meat (esp. from ruminant animals & pork), Increase productivity and yields, Improved soil management, Limit cropland expansion, Increase fish supply (aquaculture), Reduce GHG emissions Identify and describe technological (non-transformative) solutions October 31 Geology & Mineral Resources Differentiate between minerals, metals and rocks Describe the three types of rocks and the processes that drive the rock cycle Define and provide a real-world example of ‘conflict metals’ Discuss current efforts to regulate conflict metals/3TG List the three types or techniques of mining Describe and provide examples of the environmental effects of mining Describe and provide real-world examples of geologic hazards: earthquakes, tsunamis & volcanoes (+ Sasquatch!)