Environmental sustainability principles and practices

Environmental Sustainability

Reduction of biodiversity, global warming and water and air pollution are the major threats out planet faces today. As long as the human race will depend on the natural resources provided by this planet, the entire world will have to combine efforts to help environment sustainability. Countries fighting poverty that depend on their natural resources to a level that makes them essential for their development, are especially affected by any negative effects on the environment.

As emphasized in the Global Monitoring Report 2008, "Achieving environmental sustainability has both a national and a global character. Some actions, such as reducing particulate matter in urban areas, will have largely local effects. Other actions, such as mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, will affect global sustainability. Other activities, such as reducing deforestation, can have impacts that are both local and global"(Worldbank, 2008). Thus, the targets the United Nations Development Programme is intending to reach through Millennium Development Goal 7 must be focused both on "integrating the principles of environmental sustainability" (UNDP, 2006) at a national level and on international cooperation.

The preoccupation for environmental issues dates as far back as the late nineteenth century. In the United States, the first organism that dealt with the conservation of natural resources was the Sierra Club established in 1892. "In its first conservation campaign, Club leads effort to defeat a proposed reduction in the boundaries of Yosemite National Park" (Sierra Club, 2008).

At the beginning of the twentieth century, there were international conventions aimed at the conservation of the international waters as well as the border waters and the marine life (Long, 200).

The industrialization and economic growth that started in the second half of the twentieth century made the efforts toward the conservation of natural resources and the reduction of pollution mandatory (Long, 2000).

The Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) shares a portion of its work with those institutions and organizations specialized in tackling the issues of environment. Air and water pollution were the first and most obvious factors that triggered the alarm in the industrially advanced countries, claiming their toll of deaths and illnesses.

Today's list of participants in the Global Environment Facility counts 177 countries. The Mission of the GEF is to create the conditions for international cooperation to provide the funding necessary "to achieve agreed global environmental benefits in the areas of biological diversity, climate change, international waters, and ozone layer depletion" (GEF). The organism is also addressing "land degradation issues, primarily desertification and deforestation" (GEF). The projects of GEF are managed by principally by the United Nations Environment Programme, the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank. The U.S. Department of State's Fact Sheet from August 2002 indicated the U.S. were "the largest contributor to the GEF" (U.S. Department of State).

The Bureau of Oceans, Environment and Science (OES) in the U.S. Department of State points out that there is a yearly los of forest area of 22 million acres all over the world (U.S. Department of State), moreover water and air pollution have no borders. The health, economic state and security of the Americans are, according to the OES also depending on the environmental problems faced at a national and international level (idem).

The relatively new concept of Environmental Diplomacy is explained by the OES as "negotiating effective science-based global treaties and promoting their enforcement, developing international initiatives with key countries to harness market forces to the cause of sustainable development, and creating a foreign policy framework in which innovative public-private partnerships involving U.S. interests can flourish in developed and developing countries worldwide" (U.S. Department of State).

The offices inside the Bureau of OES are developing the policies of the U.S. addressing the air pollution, hazardous wastes and pollutants of all sorts based on the agreements made at "the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, the Basel Convention on Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes, the Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent, and the UN ECE Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution Agreement" (idem). Another issue managed by the offices of the OES are those dealing with the conservation and sustainability development of the ecologically and economically important ecosystems worldwide (idem).

UNDP's Biodiversity for Development Programme helps over 140 countries to use their biodiversity in a sustainable manner and maintain it while using the natural resources. According to the UNDP, biodiversity is responsible for our very survival. The ecosystems provide the conditions for the "generation of soils and maintenance of soil quality" (idem), "maintenance of air quality" (idem), maintenance of water quality (idem), "pest control" (idem), "Detoxification and decomposition of wastes" (idem), "plant reproduction" (idem), "climate stabilization" (idem), "prevention and mitigation of natural disasters" (idem).

In terms of industrial emissions, the largest countries in the world: China, the U.S., India and Russia are the champions of pollution, with China having an incontestable lead ahead of the rest (Worldbank). The general monitoring report of the World Bank is also indicating that one of the most important factors contributing to the increase in the mortality rate in the developing countries is the indoor pollution. Given the fact that around a quarter of the entire population has no access to electricity, the use of fire wood to provide the necessary means for living in a household contributes not only to the mortality rate, but also to the deforestation degree. This make the progress in access to electricity imperative and the developed countries have the responsibility to contribute to the whole developing system in order to provide the sustainability of the environment at a macro level.