Essay On Environmental Sustainability

What is Environmental Sustainability?

Environmental sustainability is the development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It can also be defined as the maintenance of the factors and practices that contribute to the quality of environment on a term basis.

How does Economic Development affect Environmental Sustainability?

There is a trade off between Economic Development & Environmental Sustainability. For example, for urbanisation, a country has to cut down on vegetation to make way for roads, factories etc. Growing economic activity (production and consumption) requires larger inputs of energy and material, and generates larger quantities of waste by-products. This results in increased extraction of natural resources, accumulation of waste and increased concentration of pollutants. These will therefore overwhelm the carrying capacity of the biosphere and result in the degradation of environmental quality and a decline in human welfare, despite rising incomes.

What are the effects of Economic Development on the environment?

Due to high consumption of resources for Economic Development, China's environment has been suffering from pollution and environmental degradation. From recent case studies, we can easily see the negative effects Economic Development has on Environmental Sustainability. Only a mere 11% of China's forests have healthy ecological functioning and 43% percent of China's surface water is too polluted to use. 57% of urban groundwater, which is the primary source of drinking water for hundreds of millions of people, is also polluted.

Due to increasing amount of water pollution, China ranks 110th among the world’s poorest c...

... middle of paper ...

...ricter and more numerous.

However, considering the huge environmental problems in the country and the expected economic growth, urbanisation and energy consumption in the next few decades, these measures may seem insufficient.

What are the implications of not dealing with environmental sustainability?

The problem of pollution and health issues would worsen and coal supply will run out quicker.

Coal is the main source of the country's sulfur dioxide emissions. It provides around 70% of China's energy needs. With higher productivity from businesses, more energy is required, hence more coal will be used. China uses almost half of the global consumption of coal, and the burning of coal also contributes to quarter of a million premature deaths in China. With a higher consumption of coal, the death rate, due to the sulfur dioxide emissions from coal, is set to increase