HENDERSON, NEVADA
Sustainability
We love our community and call it our home. But with all the progress and development happening around us, until when can we call this community our home? Will we fall prey to the lure of progress and development until all our resources are exhausted? Will we continuously allow businesses to construct buildings and houses on our land? When do we say stop and enough? More importantly, as ordinary citizens, what is our role in all this?
This is where we lay the groundwork for sustainability. Right now, we are enjoying the benefits of progress and development. Businesses are coming in and creating revenues. We have adequate housing, facilities, and amenities that cater to the needs of our community members. We can bask in the beauty of nature all around us. But the big question is, until when can we continue to enjoy these benefits? Until when can we allow progress and development to influence how we use our land? Because eventually, there will come a time when it will be too much for our natural resources to carry the weight of all these and if worse comes to worst, our natural resources may give in and yield from all the pressure. That is why it is important to lay out the groundwork for sustainability. So that we can continue to call Henderson our home.
…show more content…
A home is where a person is nurtured and cared for. And when a place feels like home, you want to protect and sustain it so that it can withstand any elements and continue to provide all that is good for all those who dwell in it. Since Henderson is a place that we call home, let us do our best to ensure its sustainability. Everyone should do his or her part in making this happen. Government officials should draft policies to protect our environment, businesses and ordinary citizens should comply. The policies should serve the interest of the environment and the common
Land use in the district of North Vancouver has been a very sensitive issue for many years. In this area, population growth has been substantial, especially because of the area's popular outdoor recreation opportunities. It is this relationship between population pressure and outdoor 'green zones'1 that is at the heart of the conflict in North Vancouver district. Residents are very passionate about, and emotionally attached to, the natural mountainous surroundings. Thus, when development plans were slated for Mountain Forest and Cove Forest, residents did not want development to take place in 'their forests.' The critical question is, how to incorporate influxes of people into a limited amount of urban area while keeping current residents satisfied?
“In contrast, agricultural farmland and open space are maintained, only thirty cents in services are for every tax dollar received, a gain of seventy. cents” (Morris 23). According to this information, urban sprawl is costing taxpayers in areas of. new development upwards of ninety-five cents on every dollar. This is money that could be used.
Brownfields are abandoned, idled, or under-used industrial and commercial sites where expansion or redevelopment is complicated by real, or perceived environmental contamination that can add cost, time, and uncertainty to the redevelopment process. Throughout the country there are an estimated 450,000 brownfields. These vacant properties exist mostly in cities, serving no practical purpose, and act as both eyesores and environmental as well as economic pitfalls. The inner cities, where most brownfields exist, were once the only choice developers had in deciding where to build industry. However, since the birth of environmental laws and regulation, the redevelopment of these properties has become a complicated and often very costly procedure. This procedure causes many businesses and corporations to look outside of the inner cities and urban areas for locations to grow and develop. This trend not only leaves the inner cities vacant and economically useless, but also leads to urban sprawl, a phenomenon that leads to the development of greenfields, or the pristine, undeveloped land outside the confines of massive urban areas.
The perception of the areas we live in, are of major importance to the well being of humans because the areas we choose to live in may very well affect our lifestyle. There are pros and cons to living anywhere in the United States and the most prominent factors are suburban and urban areas. Suburban areas contain more open land, and forests which are crucial factors in our environment, whereas urban areas contain more job opportunities and opportunities for investments, which result in higher payments. The factors associated with urbanization are buildings, factories, and huge amounts of pollution, whereas suburban areas contain more farms, plantations, and crops. Researchers are still debating whether urban
middle of paper ... ... There is constant concern about the environment, and whether man is attempting to overcome nature with its onslaught of buildings and roads. There may be cause for concern, but there is a balance point at which man can create harmony within. There is not going to be a ceasing of building, this in itself would be as unnatural as asking a bird to not build a nest.
However, based on an article I read by nextcity.org, there are three ways that we could approach to slow down its rapid rate. First, we need to make sure that “every stakeholder in the community has a place at the table before the process advances too far.” This means that developers and city residents should work and plan together from the start to make sure everyone’s goals and needs are met. Multiple meetings and gatherings should be mandatory to make sure that compromises can be made to any arguments on both sides. Next, people of the community need to “learn how the planning and development process works.”
The Earth’s environment is a incredibly complex and interconnected system. A system which, due to the demands of modern human civilization, is teetering on the edge. We have altered our environment both positively and negatively (but mostly negative) due to our need for resources and our modern lifestyle. Our carbon in the atmosphere is adding to the greenhouse effect, and the expansion of our towns and cities is fragmenting the systems around them. If no action is taken the world will be irreparably damaged.
The debate about whether the land should be developed or not are under two moral consideration: anthropocentrism and ecocentric or biocentric. People holding anthropocentrism thought the instrumental values of undeveloped land only insofar as they are used by human. Destruction of forests can provide the space for construction of more houses and availability of recreational opportunities. They support suburban development because developed lands can fulfill people’s needs and supply desired housing area. However, rural lands have great instrumental values and these value are strongly relative to the well-being of human society.
While understand this was all we could afford and that my mother worked hard to ensure that we would have a roof to sleep under, no one should feel marginalized or disconnected from a modest, comfortable lifestyle that is safe, secure, communal and aesthetically enriched. This is another one of my missions, to attend school to not only focus on these issues domestically but recognizing that this is an issue on an international scale as well. I am interested to witness the contrast of my hometown and Hong Kong and the steps our international counterparts have taken to have a sustainable, urban designed lifestyle. If we were to take the steps to improve the economic and social aspects of larger cities, such as finding alternative modes of transportation, reducing toxic waste, and decreasing dependency on cars, economic and social benefits would skyrocket which could regulate state economy and improve societal connections. There would be more funding for other areas, such as lower income areas, new programs and research for urban design.
Sustainability is a concept with a diverse array of meanings and definitions – a widely used glamorous, ambiguous, ambivalent and vague concept that is used by different stakeholder groups in various ways. Presumably to avoid noodling over a terminology or to avoid the confrontation with a definition, most widely the concept is broken down a planning process (c.f. e.g. Döring & Muraca, 2010). That is why most common sustainability is understood as sustainable development.1
Every day the world around us is changing ever so slightly in many different ways. Humans can affect the environment through our day to day lifestyle without even noticing the change. An ecological footprint is a measurement of how much a person uses the environment around them to live their life. This given measurement can help one to see their impact on the earth. It is an important tool to understand what actually a human does to change the habitat near them. My ecological footprint results gave me a perspective of how my daily life can impact the world I live in, as well as, how I as an individual can change my actions to make less waste on earth. It is also useful for each person to know their own ecological footprint since no one live
The environment today is not in a good condition, Climate change is evident, and oceans are getting polluted. Rainforrest's are decreasing in size due to deforestation and illegal logging. Animals are getting extinct due to the destruction of their habitats. Natural resources are being consumed at very large amounts, and get wasted. There are different ways these problems can be addressed, one option is environmental management. Environmental management focuses on conservation of natural resources, protection of habitats, and impact of humans on the environment. Conservation of natural resources is the smart use of the world's resources by humans, through this waste production is limited, and there will be less garbage in the world. By conserving
Sustainability simply defined to me as balancing act between the development of sustainability is necessary for both planet Earth and humans to survive. This is reinforced in the World Commission on Environment and Development report (1987) that sustainable development must meet the needs of the present without compromising the well-being of future generations”. The Earth Charter Organization widened the idea of sustainability to respect for a culture of peace, universal human rights, nature, and economic justice (What is sustainability?, n.d.).
There are lots of environmental issues going on globally. The earth faces problems such as pollution, global warming, waste disposal, and loss of biodiversity. These are just a small amount of issues out of the so many. These environmental problems pose an abundant amount of risk to the health of humans and animals. There needs to be a solution to all these problems and that is by informing others, so that way everyone can make the environment a better place.
The United Nations recently published a list of goals they hope to accomplish by 2030 called the Sustainable Development Goals. These goals will replace the Millennium Development Goals, which were set in 2000, when they expire at the end of 2015. Some of these goals include ending poverty, promoting gender equality, and improving water and sanitation conditions. Arguably, the most important goal is to “end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture” (in text citation- NY Times Article). Hunger was also an important goal on the MDG list, yet it was not fully accomplished (in text citation- Progress chart). The goals was to reduce hunger by half, and yet, the number of people who go to bed hungry