State Sovereignty vs. Environmental Sustainability

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State Sovereignty vs. Environmental Sustainability

With humanities growing knowledge of skills and technology, we have been able to

manipulate nature to meet the growing needs of humans. By doing this humans have

fished, gathered species, hunted for food, fuel, and shelter. Humans have domesticated

plants and animals, cut forests, used anything from fire to technological advancements to

alter habitats, and have significantly changes chemical hydrological and geochemical

cycles. As a result humans do not reflect what life on earth is, but changes to landscape

and sea reflect human culture. As species die, humans lose their food, medicines and

industrial resources and products that supply today for tomorrow. For humans to think

that they can be the last species standing and still survive is being ignorant of the facts .

This problem is of global concern and must be resolved with the cooperation of states,

NGO’s and the scientific community. Counties must realize that their sovereignty comes

second to the sustainable survival of not only the human race, but all of earth’s

encompassing life.

In the early 1400’s, human population began to grow substantially. The increase

in population added stress to earth’s resources and ecosystem which consistently increased

as humans developed new technologies. This period of technological enlightenment began

in the mid to late 1700’s with the industrial revolution, which was also the time when

humans moved out of self sustained villages and farms into complex interdependent cities.

Intensive industrialism started with the invention of the steam engine and ignited a mass

consumption of earth’s resources with developed countries consuming a majority of

resou...

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... be involved. Since the 1960’s and 70’s a large number of regimes,

institutions, agreements and policies for the governance of environmental politics have

been formed through the cooperation of hundreds of governments and international non

governmental organizations. The challenge for these regimes and non governmental

organizations is to promote the growth of sustainable living, preserving biological diversity

equally in plants and animals, repairing existing damage to the climate, and preventing

further damage in the future.

Bibliography:

Baylis J. Smith S. The Globalization of World Politics. An Introduction to International

Relations. Oxford University Press. 1999 p 115

Mackenzie F. Our Changing Planet. An Introduction to Earth System Science and

Global Environmental Change. Prentice Hall Inc. NJ. 1995,1998. pp 419-438

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