Environmental sustainability is making decisions and taking actions in the interest of protecting the natural world, preserving the capability of the environment to support human life and ensuring that humans use the environment in a way that does not harm the environment. It also questions how economic development affects our environment vice versa.
Environmentally unsustainable activities (long term damage) include:
Damaging rainforests and woodlands through logging
Damaging land through mining
Polluting and over-fishing oceans, rivers and lakes
Polluting the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels
Damaging prime agricultural land through use of unsustainable farming practices
In a recent study by Standard Charted Bank measuring long-term sustainability of 31 countries, South Africa came in last. In addition, South Africa is one of the world's top 20 greenhouse gas emitters as of 2006.
This is mainly due to mining in the country. The heavy reliance on coal mines to supply 80% of the energy in South Africa causes pollution and allows toxic chemicals to leech into the surrounding land and water bodies. Poor spatial planning of human settlements, sanitation and waste management systems, storm water management, and fall in life expectancy in the past few years have also contributed to South Africa’s low long-term sustainability and high greenhouse gas emission.
Relationship between economic development and environmental sustainability (Comparisons and trade-offs)
Economic development is highly dependent on the natural resources for food and energy production, which inputs to manufacturing, and to absorbing wastes and pollutants. Thus, there is a high dependency on farming. However, South Africa is not rich in agriculture resources; ...
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... in 1995 showed that native plants and micro-organisms grow naturally in hostile mine environments and how they can be propagated to potentially rehabilitate TSFs and polluted soils. The programme focused on effectiveness of different types of vegetation in groundwater and soil remediation.
Around 80 plant species have been assessed in tailings experiments; almost 60 tree species are being assessed in woodlands trials on seepage from TSFs; and approximately 200 plant species will be used out of the almost 600 species found to grow naturally on the reef outcrops, polluted soils and tailings.
The final phase of research (2009-2012) will look at how phytoremediation plants might be able to produce materials such as precious wood, fibres, chemicals, essential oils, dyes, gums, and recoverable minerals and metals for secondary industries, and thus help local communities.
China is becoming one of the increasingly crucial environmental concerns of heavy metal contamination on agricultural land. Heavy metal contamination happens when water resources are short and wastewater is then applied to plants causing major health risks to environmental quality and food production. Many scientists have been exploring solutions of this environmental problem and some research say that mycorrhizae have made a positive outcome in fighting the heavy metals and toxins in the soil. Heggo,A. (1990) studied the mechanism of mycorrhizae and heavy metals and resulted that mycorrhizae fungi may filter excessive metals in the soil. Another study showed that mycorrhizae enhanced tolerance of plants infected with toxic soils. Scientists are still studying to find out ways how mycorrhizae fungi improve these plants and resistance from heavy metals. However, metal and toxin uptake might be also impacted from the soils condition. Mycorrhizae symbiosis are well familiar for their enhancement of phosphorus uptake. This nutritional benefit is questioned to account for the plants tolerance of heavy metals and toxins in the soil. The way that heavy metals and toxins affect the ecosystem is the life of organisms such as plants don’t grow in a healthy manner causing toxic plants where animals and humans can
Holmes, Garnett, Bureau of Plant Industry United States, and Bureau of Chemistry and Soils United States. Soil Survey of The Yuma Area, Arizona-California. N.p.: Govt. print. off., 1905
Singer, Michael J., and Donald N. Munns, 1996, Soils: An Introduction, Third Edition: Upper Saddle River, Prentice Hall, 480 p.
Sustainable development includes both the issues of environment and society and tries to strike the balance between the human being and the environment. Sustainable development means the integration of social, economic and environmental factors into planning, implementation and decision-making so as to ensure that development serves present and future generations;
uring 2008 South Africa generated approximately 430 Metric tons of CO2 (Boden et al., 2011), thereby warranting South Africa’s commitment to the significant reductions in GHG emissions through international agreements. The possibility of CO2 sequestration through mineral carbonation of material (e.g. mine waste) is becoming more attractive (Hietkamp et al., 2004). A number of potentially suitable industrial wastes are extensively produced in South Africa, (e.g mine waste), and studies for mineral carbonation thereof have been conducted, (Meyer and Vogeli et al., 2014, pp. 45-51). But to date the contribution and mitigation of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions by the Cement industry has not been addressed. The South African construction industry contributes between 80 and 90% of total infrastructure spending within the South African Development Community (SADC). Growth in the construction industry directly effects the cement industry and by 2009 production capacity increased by 24% to 17.5 million ton cement produced locally for the given year.
“Sustainability means transforming our ways of living to maximize the chances that environmental and social conditions will indefinitely support human security, well-being and health.” ( McMichael et al., 2003).
There has been a vast advancement in the industrial development. The development of plastic has been a boon to the modern era. The development and advancement in the modern technology has played significant role in the various stages of the modernization. Although the introduction to plastics has been a significant step in the industrialization, the excessive use of the plastic products has affected environmental sustainability. Proper planning is very essential to implement the sustainability actively. There are many steps taken by various businesses to minimize the harm the plastics can do to the environment by reduce, reuse and recycle. One of the recent examples of planning to strengthen sustainability is by Walmart Inc. It has taken initiative
The protection of the worlds topsoil is vital to us. The soil is still the major medium for plant and crop growth and our basic resource for land use and development. Imagine our world without soil! A barren land with almost no plant growth and constant dustbowls to block out our sunlight. Erosion would destroy our mountain ranges. Our lakes, rivers and oceans would be clogged with sediments. Like any of our worlds problems, we must educate people about the problems and risks and how the depletion of topsoil affects our everyday needs. (Kirby, 1997)
Sustainability is the quality of not being harmful to the environment of depending on natural resources and there by supporting long term ecological balance.
Although capitalism has undoubtedly brought with it huge economic benefits, they have come at a price and it has become evident that the planet can not sustain the current methods of pursuing economic growth. With the onset of climate change, swelling population rates and our non-renewable resources running out the only solution is for us to look for ways to develop in a sustainable way. As we can see from this graph there is a direct correlation between economic prosperity and CO2 emissions. Seeing as the the most economically prosperous nations are the main culprits behind the destruction of the environment, it is my opinion that the onus now rests with them to lead the way toward a sustainable future.
Gazzale, L (2007), retrieved January 22, 2007 from University of Phoenix, Main MBA501 week five environmental scanning thread
In understanding sustainability, every human being plays an important role. Sustainability can be defined as how human beings depend on the environment for various needs while ensuring that what the environment is offering them, would not be depleted so that the future generation can also benefit. Sustainability is best simplified as everything that the human population needs from the environment so as to maintain their survival (ABC-CLIO, 2012). The dependence can be either direct or indirectly, depending on the relationship between man and nature. In such instances, sustainability helps in ensuring that man and nature coexist in harmony while social and economic needs are achieved so as
Phytoextraction is the uptake and storage of pollutants in the plants stem or leaves. Some plants, called hyperaccumulators, draw pollutants through the roots. After the pollutants accumulate in the stem and leaves the plants are harvested. Then plants can be either burned or sold. Even if the plants cannot be used, incineration and disposal of the plants is still cheaper than traditional remediation methods. As a comparison, it is estimated a site containing 5000 tons of contaminated soil will produce only 20-30 tons of ash (Black, 1995). This method is particularly useful when remediating metals. Some metals are also being recycled from the ash.
1. Gilbert M Masters, “Introduction to Environmental Engineering and Science”, Pearson Education Pvt. Ltd., Second Edition, 2004.
in accessible frame, micronutrients, microflora, compounds, and development controllers [C. A. Edwards( 2004), A. A. Ansari( 2011) ]. Along these lines, the vermicompost when connected or supplemented in soil enhances trim development and yield [J. G. Zaller et al.(2007) , M. Jayakumar et al.(2011)]. The night crawlers, the drivers of many procedures in soil, aside from the known vermicomposting, are likewise found to improve phytoextraction of metals from sullied soils [R. K. Sinha et al.(2010)]. Moreover, vermicompost, delivered by the joint activity of earthworm and microorganisms, contains supplements in accessible shape with expanded microbial action [M. Aira et al (2007)] . The utilization of biofertilizers is these days known to draw out a few advantages to soil: solubilization of basic minerals, get hold of supplements, offering micronutrients in more utilizable shape for plants, and partaking in organic nitrogen obsession. Microorganisms of this gathering are for the most part known as plant development