Week 1 assignment

Ch.1 Sec.1.6 Q1.6.1

A) What the essential aspects of Sustainability are as defined in the Brunt land Report?
The report uses the terms sustainable development which emphasizes the connections among social
equity, economic productivity, and environmental quality. The essential need of the worlds poor. There
are three essential aspects that sustainability seeks to integrate: economic, environmental, and social
(including sociopolitical). Economic interests define the framework for making decisions. Environmental
aspects recognize the diversity and the interdependence within living systems, the goods and services
produced by the worlds ecosystem, and the impacts of human waste. Socio-political refers to
interactions between institutions firms and people, functions expressive of human values, aspirations
and well-being, ethical issues, and decision-making that depends upon collective action.

Ch.10 10.2.6 Q10.2.2
B) Take on everyday consumer item running shoes or a cup of coffee and briefly chart its course
through the global consumer economy from the production of its materials to its disposal. What
are its environmental impact and how might they be reduced?
One everyday consumer item is paper, lots of paper is being produced as we speak and used constantly.
Paper is




Sec. 10.3.6 Q 10.3.3
C) What is the Green Revolution? What was its success and what problems has it created?
The Green Revolution was a period when productivity of global agriculture increased drastically as a
result of new advances. Through this report, the engineering of new crops varieties, the massive
applications of petroleum such as based chemical fertilizer to supplement nitrogen. It increased staple
crop production therefore reducing the suffering of malnutrition worldwide in the last two decades of
the 20
th
century. This revolution made it possible to grow more crops on the same amount of land
therefore reducing production costs and cheaper prices for food in the market. But with greatness come
loss, the green Revolution also had its issues, the use of chemical fertilizer and synthetic herbicides and
pesticides dramatically increased pollution and erosions.


Sec. 10.4.4 Q 10.4.2
D) How is a bio-complex view of the relations between human and natural systems central to
sustainability in both theory and practice?
The bio-complex view of the relations between human and natural systems is central to
sustainability in many ways. I like how in the book it compares how similar the human and natural
systems relate to each other. For example, like the human body, a modern city is an energy-dependent
system involving inputs and outputs. Every day, millions of tons of natural resources (raw materials,
consumer goods, food, water, energy) are pumped into the worlds cities, which turn them out in the
form of waste (landfill, effluent, carbon emissions, etc.). A good metaphor is how they compare the
human bodys metabolism to modern cities .Unlike the human body, however, the metabolism of
modern cities is not a closed and self-sustaining system. Cities are consuming resources at a rate that
would require a planet one and a half times the size of Earth to sustain, and are ejecting wastes into the
land, water, and air that are further degrading the planets ability to renew its vital reserves. Another
good metaphor is the environmental footprint which has become a popular means for imagining
sufficiency and excess in our consumption of resources. The footprint metaphor is useful because it
provides us an image measurement of both our own consumption volume and the environmental
impact of the goods and services we use. By making sure to consume less, and to utilize only those
goods and services with a responsibly low footprint, we in turn reduce our own footprint on the planet.

Sec. 10.8.5 Q10.8.1
E) What does it mean to say that global environmental problems such as climate change and ocean
acidification represents a tragedy of the commons? how are global solutions to be tied to
local transitions toward a sustainable society?

Global environmental problems such as climate change and ocean acidification
represents a tragedy of the commons because these problems demonstrate that at the core
of sustainability , the problem of persuading individuals or even individual nations to take
responsibility for resources that have few or no boundaries at which the global economy allows
to be extracted from faraway countries. The international community determines the degree of
decline of the planets natural capital this century by settling the problem of shared
accountability for a rapidly depleting global commons and balancing the competing objectives of
economic development and environmental sustainability. But if there is no international
commitment to protect the global resource commons, then the gains in economic prosperity,
poverty alleviation and public health in developing worlds , thrived by international agencies
will quickly be lost.