Transcript Slide 1

Earth’s Atmosphere: The atmosphere refers to the protective blanket of
gases which are surrounding the earth. It is able to sustain life on earth and
saves it from the hostile outer sphere. The atmosphere is a source of
oxygen and carbon dioxide. The atmosphere around the earth forms an
insulating blanket around the earth. Without which the temperature at the
equator would rise to 120 degree centigrade during the day and drop to as
low as -50 degree centigrade during the night. Without air there would be
no clouds, no lightning, no wind, no rain, no snow and no fire.
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Sustainable Development:
Environmentalists have defined sustainability as the balance between the economic growth
and the environmental preservation, but in a broader sense it means to meet the needs of the
present generation without compromising on the needs of the future generations. In this
regard the development path can only be sustainable if the overall capital assets remains
constant or rises over time.
The Green Economy:
It is a mechanism where we recognise the investing opportunities in almost all the sectors
with greater care and protection to the natural capital; i.e the eco-system. It has got greater
importance in recent years due to rapid change in the climatic conditions and its impact on the
living organism. This mechanism has widely recognised the global economy driven by human
hunger for energy conservation through an unsustainable process which has dramatically
increased human exposure to climatic shifts (severe earth quack, catastrophes, violent
tornados and floods).
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Green Growth:
Green growth means investing more in green opportunities and sustaining economic growth
with the aversion of widespread environmental degradation. Or in other words even more
accurately green growth means the creation of economic growth through green activities with
a win-win solution to achieve both environmental and social goals. It is a process of
decoupling economic growth from environmental impact.
Green Jobs:
It is the process of keeping people in employment that has a positive impact on the
environment or in other words it is work in agriculture, manufacturing, research and
development, administrative and services sectors that contribute more to environmental
quality and preservation.
De-Growth:
It has been argued that 60 percent of the world eco-system has been degraded and global
carbon emission has risen by 40 percent since 1990. Therefore the world has to focus more on
a de-growth model, which means to reject all those economic activities that are harming the
environment.
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Beyond GDP:
Though GDP is an important indicator of economic growth and an income measure of
development, however this indicator is not as comprehensive as the development economists
are concerned. The beyond GDP concept was championed by the European Union, Club of
Rome and the OECD in 2007 in order to realise the need for an extension of national accounts
to environmental and social issues to establish a solid information base for the decision
making process.
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Measuring Sustainability:
One of the common concept of measuring sustainability is through sustainable national
income. The concept of sustainable national income was introduced by Jeremy Warford and
David Pearce. According to Pearce and Jeremy there should be a proper measurement of the
overall capital assets including manufactured capital (machine, factories, roads etc), as well
as human capital (knowledge, experience and skills) and natural capital (the life supporting
system and the assimilative capacity of the universe).
In this regard sustainable national income or sustainable net national income is
NNP* = GNP – Dm – Dn
Where NNP* is the sustainable national income, Dm is the depreciation of manufactured
capital assets and Dn is the depreciation of the environmental capital.
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Results of Environmental Degradation:
Human hunger for energy conservation has affected the environment up to a greater extent,
where both the North and South are involved in. Countries usually accelerate economic
growth at the expense of the environment and its impact has been very serious. Some of these
consequences are mentioned here as under.
The Greenhouse Effect:
The atmosphere of the earth can be compared to the glass of a green house, allowing the
sun’s visible rays to enter and warm the land, plants, water and air. As radiation from the sun
enter Earth’s atmosphere a portion of it is reflected back into the space or absorbed directly
by the atmosphere. About half of the radiant energy reaching earth from the sun because of
its shorter wavelength can pass through the atmosphere to the Earth’s surface. But the longer
waves of heat that radiate back towards space are absorbed and radiated by water vapours,
carbon dioxide and other gases and hence the atmosphere warms up by absorbing the heat.
This process is called the greenhouse effect and the gases which contribute more towards the
greenhouse effect are mainly carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and chlorinated
fluorinated carbons (CFC). These gases are also called the greenhouse gases.
Humans have disrupted the natural carbon cycle by burning fossil fuels for energy production
and by clearing forests to food and house growing population. Both the industrial and
agricultural emissions raise atmospheric carbon by about seven billion metric tons a year and
roughly half is absorbed by the oceans and vegetations.
Global Warming:
Greenhouse gases are building up in the atmosphere in such a way as to trap the Earth heat
and gradually raising the average temperature of the planet. If this continues, we can expect
some devastating shifts in climate within next fifty years. An intensification of the
greenhouse effect over the next half century could produce average world temperature from
1.5 to 4.5 degree Celsius higher than that is today. That would induce the melting of the
polar icecap and increase in the world’s sea level from 10 inches to 5 feet. Here fertile
regions would be scorched into deserts, hurricane and tornadoes might become more violent,
forests would decline and wild-life would have to migrate or perish.
Ozone Depletion:
Ozone is an allotropic form of oxygen in which there are three atoms in each molecule, it is a
gas and occur naturally in the atmosphere of “Ozone Layer”. This ozone layer protects us
from high energy ultraviolet radiation of the sun which will otherwise kill living things. Man
made chemicals are eating the atmosphere’s ozone layer, a crucial shield without which the
ultraviolet rays would cause widespread skin cancer and damage to much needed crops. The
existence of a vast ozone hole was noted over the Antarctica in 1985 of the size of the United
States and the depth of Mount Everest. This hole develops every year in September and
October and exposing human beings to ultraviolet rays, the cause of many serious skin
diseases. The main culprit for the depletion of ozone layer is the CFC used to perform dozens
of important functions and used aerosol, refrigerators and airconditioners.
Acid Rain:
Acid rain means in common language the presence of excessive acids in rain water. It has
been one of the effects of air pollution. When we burn fossil fuels for energy, they produce
sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide gases which are highly soluble in water. During rain
these oxides react in high quantities of water vapour of the atmosphere to form acids like
sulphuric acid, sulphurous acid nitric acid and nitrous acid which then return to the earth’s
surface with rain water or may remain in the atmosphere in clouds. It has a number of adverse
implications like increasing acidity in the soil, destroys forests and crops, reducing
agricultural productivity and threatening humans. It contaminates the breathing air, drinking
water and food.