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Vision
Excellence in Emerging Technical Education through Research, Innovation, and Teamwork
Mission
Educate students professionally to face social challenges by providing a healthy learning
environment grounded well in emerging technologies, value based education , creativity, and
nurturing teamwork.
Goal
Our goal is to be a world class technical institution fostering innovation, leadership and
entrepreneurial spirit.
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Environmental Studies - Introduction
An Update on Major Environmental Issues, and an Introduction to
Environmental Science and Sustainability
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Definition : It deals with every aspect that affects a living organism.
It is essentially a Multidisciplinary approach that bring about an
appreciation of our natural world and human impact on its integrity.
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Objectives of EVS
Awareness
Knowledge
Attitude
Skill
Participation
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Importance of EVS
EVS enlighten us about the importance of protection and conservation of our environment.
EVS has become significant for the following reasons:
Environmental issues being of international importance.
Problems cropped in the wake of development.
Explosive increase in pollution.
Need for an alternative solution.
Need to save humanity from extinction.
Need for wise planning of development
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Benefits of EVS
Conservation of energy and fast depleting natural resources.
Increase in economic productivity.
Imparting knowledge about waste management, treatment and disposal.
Develop social responsibility towards environment protection.
Creating awareness to control population.
Inculcating attitude and values towards understanding interdependence of nature, man and work towards sustainable
development.
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Major Environmental Issues
• Ozone Layer Depletion
• Pollution
• Extinction
• Global Warming
• Resource Depletion
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Ozone Layer Depletion
Source: wikimedia 9
• Ozone is a gas in the stratosphere which converts the incoming UV radiation
from the sun into infrared rays by what is known as the ozone-oxygen
cycle.
• In the above diagram, the blue part is the “ozone hole” over the Antarctic. It is
the part of the stratosphere where the concentration of Ozone is very low.
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Ozone Layer Depletion- Solved!
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• It is a problem we have successfully solved by imposing a worldwide ban on
CFC and other Ozone Depleting substances via the Montreal Protocol (1987).
• The “Ozone hole” is expected to close by 2040.
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Trends of various
Ozone-depleting
gases like
HCFC,CFC,
Bromomethane,
carbon tetrachloride
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Source: wikimedia
• These are the trends of the ozone-depleting gases in the atmosphere. Only a
few gases like HCFCs are on the rise but are expected to be phased out by
2030. Other slight rises are due to weak regulation in East Asian countries and
are expected to go down as well as those countries become more developed
and impose regulations more stringently. Overall, Ozone hole issue has been
declared as resolved. The only reason one should discuss this problem now is
to understand how the entire planet came together to solve this very complex
problem. These lessons can be used to solve other, much pressing,
environmental issues.
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Major Environmental Issues
Ozone layer Depletion
Pollution
Extinction
Global Warming
Resource Depletion
Tragedy of the Commons
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Tragedy of the Commons
Source: NTU
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“Tragedy of the commons” is a term that was first used to explain how the
exploitation of common grazing lands by farmers in Great Britain and Ireland. It is a
situation where on a jointly owned resource like grazing land, river, air, roads etc.
(otherwise called commons), individuals acting independently based on their own
self interest will cause harm to the resource and to the benefit of all the users from
that resource. In the short run, the individuals acting on their self interest will
benefit by shifting the burden of maintenance of the commons on the other parties,
but eventually everyone will suffer from the degradation of that resource. Hence the
word tragedy is used.
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•The tragedy of the commons is a problem in economics that
occurs when individuals neglect the well-being of society in the
pursuit of personal gain.
•This leads to over-consumption and ultimately depletion of the
common resource, to everybody's detriment.
•For a tragedy of the commons to occur a resource must be
scarce, rivalrous in consumption, and non-excludable.
•Solutions to the tragedy of the commons include the imposition
of private property rights, government regulation, or the
development of a collective action arrangement. 18
Examples of Ground Water
Depletion
Tragedy of the
Commons
Overfishing
World’s marine fisheries catches
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Pauly D & Zeller D (2016)
Ground water is a tragedy of the commons issue because underground water is a
commons property. Individuals extract water from their bore wells but the
underground aquifer is common to all. If one extracts heavily, it affects the supply of
others. The graphic on the right shows this tragedy happening in India as of today.
Overfishing is commons problem because though fish stocks are a renewable resource,
they are common to all fisherman and are renewable only if they can breed in the same
numbers as they are being extracted. If some fishermen over extract fish, the other
fishermen have a lesser fish stock to fish, straining the overall population of fish. As a
result, each subsequent population of fish will be smaller than the previous causing a
“tragedy” for all. In the short run, some fishermen who exploit are benefited but in the
long run everyone suffers as their catch decreases. In the graph you can see the global
fishing catch declining, heralding the tragedy of this commons. 20
Solutions?
• Government Intervention?
• Privatization?
• Local Management?
• Is there a technological solution?
There is no definite solution
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Elinor Ostrom is the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics. She
won it for her work that showed for the first time that the local commons
can be successfully managed by locals without any regulation by
government or privatization. Till her work was seen, it was assumed that
only the latter two options existed for solving this problem.
[Link]
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NASA
Pollution
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[Link]
• Pollution is a serious problem in India. To give an example of how bad it is,
take the case of Air Pollution. On the left is a map of the United States PM 2.5
(considered one of the most serious pollutant for human respiratory health)
concentration in the atmosphere. US follows the WHO guidelines which says
that up to 10 µg/m3 is safe, after which it is can be detrimental. The scale in
the US map reflects this with 10 µg/m3 designated as green. The highest that
scale goes to is 20 µg/m3. If the PM2.5 goes to this level, they usually
announce health advisory and generally discourage people from going out of
their houses.
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[Link]
It is of no surprise then that we have one of the highest death rate related to
chronic respiratory issues. And of the 20 most polluted cities in the world, we
are home to 13. As shown in this article from New York Times.
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Extinction
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• Though we know extinction is happening, what is surprising is the rate at
which it is happening. It is so fast that scientists now think that the 6th mass
extinction has begun. In many instances, we are losing species faster than we
are discovering them.
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Courtesy: [Link]
Charles David Keeling
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• To understand this, it is important to look at the work of Charles David
Keeling. He was a geochemist who built the first instrument to take precise
measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere and took preliminary readings from
Mauna Loa in Hawaii. Before his work, the CO2 measurements in the
atmosphere varied quiet a bit and were wholly unreliable. Mauna Loa was
chosen as the first test site because it is away from the mainland US and as
winds come from the ocean to the mainland, the readings he would get would
not contaminated by local influence such as cars and industries. He would
truly get the average conc. of CO2 in the atmosphere.
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He took readings from 1957 to 1960. He also sent copies of his instruments to ice floe
station in the South Pole and high and low altitude aircrafts. The graph is the result of
his measurements. It has three major breakthroughs. First, that the CO2 conc. in the
atmosphere is not a constant. It varies according to season. In the spring and summer
seasons, trees grow leaves in the northern hemisphere which reduces the amount of
CO2 in the atmosphere. In fall and winter seasons, these trees shed leaves and also lose
their CO2, which causes a rise of CO2 in the atmosphere. Second breakthrough was
that if you were draw a trend line through this graph, you would see a slight uptick. He
roughly calculated this uptick is at the same rate of fossil fuel emissions in the world.
Third, though the rate is the same, the total estimated quantity of CO2 increase in the
atmosphere is not the same as the amount emitted in the atmosphere by fossil fuels. He
conjectured that some of it was being absorbed by natural systems like forests and
oceans (and hence not all of it was being absorbed back by earth systems). 35
The Keeling
Curve
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Though some of his results were controversial at that time, his measurements
gained enough support to secure funds and set up a permanent observatory in
Mauna Loa. The graph above is the result of this effort. Though somewhat vaguely
present in his 1960 graph, this one shows a clear uptick in the CO2 conc. and an
increase of roughly 100ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere since 1957. Mauna Loa is
now the worlds longest continuous CO2 measuring station. In commemoration
of his efforts, this curve is now called “The Keeling curve”. It has been heralded as
one of the most influential scientific works of our time.
[Link]
air
[Link]
story-of-co2
[Link] 37
So what?
The Keeling Curve
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This is the latest reading of CO2 conc. in the atmosphere. It is important to ask why
this value should be taken seriously. So what if the value of CO2 conc. in atmosphere is
413.51ppm. So what if it is roughly 100ppm more than the first measurement in 1957.
That does not mean anything without proper context. For this, one needs to look at ice
core data.
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Ice Core
Courtesy: The Telegraph 40
Ice cores look like this. They are cylindrical blocks of ice dug out of from permafrost.
Permafrost as the name suggests is permanent frost. In certain places in the world,
like the poles, when snow forms in the winter, it never melts. When this snow forms,
it traps small air pockets within itself, and as snow forms every winter every year,
each year forms a layer of ice over the last years ice deposit. If one were to dig
vertically into these layers and extract the air pockets from each layer of ice, you
would get a temporal scale of atmospheric composition of the planet. You can use this
composition to decipher the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and also the ambient
temperature of the planet in that year.
[Link]
[Link]
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Ice Core Drilling
Courtesy: Frontier Scientists
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Image credit: Havard/Jeremy Shakun 43
Scientists have been able to reconstruct earth’s CO2 and avg. Antarctic temperature
history for the past 800,000 years through ice cores data. In this graph, each trough
represents an ice age. In the last 800,000 years, we have seen 7 ice ages. As is evident
from this graph, Earth is presently coming out of an ice age. As is also clear from the
graph, temperature and CO2 are strongly correlated (the relationship between them
though, is not linear). This is where the concern is raised. If CO2 and temp are
correlated, and if every time CO2 has increased in the atmosphere, the Earth has
warmed enough to come out of an ice age, what will the current amount of CO2 do
to the present climate. As is clear from the graph, earth has never seen so much CO2
in the atmosphere in its past 800000 year history. This excess CO2 is clearly a cause
of major concern and is entirely due to man made reasons. There is nothing natural
about this CO2 conc. in the atmosphere.
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IPCC, 2007A
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This problem is further made worse by the fact that the rate of change of CO2, as
shown in the graph has accelerated despite our efforts to curtail it in the last couple
of decades. This shows that all the measures we have taken till date to tackle this
issue have been woefully inadequate.
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This graph, based on the comparison of atmospheric samples contained in ice
cores and more recent direct measurements, provides evidence that
atmospheric CO2 has increased since the Industrial Revolution. (Credit: Luthi,
D., et al.. 2008; Etheridge, D.M., et al. 2010; Vostok ice core data/J.R. Petit et
al.; NOAA Mauna Loa CO2 record.)
Evidences
[Link] ice sheets : The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets
have decreased in mass. Data from NASA's Gravity Recovery
and Climate Experiment show Greenland lost an average of 286
billion tons of ice per year between 1993 and 2016, while
Antarctica lost about 127 billion tons of ice per year during the
same time period.
[Link] Arctic sea ice : Both the extent and thickness of
Arctic sea ice has declined rapidly over the last several decades.
( Image: Visualization of the 2012 Arctic sea ice minimum, the
lowest on record)
Source : UCAR centre for science education 48
[Link] events : The number of record high temperature events in the
United States has been increasing, while the number of record low
temperature events has been decreasing, since 1950. The U.S. has also
witnessed increasing numbers of intense rainfall events.
[Link] acidification : Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the
acidity of surface ocean waters has increased by about 30 percent. This
increase is the result of humans emitting more carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere and hence more being absorbed into the oceans. The amount of
carbon dioxide absorbed by the upper layer of the oceans is increasing by
about 2 billion tons per year.
Source : UCAR centre for science education 49
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Another layer of complexity to this problem comes when you take this data and try
to predict what is going to happen in the future. Because Earth is a non-linear
dynamical system, it is hard to anticipate how the future of climate is going to
look.
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Temperature
change under
different
scenarios
El-Beltagy and Madkour, 2012
This is a graph of temperature change in the year 2100 under different scenarios.
Each line represents a different model which takes into different, but equally valid
assumptions about how the temperature of planet will rise. As you can see, the
variation is quite large. It ranges from about 1.5 degree C to about 6 degree C
which, is quiet a large difference. 6 degree C change will mean evacuation of many
coastal areas and islands around the world. 1.5 degree C change will mean slight
but manageable sea level rise. Both those extreme scenarios require diametrically
opposite policy interventions.
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COP21 or otherwise known as the Paris Climate Agreement, signed in 2015, has
the ambitious goal of keeping global temperature rise by 2100 to below 2 degree C
with aspirations to keep it below 1.5 degree C. These goals are nearly unattainable
keeping in mind the projections seen in previous slide.
[Link]
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This graph highlights this issue. Even with the current policies, we are realistically
looking at about 4 degree C rise, which is catastrophic. Some new proposed
environmental policies are expected to bring this down to 2.5-2.7 degree C but
nothing close to the 2 degree C or 1.5 degree C as per COP21 goals.
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Sustainable Development
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Sustainable Development (SD)
“Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising
the ability of future generation to meet their own needs”
1987 report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED).
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What is Sustainable about Development?
• What is development?
• How do you measure sustainability in the current paradigm of development?
• Is your definition of sustainability in line with environmental sustainability?
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What is development?
Definition of Development:
Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
“GDP measures the monetary value of final goods and services—that is,
those that are bought by the final user—produced in a country in a
given period of time”- IMF
Measurement of throughput of natural resources
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• In our world, development is primarily defined by GDP. Lesser developed
economies have lower GDP. Developed economies have higher GDP.
Therefore, for development to happen GDP must rise. But GDP is actually a
measure of how much natural resources are consumed. So, resource
consumption must increase for development to happen.
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Challenges to Sustainable Development
• Rising income inequality ( Economical Kuznets curve)
• Environmental degradation ( Environmental Kuznets curve)
Economical Kuznets curve : Refers to relating growth and income
redistribution.
Environmental Kuznets curve : Refers to relating growth and environment.
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How to measure sustainability?
• For the case of development- Sustainable growth
• For the case of the environment- Environmental sustainability
• Environmental sustainability requires that we don’t consume
nonrenewable resources. In such a scenario, GDP should be close to
zero.
Sustainable Growth ≠ Environmental Sustainability
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• Therefore, for development to happen at a regular pace, we need a
“sustainable” GDP growth. But this means that we are increasing our resource
consumption at a regular pace.
• Environmental sustainability requires that we don’t consume non-renewable
resources since any consumption of such resources will reduce the
environment as an entity.
• Therefore, sustainable growth and environmental sustainability necessarily
cannot be the same thing.
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Why do we use GDP as a metric
for overall improvement in
human life?
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Simon Kuznets
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Simon Kuznets was the first person to introduce the concept of GDP to understand
year on year development rate of a country and quantify it. Before his time, industrial
growth was only measured in indirect terms and was very vague. This lead to serious
issues in framing proper economic policies. The great US depression of 1929 is a good
example of the problems caused by this vague understanding. He was also the first
person to collect data for the US and some European countries to calculate their
GDPs.
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Kuznets Curve
Courtesy: [Link]
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While he was collecting this data, he observed that as the income per capita
increases, so does the income inequality of the country, but only up to a
certain point. Any subsequent increase in the income per capita then
decreases Inequality. He did not comment on how this happens or why it
happens. Just that it happens. He even said that this conclusion was
“Perilously close to pure guesswork” as the data he was working with was very
limited. But, nonetheless, it became very popular especially for many
underdeveloped/developing economies.
The policy for removing income inequality was now simple. Just focus on GDP
(Income per capita as an aggregate will be GDP). As long as the GDP rose,
inequality would rise but at some point come down on its own. Take the case
of the western economies. They are on the right hand side of this curve and
their income inequality is low. India is somewhere near the top left side of the
curve and our inequality is high. Intuitively, this graph makes sense.
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• While he was collecting this data, he observed that as the income per capita
increases, so does the income inequality of the country, but only up to a certain
point.
• Any subsequent increase in the income per capita then decreases Inequality. He did
not comment on how this happens or why it happens. Just that it happens. He even
said that this conclusion was ““Perilously close to pure guesswork” as the data he was
working with was very limited.
• But, nonetheless, it became very popular especially for many
underdeveloped/developing economies. The policy for removing income inequality
was now simple. Just focus on GDP (Income per capita as an aggregate will be
GDP).
• As long as the GDP rose, inequality would rise but at some point come down on its
own. Take the case of the western economies. They are on the right hand side of this
curve and their income inequality is low. India is somewhere near the top left side of
the curve and our inequality is high. Intuitively, this graph makes sense.
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Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC)
Courtesy: [Link] 75
• This understanding got carried forward to the environment as well. As a
country is developing, it will consume resources at a rate which will
cause environmental decay, but after a certain point, environmental decay
will come to a halt and will start to improve.
• Again, if you take the case of Europe and India, it makes intuitive sense.
Europe is rich enough to spend some of its income on protection of their
environment. India is not quite there yet and is seeing destruction of its
environment. Many developing countries are doing worse. This is an
amazing insight for a policy maker or the government.
• With this and the previous graph combined, what it means for them is
that if they focus just on growing the GDP, though in the short term
inequality and environmental destruction will rise, in the long run both
of those major issues will be resolved automatically.
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But lets stop to think about how the EKC actually works. Take the case of Europe.
Europe is very sensitive to its environment and have very stringent rules for its
protection. But does that mean they have low carbon footprints? No! On the contrary it
has one of the highest per capita CO2 emissions of the world. It manages to have a clean
environment by shifting the onerous of doing polluting jobs to other countries and
importing the products from them. This allows them to be clean while also causing
environmental degradation. This is clearly not a sustainable way to reduce environmental
degradation in the world as countries like India and China also “develop”. The EKC is
right if you take countries in isolation but very wrong when taken for the whole world.
There is therefore a need to move to better policies to reduce environmental degradation
and actually develop sustainably.
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Thank you
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