Environment assignment 2 - Essay Example

This would greatly reduce the ability of many firms in Botswana to achieve their goals, ultimately leading to lower GDP and increased poverty. d) Western governments can integrate HIV/AIDS in funding proposals so that they the Less Developed Countries (LDCs) can use these monies to boost their internal efforts in combating the spread and negative impact of AIDS. In addition to this the developed world could sponsor building of capacity in health institutions through training health practitioners on modern ways of tackling pandemics, overcoming stigma and promotion of safe sex campaigns.

Giving money alone to LDCs without the necessary human capacity to manage it well would be ineffective. Question 2 According to Kriebel et al. (2001) the precautionary principle consist of four central components: taking preventive action in the face of uncertainty; shifting the burden of proof to the proponents of an activity; exploring a wide range of alternatives to possibly harmful actions; and increasing public participation in decision making. With this in mind, we agree that should one wish to introduce a new chemical or a new industrial process, he or she must demonstrate that their change will not harm the environment before proceeding.

For starters, as it is now evident to the world, the pace of efforts to combat problems such as climate change, ecosystem degradation, and resource depletion is too slow and that environmental and health problems continue to grow more rapidly than society’s ability to identify and correct them. This therefore means that we cannot afford to compound these problems by allowing more untested products or processes to be started when we already have a backlog of issues to solve. Kriebel and Tickner (2001) concur with this argument when they state that the precautionary principle helps us to avoid creating new problems as we solve the existing ones.

By shifting the burden of proof to proponents of an idea, the precautionary principle prevents the proponents from hurriedly investing in technologies or techniques for a “quick buck”. Proponents are forced to think through all things that they may propose. This self-check mechanism is regulated from abuse by an increased stakeholder participation, which is advocated for by the precautionary principle. Question 3 In the most comprehensive, peer-reviewed and quantitative climate-health assessment to date, the World Health Organization (WHO) examined the global burden of disease already attributable to anthropogenic climate change up to the year 2000.

The study found that this “global warming” could already be causing over 150,000 deaths and approximately five million ‘disability-adjusted life years’ (DALYs) per year through increasing incidences of diseases especially in developing countries (Patz, Campbell-Lendrum, Holloway, & Foley, 2005). This, however, does not imply that the developed states are risk-free. On the contrary, large increases in heat waves (more devastating than the 2003 Europe heatwaves) have been projected for the USA and European countries (Patz et al., 2005). On the other hand, global warming may not be all doom and gloom.

According to “What Are the Benefits of Global Warming?,” (n.d.) global warming could increase the amount of land available by reducing the Polar Regions. This would lead to provision of more land for production of food crops, crops to be used for generating alternative fuels and land for living. Others argue that it would