Environmental Sustainability - Article Example

SUSTAINABILITY IN ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES by Student’s Name Code + Name of Course Date Sustainability in Environmental Studies The topic of environmental sustainability is important for developing programs aligned on ecological design in the integration of human activities with functions and structures of the natural universe. Thus, through the acquisition of practical skills and knowledge on sustainability, communities will prosper in the universe that persistently faces unprecedented pressures to economic and environmental well-being. Research will assist in contributing towards the establishment of resilient societies and a sustainable universe. It is important to practice environmental sustainability because all humans need to secure sufficient quality of ecosystems, the biodiversity of animal and plant species and different natural resources, including the living environment. In sustainable development, focus is placed on environmental sustainability and connection to quality of human life1. This essay looks at different studies concerning how the unprecedented population growth, urbanization and economies, and energy use are imposing new pressures on the globe’s resources and society’s capacity to uphold or enhance environmental eminence. In order to enhance living standards, environmental protection, and human health, the current generation must move to prevent or mitigate the undesirable consequences of the economy and a growing population using research among other strategies. Literature Review The topic “sustainable development” or “sustainability” has been applied to denote the capacity of the public to meet present needs without jeopardizing the economic, ecological, and social structures on which the society will depend for meeting needs in the future2. After an interim start committed to response of humans to the physical environment, there came up different Journal of Social Issues devoted to issues like environmental challenges, energy conservation, and environmental management. The concept of ‘Green justice” and the ‘Psychology and campaign for a sustainable future has also been discussed.’Steg in his journal ‘Promoting environmentalism agitates for social sciences to address the sustainable development issue. The writer mentions “the population growth rate threat”, the snare of overconsumption," as well as the "threat of under-conservation."3 In their yearly “Journal for environmental psychology,” Abrahamse et al. described an open position for research in psychology on global change, adaptation, and mitigation. As a persistent societal challenge, environmental sustainability covers metropolitan living environments, wildlife, recreation areas, and natural resources in an overarching manner. This comprises the weather and climatic conditions for all natures of life. Hopwood, Mary, and Geoff conducted a study where they clearly caution that fights over environmental conditions and natural resources are threatening stability and peace among nations and are likely to do so in the near future at higher levels4. In order to ensure environmental sustainability and security, the overall policy goal must definitely be to reverse the trend of slow environmental deterioration both locally and globally. In a different Ecology Economics Journal, different writers formulated sustainable development as an emerging problem for psychology, hence outlining distinctive, relevant research lines.5 After a long period of policy making in environmental issues, many instances of lethal pollution have been addressed. Lead has been forbidden from automobiles fuels, asbestos from construction materials, and DDT from insecticides. Toxic wastes are handled with more care, and industrial protection has meaningfully amplified, and electric power stations have turned cleaner, and materials and energy are used more effectually. Research by Melville has provided sensitive information on the necessities of renewable sources of energy for the entire universe. Nevertheless, as human populations increase, material use also rises as well as the magnitude of production technology. As these keep rising, the quality and quantity of environmental resources continues decreasing steadily6. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP, 2002) as cited by Vlek, and Linda in their Journal of Human Sciences noted that there is growing concern about loss of biodiversity, nature fragmentation, scarcity in availability of freshwater, over-fishing in seas, adverse weather events, global warming, environmental noise and urban air pollution.7 Furthermore, the report demonstrates vivid images of the manner in which road infrastructure and human settlements are burgeoning in hastily urbanizing regions worldwide. These issues point to the extent at which sustainable development research is crucial to avert more damage. Findings by Chappells and Elizabeth indicate that in regions that are less industrialized in the world, the environmental image is unwelcoming. For instance, many societies in South America, Africa, and Southern Asia are strongly reliant on natural ecosystem amenities such as water resources, arable land, various forest products, and fish stocks.8 Their daily survival requires the consideration of explicit long-term values. Further studies document that in a few African states, poverty has risen, and life expectancy has dwindled while the environment has worsened. Poverty not only devalues people it is also disparaging for domestic environments According to (Narayan, Patel, Schafft, Rademacher, & Koch-Schulte, 2000) as cited by Pearce, Edward, and Anil, research indicates that sustainability has been hampered in the poorer regions of the world due to extreme deforestation, inadequacy of clean water for drinking, coastal flooding, and increased urban air pollution9. Most studies on sustainable environments have adopted the characterization of most environmental challenges as a commons dilemma.10 This social situation considers a collective risk or cost as generated through the combined harmful externalities of numerous people acting rather independently from each other. Van Vugt’s research on commons dilemma claims that the external effects of numerous individual decisions may contribute to sustainability problems that would affect the future generations. The study focusses on factors, which would encourage social cooperation for protecting common resources11. Gärling and Magareta provide current research methods, conceptualizations, and empirical inferences.12 Common questions regarding any dilemma of the commons consider addressing the existing problems; their seriousness and interventions to be undertaken over the challenges experienced using appropriate policy goals. Moreover, research on sustainability of the environment by Sundblad has established that the efforts in environmental management in the wealthier states have considerably minimized environmental effects of human activities. In such countries, there are clean-up operations, economic policies, and technological innovations especially at the local environments of humans. In many spheres, nevertheless, the growth in consumption, technological power, and human population is surpassing the environmental developments attained13. Sundblad further documents that, in 2006, the global population increased by nearly 75 million people on top of the 6.5 billion. Oil use increased by 1.4per cent to 83.4 million barrels daily14. In the Journal for Cleaner Production, Aoe Taeko maintains that the implementation of eco-technology for instance cleaner automobiles may still result in increases in environmental load through the “rebound effect.”15 Rebound amounts to the rise of the action when its environmental resource use per unit is minimized, for example, the augmented use of energy-saving fluorescent lamps. The degree of rebound matches the extent to which the rise in demand for a particular product surpasses the rise per-unit effectiveness of production. Significant rise in use of environmental resource is linked to the rising use of vehicles for goods and passenger transportation from the Second World War. For the OECD countries, Fournier, Valérie documented that the figure of car-kilometers per capita has been rising steadily.16 Carbon emissions congruently increased over the same era, with a per capita amount for America maintaining stability but notably greater than relevant numbers for other OECD members17. Bearing in mind the near future, the writer notes that the travel is turning as the main leader of rise in carbon discharges in the industrialized nations. Changes in lifestyles predominantly driven by higher incomes especially increased auto mobility have constantly culminated to higher carbon discharges, and the patterns in the transport sector exhibit no signals of saturation. Knowledge Gaps and Areas for Further Research The behavioral and social sciences have a stimulating research agenda, which concern the specific topics and general issues discussed in this paper. More research should thus be conducted to cover environmental responses and risk judgment to numerous stressors, the elements of environmentally noteworthy behaviors, the social and individual effects of diverse environmental conditions. This should also include the evaluation and design of operative programs for behavior change for protecting environmental resources.18 For the general society, analysis of the problems, behavioral intervention programs and policy decision making are especially significant in connection to climate change generated from global warming.19 This immense environmental commons dilemma is powerfully grounded on large-scale use of fossil fuels through various equipment, motorized installations, and vehicles. Research could also delve into appropriate behavioral or technical changes, more population growth and rising affluence as well as the associated discharges of greenhouse gases.20 The currently existing journal articles have not discussed all the major sustainability research topics. A particular topic commendable for more research is environmental decision making, which is a critical task in the management of many dilemmas of the commons. Research needs to fill gaps in decision-making originating from cognitive biases and limitations as well as social misrepresentations like groupthink in handling environmental management. Organizational decision making in environmental sustainability may be less composed due to relations of power and the psychological and political need to adhere to development strategies previously adopted. Therefore, the areas that particularly need attention for environmental decision research constitute definition of problems, multi-attribute situation evaluation, multi-party decision-making, and long-term threat judgment.21 Researchers may benefit from the long custom of behavioral decision studies, and they may use different experiences and methods concerning methodical decision analysis. There exists a list for various criteria exceptionally for environmental decision-making. This could be useful in presenting an inventory of challenges and possibilities. Another meaningful research topic could be “effectiveness evaluation” of policies for environmental sustainability, which may comprise more or less expensive behavioral alterations, as well as transformations in environmental situations.22 Environmental or behavioral changes may largely affect the well-being of humans, and this could be analyzed in terms of particular modifications in the quality of human life. On the other side, the quality of life may be evaluated against the context of existing classifications of human values and needs. This could occur so that sustainable development associates with the admonition to attain the requirements of the current without jeopardizing the fulfillment of future human needs. Reference List Abrahamse, Wokje, Linda Steg, Charles Vlek, and Talib Rothengatter. "A review of intervention studies aimed at household energy conservation." Journal of environmental psychology 25, no. 3 (2005): 273-291. Chappells, Heather, and Elizabeth Shove. “Debating the future of comfort: environmental sustainability, energy consumption and the indoor environment.” Building Research & Information 33, no. 1 (2005): 32-40. Esty, Daniel C., Levy, Mark, Srebotnjak, Tanja and Alexander De Sherbinin. “Environmental sustainability index: benchmarking national environmental stewardship.” New Haven: Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy (2005): 47-60. Gärling, Tommy, and Magareta, Friman. "A behavioural perspective on voluntary reduction of private car use." Keep moving, towards sustainable mobility (2012): 109-134. Ghai, Dharam, and Jessica M. Vivian. Grassroots environmental action: people's participation in sustainable development. Routledge, 2014. Fournier, Valérie. "Escaping from the economy: the politics of degrowth." International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 28, no. 11/12 (2008): 528-545. Hirsch Hadorn, Gertrude, Bradley, Christian Pohl, Stephan Rist, and Urs Wiesmann. "Implications of transdisciplinarity for sustainability research." Ecological Economics 60, no. 1 (2006): 119-128. Hopwood, Bill, Mary Mellor, and Geoff O'Brien. "Sustainable development: mapping different approaches." Sustainable development 13, no. 1 (2005): 38-52. Melville, Nigel P. "Information systems innovation for environmental sustainability." Mis Quarterly 34, no. 1 (2010): 1-21. Moldan, Bedřich, Svatava Janoušková, and Tomáš Hák. "How to understand and measure environmental sustainability: Indicators and targets." Ecological Indicators 17 (2012): 4-13. Pearce, David, Edward Barbier, and Anil Markandya. Sustainable development: economics and environment in the Third World. Routledge, 2013. Steg, Linda, and Charles Vlek. “Encouraging pro-environmental behaviour: An integrative review and research agenda.” Journal of environmental psychology 29, no. 3 (2009): 309-317. Van Vugt, Mark. “Averting the tragedy of the commons using social psychological science to protect the environment.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 18, no. 3 (2009): 169-173. Scheirer, Mary Ann. "Linking sustainability research to intervention types." American journal of public health 103, no. 4 (2013): 73-80. Sundblad, Eva-Lotta. People´ s knowledge about climate change: Uncertainty as a guide to future commitments. 2008. Read More