HE-426

Environmental
Management
Learner’s Module

HAROLD O.BUENVENIDA,
PhD.
Course Facilitator

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Lesson 4
Environmental Limits and Crises
At the end of this lesson you should be able to:
1. Understand the principles of environmental limits
2. Recognize the different crises in the environment.
3. Devise a solution to the environmental crises.

The idea of environmental limits on the ability of the Earth's biophysical systems to cope with and
adapt to pressures from human activity, whether from demand for natural resources, the waste
products of modern economies, or from habitat modification and destruction. The natural environment
is very giving. Every day, humans take advantage of resources from nature to meet their daily needs,
including fresh air, food and clean water. When humans take only what they need, nature replenishes
these resources and life is sustainable.

However, if the natural environment is pushed beyond its limits because humans use resources too
quickly, introduce pollutants into the environment or destroy nature in a pursuit of more economic
and social prosperity, then nature has a hard time keeping pace. In this lesson, we will take a look at a
concept called 'sustainable development' and how it can only occur within the limits of the
environment.

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Environmental limits can be defined as the point beyond which the environment exceeds its ability to
provide essential resources. ... These needs lead to the depletion of natural resources, the destruction
of ecosystems and an increase in pollution making it harder to achieve environmental sustainability.

Human well-being is dependent upon renewable natural resources. Agricultural systems, for example,
depend upon plant productivity, soil, the water cycle, the nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorus nutrient
cycles and a stable climate. Renewable natural resources can be subject to biological and physical
thresholds beyond which irreversible changes in benefit provision may occur. These are difficult to
define and many are likely to be identified only once crossed. An environmental limit is usually
interpreted as the point or range of conditions beyond which there is a significant risk of thresholds
being exceeded and unacceptable changes occurring.

Biodiversity loss, climate change and a range of other pressures are affecting renewable natural
resources. If governments do not effectively monitor the use and degradation of natural resource
systems in national account frameworks, the probability of costs arising from exploiting natural
resources beyond environmental limits is not taken into account. Appropriate measurement
methodologies need to be developed and validated to assess the capacity of natural resource systems
to deliver benefits, such as relevant sets of indicators. Decisions at local and regional scales need to
reflect the implications and tradeoffs for natural resource systems inherent in policy choices to
determine possible consequences for current and future wellbeing. Valuation of changes in the
benefits provided by natural resource systems are being incorporated into existing Cost Benefit
Analysis (CBA) techniques used in policy impact.

Assessment approaches. However, where there is a risk of thresholds being breached and potentially
irreversible impacts occurring, additional policy safeguards to maintain natural resource systems
within environmental limits are required. Managing ecosystems to maximize one particular benefit,
such as food provision, can result in declines in other benefits. The evidence base is not yet sufficient
to determine the most effective ways to maintain benefit provision within environmental limits, but a
range of policy responses are seeking to optimize multiple benefit provision, including: „ agri-
environment schemes „ generic measures to enhance biodiversity, which may increase the capacity of
natural resource systems to adapt to environmental change „ the use of ecological processes to
increase overall natural system resilience to address problems such as flood risk management.

The consequences of large scale and potentially irreversible changes in benefits from natural resource
systems, such as marine fisheries, could affect ecological security to such an extent that it is rational
to minimize the risks, even if there is uncertainty as to exactly where the limits lie. However, the
policy response to environmental risks to human wellbeing is mediated by the public response to that
risk, with public acceptance affecting whether policies responding to a risk are enacted. There are
significant challenges to successfully communicating environmental risks to the public.

An environmental limit is usually interpreted as the point or range of conditions beyond which
there is a significant risk of abrupt irreversible, or difficult to reverse, changes to the benefits
derived from natural resource systems that are judged to have an unacceptable level of impact on
human wellbeing.

„At a global level, the drivers of environmental change are continuing or increasing. Growing
demands for natural resources have impacted the complex systems of plants, animals, and physical
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processes that sustain the flow of benefits from natural resource systems, which support the
conditions necessary for life. „ An insufficient diversity of organisms in ecosystems to buffer
environmental changes may result in ‘ecological surprises’ involving unexpected, irreversible, and
negative alterations of key ecological processes. However, these shifts are difficult to predict and
many such thresholds are likely to be identified only once breached. „ For most natural resource
systems, environmental limits have not been defined, although possible environmental limits have
been suggested at the global level for maintaining key biogeochemical processes.

Natural resources include land, water, air and associated living systems comprising the mineral, plant
and animal component of the biosphere (the part of the earth’s crust, waters and atmosphere that
supports life). These are organized into ecological systems, or ecosystems. They influence, and in turn
are influenced by, biogeochemical processes (the chemical, physical, geological, and biological
processes and reactions that govern the composition of the natural environment) over different
temporal and spatial scales that can be used in conjunction with other types of resources (financial,
manufactured and social) to produce goods and services for human wellbeing. Natural resources are
often referred to as natural capital.

The stock of renewable natural resources should be maintained over time, for example, a fish stock
should not be harvested beyond sustainable limits or it will collapse. This report is concerned with
renewable natural resources and related ecosystem services (NRES), which include land, water, air
and associated living organisms from which goods and services beneficial to human wellbeing are
derived.

An environmental limit is regarded as the boundary beyond which exploitation of a natural resource
poses increasing risks. A range of terms has been used in relation to environmental limits, listed in
They have been more specifically defined as the ‘point or range of conditions beyond which the
benefits derived from a natural resource system are judged unacceptable or insufficient’.

Environmental limits can be established on the basis of societal preference for the minimal
acceptable output of benefits or the level of risk of crossing a biological or physical threshold at
which unacceptable changes may occur.

Environmental limits relate to the delivery of benefits, rather than the state or extent of any given
ecosystem. For example, climate change may result in lower mean river flows in summer, leading to
less dilution of treated effluent from sewage plants. This in turn can result in hypernutrification of
watercourses (eutrophication), and the state of the watercourse deteriorating to the extent that the
disposal of waste benefits are reduced to unacceptable levels. Once this water quality threshold is
reached, the ability of the system to deliver other benefits, such as angling or recreational activities,
may also not fall below acceptable levels.

The environmental limit could be set in relation to the level of river flow, the concentration of sewage
effluent or the impacts on angling or other recreational benefits. Although biological and physical
thresholds are objectively based on available evidence , risk based limits reflect political
considerations. There is scientific uncertainty about thresholds, and the consequence of exceeding
them. This may result in a lack of political consensus about where environmental limits should be set.

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Similarly, targets and indicators are used to monitor and set progress towards environmental standards
. If ecological thresholds are breached, impacts on human wellbeing could form the basis of legal
action. However, there is a lack of clarity in the relationship between limits and existing
environmental standards, targets and indicators . This is a reflection of uncertainties about where the
ecological thresholds for many natural resource systems lie, and what would be the consequence of
exceedance for human wellbeing.

The term ‘environmental limits’ has been used in a number of different contexts, most commonly in
terms of the consumption of products and services and the ability of natural resource systems to
sustain this), and in the management of impacts on natural resource systems and ecosystem services„

 The former of these is usually referred to as ‘sustainable consumption and production’. The
main focus of this policy area is to promote better products and services, which have lower
environmental impacts from the use of energy, resources, or hazardous substances through
cleaner, more efficient, production processes and reducing impacts throughout the rest of the
lifecycle of a product or services. The aim of these policies is to ‘decouple’ economic growth
from environmental impacts. „

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 The latter policy area is usually referred to as the ‘ecosystem approach’ – “a strategy for the
integrated management of land, water and living resources that promotes conservation and
sustainable use in an equitable way”.20 The ecosystem approach provides a framework for
considering impacts on natural resource systems as a whole and maintaining options for
future uses. In the context of regulatory decision making, this report mainly considers how the
concept of environmental limits could be applied through the ecosystem approach to the
delivery of benefits derived from particular ecosystem services.

The ecosystem approach includes consideration of the ecological thresholds at which changes occur,
as well as societal trade-offs between different benefits. Ecological thresholds exist at a range of
scales from the global to the national, and local. Although the concept of environmental limits tends
to place emphasis on thresholds, the capacity of natural resource systems to recover from impacts or
pressure is also integral. Some natural resource systems become more vulnerable to irreversible
changes if the resilience of the system is reduced by a plurality of pressures.

Environment and Development Goals

Development Goal of ‘ensuring environmental sustainability’ that has a number of targets against
which progress is being measured, including: „

target 7A: Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes;
reverse loss of environmental resources; „

target 7B: Reduce biodiversity loss, achieving, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of loss as
reflected in: proportion of land area covered by forest; CO2 emissions, total, per capita; consumption
of ozone-depleting substances; proportion of fish stocks within safe biological limits; proportion of
total water resources used; proportion of terrestrial and marine areas protected and proportion of
species threatened with extinction.

The Strategic Plan of the convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) or the "Aichi Target" was
adopted at Nagoya in October 2010. The target includes a commitment to halve, and where feasible,
bring close to zero, the loss of natural habitats and also to protect 17% of terrestrial and inland water

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areas and 10% of marine areas. Also included are measures to control invasive species and a protocol
on access to genetic resources and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from their
utilization

Further Reading:

https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/post/POSTLongReport_37
0-Environmental-Limits.pdf

ACTIVITY:

Go further with your readings, critique the information regarding the current environmental crisis.
From the contemporary issues regarding the environment. Choose three environmental crises and
create a case study digest. Include all the discussions and information and write a very comprehensive
expository essay anchoring and relating on this question:

Why there is a need to respect nature and its limits?

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