ENV 107

Introduction to
Environmental Science

Lecture 2-3: Fundamentals of Environment

North South University

 Fundamental Concepts of
Environment
• Human population growth (the environmental problem).
• Sustainability (the environmental goal)
• A global perspective (many environmental problem
require a global solution)
• An urbanizing world (most of us live and work in urban
areas)
• People and nature (we share a common history with
nature)
• Science and values (science provides solutions; which
ones we choose are in part of value judgment)
 Human Population Problem
• The continued rapid growth of human population will
intensify all environmental problems and undermine our
efforts to find effective solutions for them.

• Human population growth is, in some important ways, the

underlying issue of environmental problems. Much of the
current environmental damage is directly or indirectly the
result of the large number of people on the earth and our
rate of increase.

• Population growth and famine is related. Famine is one of

the thing that happens when a human population exceeds
its environmental resources.
 Sustainability

World's standard definition of environmental

sustainability is sustainable development
• The Brundtland Commission of the United Nations
on March 20, 1987:
“sustainable development is development that
meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to
meet their own needs.”
 Sustainable Development

• Sustainable development ensures..” a harmonious

process of social and economic betterment that
satisfies the needs and values of all interest groups
while maintaining future opportunities and
conserving natural resources and biological
diversity”.
 Carrying Capacity
• It is generally defined as the maximum number of
individuals of a species that can be sustained by an
environment with out decreasing the capacity of the
environment to sustain that same number in the future.
 A Global Perspective

• Due to the interconnectedness of the earth’s

ecosystems and the wide-ranging effects of human
intervention with them, scientists and citizens alike
must adopt a global perspective in order to
understand and reorganize environmental problems.
• Awareness of how people at a local level affect the
environment globally gives credence to the Gaia
hypothesis.
• Future generations will need a global perspective on
environmental issues.
Gaia Hypothesis

• Named after the

Greek earth goddess,
the hypothesis
suggests that all living
things have a
regulatory effect on
the Earth's
environment that
promotes overall life.
 Gaia Hypothesis

• The Gaia hypothesis is an ecological hypothesis that

proposes that living and nonliving parts of the earth
are a complex interacting system that can be thought
of as a single organism.

• Was first scientifically formulated in 1960s by the

independent research scientist Dr. James Lovelock,
as a consequence of his work for NASA on methods
of detecting life on Mars.
 Gaia Hypothesis

• The Gaia theory suggests that the abiotic and biotic

environment is made up of many complex
interrelationships;
• Many of these complex interrelationships are quite
delicate and may be altered by human activity to a
breaking point; and
• The theory suggests that humans must learn to
respect Gaia by reducing their intentional
modification of the Earth's abiotic and biotic
components.
 An Urbanizing World
• Population increase, technological development,
unemployment, are some of the reasons of
increasing urban areas at a faster rate, particularly
in the developing world.
• As urban areas expands, wetlands are filled in,
forests cut, and soils covered over with pavements
and buildings.
• There are 36 megacities, 23 of them are in Asia.
• As more and more people live in urban areas,
efforts to solve environmental problems must focus
on creating more livable urban environments and on
increasing the harmony between urban
development and natural landscapes.
 People and Nature

• People and nature are intimately integrated. Each

affects the other.
Two paths lie before us:
 One path is to assume that environmental problems
are the result of human actions and that the solution is
simply to stop these actions. It has emphasized
confrontation and emotionalism.
 The second path begins with a scientific analysis of
an environmental controversy and leads from there to
cooperative problem solving. It accepts the
connection between people and nature.
 Science and Values

• Deciding what to do about an environmental problem

involves both values and science.
science
• Placing a value on various aspects of the
environment requires knowledge and understanding
of the science but also depends on our judgments
concerning the uses and aesthetics of the
environment and on our moral commitments to other
living things and to future generations.
• Ecological knowledge provides options for
environmental action, choices are determined in part
by our values; science tells us what we can do, while
our values help us determine what we should do.
 Placing a Value on the Environment

• The value of the environment is based on eight

justifications:
– Aesthetic, creative, recreational, inspirational, moral,
cultural, ecological, and utilitarian
• The utilitarian justification sees some aspects of the
environment as valuable because it benefits individuals
economically or is directly necessary to human survival.
E.g. mangrove swamps provide shrimp
• The ecological justification is that an ecosystem is
necessary for the survival of some species of interest to
us, or that the system itself provides some benefit. (e.g.
mangrove swamps provide habitat for marine fish.)
Placing a Value on the Environment

• Aesthetic justification has to do with appreciation of

the beauty of nature. (e.g. many people find
wilderness scenery beautiful and would rather live in a
world with wilderness than without it).
• Nature is an aid to human creativity/inspiration
(creative/inspiration justification).
• Moral justification has to do with the belief that
various aspects of the environment have a right to
exist and that is our moral obligation to allow them to
continue or help them to persist.
 Environmental Resources
• Also be called “Natural resources”
• Natural resources = substances and energy sources
needed for survival
• A natural resource is anything obtained from the
environment to meet human needs and wants.
• Examples include: Land, Water, Oil, Coal, Food, Goods
• Some resource, such as solar energy, fresh air, wind,
fresh surface water, fertile soil and wild plants are
directly available for use;
• Other resources such as petroleum, iron, groundwater
are not directly available. They become useful to us
only with some effort and technological activities.
 Environmental Resources
The classification of natural resources:
Renewable Resources:
• Can be replenished or reproduced easily. Renew themselves
over short periods
• Some of them, like sunlight, air, wind, etc., are continuously
available and their quantity is not affected by human
consumption. Solar energy is expected to last at least 6 billion
years as the sun completes its life cycle
• Can be replenished fairly rapidly (hours to several decades)
through natural processes as long as it is not used up faster than
it is replaced
• Some of these, like agricultural crops, take a short time for
renewal; others, like water, take a comparatively longer time,
while still others, like forests, take even longer
 Environmental Resources
Non-renewable Resource:
• Resources that exist in a fixed quantity or stock in the
earth’s crust are
• On a time scale of millions to billions of year, geological
processes can renew such resources. Example- fossil fuel
• Minerals and fossil fuels are included in this category
• Since their rate of formation is extremely slow, they
cannot be replenished once they get depleted
• Of these, the metallic minerals can be re-used by
recycling them
• But coal and petroleum cannot be recycled
Environmental Resources
 Pollution
• Pollution is the harm that results because of the
presence of a substance or substances where they
would not normally be found or because they are
present in larger than normal quantities.
• It is the introduction of contaminants into the natural
environment that cause adverse change
• Pollution can take the form of chemical substances
as solid, liquid or gas.
• Or can take the form of energy, such as noise, heat
or light
Pollution
 Pollutant Based on Sources
Pollution Source
– Naturally (from volcanic eruptions),
– Human activities (from burning coal),
– Industrialized agriculture.
 Pollutant Based on Sources
Two types of pollution sources:
• Point sources, where pollutants come from single,
identifiable sources.
• Examples are the (1) smokestack of a coal-burning
power plant, (2) drainpipe of a factory, or (3)
exhaust pipe of an automobile.
 Pollutant Based on Sources
• Non-point sources, where pollutants come from
dispersed (and often difficult to identify) sources
• Examples are (1) runoff of fertilizers and pesticides
(from farmlands, golf courses, and suburban lawns
and gardens) into streams and lakes and (2)
pesticides sprayed into the air are blown by the wind
into the atmosphere.
 Pollution

Based on the impact, pollution can be classified into;

• Non-threshold: A substance or condition harmful to
a particular organism at any level or concentration.
• e.g. mercury, lead, cyanide etc

• Threshold: A substance that is harmful to a

particular organism only above a certain
concentration, or threshold level.
• e.g. Chlorine dioxide, carbon monoxide and arsenic
etc.
 Pollutants
Pollutants, the components of pollution, can be either
foreign substances/energies or naturally occurring
contaminants.
The pollutants can be classified into three groups:
Degradable Pollutants:
• Can be decomposed, removed or consumed and
thus reduced to acceptable level by natural physical,
chemical, and biological processes
• Examples - Degradable plastic garbage bags, toilet
paper, flushable wet wipes, sewage, paper
products, vegetables, juice, seeds and leaves
 Pollutants
Biodegradable Pollutants:
• Pollutants which can be broken down into simpler,
harmless, substances in nature in due course of
time (by the action of micro-organisms like certain
bacteria)
• Example - domestic wastes (garbage), urine, faecal
matter, sewage, agriculture residues, paper, wood,
cloth, cattle dung, animal bones, leather, wool,
vegetable stuff or plants
 Pollutants
Non-biodegradable Pollutants:
• Pollutants which cannot be broken down into
simpler, harmless substances in nature
• Examples - plastics, polythene, bags, insecticides,
pesticides, mercury, lead, arsenic, metal articles like
aluminum cans, synthetic fibers, glass objects, iron
products and silver foils