ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

If you live in Metropolitan Manila and travel to school (or to work) every day, the moment you step out
of your home, you are already exposed to the most serious problem humanity faces today: the
deteriorating state of the environment. As you walk out of the ate, the fetid smell of uncollected
garbage hits you and you go near the trash bin, curious about what is causing the smell. You see rotting
vegetables, a dead rat, and a bunch of whatnot packed in plastic. These three "wastes" are already
indicative of some environmental problems-the vegetables ought to be added to a compost pile; the rat
either buried or burned (to also get rid of the lice that might jump into the hair of the children playing
nearby) and the plastics washed and recycled because, unlike the other two wastes, it cannot
decompose. You hop on the first bus and as it approaches Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA), the
traffic slows down considerably. It is the normal Manila morning traffic where, as the joke goes, the
turtle can outpace even the fastest of motor vehicles. You look out of the window and see the smoke
coming out of diesel vehicles and as you lift your head up to the sky, you see nothing but smog courtesy
of the cars and buses, as well as the coal plant and several industrial sites located alongside the Pasig
River. You noticed the oil spots on the river, not to mention the tons of effluents (human and non-
human wastes) floating alongside each other. In the city you live in, there is a dying river, an increasingly
poisonous sky, an enormous amount of waste, and a declining quality of life.
It is at this point that you recognize the ecological crisis happening around you, and how the
deterioration of the environment has destabilized populations and species, raising the specter of
extinction for some and a lesser quality of life for the survivors and their offspring.

The World's Leading Environmental Problems

The Conserve Energy Future website lists the following environmental challenges that the world faces
today
1. The depredation caused by industrial and transportation toxins and plastics in the ground; the defiling
of the sea, rivers, and water beds by oil spills and acid rain; the dumping of urban waste.
2. Changes in global weather patterns (flash floods, extreme snowstorms, and the spread of deserts) and
the surge ocean and land temperatures leading to a rise in sea levels (as the polar ice caps melt because
of the weather), plus the flooding of many lowland areas across the world.
3. Overpopulation (see Lesson 9)
4. The exhaustion of the world's natural non-renewable resources from oil reserves to minerals to
potable water
5. A waste disposal catastrophe due to the excessive amount of waste (from plastic to food packages to
electronic waste) unloaded by communities in landfills as well as on the ocean; and the dumping of
nuclear waste
6. The destruction of million-year-old ecosystems and the loss of biodiversity (destruction of the coral
reefs and massive deforestation) that have led to the extinction of particular species and the decline in
the number of others
7. The reduction of oxygen and the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because of
deforestation, resulting in the rise in ocean acidity by as much as 150 percent in the last 250 years
8. The depletion of the ozone layer protecting the planet from the sun's deadly ultraviolet rays due to
chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the atmosphere
9. Deadly acid rain as a result of fossil fuel combustion, toxic
chemicals from erupting volcanoes, and the massive rotting
vegetables filling up garbage dumps or left on the street
10. Water pollution arising from industrial and community waste residues seeping into underground
water tables, rivers, and seas
11. Urban sprawls that continue to expand as a city turns into a megalopolis, destroying farmlands,
increasing traffic gridlock, and making smog cloud a permanent urban
fixture
12. Pandemics and other threats to public health arising from wastes mixing with drinking water,
polluted environments that become breeding grounds for mosquitoes and disease carrying rodents, and
pollution
13. A radical alteration of food systems because of genetic modifications in food production

Many of these problems are caused by natural changes. Volcanic eruptions release toxins in the
atmosphere and lower the world's temperature. The US Geological Survey measured the gas emissions
from the active Kilauea volcano in Hawai and concluded "that Kilauea has been releasing more than
twice the amount of noxious sulfur dioxide gas (SO2) as the single dirtiest power plant on the United
States mainland. The 15 million tons of sulfur dioxide that were released when Mount Pinatubo erupted
on June 15, 2001 created a "hazy layer of aerosol particles composed primarily of sulfuric acid droplets"
that brought down the average global temperature by 0.6 degrees Celsius for the next 15 months.
Volcanologists at the University of Hawaii added that Pinatubo had released "15 to 20 megaton...of
[sulfur dioxide] into the stratosphere...to offset the present global warming trends and severely impact
the ozone budget.

Man-made Pollution
Humans exacerbate other natural environmental problems. In Saudi Arabia, sandstorms combined with
combustion exhaust from traffic and industrial waste has lead the World Health Organization (WHO) to
declare Riyadh as one of the most polluted cities in the world. It is this "human contribution" that has
become an immediate cause of worry. Coal fumes coming out of industries and settling down in
surrounding areas contaminated 20 percent of China's soil, with the rice lands in Hunan and Zhuzhou
found to have heavy metals from the mines, threatening the food supply.
Greenpeace India reported that in 2015, air pollution in the country was at its worst, aggravated by the
Indian government's inadequate monitoring system (there are only 17 national air quality networks
covering 89 cities across the continent!). Furthermore, 94 percent of Nigeria's population is exposed to
air pollution that the WHO warned as reaching dangerous levels, while Gaborone, the capital of
Botswana, is the 7th most polluted city in the world. The emission of aerosols and other gases from car
exhaust, burning of wood or garbage, indoor-cooking, and diesel-fueled electric generators, and
petrochemical plants are projected to quadruple by 2030.
Waste coming out of coal, copper, and gold mines flowing out into the rivers and oceans is destroying
sea life or permeating the bodies of those which survived with poison (mercury in tuna, prominently).
The biggest copper mine in Malanjkhand in India discharges high levels of toxic heavy metals into water
streams, while in China, the "tailings" from the operations of the Shanxi Maanqiao Ecological Mining
Ltd., producing 12,000 tons of gold per year, "have caused pollution and safety problems."Conditions in
China have become very critical as the "toxic by products of production processes...are being produced
much more rapidly than the Earth can absorb. Meanwhile, for over a century, coal mines in West
Virginia have pumped "chemical- laden wastewater directly into the ground, where it can leech into the
water table and turn what had been drinkable...water into a poisonous cocktail of chemicals." The
system "goes back generations and could soon render much of the state's water undrinkable."
Pollution in West Africa has affected "the atmospheric circulation system that controls everything from
wind and temperature to rainfall across huge swathes of the region." The Asian monsoon, in turn, had
become the transport of polluted air into the stratosphere, and scientists are now linking Pacific storms
to the spread of pollution in Asia. Aerosol is tagged the culprit in changing rainfall patterns in Asia and
the Atlantic Ocean. These climatic disruptions have similarly caused drought all over Asia and Africa and
accelerated the pace of desertification in certain areas. Twenty years ago, there were over 50,000 rivers
in China. In 2013, as a result of climate change, uncontrolled urban growth, and rapid industrialization,
28,000 of these rivers had disappeared.
People's health has been severely compromised. An archived article in the journal Scientific American
blamed the pollution for "contributing to more than half a million premature deaths each year at the
cost of hundreds of billions of dollars."The International Agency for Research on Cancer blamed air
pollution for 223,000 lung cancer deaths in 2010. In Indonesia and Malaysia, the link between forest
fires and mortality had been well-established. The aforementioned coal mining in West Virginia
(mentioned above) has also made people sick, some with "rare cancers, little kids with kidney stones
[and] premature deaths," and children born with congenital disabilities and adults having shorter life
expectancy.
It has been the poor who are most severely affected by these environmental problems. Their low
income and poverty already put them at a disadvantage by not having the resources to afford good
health care, to live in unpolluted areas, to eat healthy food, etc. In the United States, a Yale University
research team studying areas with high levels of pollution observed that the "greater the concentration
of Hispanics, Asians, African-Americans, or poor residents in an area, the more likely that dangerous
compounds such as vanadium, nitrates, and zinc are in the mix of fine particles they breathe. In India,
studies on adults health revealed that 46% in Delhi and 56% of in Calcutta have "impaired lung function"
due to air pollution. In China, the toxicity of the soil has raised concerns over food security and the
health of the most vulnerable, especially the peasant communities and those living in factory cities. In
2006, 160 acres of land in Xinma, China was badly poisoned by cadmium. Two people died and 150 were
known to be poisoned; the entire village was abandoned.Hong Kong faces the same problem.
In Metropolitan Manila, 37 percent (4 million people) of the population live in slum communities, areas
where "the effects of urban environmental problems and threats of climate change are also most
pronounced. due to their hazardous location, poor air pollution and solid waste management, weak
disaster risk management, and limiting coping strategies of households." Marife Ballesteros concludes
that this unhealthy environment deepens poverty, increases the vulnerability of both the poor non-poor
living in slums, and excludes the slum poor from growth.
one of the major ironies of urban pollution is that the necessities that the poor has access to are also the
sources of the problem. The main workhorse of the public transport system is the bus. However,
because it runs mainly on diesel fuel, it is now "one of the largest contributors to environmental
problems worldwide." This problem is expected to worsen as the middle classes and the elites buy more
cars and stems are improved to give people more chance to worsen as the travel.
The other mode of transportation that the poor can afford is the motorbike (also called the two- and
three-wheeled vehicles). According to the Centre for Science and Environment in Delhi, India, "two-
wheelers form a staggering 75%-80% of the traffic in most Asian cities." Motorbikes burn oil and
gasoline and "emit more smoke, carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, and particulate matter than the gas-
only four-stroke engines found in newer motorcycles."Finally, adding to this predicament is the
proliferation of diesel-run cars. These vehicles usually command a lower price because of their durability
and low operating cost, and hence affordable to the middle class. However, they also release four times
the toxic pollution as the buses.208

"Catching Up"
These massive environmental problems are difficult to resolve because governments believe that for
their countries to become fully developed, they must be industrialized, urbanized, and inhabited by a
robust middle class with access to the best of modern amenities. A developed society, accordingly, must
also have provisions for the poor-jobs in the industrial sector. public transport system, and cheap food.
Food depends orn country's free trade with other food producers. It also relies on "modernized"
agricultural sector in which toxic technologies (suck as fertilizers or pesticides) and modified crops (e.g,
high-yielding varieties of rice) ensure maximized productivity
The model of this ideal modern society is the United States which, until the 1970s, was a global
economic power, with a middle class that was the envy of the world.209 The United States, however did
not reach this high point without serious environmental consequences. To this very day, it is "the worst
polluter in the history of the world," responsible for 27 percent of the world's carbon dioxide
emissions.2"0 Sixty percent of the carbon emission comes from cars and other vehicles plying American
highways and roads, the rest from smoke and soot from coal factories, forest fires, as well as methane
released by farms and breakdown of organic matter, paint, aerosol, and dust.21
These ecological consequences, however, are far from the mind of countries like China, India, and
Indonesia, which are now in the midst of a frenzied effort to achieve and sustain economic growth to
catch up with the West. In the "desire to develop and improve the standard of living of their citizens,
these countries will opt for the goals of economic growth and cheap energy," which, in turn, would
"encourage energy over-consumption, waste, and inefficiency and also fuel environmental
pollution."212 With their industrial sector still having a small share of the national wealth, these
countries will be using first their natural resources like coal, oil, forest and agricultural products, and
minerals to generate a national kitty that could be invested in industrialization
These "extractive" economies, however, are "terminal" economies.213 Their resources, which will be
eventually depleted, are also sources of pollution. In Nigeria, Niger Delta oil companies have "caused
substantial land, water, and air pollution." Nigeria is caught in a bind. If it wants "to maintain its current
economic growth path and sustain its drive for poverty reduction,he very pollutingl oil exploration and
production will continue , be a dominant economic activity?"24 If the United States lets its vironment
suffer to achieve modernity and improve the lives of eople, developing countries see no reason,
therefore, why they en could not sacrifice the environment in the name of progress. This issue begs the
question: How is environmental ustainability ensured while simultaneously addressing the development
needs of poor countries?

Climate Change Governments have their own environmental problems to deal with, but these states
ecological concerns become worldwide due to global warming, which transcends national boundaries.
Global arming is the result of billion of tons of carbon dioxide (coming from coal-burning power plants
and transportation), various air pollutants, and other gases accumulating in the atmosphere. These
pollutants trap the sun's radiation causing the warming of the earth's surface. With the current amount
of carbon dioxide and other gases, this "greenhouse effect" has sped up the rise in the world
temperature.25 There is now a consensus that the global temperature has risen at a faster rate in the
last 50 years and it continues to go up despite efforts by climate change deniers that the world had
cooled off in and around 1998.216 The greenhouse effect is responsible for recurring heat waves nd
long droughts in certain places, as well as for heavier rainfall nd devastating hurricanes and typhoons in
others. Until recently. alifornia had experienced its worst water shortage in 1,200 years lue to global
warming, 27 This changed recently when storms rought rain in the drought-stricken areas. The result,
however s that the state is having some of its worst flashfloods in the 21" entury.218 In India and
Southeast Asia, global warming altered he summer monsoon patterns, leading to intermittent flooding
hat seriously affected food production and consumption as well s infrastructure networks. Category 4 or
5 typhoons, like the uper Typhoon Haiyan that hit the central Philippines in 2013, had