Sustainable Development: Natural Hazards and Global Goals
Natural Hazards and Sustainable Development
Natural hazards: probability of occurrence of adverse consequences motivated by physical phenomena, which have natural origin: hydrological, geological or atmospheric, which can affect local, national or international levels, with the capacity to harm humans or the environment. These risks can lead to natural disasters.
Characteristics of Sustainable Development
Ecological Sustainability
The Basic Premises:
- Use potentially renewable resources below their capacity for regeneration, and prevent overexploitation of them.
- Minimize contamination processes, so that if they should happen, they would be absorbed by the medium.
- Promote recycling and reuse in society.
- Deploy patterns of behavior aimed at preserving the environment, moving beyond anthropocentric behavior, recognizing the significance that nature has to humans.
- Transform the consumption patterns that drive the societies of the developed world.
- Eradicate poverty and promote debt forgiveness.
- Slow population growth.
Management Actions:
- Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA): This is a process to identify, predict, prevent, and assess the possible negative effects of an action on the environment and people.
- Eco-efficiency: A business proposal that aims to reduce environmental impacts achieved through a focus on the exploitation of natural resources and reducing pollution associated with production processes.
- Ecoauditoria: A gauge, assessment, and verification which is done at a company that requests it voluntarily.
- Ecolabels: Enterprises that meet certain requirements in relation to environmental performance receive a label called ecolabel, granted by an official body.
- Life Cycle Analysis (LCA): Examining a product from the materials that form it until its transformation into waste, through intermediate stages, i.e., from birth until death.
- Sustainability indicators: Ecological footprint: area of productive land to generate enough resources to be used and to absorb wastes and pollutants produced by a given population with a particular standard of living. The difference between the surface area available and consumed is called ecological deficit.
Economic Sustainability
- Fair trade: A commercial relationship based on respect and guaranteeing the rights of disadvantaged workers, ensuring a worthy trade, necessary for sustainable development in a region.
- Green tax: A tax to reward companies and individuals who bet on cleaner technologies, and otherwise punish those actions that might in some way negatively affect the environment.
- Debt for nature: Debt relief agreements in exchange for protection of particularly important and vulnerable ecosystems.
- Banking ethics: Providing loans to customers who lack resources and are not asked for any financial guarantee for the loan, which is a small amount given at a very low interest.
Kyoto Protocol
The Kyoto Protocol is the summit where a binding agreement was reached for signatory countries, which involved the reduction of emissions of greenhouse gases by a significant 5.2% in a period between 2008 and 2012, with 1992 as the base year. It thus adopted a landmark agreement, although it had many difficulties, especially regarding the U.S. position. But it was in 2001 when a total of 180 countries signed an agreement protocol implementation, although among the signatory countries some did not comply, like the U.S..
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
These objectives were agreed upon by the respective Heads of State and Government at the World Summit 2000. The deadline for achieving these goals was 2015. The eight goals that were proposed were:
- Eradicate hunger in the world.
- Achieve universal primary education.
- Promote gender equality and empower women.
- Reduce child mortality.
- Improve maternal health.
- Combat HIV / AIDS, malaria and other diseases.
- Ensure environmental sustainability.
- Develop a global partnership for development.