Environmental Issues

1.Population and Urbanization

-          an empirical correlation exists between the rate of population growth and the level of economic development, which is often equated to quality of life

-          Meeting and stabilizing population growth is possible through improving quality of life and expanded development that is equitable and sustainable

-          The challenge is how do we improve quality of life?

2. Health (unclean air, water and land)

World Health Organization

—  - estimates that poor environmental quality contributes to 25 percent of all preventable illness in the world.

— -  reports that 900 million people lack access to an improved water supply

-for people living in poverty, illness and disability translate directly to loss of income. This can be devastating for individuals and their families who are dependent on health for their income

— -  Health is linked to Sustainable Development –” Health is the outcome of sustainable development. The goals of sustainable development cannot be achieved when there is high prevalence of debilitating illness and poverty, and health of the population cannot be achieved without a responsive health system and healthy environment. Environmental degradation, mismanagement of natural resources, and unhealthy consumption patterns and lifestyles impact health. Ill health in turn, hampers poverty alleviation and economic development (WHO, 2005)

—  - Ecosystem provides the fundamental stepping stone in the economic empowerment of rural poor.

3. Water Scarcity, Conflict and Resolution (limited resource and distribution)

—  -Water scarcity is a situation where there is insufficient water to satisfy normal human requirements. WHO defines normal human requirements as reasonable access to a water source: availability of at least 20 L/capita-day from a source within 1 km of the user’s dwelling.

—  - A country is defined as experiencing water stress when annual water supplies drop below 1,700 m³ per person and water scarce when annual water supplies drop below 1,000 m³.

— -  The Philippines is expected to have water scarcity by 2025 (World Meteorological Org.)

— -  Water is expected to be a source of source of both tension and cooperation in the future.

— -  Finding sustainable economic solution to the water infrastructure problems is another challenge.

4. Energy and Climate (GHG emissions)

— -  Energy consumption of the country has increased for the past ten years due to commercial and industrial development and improve accessibility.

— -  It is expected that supply of energy will further decline due to increase in demand and limited energy development projects

— -  Energy consumption is one reason why greenhouse gas is causing change to our climate. Majority of these emissions aree associated with burning fossil fuels.

— -  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change expects that Global Temperature will likely rise from a range of 2.4 ^oC to 6.4 ^oC.

— -  Impact of Climate Change differs in every location – drought, floods, typhoons, loss of species

—  GHG can be curbed if overall emissions are reduced by 80% by 2050 (some scientists)

5. Toxic Chemical and Finite Resources (release of toxic chemicals and reliance to non-renewable resources)

    -  The release of toxic chemicals to the environment remains a global issue (Nuclear disaster in Fukushima)

    - These poses great health risk to human health and the ecosystems

    - Reliance to non-renewable resources will increase in large magnitude due to population growth

    -  It could be mitigated by integrating in the design the use of green technologies

6. Materials flow and built environment (the embodied energy used by the materials and urban heat islands)

       -—  The built environment is where we live, work, shop, study and play. It requires tremendous amount of   water, energy and natural resources for its construction and operation.

—  - Materials used in building the built environment uses tremendous resources and energy

-  The built environment also affects the local heating of urban areas – termed as the “Urban Heat Island” – as well as the quantity of water that cycles

—  - Impervious structures affects the filtration of water to the aquifers

—  - A strategy to mitigate effect is through “smart growth or new urbanism”. Both of these approaches to urban development are focused on designing communities that preserve natural lands, protect water and air quality and reuse developed land.

By Vanessa Valencia with No comments

Urgency to Act

Urgency to Act

  “Spaceship earth carrying capacity to sustain life will be soon exceeded”

—  The worlds population exceeds 6 billion, and 80 million people are added each year. Resource consumption per capita also is in the rise. For example, over 25 percent of the possible terrestrial and aquatic solar energy captured in photosynthesis by primary producers (plants and cyanobacteria) in now appropriated by humans. Just two more doublings of the human impact on the worlds natural resources – through a combination of population increase and consumption-fueled economic growth – would result in 100 percent of the net primary production being utilized by humans.

Carrying Capacity

—  Refers to the upper limit to population or community size imposed through environmental resistance (availability of renewable land non-renewable resources)

—  Renewable resources are those that can be  produced for consumption

—  Non-renewable resources are resources that are finite such as space and could not be produced- once used, it could not be recreated

—  In the past, society evolved with the principle of “fighting against limits rather than learning to live with them.” ( The Limits to Growth, Meadows, et.al, 1972)

IPAT equation

                                I = P * A * T

(Environmental Economic model of Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren Ehrlich Identity )

Human Impacts on the Environment (I) can be estimated from three (3) general factors:

—  The number of people (P)

—  Resources consumed per person (A for "affluence")

—  Effects of the Technologies used to obtain those resources (T)

—  The impact of any group or nation on the environment is represented qualitatively by P*A*T

—  “I = P * A * T” where ‘I=environmental impact’  ‘P=population,’  ‘A=affluence’  ‘T=technology’ expresses that growth in population, affluence, and technology are jointly responsible for environmental problems

Example: Multiply the population (P) times the number of cars per person (A) times the average CO₂ emissions per user (T)

Existing and Emerging Environmental Issues

—  Globalization, Trade, and Development

—  Coping with climate change and viability

—  Growth of megacities

—  Human vulnerability to climate change

—  Freshwater depletion and degradation

—  Marine and Coastal degradation

—  Population growth

—  Rising consumption in developing countries

—  Bio-diversity depletion

—  Bio-security

Source: United Nations Environment Programme, 2002

We have to act urgently

—  As population and per capita consumption increase, so does the urgency for architects/ professionals/ ordinary persons to protect and enhance the environments and communities where people reside

—  Role of Engineers

—  It has a unique role to play, because they have a direct effect to on the design and development of products, processes, and systems, as well as on natural ecosystems through material selection, project siting, and the end-of-life handling of products.

(adopted from Environmental Engineering by James R. Milhelc and Julie Beth Zimmerman)

By Vanessa Valencia with No comments

Popular Names in the field of EnEng

—Rachel Louise Carson (1907-1964)

·          —first modern “eco-feminist” who sparked the environmental movement in the United States

·         — American biologist who wrote Silent Spring (1962);  book’s title suggested a time when bird populations are greatly reduced as a result of pesticides bio-accumulation and could no longer be heard singing in the Spring.

·          —Principle of ‘bio-magnification’ - the process by which a pollutant becomes increasingly concentrated as it moves up the food chain and builds up in the human body over an individual’s lifetime.

·         — Carson’s advocacies led to the formation of US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) in 1970, the Environmental Impact Assessment System, the Council of Environmental Quality; the Environmental Defense Fund was created in 1967 with money from her estate (first ENGO)

·         — testified before the US Congress and campaigned against pesticide DDT -DichloroDiphenylTrichloroethane –– that weakens the eggshells of raptors; results in bioaccumulation of toxic chemicals in the food chain

·          —Ironically Carson died of cancer in 1964 before she saw the fruit of her labor:

·          —In 1992, a panel of distinguished Americans declared Rachel Carson's Silent Spring as one of the most influential books of the last century.

·          —She was a superwoman who almost single-handedly alerted Americans to the dark side of industrial technology.

—Aldo Leopold (1898-1948)

·          —Father of wildlife ecology – contributed to environmental ethics.

·          —A Sand County Almanac (1948)

·          —Leopold’s Personal Land Ethic

·          —each person must become a steward of the land.

·          —humans need to integrate themselves into the pyramid of life, rather than attempt to control it, and personal ethics should extend to the natural world. This is necessary for the healthy existence of both humans and the natural world

—“That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.”

—“A land ethic changes the role of homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it…it implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such.”

·         — Environmental Ethics and Philosophy of stewardship and “adaptive management” in ENR conservation was of profound importance to the environmental movement

·          —“Leopold’s matrix”

—Dr. Eugene Pleasants Odum (1913-2002)

·          —Father of Systematic Ecology

·          —Coined the word ‘ecosystem’

·          —Holistic approach in the study of the environment – interrelating biology, geology, geography, hydrology, climatology, etc.

·         — Suggested a hard-nosed scientific approach to regional planning

·          —The first Earth Day in 1970 adopted his concept of the ‘Living Earth’ as a global set of interlaced ecosystems

—Dr. Garret Hardin (1915-2003)

·         — Redefined ‘Malthusian K’ as ‘Carrying capacity’ referring “the maximum population of a given species that can be supported indefinitely in a defined habitat without permanently impairing the productivity of that habitat.”

·          —“Tragedy of the Commons (Science, 1968)

·          When environmental resources have poorly defined property rights, individuals enjoy free unlimited access and the right to use without exclusion, each individual is motivated to maximize his or her own benefits from exploiting the resource, to the point that uncontrolled demand accelerates the depletion of the resource. When no individual has adequate incentive to conserve the environment, there arises free-rider problem.

·         — Hardin’s parable illustrates how free access and uncontrolled demand for a finite resource ultimately leads to over-exploitation of that resource

·          —The costs of exploitation are distributed between all those to whom the resource is available as well as third parties – such as pollution (externalities)

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—Dr. Barry Commoner (1917- )

·         — Ecologist and educator who studied effects of radiation on living tissue and their chemical and biological damage to the biosphere.

·          —Among those who called for end to nuclear bomb tests as early as 1953

·          —Formulated the Four Laws of Ecology (National Geographic, 1970)

—“Nature knows best.”

—“There is no such thing as a free lunch.”

—“Everything is connected to everything else” “We can never do merely one thing”

—“Everything goes somewhere.” “There's no away to throw to”

·          —an outspoken, sometimes radical motivator of change on such environmental issues as energy conservation, pesticide use, waste management and control of toxic chemicals, Commoner founded the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems (CBNS),

—Dr. William Rees: Ecological Footprint

·          —Every individual, process, and activity has an impact on the earth via (1) resource use, (2) generation of waste and (3) use of service provided by nature. These inputs can be converted into biologically productive area, on a per hectare basis.

·          —Ecological footprint approximates the amount of productive land and water resources needed to sustain a population in producing all the goods we consume and to get rid of the wastes and pollution generated. It accounts the use of energy, food, water, building materials and all other consumables. Calculations are presented as a measure of land area in global hectares (gha) per capita. It is used as an indicator of environmental sustainability

·          —“How much land in various categories is required to support the region’s population indefinitely at a given material standard?” This varies depending on a region’s standard of living and is a per capita index which is an indication of the land area required (or consumed) to support a given population (Dr. William Rees & Wackernagel, Ecological Footprint on Appropriated Carrying  Capacity EF/ACC, 1992).

·          —Every major category of consumption of waste discharge requires the productive or absorptive capacity of a finite area of land or water (ecosystem). In accounting for this land, the total area becomes the ecological footprint or the carrying capacity ‘appropriated’ by that economy. The concept of the ecological footprint describes how much carrying capacity is appropriated by any region, based on its standard of living, through the importing of resources from around the globe. Ecological Footprint provides society with a tool which indicates resource consumption and can be used in ranking development options based on their ecological impact.

·          —Calculating your ecological footprint gives an estimate of how much “nature” is consumed from your everyday life choices and if the planet, given its limited resources, can actually sustain this lifestyle.

·         — Human population and average consumption are increasing while the total area of productive land and stocks of natural capital are fixed or in decline

·         — Human induced ecological stress is a function not only population but also of  per capita consumption

·          —Consumption is growing more rapidly than population

·          —Ecological Footprint is intended as a quantitative measure of sustainability. EF may be used by civic groups to measure how sustainability is exceeded

·          —It is summation of a land use/consumption matrix.

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Environmental Engineering

— Questions:

1. What do you know on the term “Environment”?

—2. What are the different environmental issues that affects the earth and humanity?

—3. Why an environmental issue?

—4. What can you do to improve the situation or provide solution to these environmental issues?

—5. Are Humans Responsible to the State or Condition of the Environment, NOW? Why?

Environmental Science

- — branch of knowledge that involves the study of different components of the environment that interact and result in such phenomena, which can be either beneficial or harmful for the environment and the beings dependent on it for their sustenance.

Engineering

- —It is a profession that applies science and mathematics to make the properties of matter and sources of energy useful in structures, machines, products, systems, and processes

Environmental Engineering

-  is manifest by sound engineering thought and practice in the solution of problems of environmental sanitation, notably in the provision of safe, palatable, and ample public water supplies; the proper disposal of or recycle of waste water and solid wastes; the adequate drainage of urban and rural areas for proper sanitation; and the control of water, soil, and atmospheric pollution, and the social and environment impact of these solutions. Furthermore, it is concerned with engineering problems in the field of public health, such as control of athropod-borne diseases, the elimination of industrial health hazards, and the provision of adequate sanitation in urban, rural, and recreational areas, and the effect of technological advances on the environment. (ASCE)

 Focus of Environmental Engineering

1. —Provision of safe, palatable, and ample public water supplies

2. —Proper disposal of or recycling of wastewater and solid wastes

3. —Control of water, soil, and atmospheric pollution (including noise as an atmospheric pollutant)

Environmental Code of Ethics

1. —Use knowledge and skill for the enhancement and protection of the environment

2. —Hold paramount the health, safety and welfare of the environment

3. —Perform services only in areas of personal exercise

4. —Be honest and impartial in serving the public, your employers, your clients, and the environment

5. —Issue public statements only in an objective and truthful manner

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