#The Multitude of Paths to Sustaining Biodiversity

[duubsite]

The Multitude of Paths to Sustaining Biodiversity: A Broader View

Introduction In a world grappling with unprecedented environmental challenges, the stark reality of biodiversity loss has catapulted to the forefront of global concerns. The current trajectory of biodiversity decline, driven largely by human activities, brings to mind the cataclysmic event that wiped out the dinosaurs. This sobering comparison underscores the urgency of reassessing our…

[probablyasocialecologist]

A new study launched this week highlights the work of Andhra Pradesh Community-Managed Natural Farming (APCNF) and the remarkable untapped potential of agroecological natural farming in Andhra Pradesh, India.  Spanning over 6 million hectares, and involving 6 million farmers and 50 million consumers, the APCNF represents the largest agroecological transition in the world. Amidst the diverse landscapes of Andhra Pradesh, this state-wide movement is addressing a multitude of development challenges—rural livelihoods, access to nutritious food, biodiversity loss, climate change, water scarcity, and pollution—and their work is redefining the way we approach food systems. Farmers practicing agroecology have witnessed remarkable yield increases. Conventional wisdom suggests that chemical-intensive farming is necessary to maintain high yields. But this study shows agroecological methods were just as productive, if not more so: natural inputs have achieved equal or higher yields compared to the other farming systems—on average, these farms saw an 11% increase in yields—while maintaining higher crop diversity. This significant finding challenges the notion that harmful chemicals are indispensable for meeting the demands of a growing population. The advantages of transitioning to natural farming in Andhra Pradesh have gone beyond just yields. Farmers who used agroecological approaches received higher incomes as well, while villages that used natural farming had higher employment rates. Thanks to greater crop diversity in their farming practice, farmers using agroecology had greater dietary diversity in their households than conventional farmers. The number of ‘sick days’ needed by farmers using natural farming was also significantly lower than those working on chemically-intensive farms. Another important finding was the significant increase in social ‘capital’: community cohesion was higher in natural farming villages, and knowledge sharing had greatly increased—significantly aided by women. The implications for these findings are significant: community-managed natural farming can support not just food security goals, but also sustainable economic development and human development. The study overall sheds light on a promising and optimistic path toward addressing geopolitical and climate impacts, underlining the critical significance of food sovereignty and access to nourishing, wholesome food for communities. Contrary to the misconception that relentlessly increasing food production is the sole solution to cater to a growing population, the truth reveals a different story. While striving for higher yields remains important, the root cause of hunger worldwide does not lie in scarcity, as farmers already produce more than enough to address it. Instead, food insecurity is primarily driven by factors such as poverty, lack of democracy, poor distribution, a lack of post-harvest handling, waste, and unequal access to resources. 

[grunerblog]

Napier Grass Bio CNG Plant: A Sustainable Revolution by Gruner Renewable

In the rapidly evolving landscape of renewable energy, the Napier Grass Bio CNG Plant stands out as a beacon of innovation and sustainability. Gruner Renewable, a leader in the field of green energy solutions, is pioneering the use of Napier Grass to power the future with clean, renewable bio-compressed natural gas (Bio CNG). This comprehensive guide delves into how Gruner Renewable is harnessing the potential of Napier Grass, transforming it into a key player in the global shift towards sustainable energy.

The Power of Napier Grass in Bio CNG Production

Napier Grass, with its rapid growth rate and high yield of biomass, is an excellent source for bioenergy production. Recognizing this, Gruner Renewable has developed cutting-edge Bio CNG plants specifically designed to convert this abundant grass into bio-compressed natural gas. This process not only provides a renewable source of energy but also offers an effective solution for managing agricultural waste, thereby contributing significantly to environmental conservation.

Gruner Renewable’s Approach to Sustainability

Gruner Renewable’s Napier Grass Bio CNG Plants are at the forefront of ecological innovation, embodying the company’s commitment to sustainable development. By integrating advanced technology with sustainable agricultural practices, Gruner Renewable ensures that every step of the Bio CNG production process is environmentally friendly, from the cultivation of Napier Grass to the generation and utilization of Bio CNG.

Environmental and Economic Benefits

The implementation of Napier Grass Bio CNG Plants brings a multitude of environmental and economic benefits:

● Reduced Carbon Footprint: The conversion of Napier Grass to Bio CNG significantly lowers greenhouse gas emissions compared to fossil fuels, contributing to the fight against climate change.

● Sustainable Agriculture: The cultivation of Napier Grass promotes land regeneration and biodiversity, providing farmers with a sustainable crop that is both profitable and eco-friendly.

● Energy Security: By producing Bio CNG locally, communities can reduce their dependence on imported fossil fuels, enhancing energy security and fostering economic independence.

The Global Impact of Napier Grass Bio CNG Plants

Gruner Renewable is not just transforming energy production on a local scale; the company envisions a world where Napier Grass Bio CNG Plants play a pivotal role in meeting global energy needs sustainably. By exporting technology and expertise, Gruner Renewable aims to inspire and facilitate the adoption of Bio CNG across various regions, paving the way for a cleaner, greener, and more sustainable global energy landscape.

Why Partner with Gruner Renewable?

Choosing Gruner Renewable for the development of a Napier Grass Bio CNG Plant means partnering with an industry leader known for:

● Innovation: Leveraging cutting-edge technology and research to optimize the efficiency and sustainability of Bio CNG production.

● Expertise: A team of seasoned professionals dedicated to providing comprehensive solutions, from the planning and design of Bio CNG plants to their operation and maintenance.

● Sustainability: A commitment to environmental stewardship, ensuring that all projects contribute positively to the planet and society.

Conclusion

The Napier Grass Bio CNG Plant is more than just an energy project; it’s a testament to Gruner Renewable’s vision of a sustainable future powered by renewable resources. As the world seeks alternatives to diminish its environmental impact, the innovative use of Napier Grass for Bio CNG production offers a promising path forward. With Gruner Renewable leading the charge, the potential for clean, sustainable energy has never been more attainable.

Call to Action

Join the sustainable energy revolution with Gruner Renewable. Explore how the Napier Grass Bio CNG Plant can transform your approach to energy production and contribute to a greener planet. Visit our website to learn more about our innovative solutions and take the first step towards a sustainable future today.

[gruballergy]

The Wholesome World of Veganism: Exploring the Benefits

Veganism, once considered a niche dietary choice, has grown into a global movement with a multitude of benefits that extend beyond personal health. This lifestyle is not just about avoiding animal products; it's a conscious decision to promote compassion, reduce environmental impact, and improve overall well-being. In this article, we will delve into the numerous benefits of adopting a vegan lifestyle.

1. Improved Health

One of the most significant personal benefits of a vegan diet is improved health:

Lower Risk of Chronic Diseases: A well-balanced vegan diet is associated with a reduced risk of heart disease, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and certain types of cancer. It is typically lower in saturated fats and cholesterol, while being rich in fiber, vitamins, and antioxidants.

Weight Management: Vegan diets tend to be lower in calories and saturated fats, making them effective for weight management and weight loss.

Better Digestion: Plant-based diets are typically high in fiber, which aids digestion and can alleviate common digestive issues like constipation.

Enhanced Nutrient Intake: A vegan diet can provide a wealth of essential nutrients, such as fiber, vitamins C and E, potassium, and folate. However, it is essential to plan meals carefully to ensure adequate intake of nutrients like vitamin B12, iron, calcium, and omega-3 fatty acids.

2. Ethical Considerations

Veganism is rooted in ethical and moral principles:

Animal Welfare: Vegans abstain from using or consuming animal products to minimize harm to animals. They believe that animals should not be exploited for food, clothing, or other purposes.

Environmental Concerns: By reducing the demand for animal agriculture, vegans contribute to lower greenhouse gas emissions and a smaller ecological footprint. This ethical choice aligns with the goal of preserving the planet for future generations.

3. Environmental Benefits

Veganism offers numerous advantages for the environment:

Reduced Greenhouse Gas Emissions: The livestock industry is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Adopting a vegan diet can substantially reduce one's carbon footprint and help combat climate change.

Conservation of Resources: Producing plant-based foods requires fewer resources, including land, water, and energy, compared to raising animals for meat and dairy. This shift can help conserve vital resources.

Preservation of Biodiversity: Livestock farming often leads to deforestation and habitat destruction. By reducing the demand for animal products, vegans contribute to the preservation of biodiversity.

4. Compassionate Living

Vegans embrace a lifestyle that extends compassion not only to animals but also to fellow humans:

Global Food Security: By choosing plant-based foods over animal agriculture, vegans promote a more equitable distribution of resources and food, potentially reducing global food insecurity.

Social Justice: Veganism acknowledges the complex social and economic issues tied to the livestock industry, including workers' rights and fair labor practices.

Conclusion

The benefits of a vegan lifestyle are far-reaching, encompassing personal health, ethical considerations, environmental sustainability, and compassionate living. While transitioning to veganism may require some adjustments, the rewards are immense. It offers a path to a healthier, more ethical, and environmentally responsible way of living, contributing to a brighter future for individuals, animals, and the planet as a whole. As more people recognize these benefits, the vegan movement continues to grow and make a positive impact on our world.

[aaatourcostarica1]

Crafting Unforgettable Adventures: Custom Trip Planning to Costa Rica

Costa Rica, a tropical paradise nestled in Central America, beckons adventure seekers with its lush rainforests, pristine beaches, and rich biodiversity. Whether you dream of exploring dense jungles, encountering exotic wildlife, or immersing yourself in the pura vida lifestyle, a custom trip to Costa Rica offers an unparalleled experience. In this article, we'll delve into the world of personalized travel planning and how crafting a custom trip to Costa Rica allows you to embrace the country's natural wonders on your terms.

Why Opt for a Custom Trip to Costa Rica?

While group tours and pre-packaged itineraries have their merits, a custom trip offers a multitude of advantages that cater to individual preferences and interests:

Tailored Experiences:

Custom trip planning allows you to handpick activities and destinations that resonate with your interests. Whether you crave adventure, cultural encounters, or relaxation, your itinerary will be crafted to align with your desires.

Flexibility and Freedom:

Unlike fixed tours, a custom trip lets you set the pace and schedule. You can linger longer in places that captivate you, make spontaneous detours, or adapt your plans to seize unexpected opportunities.

Personalized Expertise:

Working with seasoned travel specialists ensures your custom trip is curated to perfection. These experts possess in-depth knowledge of Costa Rica's hidden gems, secret spots, and off-the-beaten-path attractions.

Crafting Your Custom Trip Itinerary

Destination Exploration:

Begin by exploring the diverse regions of Costa Rica. From the vibrant capital city of San Jose to the biodiverse Osa Peninsula, each locale boasts unique landscapes and experiences. Whether it's the majestic Arenal Volcano, the remote Corcovado National Park, or the laid-back charm of Monteverde, consider your interests and preferences while selecting destinations.

Adventure and Eco-Tourism:

Costa Rica is a haven for adventure enthusiasts. Surf the waves of Guanacaste, zip-line through the rainforest canopies, or hike the trails of Manuel Antonio National Park. Embrace eco-tourism by visiting animal sanctuaries and participating in sustainable practices that conserve the environment.

Wildlife Encounters:

Costa Rica is a treasure trove of biodiversity. Include visits to wildlife-rich regions like Tortuguero, known for its sea turtles, or the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve, home to diverse avian species. For an unforgettable experience, consider night tours to spot nocturnal creatures in their natural habitats.

Cultural Immersion:

Immerse yourself in Costa Rican culture by visiting local communities and engaging in traditional activities. Savor delicious cuisine, learn about coffee production, or participate in artisanal workshops, gaining insight into the pura vida lifestyle.

Relaxation and Wellness:

After exhilarating adventures, treat yourself to some relaxation and rejuvenation. Choose from an array of luxurious resorts, serene yoga retreats, or tranquil beachfront accommodations to unwind amidst nature's splendor.

Choosing the Right Travel Specialist

Selecting a travel specialist is pivotal in ensuring the success of your custom trip to Costa Rica. Look for these essential qualities in your chosen partner:

Experience and Expertise:

Opt for a travel specialist with extensive experience in curating custom trips to Costa Rica. Their in-depth knowledge will translate into a well-crafted itinerary that aligns perfectly with your preferences.

Client-Centric Approach:

A reputable travel specialist listens to your needs, desires, and concerns to create a personalized trip that fulfills your travel aspirations.

Responsiveness and Support:

Choose a company that offers reliable and prompt customer support throughout the planning process and during your journey.

A custom trip to Costa Rica unlocks a world of breathtaking natural beauty, thrilling adventures, and cultural richness. By tailoring your itinerary to match your interests and preferences, you'll embark on a journey that leaves an indelible mark on your heart. The enchanting landscapes, warm hospitality, and unparalleled experiences will redefine your understanding of travel and immerse you in the wonders of Costa Rica's pura vida lifestyle.

AAA Tours provides Custom Vacation Packages & Trip Planning to Costa Rica. Our Private Tour Package include Hotel Reservations, Travel Arrangement & Complete Tour Planning.

[introenst]

ENST1000 FINAL

Blog Post #1: Environmental Studies: Exploring the Living Condition

          There seems to be uncertainty or pre-conceived notions about what “environmental studies” entails. What does it mean to study the environment? What is the difference between “science” and “studies”? What is the environment? This blog post intends to explore these questions and hopefully provides some answers by drawing upon Fordham University’s curriculum for the Environmental Studies major and G. Tyler Miller’s and Scott E. Spoolman’s 19th edition of Living in the Environment.

          Fordham University’s Environmental Studies major curriculum can hopefully answer some of these questions, which is described as “interdisciplinary course work in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities” and briefly explains the kinds of problems this degree can help an environmental studies student tackle through “economic, political, and societal policy solutions” (Fordham). “Interdisciplinary” is an accurate description of this kind of degree. It draws from a wide variety of disciplines to understand environmental issues using different methodologies and ways of thinking.

(Figure 1. The Structure of the Environmental Studies Major, Fordham)

          A part of the curriculum requires coursework in three natural science courses. It demands students familiarize themselves with physical and life sciences, and take two courses in either category, and one of the other. However, these science courses can be satisfied through general education classes that non-science major students are required to take. I think this should be different. In a field that potentially generates policy makers, urban planners, lawyers, researchers, etc, there is a great deal of scientific illiteracy that this degree should prepare us. As a result, I think a lot of the discourse, at least at the undergraduate level, can get caught up in vague conversations where we throw around ambiguous terms because we lack training in these important disciplines.

          Another ambiguous term that we often hear thrown around when discussing the environment is “sustainability.” Sustainability is a concept at the core of the textbook. According to the text, sustainability is about learning from and utilizing nature’s natural processes that have sustained life on earth for billions of years through solar energy, biodiversity, and chemical cycling. The authors refer to this principle as “biomimicry” and suggest we should use it as a model to lead more sustainable lives (Miller and Spoolman 2018, 9). With that said, here are the subthemes of sustainability that will be frequently revisited and my takeaways:

Natural capital: the natural resources and ecosystem services that support all life and our economies

Human activities degrade natural capital: how our actions are damaging

Solutions: this is where we come in to have meaningful discussions

Individuals matter: we have to believe we can all be part of the solution

          As mentioned before, environmental studies draw upon multiple disciplines including economics, political science, and philosophy to develop solutions to our environmental issues. Some additional principles of sustainability as  outlined by the authors include concepts such as “full-cost pricing,” “win-win  solutions,” and ethical arguments about our responsibility to life on earth (Miller  and Spoolman 2018, 9). I was first exposed to “full-cost pricing” last  semester in my introductory economics course but under a different term—externalities.  In our economies, resources are allocated via markets through the interactions  (the supply and demand) of various sellers and buyers using a price  system. Externalities are essentially the true costs or benefits that  are not reflected in the price of a good or service. For instance, the adverse  effects of exhaust from automobiles to our health or depletion of fossil fuels  is not reflected in the price of gasoline. Internalizing these costs is what  full-cost pricing refers to. Later in the chapter, the authors talk about some  causes to environmental problems and why these problems might persist. Our failure  to internalize these environmental and health costs is harmful because it  makes us completely oblivious to how our market activities have consequences when  we participate in these transactions. The textbook asks if the price of  gasoline were $14 a gallon (to consider external costs), how would this affect  our decisions about transportation? This price would surely make anybody think at  least three times about the type of car they use or their method of transportation  because people do respond to these price signals. However, at the end of the day  this would not be a viable solution if there are no structures in place to  help people transition into more eco-friendly transportation alternatives  such as accessible trains, buses, bike paths, etc. This is just one example of  thousands of environmental problems we face, and we can see how complex these  issues are. We can see from this example alone how an environmental issue can meddle  with a variety of disciplines. To be able to fix such an issue, not only would  one need to be knowledgeable of the economic implications, but also needs to  be equipped with some sort of city design background, understand the  demographics affected and how to best serve those groups, and how to work in a  solution that is viable within the laws in place, among other discrepancies.

          Another key component of sustainability deals with how our activities are hurting the earth’s natural capital. This is probably the concept most people are aware of and the first thing that comes to mind when discussing what it means to be sustainable. This conversation is essentially about our ecological footprints, or the impact we have on natural capital quantified by the amount of land needed to supply these natural resources. The “Tragedy of the Commons” was a concept coined by economist William Froster Lloyd in 1833 and later revived again by Garret Hardin in 1968 to elucidate how our human activities degrade shared renewable resources faster than they can be replenished. Ultimately, if we exhaust a resource, we eventually will not be able to benefit from it and that is what is tragic--we set ourselves up for loss. This Ted-Ed video does a great job at explaining it and serves as a reminder that “What’s good for all of us is good for each of us” (Amendolare 2017).

          According to the Global Footprint Network, my ecological footprint is 4.7 global hectares, meaning I would need approximately about 11.6 acres of biologically productive land to be able to sustain my lifestyle. What this activity is referring to is the concept of biocapacity, “the ability of its [the earth’s] productive ecosystems to regenerate the renewable resources used…and to absorb the resulting wastes and pollution indefinitely” (Miller and Spoolman 2018, 13).  If everyone on Earth were to live the same way I did, we would overshoot the Earth’s biocapacity and actually need 2.7 Earth’s to be able to regenerate resources and to also recycle waste and pollution through natural processes.

(Figure 2. Personal Footprint, Global Footprint Network, 2020)

          My largest consumption category was food, making up 1.8 gha. The food I consume, namely meat and dairy products, have huge impacts on the environment for a multitude of reasons including transportation and the natural resources needed to produce these animal products, just to name a few. I think this is maybe the hardest aspect to change about my ecological footprint because it means changing a lifestyle that was ingrained into me. However, in my household I consume the least amount of meat and have replaced some animal products for plant-based products, but my other family members might not be as flexible when altering their diet.

              In that same vein, another concept I appreciated in the text was that “people have different views about environmental problems and their solutions.” This section raises profound questions about how we view nature, the meaning we assign to nature, and how our humanity fits into these problems. This is arguably one of the biggest hurdles we face when trying to tackle environmental issues because I think these different worldviews instill a different sense of urgency with in us to act on these problems. Thus, we behave and treat our surroundings accordingly.

              In summation, to study the environment means to learn how to be well-rounded. More importantly, to tackle environmental issue we face means to adopt a sustainable worldview, as individuals, and ultimately as societies to get meaningful work done.

Word count: 1347

Works Cited:

Amendolare, Nicholas. What is the tragedy of the commons? YouTube, November 21, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxC161GvMPc.  

Fordham. “Fordham Online Information: Academics: Academic Departments: Environmental Studies.” Fordham University: The Jesuit University of New York. Fordham University. Accessed January 24, 2020. https://www.fordham.edu/info/20920/environmental_studies.

Global Footprint Network. n.d. “Ecological Footprint per person.” Accessed January 22, 2020.

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott E. Spoolman. 2018. Living in the Environment: Nineteenth Edition, V-25. Canada: Cengage Learning.

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Blog Post #2: The Environmental Sciences: How do we study the natural world?

              This week’s readings dealt with much of the fundamental concepts in biology, chemistry, and physics necessary to understand environmental issues. In these chapters, Miller and Spoolman provide the groundwork for understanding more complex ecological phenomena. These chapters build upon simple concepts to more complex ones. The readings were complemented by two videos, one of which compacts Earth’s 4.5 billion years into a 24-hour day and the other shows how the absence or presence of an animal in an ecosystem has far reaching consequences, nicely tying the readings together by demonstrating how these complexities are all interconnected and how scientists go about studying them.

              Although it is not much of a scientific principle but more of a scientific tool, Miller begins chapter two by reminding the reader of the scientific method. Put simply, scientists use the scientific method to make descriptive discoveries about how the world works that can be used to make predictions. I find the scientific method rather intuitive and indispensable at helping go about our investigations of the world in a logical and (ideally) unbiased way.

(Figure 1. The scientific method, Living in the Environment, 2018)

              Science is not perfect, and we should always be skeptical of any information presented to us and evaluate our own beliefs when arriving at any conclusion. The scientific method essentially is what it means to “do science,” but it should be noted that this system is not perfect and has its own limitations. Some limitations include its inability to “prove” anything. This sometimes is hard to wrap around one’s head because we often point to science as absolute truth or fact, but conclusions reached via the scientific method, even ones with over 90% certainty, are not actually certainly proven. Science is subject to a couple of important limitations that should always be critically considered. For instance, science uses “proof” to support a conclusion, but not to imply a cause and effect relationship. Secondly, science is done by people who can hold biases that affect their results and way of going about an investigation entirely. Thirdly, “many systems in the natural third world involve a huge number of variables with complex interactions. This makes it too difficult, costly, and time consuming to test one variable at a time in controlled experiments” (Miller and Spoolman 2018, 34). Much of science is comprised of controlled experiments, very unlike how things play out in the real world, that tries to isolate different variables to try to understand relationships in controlled conditions. Finally, science relies on statistical tools that tries to represent whatever is being studied. For instance, it would be insane and impractical to survey every single plant in a forest. Instead, a scientist would sample random parts of the forest to best represents the flora present in said forest. It is important to recognize these limitations when thinking critically of information presented to us.

            Chapter two is concerned with the review of basic concepts in chemistry and physics. Matter, in its most basic unit, is comprised of atoms of different elements. These atoms, of the same element or different, bond with one another to form larger pieces of matter known as compounds or molecules. Molecules are essentially the building blocks of many of the macromolecules, namely carbohydrates, proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids, that life on Earth is made up of. These macromolecules are our sources of energy, they are our genetic information, and are what make all of life physically. All of these macromolecules are essential to our biological processes and our interactions with the environment, that continuously supplies this matter to us. In that same vein, the Law of Conservation of Matter state that “whenever matter undergoes a physical or chemical change, no atoms are created or destroyed” (Miller and Spoolman 39). This means that our biological matter must be recycled back into the environment because matter cannot be produced or destroyed. Central to understanding environmental issues are physical concepts, most importantly the flow of energy. The First Law of Thermodynamics, or the Law of Conservation of Energy, states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. This is similar to the law of matter. Energy takes on different forms instead of being generated or destroyed. A second important law is the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states “when energy is changed from one form to another, it always goes from a more useful to a less useful form” (Miller and Spoolman 2018, 42). This means that when high-quality energy is converted from one form to another, it yields lower quality energy that cannot perform useful work and is output into the environment. These laws are important in the contexts to ecology because ecosystems depend on energy from the sun to be able perform its function at every trophic level. Much of the degraded energy becomes heat and the best way to ensure we are not wasting energy is to use it more efficiently and to consume less of it if not needed.

(Figure 2. Energy flow in an ecosystem, Khan Academy)

          Most important in this chapter is when the authors discuss how systems work. Systems depend on regular inputs, outputs, some general patterns in between. When these patterns are disturbed, a system can be thrown off balance. In the case of a positive feedback loop, inputs to a system can generate even more change to the system, and in some cases end up in what is called an ecological tipping point. A negative feedback loop does the opposite by discouraging this initial disturbance to the system and bringing it back to a state of equilibrium.

          The flow of energy and the cycling of nutrients in an ecosystem imply different levels of this system with agents that carry out different roles, or niches. These different trophic levels imply certain relationships among these agents, most of which are predator-prey relationships to keep the flow of energy going. Likewise, nutrients become cycled through these predator-prey relationships. The video “How Wolves Change Rivers” beautifully demonstrates how these processes, trophic cascades, play out in the real world. In the Yellowstone National Park, wolves were reintroduced in 1995 as an effort to control the impact of an overgrazing population of deer which was having cascading effects on the biodiversity of the park. In doing so, the rivers had responded to the reintroduction of the wolves due to the far-reaching impacts their presence had on the vegetation, which directly affected the riverbanks. The impacts of these predator-prey relationships are easier to see than the impacts had on abiotic or physical geography of an ecosystems. This example does a great job at exhibiting the laws of conservation of energy and matter at play through the layered, but organized relationships that exist in ecosystems.

Discussion question: How does matter and energy cycle through your everyday life? Are there any gaps? How can it be useful to be conscious of these dynamics?

Word Count: 1105

Works Cited:

“Energy Flow & Primary Productivity (Article).” Khan Academy. Khan  Academy.   https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/ecology/intro-to-ecosystems/a/energy-flow-primary-productivity.    

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott E. Spoolman. 2018. Living in the Environment: Nineteenth Edition, V-25. Canada: Cengage Learning.

Sustainable Human. How  Wolves Change Rivers. Youtube, February 13, 2014.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q&feature=youtu.be.

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Blog Post #3: The Climate Crisis Through History

          This week’s material consisted of exposure to a historical disciplinary approach that can be applied to understand the crisis we are facing as our planet undergoes change. After interacting with the readings and watching Edward Burtynsky’s documentary “Manufactured Landscapes,” it was very clear to me that we must pay important attention to time. Time is the metric we use to measure change, and ultimately, this change creates a story that we must be hungry to uncover. This story is ultimately the history of it all—the universe, planet Earth, the story of life on Earth, our own human history, and how we are leaving a mark on this planet. This approach can help us understand how our humanity fits into the grand scheme of things

          Big History is an academic discipline that studies history from the dawn of time, which by many is considered the Big Bang. It can be thought of as “macrohistory” in that it focuses on general trends and patterns since the dawn of time, and put succinctly, it is “the fundamental nature of change itself” (Wikipedia). Big History is quite different from conventional history in that human affairs are not at the center of its focus. It draws on a multitude of disciplines, meaning its data is not limited to primary sources such as written records, artifacts, and other pieces of evidence that help us put together what happened during the time period being studied. Instead, it may also draw upon laws in physics, biological or chemical experiments, fossils, trends in human behavior that have grand impacts such as large-scale disturbances of ecosystems and raising global temperatures.

(Figure 1. An outline of Big History, Wikipedia)

          Some criticism this academic discipline receives is that it is “anti-humanist” and that it downplays methodologies used in conventional history as it is more of a “science” in the way biology or physics are sciences. Sam Wineburg, a history professor at Stanford argues that “At certain points, it becomes less history and more of a kind of evolutionary biology or quantum physics,” to say that it becomes less compelling in the way history is (The New York Times). However, a biology course is inherently historical since it uses evidence to try to reconstruct the history of life on Earth in the same way conventional history uses evidence to create a narrative for what happened during the first century.  I think Big History can be useful in helping us thinking differently about these disciplines. Science is often met with some degree of skepticism when it seems to contradict our ways of thinking, but people more readily accept a documentary that recounts events in ancient Mesopotamia. We need to be receptive of “strange” and new ways of thinking because the changes we are facing today urge us to pick up new weapons to adapt to change, and this includes our ways of studying.

(Figure 2. Time Chart, Unknown)

              This snippet of this time chart is what Big History could potentially look like. Granted, however, this timeline has some inaccurate information and when looking at events in human history, they seem to put western history at the center. The left column is fragmented and has larger gaps between events and lists more “trends.” I think when discussing human history, we kind of have to work backwards almost. We need to figure out what are the patterns we are seeing and how did we create the conditions for these patterns to emerge. I think this later part in Big History can be identified as the “Anthropocene,” or the human era. This was proposed as a geological epoch because it has been widely accepted that using geological metrics, humans are having an impact so significant on the Earth that can be quantified.  

(Figure 3. Human footprint, New Atlas)

          Jared Diamond’s book Collapse: How Societies Chose to Fail or Succeed lends us another way to study environmental history. In this book, Diamond compares how different society dealt with “input” variables, or a sort of stimulus to its stability, yielding “outputs” defined by the society’s survival or failure. He argues that some reasons for the collapse of past societies are rooted in overpopulation and not being able to sustain its people. Some causes to modern failures include deforestation, loss of land fertility, problems with water management, overhunting or overfishing, people’s increased footprint, among other reasons. He also predicts that human-driven climate change, the buildup of environmental toxins, energy issues, and surpassing the Earth’s photosynthetic capacity will be factors that contribute to the demise of present and future societies. I have not read this book, but it seems to show the clear link between how the success of our societies is deeply interwoven, even dependent on, our relationship with the natural resources we interact with. This is an important theme to keep in the backs of our heads when studying history.

          Conventional history is still vital to use when studying the environmental history of our nations, for instance the United States. The next readings are supplements to Mill’s textbook The Living Environment. These readings show a kind of macrohistory of the United States by grouping general social and political trends in U.S history. The Tribal Era encompasses 13,000 years before the 1600s where hundreds of Native American groups with distinct identities lived in small numbers and had low resource use per person. The Frontier Era, from 1607-1890, is the time period where Europeans populate and forcefully expand west, mindlessly exploiting the land and displacing Native Americans further west if they did not already kill them. The land was cleared for settling and for creating farms, and land was viewed as something own—it was often given away or sold at very low prices to private interests. European relationship to the land was marked by greed and hunger to use up resources for personal gain. I think the name of this era downplays the violence and misuse that took place during this era. Towards the end of the Frontier Era, the Early Conservationist Era emerged, lasting from 1832 until 1870. This era was defined by the concern raised by some people who thought that resources were being degraded or depleted at alarming rates in North America. Many began to advocate, but were not taken seriously, the preservation of nature for “future generations,” and we see a new theme in U.S environmental history emerge. From 1870 until present day, we see increased intervention from the federal government in conservation efforts and an increased awareness in public health. Through these documents, I see a trend arise where there is growing tensions between private interests such as mining, coal, oil, automobile, and other companies that use natural resources to provide goods and services, who argue that argue that these policies are harmful for economic growth, and people advocating for more environmentally conscious policy.  

          Burtynsky’s film does a great job at documenting the scale of China’s industrial revolution in an objective way. He chooses China not to place value judgments on their industrial endeavors, but because China has massive landscapes that have been completely turned into wastelands or are grounds of largescale production. These landscapes allow us to reflect on the anthropogenic impact we have on Earth in the name of progress. This way of portraying our impact should be appreciated.  We live in a world where we are quick to point blame to someone but do not take time to step back and try to understand how these processes or events come to be. I think this is something a discipline such as Big History can help us address when being critical of issues we face because it looks at events in the context of larger patterns.

          We pursue technological advancements in the name of progress—progress that we think will help our future generations at the cost of degrading natural resources. This rhetoric that is concerned with our future generations has inspired environmental consciousness in the US, and probably in other places around the world. But this same rhetoric is what motivates mass production, and consequently results in mass waste. We need to stray away from this way of thinking and embrace new ways, for instance by encouraging different disciplines to contribute their tools to this universal issue we face.

Word Count: 1367

Works cited:

Diamond, Jared M. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Penguin, 2011.

Dowd, Michael. “Big History Hits the Big Time.” HuffPost, December 7, 2017. https://www.huffpost.com/

Irving, Michael. “Are We Living in the Anthropocene Epoch? Scientific Body Says ‘Yes.’” New Atlas, August 31, 2016. https://newatlas.com/anthropocene/45151/.

TEDTalks: Edward Burtynsky--TED Prize Wish, Share the Story of Earths Manufactured Landscapes, n.d.

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Blog Post #4: How do we see the world? Who are we? Who should we be? What should we do?

        Philosophy is the study of asking big questions about our nature and the nature of the world and trying to arrive at answers. Closely related, ethics concerns itself with what is right and wrong, what we ought to do, and who we ought to be. When applied to the environment, we are talking about how we view the world, how we act in accordance to this worldview, and what we should do differently to align ourselves with what is right. The 25th chapter of Living in the Environment by Tyler G. Miller and Scott E. Spoolman talks about commonly held environmental worldviews that get at who we are, our perceived nature of the world/environment/planet, and how we fit into it. As a supplementary reading, David Orr’s essay “What is Education For?  Six myths about the foundations of modern education, and six new principles to replace them,   ” highlights the need for a specific kind of education—one where we are conscious of different perspectives and philosophies. I contend that our moral compass is what fills our sense of urgency to respond to issues and guides how we take action when responding. Therefore, Orr is right in that we need to go beyond the horizons of our own perspectives because the issue we face are multi-faceted and demand that we let go of our biases to limit our ignorance as much as we can.

              There are three main types of worldviews mentioned in the text. The first kind are the “human-centered worldviews.” As the name suggests, these perspectives prioritize human needs and wants. These worldviews generally view humans as the dominant species with the capacity and responsibility to manage the earth, often using natural resources and other life on Earth as means to our desires. At a glance, this perspective sounds selfish and cold. It includes the “stewardship worldview,” a perspective that places an ethical obligation on humans to protect other species and the condition of the Earth, which many of us would agree we have this obligation especially when we talk about what we should do to “manage” the climate crisis we find ourselves faced with. These conversations are often about discouraging “wrong” human behavior and promoting behavior that has less of a burden on the environment, such as low-impact economic growth. It should be noted that this worldview is different from the next ones in that the stewardship perspective places an obligation on humans to behave in a certain way; we have a responsibility to manage and protect because we are the dominating species in this world.

              Another popular type of worldview is the life-centered worldview. This perspective contends that we have an ethical duty to slow down the extinction of other species as a result of our harmful activities. This perspective calls for people to recognize the value of other life and views actions as morally wrong if they are harmful to other life.

              Finally, the third type of environmental worldviews is the earth-centered worldview. This worldview is broader in that it aims to preserve earth’s biodiversity, ecosystem services, and life support systems for all species. It does not believe we are in charge, rather it contends that we too are animals and subject to ecological processes, and to achieve this we need to behave more sustainably. An example of an earth-centered worldview is the environmental wisdom worldview which is very much in line with the authors’ worldview that we have an obligation to leave the earth just as good or better than we found it. These different worldviews are important to understand because they give us a sense of urgency (or lack thereof) to act. They also dictate what the is the “right” way to go about our environmental issues.

              Later in the chapter, the author’s highlight that being environmentally literate will help us make more ethically informed decisions about how we interact with the world. I thought this was interesting because the countries we consider to be more “educated” are also the nations that have greater footprints. However, the authors of the textbook argue for a specific kind of environmental literacy, namely one that offers a comprehensive understanding of “how the earth’s life-support system works, how our actions affect its life-sustaining systems, and how we can change our behavior toward the earth and thus toward ourselves” (Miller and Spoolman 2018, 688). The authors offer three important ideas to build this environmental literacy:

Natural capital support our economies and life on earth.

We have large ecological footprints that are rapidly growing.

There will be harmful, lasting consequences for exceeding the earth’s capacity to support our economies and life on earth.

The authors also define environmental literacy as the capacity to answer the following questions:

And at the same time showing a coherent understanding of the following concepts:

(Figure 1. Achieving environmental literacy, Living in the Environment, 2018)

               I thought it was interesting, strange almost, how the text laid this out as sort of “requirements” or a “how to” achieve environmental literacy. However, I am not sure how this is exactly useful. One would answer these questions already within the contexts of their respective worldview and not necessarily make them think more critically of their own actions. While I do think that it is a good to have some element of self-reflection, I think that it does not offer much else. When presenting my research to the public or in scholarly events, before anything I try to convey why that person should care about the work I am doing. I think there needs to be some element of why should one be concerned about my environmental responsibility? Every person’s relationship to the environment is shaped differently, and even more so in different cultural contexts, and thus, they will have varying reasons they find compelling to care for their ethical responsibility to the environment.

               David Orr’s essay offers a useful perspective on how we should approach environmental literacy that shares some commonalities with my own perspective. Orr first addresses the widely held belief that a lack of education contributes to environmental degradation. Orr disagrees and points out that educated people, those holding degrees from higher education institutions, largely contribute to the degradation of natural capital because they end up working for massive corporations with immense environmental footprints. Rather, Orr argues that we are not making compelling arguments through education as to why we should be concerned with the earth’s systems and natural capital. Second, Orr argues that education should not be a pursuit for facts, but rather a pursuit to be a better citizen of the world and “make the earth habitable and humane.”  Our education systems should be focused on the “production of people with moral courage” (Orr 2011). From personal experience, I have heard many young people my age complain about general education classes such as philosophy, literature, history, fine arts, among other courses as a waste and unnecessary. There are reasonable arguments against requiring these kinds of courses, but more often than not, students do not see the value in these courses to their professional and career goals. I find that our education system emphasizes the production of people that do some sort of labor and consequently fall short of communicating the importance of general education coursework. We have been conditioned to equate who we are with our professions or labor and forget our humanity in the process. In doing so, many professionals with higher education neglect to bridge the work they do with what they value, and thus are lacking in this “moral courage” Orr talks about.

Word count: 1241

Works Cited:

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott E. Spoolman. 2018. Living in the Environment: Nineteenth Edition, V-25. Canada: Cengage Learning.  

Orr, David. “What Is Education For?” 2011. Context Institute. September 15, 2011. https://www.context.org/iclib/ic27/orr/.  

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Blog Post #5: Economics, Politics, Law, & Sustainability

               This week’s readings are based on Miller’s Living in the Environment chapter 23, “Economics, Environment, and Sustainability,” and chapter 24 “Politics, environment, and sustainability.” Chapter 23 looks at how our economic systems are related to natural systems within the biosphere, and thus should adopt more sustainable economic activities that consider environmental harm or benefits from ecosystem services. Chapter 24 looks at government and its role in making societies more sustainable. These two chapters go hand in hand with each other because pushing our societies towards more sustainable outcomes usually entails government intervention in the form of environmental policy that proposes, funds, and enforces regulations, programs, and laws that grow and develop our economies sustainably. Although “man-made,” our economies need to be recognized as subsystems of the biosphere because of their direct relationship to natural capital and ultimately our systemic relationships and the quality of our lives. More importantly, we need to demand that our governments and influential economic figures view our economies as such and that they treat us as citizens before consumers.

               The first chapter, chapter 23, discusses markets and some of the challenging obstacles we are faced with when trying to transition into more environmentally sustainable economies. There are three ways we can classify economies: 1) a centrally planned economy is an economy where the government determines the production and the distribution of goods, 2) a mixed economy is an economy where private interests and government both determine how goods and services are distributed, and 3) a free-market economic system is one where all economic activities are determined through supply and demand with little to no government interference, using price signals to give value to a good or service as determined through the activities of sellers and buyers.

(Figure 1. Supply and demand curves for a saleable product in a free market, Miller and Spoolman, 2018)

               It was interesting to see a major issue tie in with last week’s reading of philosophical worldviews, and it pertains to how we view economies. Many experts regard our economies as subsystems of the biosphere. This is because economies rely on capital, namely natural capital which consists of natural resources and ecosystem services, human physical labor and intellectual skills, and manufactured capital which are the tools or means we use to convert our raw materials into our intended purpose. Industrialized countries generally depend “on a high-throughput economy, which attempts to boost economic growth by increasing the flow of matter and energy resources through the economic system to produce more goods and services,” generating a greater capacity to distribute goods and services to people but at the same time using natural capital for high-quality energy from the environment, and in return polluting through low-quality energy and wastes in the form of matter (Miller 632).

(Figure 2. Capital produces goods and services, Miller and Spoolman, 2018)  

               Two prominent perspectives are that of the neoclassical economists and ecological economists. Neoclassical economists such as Alfred Marshall and Milton Friedman believe there is essentially no limit to economic growth because growth does not depend on the scarcity of natural capital as they can be replaced or worked around if depleted or degraded. Ecological economists such as Herman Daly and Robert Constanza, on the other hand, highlight that some natural resources, especially the ones we have a hard time putting a price on like clean air or water, have no substitutes and therefore means that there are limits to economic growth because the degradation of these natural resources are not factored into our economic activities but we ultimately depend on them for ideal social outcomes. These competing worldviews look at economies differently. The former sees natural processes and resources as subsets to our economies, whereas the latter regards economies as subset structures that depend on natural capital systems.

               We can see the types of economies as points on a spectrum, where a centrally planned is on one end, a free-market economy is on the complete opposite side, and a perfectly mixed economy is at the center. Usually, free markets do a decent job at distributing goods and services, however sometimes they may face “market failures,” when goods and services are not distributed efficiently and leads to unideal social circumstances, for instance, the degradation of public goods and services.  Here in the United Sates, we have a mixed economy where the government intervenes to achieve social aims, and this is where we see chapter 23 bridge into chapter 24.

               The government plays an important role in the transition into more sustainable societies because it can encourage sustainable economic activity through policy. However, this is obviously far more complex than it seems. In the US for instance, we value a fair and just democratic system that represents the people and hopefully has the best public interests in mind. However, this is not always the case and we see this type of government “compromised by groups or organizations that gain enough wealth and power to have more influence over government policies than the average citizen can have” (Miller and Spoolman 2018, 658). This makes politics complicated because we have very different perspectives on what policies should be enacted on top of an already complex process of public policy development. This process can be referred to as the “policy life cycle” and is defined by four general phases as illustrated in orange by the diagram below. In between each phase there are further steps that must be taken. For instance, after identifying an issue, a research process begins to better understand said issue.

(Figure 3. Policy life cycle, Miller and Spoolman, 2018)  

        There are several tips analysts suggests should be used to guide environmental policy making. The suggestions I found most useful were the following:

The holistic principle:  environmental issues are interconnected with other problems and we  should focus on solutions that address the root causes instead of  providing temporary relief. I think this also ties into the “triple bottom line principle”  that calls for treating economic, environmental, and social issues as  interconnected rather than considering each of these issues separately.  For instance, if somebody were suffering from a bacterial infection, it  would be ineffective to use deal with its symptoms separately. We would  prescribe antibiotics to get to the core of the problem which would  ultimately relieve the symptoms as well.

The environmental justice principle:   when implementing policy, no one group should be disproportionately  burdened by environmental stressors. Our policies should be just and not  reactionary to the distress marginalized groups experience. There are  countless examples of poor and underrepresented people who are or were  directly affected by some environmental issue. It has historically taken  our most vulnerable groups to endure these impacts in silence as their  voices are shunned. More socioeconomically advantaged groups are often  more readily and adequately responded to, or are less frequently exposed  to these stressors in the first place      

The precautionary principle: if we have enough  evidence that suggests some human activity is threatening human health  or the environment, we should consider taking measure to discourage this  activity. I think this was an aspect that was often overlooked in many  cases where people suspected something was off in their communities, but  their concerns were ignored. If people are concerned about something,  it should be investigated thoroughly with the attention and care it  deserves.      

          To bring the concepts in these chapters together, we can look at Ernest Partridge’s essay “Consumer or Citizen,” where he discusses our relationship with leaders in our country, whether they are elites or policy makers. It is important to distinguish whether we are being treated as consumers or citizens because it brings to light whether we are just means to the economic development of some interest or if we are being treated with the dignity citizens in a democratic nation deserve. If we want to see the latter, we must ensure we are enacting laws that protect the use of our natural capital in our economies because they have real implications for the conditions of our societies. The main takeaway from this essay is Partridge’s point that “we are being treated more and more as mere bundles of "gut preferences," by our political leaders, and by the oligarchy that selects, finances and thus "owns" these politicians.” Our political leaders study the most effective way to convince us of their agendas, meanwhile our most influential economic forces expect us to behave like sheep who acquire the tastes defined by oligarchs and depend on our inability to think critically. We need to see ourselves not only as autonomous individuals, but also as interdependent people who form a body politic and are concerned for others involved.

Discussion Question: How does a neoclassical economic perspective influence environmental policy? How can we encourage people to view the economy differently?

Word Count: 1429

Works Cited:

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott E. Spoolman. 2018. Living in the Environment: Nineteenth Edition, V-25. Canada: Cengage Learning.

Partridge, Ernest. “Consumer or Citizen?” Template with sidebar. Accessed February 23, 2020. http://gadfly.igc.org/politics/left/consumer.htm.

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Blog Post #6: Population Growth and Cities

          The rate at which the human population is growing is alarming. The world population grows by approximately 210,000 people daily (Population Clock). The world is rapidly developing and consequently, the global human population is being driven by a natural increase. This raises concerns regarding the environmental strains a rapidly growing population poses to natural capital and global ecosystems. Equally important, we should be concerned with cities who are increasingly becoming home to much of the world’s growing population. We are faced with the challenge of the environmental implications posed by rapidly growing populations paired with making our urban settings more livable and sustainable. Cities have great potential for managing large populations while offering its inhabitants dignified lives and mitigating environmental impacts. But probably most important is how this week’s readings pose some problematic modes of thought that put population growth at the epicenter of our environmental degradation and not as a symptom of unrestrained economic growth.

          The Impossible Hamster Video metaphorically speaks of this unrestrained economic growth. In nature, we see  controlled patterns of growth, for instance, a hamster’s growth pattern, which  doubles every week until it reaches a reproductive age. If the hamster were to  keep doubling in size for an entire year, it would grow large enough to  consume all of the world’s resources. This has something to say about a popular  worldview people have regarding the economy; unrestrained economic growth has the  same impact. Our population growth has direct relationships with economic  growth and we seeing more and more the devastating impacts.

          Chapter 6 of The Living Environment by Miller and Spoolman discuss our rapidly growing human population and concerns with reaching a limit to this population growth due to the Earth’s inability to sustain our population. This concept is similar to that of a carrying capacity, which is the greatest population size a species can reach before the environment is unable to provide food, shelter, water and other needs. This concept might be a bit inhumane to apply to people because people should not only have their “basic needs” met. These should actually be rights. I thought it was interesting that instead, the term “cultural carrying capacity” was used and defined as “the maximum number of people who could live in reasonable freedom and comfort indefinitely, without decreasing the ability of the earth to sustain future generations” (Miller and Spoolman 2018, 122).  However, thinking about this critically still talks about humans with the same regard. With trying to sound ethical, I think Miller and Spoolman still fall short of realizing how this is insensitive, especially when saying “reasonable freedom and comfort” when we live in a world with massive wealth gaps and unclear definitions of what freedom and comfort even mean.

          In chapter 22, the textbook explains population trends in urban settings, major challenges faced, and how cities can be made more sustainable. Urbanization is a process that describes the development of cities and its resulting, surrounding communities (suburbs) due to urban sprawl. The text studies urbanization through metrics defined by percent population relative to a country or the world. There are other ways to measure urbanization and it generally depends on what exactly it is that you are studying. For instance, we might designate “urbanness” to a place based on the lack of green space it has, or its lack of wildlife, etc. These different metrics are useful when studying urban ecology and might be useful to consider different metrics to understand relationships in an urban context.

        As outlined in the text, there are three major trends regarding urban populations:

Globally, populations of urban areas are sharply increasing

Number and size of urban areas are increasing

Poverty is becoming more prevalent in urban areas

          By 2050, it is projected that 67% of the world population will live in cities. We expect to see an increase in the number of cities globally and a growth in the size of  these cities. Finally, the number of people living in impoverished conditions  is expected to triple by 2050. The text paints a generalized image of  poverty, often displaying poverty as living in shanty towns or slums who “build shacks  from corrugated metal, hunks of plastic, scrap wood, cardboard, and  other scavenged building materials, or they live in rusted shipping  containers and junked cars” and saying that it occurs more in less-developed countries without offering anything productive to  say (Miller and Spoolman 2018, 612). Additionally, it speaks of poverty as an ailment that causes environmental degradation  but speaks less of the consumption practices of more affluent people in  urban areas, who definitely demand more inputs and produce more waste.

          The text discusses some of the environmental challenges experienced by urban settings. Some of these environmental  problems dealt with a lack of vegetation and thus less ecosystem services,  excessive noise and light, water issues, pollution and health complications, and  local climate effects. I am particularly interested in local climate effects  and water problems that are connected to a lack of vegetation. I designed a  study, which I speak of in my practicum, where I look at the ecosystem dynamics  in a ten year-old unmanaged green roof in the Bronx Zoo. Green roofs have  countless ecosystem services they can provide to urban settings. Cities suffer  from heat-islands which describe the concentration of heat in urban settings  due heat retention in the types of surfaces such as asphalt roads,  sidewalks, and other impervious materials that make up a large portion of the surface area in urban settings.  More so, these surfaces generate another kind of issue that deals with storm-water  management due to their  impervious nature, meaning they do not allow water to seep through. Consequently, storm-water that cannot seep through these surfaces runs  off into waterways, directly or indirectly, carrying pollutants with it. It can  even stress out old sewage infrastructure, like the kind we have in New York  City and cause combined sewer overflows that can discharge raw sewage into  nearby bodies of water. My study addressed two distinct investigations regarding the  Center for Global Conservation’s greenroof in the Bronx Zoo and the water quality  of the Bronx River in the context of storm-water management. I am a huge  advocate for green roofs because of the countless ecosystem services they provide.  They can help capture rainwater and also mitigate urban heat islands by reducing  the temperature generated from heat absorption. They also bring urban  dwellers and urban wildlife green spaces that are necessary for good  health. These are one of the many solutions that can be implemented in urban design to make our cities more sustainable  and more livable.

(Figure 1. Javits Center green roof, Audubon, 2016)      

           As soon as I saw this topic on the syllabus I was excited to sign up to do my presentation on it. I have lived in cities my entire life and am fascinated by them. Unfortunately, these two chapters were rather off-putting to read. I had qualms regarding the way poverty was discussed in these chapters. It is rather interesting to see that the kind of ideas perpetuated in the text are, in my perspective, shaped by the same systemic economic structures that have little consideration for poor and marginalized communities. It was truly almost ironic to see that play out in the text.

Word Count: 1136

Works Cited:

“Current World Population.” Worldometer. Accessed March 11, 2020. https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/.

Foundation, New Economics. Vimeo, November 14, 2018. https://vimeo.com/8947526.

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott E. Spoolman. 2018. Living in the Environment: Nineteenth Edition, V-25. Canada: Cengage Learning.  

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Blog post #7: Ecosystem Services and How To Appreciate Them

          After reading Miller and Spoolman’s chapter 9 of The Living Environment, it is evident that we are contributing to the extinction of wildlife and the ecosystem services they provide through our degradation of their ecosystems. Chapter 10 offers some insight as to how we are threatening these ecosystems as well as some solutions. I think that as a species with the capacity to reason that wildlife offer benefits through their ecosystem services, that keeping these ecosystems intact is not only beneficial for wildlife but also our well-being, and that we are damaging these systems, we have a moral obligation to restore and prevent further degradation of wildlife ecosystems. We can achieve this by understanding our impact and integrating this moral obligation into our laws and economic practices, understanding how we depend on these ecosystem services, protecting wildlife and wild places from human disturbance, focusing our attention to human threatened areas, and making space for wildlife in the spaces we already inhabit.

          In chapter 9, Miller and Spoolman talk about the importance of ecosystem services provided by other species to our societies. They start off the chapter with a case study about honeybees. The ecosystem service honeybees provide to us is pollination, which is responsible for “71% of vegetable and fruit crops that provide 90% of the world’s food and a third of the U.S food supply” (Miller and Spoolman 2018,192). The problem, however, is that honeybee populations have been declining since the 1980s, and since 2006, many honeybees in Europe and the United States have been going missing due to colony collapse disorder, when all the bees of a colony abandon it during inappropriate seasons. On the one hand, we depend on this species’ ecosystem service to be able to produce enough food. On the other hand, it is not a sustainable practice to depend on this single species for our food supply. This is the example often used to showcase how we our economies depend on ecosystem services provided by wildlife, and how its extinction has heavy implications for our societies.

(Figure 1. Honeybee pollinating, Miller and Spoolman, 2018)      

          Extinction and wildlife population decline is what this chapter is all about. “Extinction is a natural process and has occurred at a low rate throughout most of the earth’s history,” namely the background extinction rate (Miller and Spoolman 2018, 193). There is a difference between natural extinctions and extinctions we serve as catalysts for where we increase this extinction rate. When many species go extinction in a short period of time, this is what is referred to as a mass extinction, for instance the Permian-triassic extinction which was estimated to wipe out approximately 90% of life on earth. After reading this, I had a couple of questions. I wonder how high the extinction rate needs to increase to qualify as a mass extinction and if the Anthropocene is categorized as a geologic period, would the extinctions induced by human impact be considered a mass extinction? Additionally, how do we know what species we already naturally going extinct before we could say our behavior had something to do with it, and how do we know what natural extinctions we have accelerated?

          This part of the reading was supplemented by short Dailymotion video published by Geo Beats that talks about the decline in wildlife population in the last forty years. There has been a reported 50% average decline in wild animal populations, and some species go well beyond this average such as freshwater vertebrates (Dailymotion). This decline was attributed habitat destruction and to human consumption practices. The text reminds us of ways human accelerate species extinction through the use of the acronym “HIPPCO” (Miller and Spoolman 2018, 198) and stands for the following:

H – Habitat destruction, degradation, fragmentation

 I – Invasive species

P – Population growth and increased resource use

P – Pollution

C – Climate change

O – Over-exploitation

          Chapter 10, the authors discuss the importance of sustaining ecosystems and the services that they offer. It is clear that these systems bring us countless human benefits in terms of our health and economies. Some of these services include, but are not limited to the support of energy flow and cycling of chemicals, air and water purification, reduction of soil erosion, absorption and release of water, their impact on climate, storing atmospheric carbon, and serving as a home for wildlife and at the same time offer renewable resources, recreational and industrial uses such as mining.

          I think many of our nations have been built on ideologies that inherently favor the exploitation of wildlife and ecosystem services to the point where we are so removed from caring about the impact we have on these systems. Our attention is never drawn to these issues until we are not directly harmed by our actions or until we see a graphic image on our cellphones of an animal experiencing some sort of distress. Not to mention, the animals we largely care for are those that we find value in, whether it be for aesthetic purposes, because we find it cute or beautiful, or because we want to exploit what it can do for us. It is important to unlearn these ways of thinking and start educating our people differently. I do think this is hard to do because many of our social structures are defined by power, which often implies the amount of wealth you have, how much capacity for consumption you have, how much you can participate in economic practices that are often harmful, etc. We are taught that our value in society is defined by wasteful consumption that contributes to this. I think even before unlearning and educating our people different comes regulating our economies differently. We need to factor in these ecosystem services that are not reflected in our economic activities. There needs to be a push towards full-cost pricing that reflects our damage to ecosystems as consumers and suppliers. Even beyond that, there need to be more laws in place that protect wildlife and we need to push for societies that are conscious of the harm they are inflicting. I think most of the time we are driven by this lack of connection to the impact we have because these effects play out far away from us. We need to see to believe. We need to be more graphic about the consequences our actions have because that is the only way we can make them hit home. Additionally, sadly, we need to convey these ideas in a way that makes people care. Undoing these horrible impacts on the world’s wildlife educating people on how this impacts them, requires new ways of thinking and unlearning, and being more aggressive when holding people accountable.

Word Count: 1105

Works Cited:

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott E. Spoolman. 2018. Living in the Environment: Nineteenth Edition, V-25. Canada: Cengage Learning    

Beats, Geo. Dailymotion. Dailymotion, September 30, 2014. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x26ybub.

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Blog post #8: Human Practices, Aquatic Biodiversity, Ecosystem Services, and Food Production

          In the materials for this week, we continue to look at the intimate relationship between human activity and the environment. Chapter 11 in Living in the Environment is concerned with the human impact on aquatic biodiversity and ecosystems, and is supplemented by the film ALBATROSS by Christopher Jordan, which is a free public artwork that painfully portrays the destructive implications of our culture on a species of seabirds. In chapter 12, Miller and Spoolman explore food production practices and their environmental effects. While the film begs us to reflect on the far reaching consequences of our actions and practices, these chapters continue to consider the authors’ sustainability model to assess how we degrade biodiversity and the ecosystem services we depend on, and to offer possible ways to move forward.

          Chapter 11 clearly highlights the importance of sustaining life in the world’s oceans and the ecosystems services provided by healthy aquatic ecosystems. The reality is that our well-being and the well-being of our economies depends on ecosystem services provided by the interaction of species that live in the ocean, and yet “we have explored less than 5% of the earth’s interconnect oceans,”  with much we do not understand about aquatic biodiversity or the impacts our actions have on them (Miller and Spoolman, 255). Oceans make up nearly three quarters of the surface of the planet we live on and we should care about aquatic biodiversity and ecosystem because they are intimately connected to our economies, well-being, and provide ecological services. Oceans are connected to our economies in direct ways and in ways that are completely overlooked, for instance, a direct economic example is our worldwide dependency on oceans for millions of jobs and tourism. Additionally, the seafood market supplies “about 40% of the world’s people” for a considerable portion of animal protein and necessary nutrition (Spoolman and Miller, 255). Some indirect economic effects deal with the health and ecological ecosystem services they provide that are not internalized into our markets, otherwise known as externalities. For instance, oceans slow atmospheric warming and climate change because they absorb 25% of the carbon dioxide and 90% of the excess heat we pollute into our atmosphere. Furthermore, they serve as natural barriers against natural disasters such as tsunamis or severe weather events and ocean life produces more than half of the oxygen we rely on. It is indisputable that we should be concerned for our world’s oceans.

          It is important to keep in mind important trends to better grasp the challenges faced by marine life. One of them being that the greatest marine biodiversity occurs near coral reefs, estuaries, and towards the bottom of the ocean and that biodiversity is greatest near coasts. Therefore, protecting and adequately sustaining coral reefs or estuaries by coasts and the bottoms of the ocean are of utmost importance, but it is also essential to understand these ecosystems holistically. Throughout the chapter, the authors refer to the acronym “HIPPCO” used in previous chapters to lay out the difference ways our actions accelerate the degradation of aquatic biodiversity and ultimately their ecosystems:

H – Habitat destruction, degradation, fragmentation: Threats such as the development of coasts where many of our worlds’ cities are situated and their resulting pollution, warmer ocean water, and ocean acidification have degraded coastal habitats. The destruction of coral reefs draws an eerie resemblance to that of the destruction of forests. Since 1950, approximately half of coastal warm water coral reefs have been degraded or destroyed, and it is estimated that we will lose another 30% by 2060.

(Figure 1. Coral reef habitat destruction, Miller and Spoolman, 2018)

I – Invasive species: Harmful invasive species have been accidentally or intentionally introduced that can disrupt entire ecosystems by altering their dynamics in food chains, for instance.

P – Population growth and increased resource use: With 80% of the world living by seacoasts such as in coastal cities, and rising urban trends, these areas continue to be vulnerable to our polluting practices.

P – Pollution: Much of the wastes produced by land based coastal activities have made sewers out of oceans by becoming deposits of biochemical hazards and solid wastes. Erosion of these wastes from industrial and urban areas end up in waterways and can yield algal blooms and ultimately create oxygen-depleted zones. My research on urban watershed is looking at how green roofs can serve as barriers against runoff that can have changes in the chemistry and biodiversity of our bodies of water such as our coastal areas.

C – Climate change: The ocean is becoming warmer, mostly at the surface, but the heat can be brought deeper into the water. On top of this, research shows that “the ability of the ocean to absorb heat is slowing,” and will eventually dissipate into the atmosphere and accelerate the warming of the earth and our changing climate (Miller and Spoolman 2018, 260).

O – Over-exploitation: Our fishing practices feed large amount of people around the globe but are unsustainable. Just like we have an ecological footprint, we also have a “fishprint” which translates into the area of ocean needed to sustain seafood consumption. It is overwhelming to see how our elaborate our technology is in the harvesting of fish, including vulnerable marine wildlife. The over-exploitation of seafood can lead to commercial extinction, when it is not profitable or viable to continue harvesting a certain species and has economic consequences.

(Figure 2. Fishing technology, Miller and Spoolman, 2018)

          The section of chapter 11 that discusses pollution is relevant to the film ALBATROSS. Chris Jordan takes us to the remote pacific island of Midway where he intimately documents a population of albatrosses being affected by our pollution of plastic in the ocean. Jordan comes across hundreds of dead albatrosses on the island and dissects them only to find that we are the reason for their deaths. The film does not tell us what to do but rather offers a reflection in the intestines of these animals that is telling of how disconnected our relationship with the life on planet Earth has become. However at times throughout the film, I felt there were things we could learn from this seabird. For example, when they are grown enough to abandon the island and give up being on land for years even though they have never done something like this before. I think we need to be daring like the albatross.

(Figure 3. Albatross parent feeding plastic to offspring, ALBATROSS)

          Chapter 12 is related to chapter 11 in that we use the ocean to feed us. This chapter is concerned with food production and its relationship to the environment. Food production mostly comes from croplands that provide grains, range lands that produce meat, and fisheries for seafood. The way we produce food has serious environmental effects, namely its impact on biodiversity loss as described in the previous chapter and when habitats are destroyed to be made sites of food production. Erosion from these places also puts harsh chemicals into waterways, and there are negative air quality implications involved as well.

Word count:  1137

Works Cited:

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott E. Spoolman. 2018. Living in the Environment: Nineteenth Edition, V-25. Canada: Cengage Learning

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Blog post #9: Our Food and Soil Through Film

          The notion that the media and art mediums can be used as platforms to raise environmental awareness and spur action to address particular problems has emerged in previous blog posts. However, it was only briefly mentioned and not explored in depth. This week, we explored environmental issues central to the agricultural industry through two documentary films. Food, Inc., directed by filmmaker Robert Kenner, is a powerful and widely recognized documentary that exposes the predatory nature of our food production industry in America and demonstrates the numerous troubling implications it has on our lives. The second film discussed here, Symphony of the Soil by director Deborah Koons Garcia, highlights the intricate relationships between soil and other biotic and abiotic components, our own relationship with soil, and how remedying and restoring these relationships has the potential to alleviate the most pressing environmental issues of our time. These two films are starkly different regarding how they each convey their message; Food, Inc. uses shocking footage to uncover “the veil between us and where food is coming from,” whereas Symphony of the Soil uses beautiful scenery and watercolor paint to deliver a sense of hope. These kinds of films have the potential to be very powerful for communicating important problems and ideas pivotal to the environmental crisis we are facing in a digestible manner. For that reason, it is important to evaluate how the arguments and information posed in these films are presented to their audience in order to be effective tools for education and activism.

          Five minutes into the film, Food, Inc. immediately makes it apparent to its viewer that there is a disconnect between them, the consumer, and how food gets to their hands. Not only that, but that it is “deliberately hidden.” The American supermarket gives us the illusion that we have the freedom to choose the food we put in our bodies or the companies we choose to support. This film  unmasks this lie by taking its audience on a journey behind the stage that is the American supermarket and finds that our meat, dairy, and the ingredients in nearly all our products are being controlled by a handful of corporate entities. In the last half century, food production has been largely shaped by the rapid growth and expansion of technology in the food industry. This technology has been intentionally designed to produce “the greatest quantity of food, on the smallest amount of land, for the least amount of money,” creating a highly industrialized system that is only concerned for mass production in order to pursue its interests, without any regard for how directly or indirectly abusive it is.

          Food, Inc should be commended for how skillfully it weaves together the wide-ranging implications of our unsettling agricultural system. Food production in America is probably most terrifying because of how multilayered it is: it produces incredible amounts of waste that is poorly managed and degrades our soil, fresh water resources, energy, creates bi-products in the form of runoff and other wastes, has the potential to become a bio-hazard by producing disease such as E. coli, contributes to poor diets, and consequently poor health outcomes that disproportionately affects low-income communities, abuses of farming communities by subjugating them to their practices, enslaves vulnerable populations such as the undocumented, and has the political and economic power to keep things that way. However, the way these ideas are communicated are laid out in a narrative that relies on the viewer’s reaction, supplemented by startling visuals of animals being hurt, forcing the viewer to antagonize the other side. It can be dangerous to display the way things are from this narrative because it does not allow the reader to really digest things for themselves and can even desensitize or make consumers feel that their actions will have no impact. The scene of the chicken house below demonstrates the kind of tone this film tries to communicate. We see the house stretch far into the distance, making the viewer feel hopeless. This film is very well-known, likely for how aggressively it portrays this issue and its call for action to revolutionize our agricultural system.

(Figure 1. Mass production of chicken, Food, Inc.)

          Symphony of the Soil does things a much differently, and maybe even more appropriately. This film pays tribute to a very special resource our planet harbors—soil. It takes its audience to four different continents to give the viewer the necessary soil science to be able to appreciate and understand the rest of the film and the particular issues it seeks to address. It starts off vague, as it begins by defining the different types of soils, the kind of nutrients that can be found in them, and the living communities that thrive in the soil. What this film does different than the previous one is that it relies on giving its viewers the information it needs to be able to arrive at their own conclusion instead of clearly defining for the audience what side they should take and who they should antagonize. It is not that the film lacks an argument, in fact the message is clear: we will benefit greatly from farming organically. Rather, it is that the message is not forced onto the viewer. The documentary uses the anecdotes of numerous farmers, chefs, and scientists from all around the world, and even performs an experiment that demonstrates the erosion from rainfall on different soil types to convince the reader why they should buy into this argument. Garcia shows us how the topmost layer of our earth, is the substance that becomes the foundation for life. This film does a great job at demystifying things such fungal and microbial colonies, which our advances in technology have taught us we should have strong dislike for and should exterminate at all costs. It celebrates life, even the critters we try to kick off our gardens, and instead shows the important role they play in an ecosystem. More so, the audience can appreciate the visuals under the microscope that allow the viewer to better understand how these systems work and see how they are beautifully interconnected. Likewise, it uses mesmerizing watercolor art to portray these systems in beautifully, almost therapeutic ways that are a symphony to the eyes of the audience. The different pigments in the watercolor bleed across the page and into each other in gently, each color fulfilling an important role in the scenery, with the rich brown color of the soil at the center of it all, pulling this healthy system together and allowing it to thrive in the way it should when we permit it.

(Figure 2. Water-painting, The Symphony of the Soil)

Word count: 1103

Works Cited:

Food, Inc., n.d.

The Symphony of the Soil, n.d.

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Blog post #10: COVID-19: Bio-hazards and Waste

          Buddha arrived at the conclusion that there are only three things for certain: aging, sickness, and death. Aging is the natural condition of living, and while we are alive, we are exposed to environmental hazards that can threaten our health, and even amount to our death. Buddha also warned about the suffering that can stem from our desires for pleasures such as material goods. Although he lived thousands of years ago, these basic teachings of Buddha’s philosophy are useful to consider today as our most pressing environmental concerns are closely tied to human health and modes of living that convince us we need to be active consumers, and consequently, are actively destroying ourselves and the natural capital around us. Chapter 17 in Living in the Environment, “Environmental Hazards and Human Health,” Miller and Spoolman explore risk to human health from hazardous materials. In Chapter 21, “Solid and Hazardous Wastes,” talks about how we systemically generate wastes through a cradle to grave life-cycle and how detrimental this process is to the well-being of societies and ecosystems. More so, we are currently seeing this unfold before our eyes.

          Health hazards can be understood through assessment of risks, and this is how the authors start off chapter 17. Risk is defined as “the probably of suffering from harm from a hazard that can cause injury, disease, death, economic loss, or damage” (Miller and Spoolman 2018, 443). It is important to note that these risks can go beyond the what we generally think of when we talk about “health,” such as economic risks. Economic risks are closely tied to our well-being, as it is widely understood that economic factors affect our well-being, for instance, employment can determine factors such as our housing, food options, medical care, mental health, education, and lifestyle choices. This is also why certain risks can be more prevalent in lower income communities than those who are better off. To address said issues, statistical methods are used to assess risks, which include “[estimating] how much harm a particular hazards can cause to human health or to the environment” and “establish priorities” and this information can inform risk management that involves action about how to reduce a certain risk and by what means (Miller and Spoolman 2018, 443).

(Figure 1. Risk assessment and risk management, Miller and Spoolman, 2018)

b

          Biological hazards are a huge threat to us. Some examples of bio-hazards include infectious diseases, the flu, sexually transmitted diseases, diarrhea diseases and more. Infectious diseases come from pathogens and can be transmitted from one person to another. We also have non-transmissible diseases such as cancer, asthma, diabetes that are not caused by pathogens, or living things, but can be cause by environmental factors. The relationships between biological hazards to human health and our behavior towards the environment comes to life in a multitude of ways. For example, climate change changes the normal temperature region diseases can be found, which can expand the range of the pathogen carrying an illness, which can be the case for “mosquito that breed more rapidly in warmer climate and spread from tropical to temperate areas,” meaning that climate change can adjust or even expand this range, allowing mosquito to bring diseases elsewhere (Miller and Spoolman 2018, 450). Another example is how illnesses are spread to humans through interactions with wildlife through common human practices such as clearing forests where people can be exposed to ticks carrying Lyme disease, the pet trade that allows “200 million wild animals legally imported into the United States without safety measures such as quarantining or screening for diseases,” and through industrialized meat production where poor sanitary conditions can be a breeding ground for e-coli bacteria to spread from livestock to humans through contaminated meat, as we saw an example in the film Food, Inc.

          Chapter 21 explores the environmental problems related to solid and hazardous wastes, which fundamentally are about their contribution to pollution and how valuable resources are wasted instead of reused or recycled and are not fed back into the environment. The YouTube video “The Story of Stuff” by The Story of Stuff project cleverly and concisely illustrates this issue.

(Figure 2. The Story of Stuff, YouTube, 2009)

         In the video, the narrator talks about the life-cycle of a product discussed in the chapter, which starts from its cradle where it is manufactured, to its grave, where it is discarded as solid waste, for instance in landfills or ends ups being litter. The first alarming thing about this life-cycle is that its linear and not cyclical, and in a world where we create consumer goods from the limited natural capital, this is clearly a red flag. William McDonough drew inspiration from business analyst Walter Stahel and argues for a cradle to cradle approach, where our economy relies on a system in which products and their parts can be reused multiple times instead of having a short lifespan, and the parts that are expected to not be useful should be degradable and should be able to be reabsorbed into nutrient cycles. He also argues that we should not design materials in a way that require toxic substances, and instead find approaches that use non-toxic substitutes. This sounds like a great idea and it would be great if we could see more and more manufacturers think this way. As is discussed in the video however, our economy is built to encourage consumption. It is obvious in our advertisements, the social pressure we feel to get the latest iPhone, or the newest and trendiest clothes, because this we have been taught that consumption is how we are considered valuable members in society. However, this has deep consequences for the natural systems of the planet, which becomes further exploited and the people providing the labor and manufacturing services for us see their communities torn apart.

          The current situation our world is faced with, namely the corona virus pandemic, is appropriate to discuss considering these chapters. We are seeing how bio-hazards can impact every aspect of our lives and completely force us into dramatic lifestyle changes in order to mitigate the risks associated with the human health threat. In terms of solid and hazardous wastes, many are under the impression that the “environment” is doing better as a result of our social distancing practices which force us to stay home, and people think that we are seeing improvements in the quality of our air, water, and allowing wildlife to reclaim lost spaces. However, this is misguided. The cradle to grave throughput system is very much intact as millions of people are instead consuming online, and we are seeing littering of gloves and masks, which can further spread the virus. Not to mention, it takes tremendous amount of waste produced from transportation to deliver all the goods we are buying off Amazon, and the people manufacturing these goods and providing us services such as transportation are being exploited and exposed to COVID-19. We need to limit our consumption to reduce the waste we produce. This can happen in small ways, such as using reusable bottles, reusable bags, using products such as menstrual cups or reusable menstrual pads which are becoming more popular. These kinds of changes are little things we can have some say in and can share with our friends and families because they are not drastic changes to our way of living but are small baby steps. Hopefully, we begin to take longer strides to change the innately exploitative nature of our economies and how they are encouraged by our government.

Word Count: 1492

Works Cited:

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott E. Spoolman. 2018. Living in the Environment: Nineteenth Edition, V-25. Canada: Cengage Learning.  

The Story of Stuff Project. “The Story of Stuff.” YouTube. YouTube, April 22, 2009. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM

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Blog post #11: Water

          The materials for this week delve into the most undervalued resource on Earth: water. Water is the most essential supply on this planet and life as we know it would not exist without it. However, our activities are decreasing our supplies of usable water and degrading its quality through pollution. To combat these issues, we need to closely monitor our water use to maximize its efficiency and reduce ways water is being polluted as the misuse and contamination of water poses threats to all life on earth. Our solutions should not lie in the further degradation of natural systems and increased reliance on technology to clean our water and to amplify our supplies, but should rather be focused on preventative and restorative measures that allow natural processes to work how they are intended to by closely monitoring our misuse of water and intervening appropriately.

          Living in a very developed country like the United States, it is easy to what a privilege it is to be able to have access to clean water almost anywhere you go. Water is readily available to us anywhere we need or want it to be, for instance, in our kitchens, bathrooms which include sinks, toilets, and showers/bathtubs, public spaces such as parks with spray showers, or public water fountains. Not only that, but we can even easily decide if we want our water hot or cold. It is rare to ever have to worry about its availability or whether our water is clean to use, but this is not the case for many people worldwide, where one in every ten people do not have access to clean water. It is important to note that this statistic only reflects access and does not talk about the quantity or how this water is used, which is more complex and unevenly distributed.

          The Water Footprint Network offers a footprint calculator that estimates the amount of water personally consumed every day. This calculation takes into account the water used to produce the food I consume, to supply the energy I use, and to produce other products I consume and use ever day such as clothes, furniture, technology, etc.

(Figure 1. Personal water footprint calculator, The Water Footprint Network)

          Figure 1 depicts a shortened version of the footprint calculator and this version shows that the most defining aspects of someone’s water footprint are their country of residence, their gender, their dietary habit, and how much money is spent. When I completed the more extensive version of the footprint calculator, they asked me questions mostly about different categories of my diet and the amount I consume in each category, and there were other questions pertaining to water usage such as the amount of time spent showering on average, how often I do my laundry, and other questions. Still, my results were not far off from the results I got in the shortened version which demonstrate how our diet, our consumption habits, and where we live are the greatest determinants of how much water we use. It was interesting to note that gender is also considered one of these defining factors, which I was not aware of, but after doing a bit of research, the CDC reports that adult men in the US consume almost .75 liters of water more than women per day. However, I wonder if the calculator takes cultural factors into account. Nonetheless, this water footprint calculator can make one think twice about their relationship with water and how removed we can be from recognizing its privilege when our water sources are not threatened before our eyes.

(Figure 2. Personal water footprint calculator results, The Water Footprint Network)

          In chapter 13, “Water Resources,” Miller and Spoolman talk about the environmental threat we face regarding decreasing water supplies driven by population and economic growth. Our available freshwater supplies are being depleted faster than they can be replenished and there are various ways this manifests itself, “by wasting, polluting, and under-pricing this irreplaceable natural resource” (Miller and Spoolman 2018, 325). Firstly, water is an underpriced resource which allows consumers to use it with little regard to how their usage can be wasteful since it is easy to access. Water is closely linked to our economy because we use water nearly in everything we produce, from food to clothes to energy. We pollute water in a multitude of ways that can range from littering to land-use problems that put wastes in waterways via factories, farms, etc, and these practices can degrade entire ecosystems.

          This chapter explores options for sustainable resources for water, such as extracting groundwater from aquifers that essential to supply cities and grow food. However, using aquifers presents itself with some challenges in some areas. Although aquifers are widely available, they can quickly become a wasted resource if misused. Aquifers can become depleted if they are over extracted, meaning the water is pumped out faster than it can be replenished. Sometimes over pumping prompts people who use them to drill deeper in order to bring more water to the surface, leading to a positive feedback situation where it continues to be over extracted, it becomes more economically unattractive to keep doing so, and can even lead to issues such as subsidence where the land sinks. Additionally, if somewhere along this process the aquifer becomes contaminated, “pollution of aquifers lasts decades or centuries,” meaning the resource can become entirely useless and devastate the area.

          With our limited water, it makes us wonder if there are ways these freshwater supplies can be increased. One widely used method in the United States has been to build dam and reservoir systems, which have proven useful “to control flood, to generate electricity, and to supply freshwater for irrigation and for towns and cities” (Miller and Spoolman 2018, 336). Additionally, the text reports that these systems have yielded 3-6 times more freshwater compared to natural rivers but at the cost of the displacement of tens of millions of people and the disruption of ecosystems. Another proposed solution is to desalinate ocean water to convert it into freshwater, but this poses some complications such as high energy costs and how to safely dispose of salts that can become biohazards to aquatic and terrestrial life if not done properly. Our solutions should not lie in the further destruction and degradation of natural systems or solutions that create other waste problems and even more energy use. I agree with the authors that we should push towards solutions where we do not use more than we need, and we should not further contaminate this precious resource.

          The authors of the textbook contend that there are things we can do to reduce the loss of freshwater. They advocate for using water more efficiently and cutting back on our overall use of water and even propose some of the following strategies:

(Figure 3. What can you do? Water use and waste, Miller and Spoolman, 2018)

          Miller and Spoolman offer some strategies to reduce our personal use and waste of water. It is even more important to consider how we use and waste water systemically in food production and the production of other products, which they touch upon in the chapter as well, that need to be addressed and regulated through government intervention, possibly using full-cost pricing or other sorts of sanctions. Other strategies include the protection of forests, wetlands, and other habitats which guard against floods and further waste of water.

          In Chapter 20, the text explores how we are polluting freshwater and oceans, which Luna Leopold would say are a reflection of how we treat natural capital, and best phrases as “The health of our waters is the principal measure of how we live on land.” There are a multitude of ways we pollute water every single day. Through agricultural activity, industrial facilities, mining, not properly treating wastewater are just a few. These activities have countless of consequences for the health of aquatic ecosystems and terrestrial life who depend on waterways as a life sustaining supply, having implications for our health and the health of wildlife.

(Figure 4. Natural capital degradation, Miller and Spoolman, 2018)

          Last summer, I was very fortunate to design my own research project in which I studied the Bronx River watershed. I was able to test the water quality for pollutants following wet weather events and its relationship to the surrounding land use. Essentially, I compared areas of varying degrees of impervious surfaces, meaning surfaces that do not allow water to seep through and consequently disrupt the natural movement of water, and this water is instead channeled, otherwise known as run-off, through polluted surfaces such as streets, sidewalks, and even contribute to combined sewer overflows, or untreated sewage, into the river. The samples I gathered in areas with more green space (less impervious surfaces), which were calculated using tools on Google Earth pro to measure the percent cover of these surface, had less pollutants such as dissolved solids, nitrates, dissolved oxygen, carbon dioxide. There was a correlation between more pollution in areas that had less green space, which demonstrate how life on land affects waterways.

(Figure 5. Yonkers DPW decontaminate/disinfect public areas, YouTube, 2020)

          Earlier, I proposed our solutions to these kinds of issues lie within government action that encourages the protection of freshwater. During our time in quarantine, I have seen on the news efforts taken by government officials to limit the spread of COVID-19 using means that are a bit worrying. For instance, in Yonkers, officials deployed fire trucks to hose down public places such as streets and bus stops with a clorox solution in an effort to disinfect these spaces people frequently come in contact with to contain the spread of the virus. The research I have done and the vast amount of work out there that talk about hazardous wastes used on land demonstrate how this can be a source of pollution of water. This was carried out with the intent to save lives and there is a lack of understanding of better ways to disinfect public spaces that do not use up so much water or put toxic pollutants in waterways, that can have cascading consequences, but these are the kind of conflicts/interests being weighed during this crisis. If our hope to improve our resources and quality of water lies in our world’s leaders, and this is the kind of uninformed action we see taking place, it is a bit unnerving. There is a clear need for greater environmental literacy for those in position of power to get us anywhere.

Word Count: 1749

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott E. Spoolman. 2018. Living in the Environment: Nineteenth Edition, V-25. Canada: Cengage Learning.

“Yonkers Converts Retired Fire Truck into Power Washer to Fight Coronavirus.” News 12 Westchester. April 1, 2020. http://westchester.news12.com/story/41960947/yonkers-converts-retired-fire-truck-into-power-washer-to-fight-coronavirus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQCfZwm7iZ4        

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Blog post #12: The Future of Homo Sapiens

         In their book The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene by the renowned scientists Simon L. Lewis and Mark A. Maslin, the writers recognize our impact as humans great enough to drive planetary change. They stand behind the notion of an “Anthropocene,” proposing that geological tools can be used to measure and argue we live in a geological epoch where the Earth has been marked by human activity. These authors argue that our “normal,” or current mode of functioning on Earth is unsustainable for the future of our species, and we are slowly moving towards three possible outcomes:

“Continued development of the consumer capitalist mode of living towards greater complexity,” meaning that in order to maintain stability, we will keep pushing for technological advancements and maintaining a capitalist mindset as solutions to our problems.

Collapse; We will experience a downfall due to “the ever escalating environmental costs or other contradiction of today’s global mega-civilization,” suggesting an entirely new mode of living in which we scale back our use of technology and see more uneven distribution of power.

Radical change that manifests itself as a total reworking of how we use energy, information, and how we collectively “spend our time” in a way that is “thoughtful and wise in our relations to each other and our home planet” (Lewis and Maslin, 369-370).

        We need to believe that this third option is truly achievable. The other two options will infringe upon our liberties and anchor deep injustices into every crevice of our perception of what life on earth should look like. The capitalist modes of living will remain intact, which are inherently unfair in their nature to make profit the cheapest way possible. Many businesses in this system are are purely interested in maximizing profit and disregard the harms of pursuing greater profit even when evidence is presented to them. The capital this system relies on include labor, raw materials, and manufacturing tools. The exploitation of labor and natural capital (raw materials, natural resources, ecosystem services) paired with emphasis on technology that improves manufacturing to yield greater profits have been central to social and economic injustices.

(Figure 1.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Twitter, 2020)

         The current situation we are facing globally, the COVID-19 pandemic, is an exemplary indicator of the scale of our impact, but in a different light, it exposes our capacity for change. In the book, the authors write “within the norms of the current consumer capitalist mode of living they are too easily discarded as ‘unrealistic,’ so the public and policy-makers never hear them” which point to why in our current system we find “radical change,” as something leftist and undo able, causing strife in our capacity to achieve anything (Lewis and Maslin, 399). However, during this pandemic, we had to step out of the bounds of our “normal” and we are witnessing “radical” or “revolutionary policy” being brought to life to address the numerous ways the virus has caused instability in our lives. For instance, during our discussions, a great example was brought regarding universal basic income that was long thought to be leftist. However, during this pandemic we see that it is one of the most urgent matters our government needs to tend to, with many calling for more monthly stimulus checks to help pay for basic necessities and bills while millions of Americans are unable to work under quarantine. It is important to note that we are one of the only countries in the West that does not promise its citizens security during pandemic. We see other countries in Europe and Canada being able to provide monthly stimulus checks to help their citizens cope. Universal basic income has always been thought of something too leftist, but we see politicians on the right strongly standing behind it during this situation. This touches upon our perceived barriers to adopt different policies because we feel we do not have alternatives to switch to without fundamentally changing how our system in place functions, but they are possible. Lewis and Maslin would agree that the sociopolitical change we are witnessing during this emergency show us that there is time for change to happen before this situation spirals out of control and it is too late and we irreversibly get tied down to a more “complex” mode of living, or complete collapse. They truly believe that there is still time for change, but it is just a matter of whether we are convinced these changes are possible and can treat each other as such.

          As previously touched upon, all the revolutions humanity has experienced have been characterized by a change in energy use, a change in our use of information, and how we treat one another and the world surrounding us. Fossil fuels are, unfortunately, the lifeblood of our economies and societies even though we have overwhelming amount of evidence that shows us we need to find more sustainable ways of fueling our everyday lives because these ecological changes will impact every aspect of civilization. We pride ourselves in our capacity to do science but have long silenced the evidence available to us. It is generally clear what the right path is in terms of our energy use; we need to switch to renewable energy sources. This will demand drastic changes in how we operate systemically, but “when the scale of the human impact is that large, the corresponding solutions to major human problems will often end up being large,” meaning that we need to step beyond our comfort zones for our own sake (Lewis and Maslin, 399). The authors also pose the rhetorical question: “Is Equality Necessary?” and the answer is yes, but it is more than that. Justice and equity are going to be necessarily interwoven in our new collective agency. We need to dismantle ways that inequalities have always expressed themselves systemically, from its most primitive form, male dominance. To be able to pursue such an ideal requires radical changes to unlearn the modes of thinking that have gotten us in this situation in the first place, which have been thousands of years of oppression of different groups and a thirst for power, which resonate in some ways with feminist ethical theories that argue "male-dominated culture or patriarchy is supported by four interlocking pillars: sexism, racism, class exploitation, and ecological destruction" (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

          Overall, this text nicely wraps up the topics and discussions we have been dwelling with throughout the entirety of this semester.  I came into this class with the impression that I would be given answers or solutions to the plethora of concerns we face in our present world, but more than anything, I leave this course equipped with the tools I need to generate these answers for myself. I learned how to engage with different mediums of communicating ideas, whether that is through the discussions we had in class, the textbook, the complementary readings, the films/videos we watched, etc., which all bring about conversations that I have learned to engage with in different ways. I have learned the importance of evaluating these different mediums and the kind of evidence each of them utilizes to create a certain perspective or narrative that they aim to portray and convince its audience of. In the same way, this is what these blog posts have trained me to do. I hope to continue to sharpen these skills throughout my academic journey because mastering this allows for autonomy in our thinking where we are able to strip away argument from evidence, and also teaches us how to skillfully weave these two together when trying to present our own ideas. Ultimately, the way we communicate these ideas in our communities and to the people of the world more broadly dictates our capacity to achieve the change we wish to see and bring to life the solutions we believe are right.

Word count: 1310

Works cited:

Lewis, Simon L. and Maslin, Mark A. The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene, Yale University Press, pp. 367-416.

Brennan, Andrew, and Yeuk-Sze Lo. “Environmental Ethics.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University, July 21, 2015. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-environmental/ 

[cosimaballettithomas-blog]

Blog No. 1

As explained in the syllabus, the purpose of this introductory course is to present students with a comprehensive and cross-disciplinary understanding of environmental issues, with respect to both their causes and effects. The structure of this course involves several disciplines, chief of which are natural and social science, and the humanities. It also helps to prepare students for the upper-level courses they will take later on in their environmental studies major/minor. According to its website, the environmental studies program at the surface presents students with opportunities to become ambassadors of the earth. And more specifically, as laid out by the “Major Concentrations and Career Tracks” page, students can engage in more specialized conversation about their specific interests through concentrations such as environmental politics and regulation, environmental law, urban planning, and environmental communications. Moreover, the course places students in a dialogue about environmental issues allowing them to form their own perspectives and worldviews based on class readings and discussions.

Equally comprised of both summary and evaluation, the purpose of the blog is to motivate students to ponder what they have learned from the assigned readings with the intention that they will also present their own assessment of the information. The “Blog Composition Suggestions” slide from Professor Van Buren’s PowerPoint also suggests that students make use of the Miller textbook’s Table of Contents and devise a “thematic entry title/question” to help guide and unify each blog entry. The PowerPoint also helps to specify the three general disciplines used in this course, as they are very broad and comprised of a multitude of more specialized sub-disciplines. For example, as laid out by the Interdisciplinary Structure of Environmental Studiesdiagram, the Humanities discipline is comprised of but not limited to environmental history, philosophy, theology, etc. Similarly, social science can include environmental economics, politics, sociology, anthropology, etc. The PowerPoint also demonstrates how integrated and involved the disciplines are with one another, using the example of environmental problems which in their addressing require the collective efforts of multiple disciplines. Some cases might also involve less recognized disciplines such as environmental psychology and art/literature where the former can be used to explain how people understand an environmental crisis and the latter to educate people about said crisis. In response to the “Critical Thinking Question,” I would argue that the discipline from the Interdisciplinary Structure of Environmental Studies that is most important for motivating a “sustainability revolution” in the next 50 years is the general field of Applied Arts and Sciences with respect to environmental engineering, architecture, business, public health, and especially urban planning that tends to inevitably absorb several disciplines into the planning process of large cities which have huge carbon footprints and thus are major exacerbators of the world’s environmental issues. Environmental politics and law under the Social Sciences discipline is also very important but again I think that they are already involved in urban planning in that any urban infrastructural planning project must coincide and cooperate with environmental policy for funding, approval, endorsement, etc.

A major or minor in environmental studies can lead students to a variety of career paths. In New York City alone, the “Internship and Job Opportunities” page of the program site offers a long list of opportunities that past students have had including working at the Bronx River Alliance, the Botanical Garden, the Bronx Zoo, the New York City chapter of the Sierra Club, the NYC Million Trees Project, and many more. I, for example, have a double minor in Urban Studies and Philosophy because I am really interested in how cities are designed with respect to characteristics such as sustainability and flood protection and I also intend to go to law school where a background in philosophy can be of great use. Moreover, on the “Research” page of the program site, students interested in conducting research can obtain further information about the process and get in touch with faculty members who have conducted their own research.

Miller’s Living in the Environment textbook is another excellent and important resource for students in the environmental studies program. Based on the Table of Contents alone, one can understand just how extensive, encompassing, and relevantthe field of environmental studies is as it has chapters on everything from evolution (Chapter 4) to environmental politics (Chapter 24). It's important to understand this as speakers for the environment in that, regardless of the path or concentration one chooses to pursue, one will come to find that even a basic understanding of what may seem like peripheral disciplines will actually be of great importance to any career associated with the environment. For example, an urban planner must not only be well versed in environmental design and architecture but the laws and zoning regulations of the city they are designing, the specific biodiversity and ecological characteristics of that city, the actual and perhaps urgent needs of the public, the environmental impact and risk assessment of their plan, and so on. This also calls on and assigns responsibility to public figures to take into account every variable when it comes to urban functions such as introduced bills, design and infrastructure proposals, tapping into new resources, and other processes that will have some kind of effect on the environment. It also explains why environmental impact reports can and should be requested for any project proposal to ensure that its endorsers are not acting environmentally negligent.

A relevant example of this is detailed in an article from the Environmental News Network titled “China’s War on Particulate Air Pollution is Causing More Severe Ozone Pollution.” For several years now the Chinese government has been working hard to reduce its air pollution and specifically, its particulate matter emissions (PM 2.5), that have been posing a huge threat to public health (pictured below). Some strategies include placing restrictions on “the number of cars on the road” and the emissions of “coal-fired power plants,” as well as replacing coal with natural gas (ENN 2019). Since 2013, “PM 2.5 concentrations in eastern China have fallen nearly 40 percent.” While this is a huge feat considering that China is one of the most congested cities in the world with respect to both population and pollution, the government likely did not take into account, or perhaps ignored, the complex chemistry associated with its environmental crisis, which has led to an increase in tropospheric ozone. As it turns out, the high level of particulate matter in China actually helped to block the production of ozone in the troposphere; therefore, China’s mission to reduce PM 2.5 caused a shift in the atmosphere’s chemistry allowing for easier ozone production. This example is relevant because it shows how a city’s seemingly innocuous mission to combat climate change can actually put it at greater risk due to inattention of each individual variable. It also offers insight into just how extensive and all-encompassing the field of environmental studies is. While its reduction of PM 2.5 reflects well on the government, the chemistry of the environment is a vast and complex force, so when one variable is altered as quickly as it was in the case of China, it can impact the entire system.

                                                                                                       (Phys.org 2016)

Word Count: 1189

Discussion Question: How should environmental issues be weighed in a time of global climate emergency, i.e., what is more urgent and who decides this? For example, should China be applauded for its efforts on the one hand of reducing PM 2.5 or held responsible on the other for its neglect to consider the entire ecological system thus ultimately aiding the facilitation of faster ozone production?

Work Cited

Van Buren, Edward. “Syllabus.”

Fordham. n.d. “Fordham Online Information | Academics | Academic Departments | Environmental Studies.” Fordham University. Fordham University. https://www.fordham.edu/info/20920/environmental_studies.

“Interdisciplinary Structure of Environmental Studies.”

Van Buren, Edward. “Prof’s PowerPoint Notes.” https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzKbjVLpnX0RMjVGYUwwZlBXa28/view

“China’s War on Particulate Air Pollution Is Causing More Severe Ozone Pollution.” 2019. Environmental News Network. Harvard University. January 2, 2019. https://www.enn.com/articles/56327-china-s-war-on-particulate-air-pollution-is-causing-more-severe-ozone-pollution.

Miller, Tyler G., and Scott Spoolman. "Table of Contents.” Edited by Scott Spoolman. In Living in the Environment. 17th ed. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning, 2012.

“Most Chinese Cities Fail Air Quality Standards in 2015: Greenpeace.” 2016. Phys.org - News and Articles on Science and Technology. Phys.org. January 20, 2016. https://phys.org/news/2016-01-chinese-cities-air-quality-standards.html.

[architectnews]

Ten end-of-year architecture projects from students at the University of Reading

A project that reintroduces endangered countryside animals into an orchard environment and a church ruin in Bristol transformed into an educational kitchen are included in Dezeen's latest school show by students at the University of Reading.

Other projects include a proposal that merges architecture and landscape design and a centre for the rehabilitation of badgers.

University of Reading

School: School of Architecture Courses: BSc Architecture and Master of Architecture (MArch) Tutors: Ana Dina, Professor Lorraine Farrelly, Associate Professor Oliver Froome-Lewis, Georgie Grant, Dr John Harding, Mike Kane, Martin Lydon, Sabrina Morreale, Piers Taylor, Michelle Tomlinson and Dr Izabela Wieczorek

School statement:

"The School of Architecture at the University of Reading engages the complex issues facing architecture in our society today, including the environment, re-use, collaborative innovation and creating equalities. It includes a topology of practice-based research and precisely situated studies in design, technology and theory.

"Our students work alongside academics and practitioners and look beyond the transient and the topical to frame precise methodologies and expertise in relation to these borderless concerns as they flow inexorably across our local and European contexts.

"Imagination and new thinking establish new links between the conceptual and the contractual; every day and the abstract; the pragmatic and the speculative; the interviewer and the interviewee and our experiences and our possibilities. Interpreting these circumstances gives us opportunities for positive change.

"These are outtakes from the end-of-year online exhibition 'Adaptations', which is now available on the University of Reading's website."

Nature's Interlude by Clara Everest

"Located in an almost flat, open field landscape, this proposal is conceived as a human-made hedgerow. It is an investigation into the merging of architecture and landscape.

"Conceived to be self-sufficient as possible, it utilises solar energy, heat recovery, natural ventilation and natural water filtration from the adjacent pond.

"Earth walls disperse outwards from the facility into the landscape, representing the roots and weaving structure of the hedgerow, whilst also framing views and connecting to the far horizons of the surrounding landscape.

"The fractured and dispersed walls create a multitude of courts and sheltered gardens referenced back to the traditional fruit walls of England."

Student: Clara Everest Course: BSc Architecture, Year three Tutor: Mike Kane Email: clara.everest[at]gmail.com

The Lambourn Valley MycoWorks and Centre for the Rehabilitation of Badgers by Harvey Warren

"The project is a 'collaboration' between clay target shooters, badgers, fungi and trees. Set along with the M4, earthworks are appropriated as sites of diverse life instead of specific human functionality.

"The building and badger tunnel bridge, which spans the M4, are linked by paths and tunnels through wild woodland, full of shooting huts and badger sets.

"The cob and mycelium building hosts a badger vet, cherry winery, shooting clubhouse, and mycelium moulding facility. Life flourishes within, and the product of these unusual relationships is a sustainable, diverse and exciting landscape, driven by organic processes."

Student: Harvey Warren Course: BSc Architecture, Year three Tutor: Associate Professor Oliver Froome-Lewis Email: hpw2000[at]hotmail.com

Alternative Rurality by Lloyd Jackson

"The AR project proposes a way in which we can better integrate into the rural landscape. As we gradually cut ties with the EU and move away from the single farm payment, agriculture in the UK will go through the most significant transformation since the post-war era.

"A farmer's subsidies will no longer equate to the amount of land they farm, but how well they can maintain and enrich the ecology of their land and incorporate ecologically beneficial practices.

"In this proposal, animals stranded in bounded pockets of land are assisted through the introduction of wildlife bridges, the expansion of hedgerows and the introduction of a new fruit forest."

Student: Lloyd Jackson Course: BSc Architecture, Year three Tutor: Michelle Tomlinson Email: l.wyn.jacksonp[at]gmail.com

Revival of the Orchard by Rosie Clark

"Situated in an open field landscape in southern England, this proposal introduces endangered species of countryside animals into a new traditional orchard environment. Drawing inspiration from the local vernacular, the truss form of the timber-framed facility gives character to the spaces offering respite, care and breeding facilities for birds, dormice and hedgehogs.

Conceived to repair habitat fragmentation created by the M4, an animal bridge extends from respite care spaces to the wider landscape, composed of a network of habitats for species outlined in the National Biodiversity Action Plan.

"By creating a landscape designed for the re-establishment of biodiverse ecosystems, proposals encourage biodiversity and ecological complexity, whilst restoring a historical farming landscape."

Student: Rosie Clark Course: BSc Architecture, Year three Tutor: Michelle Tomlinson Email: rosielauraclark[at]gmail.com

From Strata to Structure by Sofia Sergiou

"This project aims to map the natural past of a site, adding to its history and letting the geology and landscape guide the scheme's placement design.

"My designated site was the location of rare, well-preserved fossils and shells, which led to me selecting snails as my endangered species for the project.

"Continuing with the theme of pests, I selected brambles as my orchard fruit, something that is seen as a weed of sorts, being internationally grown. This was then aged in clay pots underground using an ancient method, almost being treated as a fossil itself."

Student: Sofia Sergiou Course: BSc Architecture, Year three Tutor: Sabrina Morreale Email: sofiasergiou2000[at]hotmail.co.uk

The Formalisation of Nature by Tom Rogan

"Situated adjacent to Wilder's Folly in West Berkshire, this project forms a considered narrative around local food production, endangered bird species and vernacular materials.

"A well-trodden existing footpath aligns a central spine wall of rammed chalk, with adjoining spaces including a medlar orchard, brandy distillery and breeding facility for turtle doves.

"Thatched tapered forms, inspired by both dovetails and William Morris textiles are integrated into the undulating landscape. The resulting project forms a sensitive mosaic of wild-flower meadows, hedgerows of hawthorn, mulberry and elderflower, rewilding an area once consumed by agriculture into a long-term habitat for local wildlife."

Student: Tom Rogan Course: BSc Architecture, Year three Tutor: Dr John Harding Email: tjrogan[at]btinternet.com

Mistletoe by Yann Bracegirdle

"The remnants of historic mining and lost rail lines form the spine for a new architecture for refuge and renewal. Ancient and fragmented tales of mythology to ecotherapy were discovered here to create new narratives of dislocated places and tales. King Bladud's recovery from leprosy and St Anne's healing well, intrinsically connected with nature, still run the length of the site.

"This proposal feeds off a system of corridors and habitats to provide a place with a refuge, centred around the timber three-layered gridshell atrium. A sensitive approach is merging old and new structures and pathways to re-connect the past in the present."

Student: Yann Bracegirdle Course: BSc Architecture, Year three Tutor: Mike Kane Email: yann.bracegirdle[at]gmail.com

An Urban Escape, Bringing Balance to Bristol by Adam Dobson

"With the increasing pressures of modern-day life combined with the demise of natural habitats and the climate emergency, this project looked to create an outlet by repairing, re-purposing and rewilding Bristol's Temple Church, a Grade II* listed ruin.

"The proposed public mental health and well-being service provide ecotherapy whilst subsequently increasing the biodiversity within the urban context.

"Adopting a regenerative design approach, the project looked to utilise locally-sourced reclaimed materials, whereby 'whole system thinking' was integrated into the design, creating a resilient site-specific intervention that aims to leave the ruin, the people and local wildlife in a better condition."

Student: Adam Dobson Course: Master of Architecture (MArch), Year one Tutor: Design Research Unit 2: Regenerative Design – Radical Retrofit & Adaptive Reuse. Academic Lead: Dr Izabela Wieczorek, Studio Practitioners: Diana Dina and Martin Lydon (Haworth Tompkins) Email: a.j.dobson[at]student.reading.ac.uk

The Cultural Kitchen Project by Daniel Hellyer

"The project is centred around regenerative design and radically retrofits a Grade II* listed church ruin in Bristol into an educational kitchen. It seeks to encourage community interaction and collaboration through urban food production and the celebration of cultural events throughout the year.

"Allotment spaces are designed to collectively grow food, which can be harvested and used within the cultural kitchen for events and education as well as donated to vulnerable communities suffering from food poverty.

"Whilst demountable construction techniques respect the site's heritage, the choice of materials and environmental strategies, such as rainwater harvesting, biodiversity gain and renewable energy production help to limit the project's total embodied carbon."

Student: Daniel Hellyer Course: Master of Architecture (MArch), Year one Tutor: Design Research Unit 2: Regenerative Design – Radical Retrofit and Adaptive Reuse. Academic Lead: Dr Izabela Wieczorek, Studio Practitioners: Diana Dina and Martin Lydon (Haworth Tompkins) Email: danielhellyer13[at]gmail.com

Inspiring Art through Nature | Inspiring Communities through Art by Ethan Cherrett

"The proposal for the Weston Island redevelopment project sought to reshape the existing landscape of the island to accommodate public inhabitation, inspiration and future flood mitigation.

"The project aimed to reinvigorate the island and promote the bridging of the surrounding communities regardless of the demographics they find themselves situated within, as well as to radically reuse both the existing structures and the landscape to form the proposed structures.

"Rammed earth was utilised as a driving component throughout, where 40 per cent of the build-up of walls were derived from the excavated subsoil from the proposed terraced SUDs System."

Student: Ethan Cherrett Course: Master of Architecture (MArch), Year one Tutor: Design Research Unit 1: Collaborative Design – Working to Empower Communities to Make Change. Academic Lead: Prof. Lorraine Farrelly, Studio Practitioners: Piers Taylor (Invisible Studio) and Georgie Grant (Onion Collective Watchet) Email: ethancherrett[at]gmail.com

Partnership content

This school show is a partnership between Dezeen and The University of Reading. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.

The post Ten end-of-year architecture projects from students at the University of Reading appeared first on Dezeen.

[keishaclarkccc]

WEEK 2: TASK 4 Waitangi Park Research/Visit

History

Locates on Wellington Waterfront, Waitangi Park is the largest new urban park in a century in New Zealand.

Waitangi Park is near the site of the old Waitangi wetland that was fed by the Waitangi Stream.

This place used to be a site for Maori people for launching canoes (or waka) and food gathering, with the rich natural resource of eel, fish and shellfish. 

Early English settlers planned to dig a canal along the path of the Waitangi Stream for boats passing through the Basin Lagoon, but it was affected by a massive earthquake in 1885.

The land was lifted by 1.5 metres, and watercourse and wetland had a huge change and could not be restored.

“The park’s environmentally sustainable design promotes:

Water conservation

Quality improvement of urban stormwater runoff (no net increase of pollution in natural water systems

Biodiversity

Use of renewable energy.

The Park’s environmental infrastructure includes:

Stormwater filtration of road runoff

Bio-retention along Waitangi Stream

Recycling of harvested water for irrigation

Ecologically sourced plants from the Wellington region” (WĀ)

The park offers a multitude of recreational possibilities. It is structured around five key initiatives

the activity zone

the promenades

the cultural and historical overlays; 

the field and a programme of highly integrated environmental infrastructure.

Water Sensitive Urban DesignConnectivity to the urban framework within which the waterfront site is positioned

Amplification of the park’s physical components by woven narratives pertinent to the Wellington region, referencing both the natural and cultural heritage of the site.

Plan for the redevelopment of Waitangi Park

The nowadays park which we all know was built in 2006

Wraight Athfield Landscape Architecture (WALA) won the competition held to design the park

The redevelopment of the park won a number of awards from the New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architects

The redevelopment project cost a total of $22 million.  

Regular events include: 

 Waitangi Park Market

Petanque

Skateboarding

Waka-launching

What I noticed when walking through: 

Lights shine at the ground and are placed close to the ground. 

Largely human-impacted despite a scheme/project planned to recuperate Includes; Litter, cigarette butts

Lots of brick/stone barriers

Used by a wide range of people; old, young, athletic, leisure 

References:  “Waitangi Park: WĀ.” Landscape Architecture and Urban Design, WA, www.waal.co.nz/wsud/waitangi-park/.

“Waitangi Park – an Urban Wetland Recreated.” Envirohistory NZ, Wordpress, 19 May 2011, envirohistorynz.com/2010/12/12/waitangi-park-an-urban-wetland-recreated/.

Pollock, Kerryn. “Landscape Architecture - Modern Landscape Architecture - Waitangi Park.” Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, 26 Mar. 2015, www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/photograph/42923/waitangi-park.

[csrgood]

Neglected Artisanal Miners Are Proven Critical for the Attainment of the UN Sustainable Development Goals

As world leaders are scheduled to meet virtually for the UN General Assembly in a week’s time, Pact and the University of Delaware are publishing Mapping Artisanal and Small-scale Mining to the Sustainable Development Goals (in short: ASM-SDG Policy Assessment) today. This is a first-of-its-kind report assessing all positive and negative interlinkages between artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) and each of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their respective targets. Beyond analysis, the Policy Assessment provides concrete policy guidance for harnessing ASM-SDG interlinkages and unlocking the sector’s full potential in contributing to the realization of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and related development frameworks.

According to Antonio Pedro, Director with UN Economic Commission for Africa’s Subregional Office for Central Africa, this is an unprecedented contribution to the field of mining and sustainable development, as previous contributions focused almost exclusively on the large-scale mining sector. As he argues in a compelling foreword, the Policy Assessment represents “a seminal contribution to the body of knowledge on ASM and sustainable development, filling a gap in assessments of the role of the sector in the attainment of the SDGs.”

Dr. Saleem H. Ali – Blue and Gold Distinguished Professor of Energy and the Environment with the University of Delaware – and Dr. Caroline Anstey – President and Chief Executive Officer of Pact – further underscore the importance of mapping ASM to the SDGs. “ASM is not only a poverty-driven livelihood for millions of people worldwide, but also a vibrant, dynamic and emerging economy,” they write in an introductory letter. Yet, “its linkage to development imperatives is systematically understated in global metrics.”

The Assessment was authored by Jorden de Haan and Dr. James McQuilken – both development practitioners and ASM experts at Pact – and Kirsten Dales, an independent industrial ecologist specialized in ASM. The Assessment was developed in close collaboration with Dr. Saleem H. Ali and has been reviewed by other prominent industry leaders.

Drawing from the global literature, the authors’ field experiences and further inputs from 11 experts of Pact’s Mines to Markets program, a comprehensive ‘ASM-SDG Matrix’ was first developed, which forms the informational backbone of the Assessment. The matrix maps all of the positive and negative impacts the sector currently has on the 17 SDGs and their 169 targets, as well and the impacts the sector has (or could have) when formalized. Based on this analysis, both current and potential ASM-SDG interlinkages are assessed in seven SDG clusters.

The Policy Assessment reveals a multitude of interlinkages. Clear positive and negative impacts are established, ranging from the sector’s critical capacity of providing direct livelihoods and alleviating poverty for more than 42 million[1] women, men, girls and boys (positively impacting SDG 1 ‘No Poverty’, SDG 5 ‘Gender Equality’ and SDG 8 ‘Economic Growth and Decent Work’), to the sector’s negative impacts on clean water and sanitation (SDG 6) as well as life on land and life under water (SDGs 14 and 15). However, in most cases, the interlinkages are multi-faceted and complex. This is exemplified in SDG 13 (‘Climate Action’), which is both positively impacted through the sector’s production of minerals and metals such as cobalt and copper, both required for the transition to renewable, low-carbon sustainable energy systems, and negatively impacted through mining-induced land degradation and biodiversity loss, which threaten the adaptive capacity of ecosystems and people to climate change.

The authors observe that although contributions are impressive, the primarily informal sector currently realizes only a fraction of its full potential. However, if approached in an inclusive and comprehensive manner, formalization can help realize much more by mitigating the sector’s negative impacts and amplifying its positive impacts on the SDGs. To this end, the authors discuss a set of steps and options that countries can take for developing and implementing SDG-sensitive, human rights-based ASM formalizing strategies, and for integrating ASM and the SDGs in national and regional policy frameworks. Application of this guidance is illustrated with a case study from Sierra Leone, developed in collaboration with Peter Kapr Bangura, Sierra Leone’s Director of Mines, and Mohamed Abdulai Kamara, Senior Environment Officer with the country’s Environment Protection Agency.

The ASM-SDG Policy Assessment concludes with a call for global support for SDG-sensitive ASM formalization, outlining suggested responsibilities of multi-lateral and bilateral institutions, civil society and the private sector. Together, we can recalibrate strategies and ‘build back better’ by blazing a new path toward Agenda 2030, while ensuring that no woman, man, girl, boy, mineral or SDG is ‘left behind’.

A launch event is planned for mid-October in collaboration with the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, with more information to follow soon.

#  #  # 

To read the full report and for information on the ASM-SDG Policy Assessment, visit www.pactworld.org/mining and https://sites.udel.edu/ceoe-mms/. 

About Pact – A nonprofit international development organization founded in 1971, Pact works on the ground in 40 countries to improve the lives of those who are challenged by poverty and marginalization. We serve these communities because we envision a world where everyone owns their future. Pact’s Mines to Markets program uses an integrated, market-based approach and brings together government, industry and miners themselves to make ASM formal, safer and more productive. Visit us at pactworld.org. 

About the University of Delaware - The University of Delaware’s Minerals, Materials and Society’s education, research and training program is among the first of its kind in the United States that takes an interdisciplinary approach to linking science and policy with environmental and socio-economic issues around extractive supply chains for all consumer industries of minerals, extractives and related materials. Learn more at https://sites.udel.edu/ceoe-mms/.

[1] For the latest estimate of the global ASM workforce, see Delve, the global ASM data platform by the World Bank and Pact: https://delvedatabase.org/

source: https://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/45710-Neglected-Artisanal-Miners-Are-Proven-Critical-for-the-Attainment-of-the-UN-Sustainable-Development-Goals?tracking_source=rss

[introenst]

Environmental Studies: Exploring the Living Condition

        From time to time, a relative, a friend I have not seen in a while, or even a stranger I connect with will be curious about what I dedicate myself to. Being that I am a full-time college student, I eagerly tell them I am pursuing an environmental studies degree at Fordham University. Their reaction to this information is always fascinating in the way a social experiment is. My brother’s response was “So you’re going to be a …?” expecting me to fill in the blank with some clear-cut profession. Others assume I plan to be an engineer or zoologist or be involved with Animal Planet in a remote location marked by its “wilderness.”  I have received a range of amusing responses but the common denominator among these reactions is some sort of uncertainty or pre-conceived notion about what “environmental studies” entails.

        What does it mean to study the environment? What is the difference between “science” and “studies”? What is the environment? When it’s my turn to respond, I try to dispel any confusion by explaining that the Environmental Studies major curriculum consists of “interdisciplinary course work in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities” or explain the kinds of problems this degree can help me tackle through “economic, political, and societal policy solutions.” (Fordham)

(Figure 1. The Structure of the Environmental Studies Major)

        Another ambiguous term that we often hear when discussing the environment is “sustainability.” Sustainability is a concept at the core of G. Tyler Miller’s and Scott E. Spoolman’s 19th edition of “Living in the Environment,” the textbook this blog will heavily draw upon. According to the text, sustainability is about learning from and applying nature’s natural processes that have sustained life on earth for billions of years through solar energy, biodiversity, and chemical cycling. The authors refer to this principle as “biomimicry” and suggest we should use it as a model to lead more sustainable lives (Miller and Spoolman 2016, 9). With that said, here are the subthemes of sustainability that will be frequently revisited and my takeaways:

Natural capital: the natural resources and ecosystem services that support all life and our economies

Human activities degrade natural capital: how our actions are damaging

Solutions: this is where we come in to have meaningful discussions

Individuals matter: we have to believe we can all be part of the solution

        As mentioned before, environmental studies draw upon multiple disciplines including economics, political science, and philosophy to develop solutions to our environmental issues. Some additional principles of sustainability as outlined by the authors include concepts such as “full-cost pricing,” “win-win solutions,” and ethical arguments about our responsibility to life on earth (Miller and Spoolman 2016, 9). I was first exposed to “full-cost pricing” last semester in my introductory economics course but under a different term—externalities. In our economies, resources are allocated via markets through the interactions (the supply and demand) of various sellers and buyers using a price system. Externalities are essentially the true costs or benefits that are not reflected in the price of a good or service. For instance, the adverse effects of exhaust from automobiles to our health or depletion of fossil fuels is not reflected in the price of gasoline. Internalizing these costs is what full-cost pricing refers to. Later in the chapter, the authors talk about some causes to environmental problems and why these problems might persist. Our failure to internalize these environmental and health costs is harmful because it makes us completely oblivious to how our market activities have consequences when we participate in these transactions. The textbook asks if the price of gasoline were $14 a gallon (to consider external costs), how would this affect our decisions about transportation? This price would surely make anybody think at least three times about the type of car they use or their method of transportation because people do respond to price changes. However, at the end of the day this would not be a viable solution if there are no structures in place to help people transition into more eco-friendly transportation alternatives such as accessible trains, buses, bike paths, etc. This is just one example of thousands of environmental problems we face, and we can see how complex these issues are.

        Another key component of sustainability deals with how our activities are hurting the earth’s natural capital. This is probably the concept most people are aware of and the first thing that comes to mind when discussing what it means to be sustainable. This conversation is essentially about our ecological footprints, or the impact we have on natural capital quantified by the amount of land needed to supply these natural resources. The “Tragedy of the Commons” was a concept coined by economist William Froster Lloyd in 1833 and later revived again by Garret Hardin in 1968 to elucidate how our human activities degrade shared renewable resources faster than they can be replenished. Ultimately, if we exhaust a resource, we eventually will not be able to benefit from it and that is what is tragic--we set ourselves up for loss. This Ted Ed video does a great job at explaining it and serves as a reminder that “What’s good for all of us is good for each of us” (Amendolare).

        According to the Global Footprint Network, my ecological footprint is 4.7 global hectares, meaning I would need approximately about 11.6 acres of biologically productive land to be able to sustain my lifestyle.

(Figure 2. Global Footprint Network)

        My largest consumption category was food, making up 1.8 gha. The food I consume, namely meat and dairy products, have huge impacts on the environment for a multitude of reasons including transportation and the natural resources needed to produce these animal products, just to name a few. I think this is may be the hardest aspect to change about my ecological footprint because it means changing a lifestyle that was ingrained into me. However, in my household I consume the least amount of meat and have replaced some animal products for plant-based products, but my other family members might not be as flexible when altering their diet.

        In that same vein, another concept I appreciated in the text was that “people have different views about environmental problems and their solutions.” This section raises profound questions about how we view nature, the meaning we assign to nature, and how our humanity fits into these problems. This is arguably one of the biggest hurdles we face when trying to tackle environmental issues because I think these different worldviews instill a different sense of urgency with in us to act on these problems.

Discussion question: What do you think is our greatest obstacle to achieving more sustainable societies?

Word count: 1102

Works Cited:

Fordham. “Fordham Online Information: Academics: Academic Departments: Environmental Studies.” Fordham University: The Jesuit University of New York. Fordham University. Accessed January 24, 2020. https://www.fordham.edu/info/20920/environmental_studies.

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott E. Spoolman. 2016. Living in the Environment: Nineteenth Edition, V-25. Canada: Cengage Learning.

Global Footprint Network. n.d. “Ecological Footprint per person.” Accessed January 23, 2020.

Amendolare, Nicholas. What is the tragedy of the commons? YouTube, November 21, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxC161GvMPc.

[architectnews]

Rimac Campus, Sveta Nedelja Croatia

Rimac Campus, Sveta Nedelja, Croatia, Croatian Commercial Architecture, Building Development

Rimac Campus in Sveta Nedelja

19 Apr 2021

Rimac Campus

Design: 3LHD architects

Location: Sveta Nedelja, Zagreb County, Croatia

The Rimac Campus is located 16 km from the centre of Zagreb, Croatia’s capital city. It sits in a unique position as it is surrounded by a natural landscape yet still well connected to the highway and airport.

The most prominent building on the north side is Erdody Castle which is perched above the site. The relation to the castle and topography determined the position of future buildings and outdoor spaces. The two new above-ground volumes, fluid in shape, follow the natural topography and house the production facility and the office building (R&D). The third connecting volume is hidden in the landscape and houses a restaurant, kindergarten and utility spaces. Covered with a green roof, it blurs the boundary between the built form and the natural landscape. All buildings of the campus are designed as pavilions, accessible from all sides.

The campus can be accessed from two directions – east and west, giving quick access to logistics teams and employees, while guests are directed towards the main square through carefully designed urban spaces.

The main square of the campus is a place where everyone is welcome, and an access point for all other facilities on campus. It features great views of the Erdody Castle and an urban wetland, a new habitat for a multitude of species that will foster biodiversity on site. The restaurant, located in the center of the square, gathers employees, clients and visitors around the “same table”, encouraging them to socialize within a family atmosphere. It has views of the square, castle to the north and the sheep meadow in the south allowing employees and visitors to work and stay in a unique and inspiring setting. The restaurant also serves as a link between the production facility and the office building, further emphasizing the accessible and fluid character of the campus.

The production facility, the largest volume on the campus, is designed to be as efficient and as adaptable as possible. It enables cutting-edge technology and hypercar production as well as the flexibility for future development and growth of the company.

The museum is linked with the main square, production facility and the restaurant. It is designed as a two-storey volume. As the museum space sits on a slope, a ramp links the different spaces of the exhibition. The ramp navigates visitors through the exhibition. Every curve on the ramp will lead visitors to new insights and discoveries.

The office building is organized around two closed multi-storey atriums. One features an auditorium – a space for lectures, projections and social events, and the other one is a green oasis primarily intended for independent work and employee relaxation. Atriums are an essential design element, as they provide bilateral workspace lighting. Deep overhangs on the facade bring a lot of daylight into the space without direct exposure to the sun. Flexible workspaces allow users to personalize their own space and create preferred working environments.

The kindergarten building is located on a quieter part of campus, away from noise and traffic. The southern orientation and a multitude of open and semi-open zones make it an ideal environment for play and learning. Children come into contact with the animals present on the campus, and develop motor and social skills through outdoor activities such as gardening and animal care.

Contact with nature is also made through a dormitory consisting of cabins scattered in the forest. These are temporary residence spaces for employees that still allow them privacy in a picturesque setting. Sports, recreational facilities, and common areas for socializing and team building are located nearby.

The entire campus is surrounded by forest and agricultural land. Plant species intended for planting are primarily indigenous with minimal maintenance requirements and fully adapted to the climatic conditions of the site. Vegetation within the campus also has a functional role: it provides edible fruits, contributes to the ecological features of the space, provides shade, serves as a safety barrier for passage to the roofs and is a noise reduction element.

All campus facilities are connected by a series of pedestrian paths that will allow free circulation for all users on the site. After working hours, the internal road will serve as a testing track for Rimac Automobili. Corners of the road are inspired by the world’s famous race tracks.

The sustainability concept for the campus combines modern technology and natural energy resources – harnessing energy from renewable resources (photovoltaics on the roof of the production facility) and a geothermal heat pump system (that will use the underground water for heating and cooling and play a significant role in the reduction of CO2 emissions).

By intertwining nature with modern technology, the new and the old – the campus represents harmony and balance.

The project is being developed with the help of VOLUM3 – a collaborative platform 3LHD helped develop in the past few years. VOLUM3 is based on real needs of an architectural office. It was created in response to communication problems that arise during design and construction. It is intended for architects, construction engineers and other stakeholders in construction projects. It makes project management fast and easy – deadlines, tasks and responsibilities of individual project collaborators are clearly managed. All project info is stored in a cloud-based platform, safe and always available. VOLUM3 modules are digital versions of real-life workflows – everything is project related. It does not change the users’ workflow: https://volum3.com/en/

Rimac Campus in Zagreb, Croatia – Building Information

Architects: 3LHD

Status: project Project start date: 25.03.2019 Project end date: 07.05.2021. Address: Kerestinec City: Sveta Nedelja Country: Hrvatska Geolocation: 45°46“26’N, 15°49“2’I Type: invited international competition Site area: 197575 sqm Size: 112980 sqm Client: Rimac Automobili d.o.o. Author: 3LHD Project team: Saša Begović, Tatjana Grozdanić Begović, Marko Dabrović, Paula Kukuljica, Silvije Novak, Nevena Kuzmanić, Luka Cindrić, Andrej Filipović, Duje Katić, Monika Prinčić, Tomislav Soldo, Ida Ister, Dora Kodrić, Mia Kozina, Domagoj Osrečak, Krunoslav Szorsen, Sanja Jasika Lovrić, Tamara Paulina Pavković, Ivana Marić Collaborators (competition stage 2019): Building physics: Mateo Biluš Traffic planning concept: Boris Leović Structural concept: Ivan Palijan Energy concept: Damir Žaja Landscape design concept: Ines Hrdalo, Kaja Šprljan Bušić Consultants form the Veterinary medicine faculty: Dražen Matičić, Željko Pavičić (Veterinary medicine faculty Zagreb) Model: Nikola Brlek (Super hands) Animation: Boris Goreta Visualizations: Mario Harni, Branimir Turčić Collaborators: Structural engineering – Studio Arhing (Juraj Pojatina) Traffic planning and project of manipulative surfaces – C5 Koncept (Boris Leović) Drainage and hydrant network (internal infrastructure) – Bobanac (Milan Bobanac, Jakov Pažanin) Drainage and hydrant network (external infrastructure) – APZ Hidria (Petra Sirovec) Geotechnical design of the lake reservoir – Geotech (Marko Šperanda) Landscape design, lake project – Studio za krajobraznu arhitekturu, prostorno planiranje, okoliš (Marko Sošić) Electrical Engineering – Elektroplan (Matej Lijović) Electrical project of lake technology – Zagrebinspekt HVAC – BESTPROJEKT Elevators – PPN Projekt (Rok Pietri) Sprinkler installation – Apin projekt (Nenad Semenov) Mechanical project of lake technology – Zagrebinspekt Special project – kitchen technology – Dekode (Zoran Divjak) Building physics – AKFZ studio (Mateo Biluš) Fire protection and safety at work project – Inspekting (Maksim Carević) Landscape design – Studio za krajobraznu arhitekturu, prostorni planiranje, okoliš (Marko Sošić) Bill of quantities – Pro Elemento (Dinko Žele) Project management: Drees&Sommer Management consulting: Protema Climate engineering: Transsolar

Visualizations: Mario Harni, Branimir Turčić

Rimac Campus, Zagreb, Croatia images / information received 190421

3LHD : Architect Profile

Location: Zagreb, Croatia

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[introenst]

ENST1000: Midterm

Blog Post #1: Environmental Studies: Exploring the Living Condition

          There seems to be uncertainty or pre-conceived notions about what “environmental studies” entails. What does it mean to study the environment? What is the difference between “science” and “studies”? What is the environment? This blog post intends to explore these questions and hopefully provides some answers by drawing upon Fordham University’s curriculum for the Environmental Studies major and G. Tyler Miller’s and Scott E. Spoolman’s 19th edition of Living in the Environment.

          Fordham University’s Environmental Studies major curriculum can hopefully answer some of these questions, which is described as “interdisciplinary course work in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities” and briefly explains the kinds of problems this degree can help an environmental studies student tackle through “economic, political, and societal policy solutions” (Fordham). “Interdisciplinary” is an accurate description of this kind of degree. It draws from a wide variety of disciplines to understand environmental issues using different methodologies and ways of thinking.

(Figure 1. The Structure of the Environmental Studies Major, Fordham)

          A part of the curriculum requires coursework in three natural science courses. It demands students familiarize themselves with physical and life sciences, and take two courses in either category, and one of the other. However, these science courses can be satisfied through general education classes that non-science major students are required to take. I think this should be different. In a field that potentially generates policy makers, urban planners, lawyers, researchers, etc, there is a great deal of scientific illiteracy that this degree should prepare us. As a result, I think a lot of the discourse, at least at the undergraduate level, can get caught up in vague conversations where we throw around ambiguous terms because we lack training in these important disciplines.

          Another ambiguous term that we often hear thrown around when discussing the environment is “sustainability.” Sustainability is a concept at the core of the textbook. According to the text, sustainability is about learning from and utilizing nature’s natural processes that have sustained life on earth for billions of years through solar energy, biodiversity, and chemical cycling. The authors refer to this principle as “biomimicry” and suggest we should use it as a model to lead more sustainable lives (Miller and Spoolman 2018, 9). With that said, here are the subthemes of sustainability that will be frequently revisited and my takeaways:

Natural capital: the natural resources and ecosystem services that support all life and our economies

Human activities degrade natural capital: how our actions are damaging

Solutions: this is where we come in to have meaningful discussions

Individuals matter: we have to believe we can all be part of the solution

          As mentioned before, environmental studies draw upon multiple disciplines including economics, political science, and philosophy to develop solutions to our environmental issues. Some additional principles of sustainability as outlined by the authors include concepts such as “full-cost pricing,” “win-win solutions,” and ethical arguments about our responsibility to life on earth (Miller and Spoolman 2018, 9). I was first exposed to “full-cost pricing” last semester in my introductory economics course but under a different term—externalities. In our economies, resources are allocated via markets through the interactions (the supply and demand) of various sellers and buyers using a price system. Externalities are essentially the true costs or benefits that are not reflected in the price of a good or service. For instance, the adverse effects of exhaust from automobiles to our health or depletion of fossil fuels is not reflected in the price of gasoline. Internalizing these costs is what full-cost pricing refers to. Later in the chapter, the authors talk about some causes to environmental problems and why these problems might persist. Our failure to internalize these environmental and health costs is harmful because it makes us completely oblivious to how our market activities have consequences when we participate in these transactions. The textbook asks if the price of gasoline were $14 a gallon (to consider external costs), how would this affect our decisions about transportation? This price would surely make anybody think at least three times about the type of car they use or their method of transportation because people do respond to these price signals. However, at the end of the day this would not be a viable solution if there are no structures in place to help people transition into more eco-friendly transportation alternatives such as accessible trains, buses, bike paths, etc. This is just one example of thousands of environmental problems we face, and we can see how complex these issues are. We can see from this example alone how an environmental issue can meddle with a variety of disciplines. To be able to fix such an issue, not only would one need to be knowledgeable of the economic implications, but also needs to be equipped with some sort of city design background, understand the demographics affected and how to best serve those groups, and how to work in a solution that is viable within the laws in place, among other discrepancies.

          Another key component of sustainability deals with how our activities are hurting the earth’s natural capital. This is probably the concept most people are aware of and the first thing that comes to mind when discussing what it means to be sustainable. This conversation is essentially about our ecological footprints, or the impact we have on natural capital quantified by the amount of land needed to supply these natural resources. The “Tragedy of the Commons” was a concept coined by economist William Froster Lloyd in 1833 and later revived again by Garret Hardin in 1968 to elucidate how our human activities degrade shared renewable resources faster than they can be replenished. Ultimately, if we exhaust a resource, we eventually will not be able to benefit from it and that is what is tragic--we set ourselves up for loss. This Ted-Ed video does a great job at explaining it and serves as a reminder that “What’s good for all of us is good for each of us” (Amendolare 2017).

          According to the Global Footprint Network, my ecological footprint is 4.7 global hectares, meaning I would need approximately about 11.6 acres of biologically productive land to be able to sustain my lifestyle. What this activity is referring to is the concept of biocapacity, “the ability of its [the earth’s] productive ecosystems to regenerate the renewable resources used…and to absorb the resulting wastes and pollution indefinitely” (Miller and Spoolman 2018, 13). If everyone on Earth were to live the same way I did, we would overshoot the Earth’s biocapacity and actually need 2.7 Earth’s to be able to regenerate resources and to also recycle waste and pollution through natural processes.

(Figure 2. Personal Footprint, Global Footprint Network, 2020)

          My largest consumption category was food, making up 1.8 gha. The food I consume, namely meat and dairy products, have huge impacts on the environment for a multitude of reasons including transportation and the natural resources needed to produce these animal products, just to name a few. I think this is maybe the hardest aspect to change about my ecological footprint because it means changing a lifestyle that was ingrained into me. However, in my household I consume the least amount of meat and have replaced some animal products for plant-based products, but my other family members might not be as flexible when altering their diet.

          In that same vein, another concept I appreciated in the text was that “people have different views about environmental problems and their solutions.” This section raises profound questions about how we view nature, the meaning we assign to nature, and how our humanity fits into these problems. This is arguably one of the biggest hurdles we face when trying to tackle environmental issues because I think these different worldviews instill a different sense of urgency with in us to act on these problems. Thus, we behave and treat our surroundings accordingly.

          In summation, to study the environment means to learn how to be well-rounded. More importantly, to tackle environmental issue we face means to adopt a sustainable worldview, as individuals, and ultimately as societies to get meaningful work done.

Discussion question: What do you think is our greatest obstacle in achieving more sustainable societies?

Word count: 1347

Works Cited:

Amendolare, Nicholas. What is the tragedy of the commons? YouTube, November 21, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxC161GvMPc.

Fordham. “Fordham Online Information: Academics: Academic Departments: Environmental Studies.” Fordham University: The Jesuit University of New York. Fordham University. Accessed January 24, 2020. https://www.fordham.edu/info/20920/environmental_studies.

Global Footprint Network. n.d. “Ecological Footprint per person.” Accessed January 22, 2020.

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott E. Spoolman. 2018. Living in the Environment: Nineteenth Edition, V-25. Canada: Cengage Learning.

___________________________________________

Blog Post #2: The Environmental Sciences: How do we study the natural world?

          This week’s readings dealt with much of the fundamental concepts in biology, chemistry, and physics necessary to understand environmental issues. In these chapters, Miller and Spoolman provide the groundwork for understanding more complex ecological phenomena. These chapters build upon simple concepts to more complex ones. The readings were complemented by two videos, one of which compacts Earth’s 4.5 billion years into a 24-hour day and the other shows how the absence or presence of an animal in an ecosystem has far reaching consequences, nicely tying the readings together by demonstrating how these complexities are all interconnected and how scientists go about studying them.

          Although it is not much of a scientific principle but more of a scientific tool, Miller begins chapter two by reminding the reader of the scientific method. Put simply, scientists use the scientific method to make descriptive discoveries about how the world works that can be used to make predictions. I find the scientific method rather intuitive and indispensable at helping go about our investigations of the world in a logical and (ideally) unbiased way.

(Figure 1. The scientific method, Living in the Environment, 2018)

          Science is not perfect, and we should always be skeptical of any information presented to us and evaluate our own beliefs when arriving at any conclusion. The scientific method essentially is what it means to “do science,” but it should be noted that this system is not perfect and has its own limitations. Some limitations include its inability to “prove” anything. This sometimes is hard to wrap around one’s head because we often point to science as absolute truth or fact, but conclusions reached via the scientific method, even ones with over 90% certainty, are not actually certainly proven. Science is subject to a couple of important limitations that should always be critically considered. For instance, science uses “proof” to support a conclusion, but not to imply a cause and effect relationship. Secondly, science is done by people who can hold biases that affect their results and way of going about an investigation entirely. Thirdly, “many systems in the natural third world involve a huge number of variables with complex interactions. This makes it too difficult, costly, and time consuming to test one variable at a time in controlled experiments” (Miller and Spoolman 2018, 34). Much of science is comprised of controlled experiments, very unlike how things play out in the real world, that tries to isolate different variables to try to understand relationships in controlled conditions. Finally, science relies on statistical tools that tries to represent whatever is being studied. For instance, it would be insane and impractical to survey every single plant in a forest. Instead, a scientist would sample random parts of the forest to best represents the flora present in said forest. It is important to recognize these limitations when thinking critically of information presented to us.

           Chapter two is concerned with the review of basic concepts in chemistry and physics. Matter, in its most basic unit, is comprised of atoms of different elements. These atoms, of the same element or different, bond with one another to form larger pieces of matter known as compounds or molecules. Molecules are essentially the building blocks of many of the macromolecules, namely carbohydrates, proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids, that life on Earth is made up of. These macromolecules are our sources of energy, they are our genetic information, and are what make all of life physically. All of these macromolecules are essential to our biological processes and our interactions with the environment, that continuously supplies this matter to us. In that same vein, the Law of Conservation of Matter state that “whenever matter undergoes a physical or chemical change, no atoms are created or destroyed” (Miller and Spoolman 39). This means that our biological matter must be recycled back into the environment because matter cannot be produced or destroyed. Central to understanding environmental issues are physical concepts, most importantly the flow of energy. The First Law of Thermodynamics, or the Law of Conservation of Energy, states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. This is similar to the law of matter. Energy takes on different forms instead of being generated or destroyed. A second important law is the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states “when energy is changed from one form to another, it always goes from a more useful to a less useful form” (Miller and Spoolman 2018, 42). This means that when high-quality energy is converted from one form to another, it yields lower quality energy that cannot perform useful work and is output into the environment. These laws are important in the contexts to ecology because ecosystems depend on energy from the sun to be able perform its function at every trophic level. Much of the degraded energy becomes heat and the best way to ensure we are not wasting energy is to use it more efficiently and to consume less of it if not needed.

(Figure 2. Energy flow in an ecosystem, Khan Academy)

          Most important in this chapter is when the authors discuss how systems work. Systems depend on regular inputs, outputs, some general patterns in between. When these patterns are disturbed, a system can be thrown off balance. In the case of a positive feedback loop, inputs to a system can generate even more change to the system, and in some cases end up in what is called an ecological tipping point. A negative feedback loop does the opposite by discouraging this initial disturbance to the system and bringing it back to a state of equilibrium.

          The flow of energy and the cycling of nutrients in an ecosystem imply different levels of this system with agents that carry out different roles, or niches. These different trophic levels imply certain relationships among these agents, most of which are predator-prey relationships to keep the flow of energy going. Likewise, nutrients become cycled through these predator-prey relationships. The video “How Wolves Change Rivers” beautifully demonstrates how these processes, trophic cascades, play out in the real world. In the Yellowstone National Park, wolves were reintroduced in 1995 as an effort to control the impact of an overgrazing population of deer which was having cascading effects on the biodiversity of the park. In doing so, the rivers had responded to the reintroduction of the wolves due to the far-reaching impacts their presence had on the vegetation, which directly affected the riverbanks. The impacts of these predator-prey relationships are easier to see than the impacts had on abiotic or physical geography of an ecosystems. This example does a great job at exhibiting the laws of conservation of energy and matter at play through the layered, but organized relationships that exist in ecosystems.

Discussion question: How does matter and energy cycle through your everyday life? Are there any gaps? How can it be useful to be conscious of these dynamics?

Word Count: 1105

Works Cited:

“Energy Flow & Primary Productivity (Article).” Khan Academy. Khan Academy.  https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/ecology/intro-to-ecosystems/a/energy-flow-primary-productivity.

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott E. Spoolman. 2016. Living in the Environment: Nineteenth Edition, V-25. Canada: Cengage Learning.

Sustainable Human. How Wolves Change Rivers. Youtube, February 13, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q&feature=youtu.be.

____________________________________________

Blog Post #3: The Climate Crisis Through History

          This week’s material consisted of exposure to a historical disciplinary approach that can be applied to understand the crisis we are facing as our planet undergoes change. After interacting with the readings and watching Edward Burtynsky’s documentary “Manufactured Landscapes,” it was very clear to me that we must pay important attention to time. Time is the metric we use to measure change, and ultimately, this change creates a story that we must be hungry to uncover. This story is ultimately the history of it all—the universe, planet Earth, the story of life on Earth, our own human history, and how we are leaving a mark on this planet. This approach can help us understand how our humanity fits into the grand scheme of things

          Big History is an academic discipline that studies history from the dawn of time, which by many is considered the Big Bang. It can be thought of as “macrohistory” in that it focuses on general trends and patterns since the dawn of time, and put succinctly, it is “the fundamental nature of change itself” (Wikipedia). Big History is quite different from conventional history in that human affairs are not at the center of its focus. It draws on a multitude of disciplines, meaning its data is not limited to primary sources such as written records, artifacts, and other pieces of evidence that help us put together what happened during the time period being studied. Instead, it may also draw upon laws in physics, biological or chemical experiments, fossils, trends in human behavior that have grand impacts such as large-scale disturbances of ecosystems and raising global temperatures.

(Figure 1. An outline of Big History, Wikipedia)

          Some criticism this academic discipline receives is that it is “anti-humanist” and that it downplays methodologies used in conventional history as it is more of a “science” in the way biology or physics are sciences. Sam Wineburg, a history professor at Stanford argues that “At certain points, it becomes less history and more of a kind of evolutionary biology or quantum physics,” to say that it becomes less compelling in the way history is (The New York Times). However, a biology course is inherently historical since it uses evidence to try to reconstruct the history of life on Earth in the same way conventional history uses evidence to create a narrative for what happened during the first century.  I think Big History can be useful in helping us thinking differently about these disciplines. Science is often met with some degree of skepticism when it seems to contradict our ways of thinking, but people more readily accept a documentary that recounts events in ancient Mesopotamia. We need to be receptive of “strange” and new ways of thinking because the changes we are facing today urge us to pick up new weapons to adapt to change, and this includes our ways of studying.

(Figure 2. Time Chart)

          This snippet of this time chart is what Big History could potentially look like. Granted, however, this timeline has some inaccurate information and when looking at events in human history, they seem to put western history at the center. The left column is fragmented and has larger gaps between events and lists more “trends.” I think when discussing human history, we kind of have to work backwards almost. We need to figure out what are the patterns we are seeing and how did we create the conditions for these patterns to emerge. I think this later part in Big History can be identified as the “Anthropocene,” or the human era. This was proposed as a geological epoch because it has been widely accepted that using geological metrics, humans are having an impact so significant on the Earth that can be quantified. 

(Figure 3. Human footprint, New Atlas)

          Jared Diamond’s book Collapse: How Societies Chose to Fail or Succeed lends us another way to study environmental history. In this book, Diamond compares how different society dealt with “input” variables, or a sort of stimulus to its stability, yielding “outputs” defined by the society’s survival or failure. He argues that some reasons for the collapse of past societies are rooted in overpopulation and not being able to sustain its people. Some causes to modern failures include deforestation, loss of land fertility, problems with water management, overhunting or overfishing, people’s increased footprint, among other reasons. He also predicts that human-driven climate change, the buildup of environmental toxins, energy issues, and surpassing the Earth’s photosynthetic capacity will be factors that contribute to the demise of present and future societies. I have not read this book, but it seems to show the clear link between how the success of our societies is deeply interwoven, even dependent on, our relationship with the natural resources we interact with. This is an important theme to keep in the backs of our heads when studying history.

          Conventional history is still vital to use when studying the environmental history of our nations, for instance the United States. The next readings are supplements to Mill’s textbook The Living Environment. These readings show a kind of macrohistory of the United States by grouping general social and political trends in U.S history. The Tribal Era encompasses 13,000 years before the 1600s where hundreds of Native American groups with distinct identities lived in small numbers and had low resource use per person. The Frontier Era, from 1607-1890, is the time period where Europeans populate and forcefully expand west, mindlessly exploiting the land and displacing Native Americans further west if they did not already kill them. The land was cleared for settling and for creating farms, and land was viewed as something own—it was often given away or sold at very low prices to private interests. European relationship to the land was marked by greed and hunger to use up resources for personal gain. I think the name of this era downplays the violence and misuse that took place during this era. Towards the end of the Frontier Era, the Early Conservationist Era emerged, lasting from 1832 until 1870. This era was defined by the concern raised by some people who thought that resources were being degraded or depleted at alarming rates in North America. Many began to advocate, but were not taken seriously, the preservation of nature for “future generations,” and we see a new theme in U.S environmental history emerge. From 1870 until present day, we see increased intervention from the federal government in conservation efforts and an increased awareness in public health. Through these documents, I see a trend arise where there is growing tensions between private interests such as mining, coal, oil, automobile, and other companies that use natural resources to provide goods and services, who argue that argue that these policies are harmful for economic growth, and people advocating for more environmentally conscious policy.  

          Burtynsky’s film does a great job at documenting the scale of China’s industrial revolution in an objective way. He chooses China not to place value judgments on their industrial endeavors, but because China has massive landscapes that have been completely turned into wastelands or are grounds of largescale production. These landscapes allow us to reflect on the anthropogenic impact we have on Earth in the name of progress. This way of portraying our impact should be appreciated.  We live in a world where we are quick to point blame to someone but do not take time to step back and try to understand how these processes or events come to be. I think this is something a discipline such as Big History can help us address when being critical of issues we face because it looks at events in the context of larger patterns.

          We pursue technological advancements in the name of progress—progress that we think will help our future generations at the cost of degrading natural resources. This rhetoric that is concerned with our future generations has inspired environmental consciousness in the US, and probably in other places around the world. But this same rhetoric is what motivates mass production, and consequently results in mass waste. We need to stray away from this way of thinking and embrace new ways, for instance by encouraging different disciplines to contribute their tools to this universal issue we face.

Discussion question: In the film Manufacturing Landscapes, Edward B Burtynsky shows us sites of large-scale labor. How do these images tie into Marx’s theory of alienation?

Word Count: 1367

Works cited:

Diamond, Jared M. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Penguin, 2011.

Dowd, Michael. “Big History Hits the Big Time.” HuffPost, December 7, 2017. https://www.huffpost.com/

Irving, Michael. “Are We Living in the Anthropocene Epoch? Scientific Body Says ‘Yes.’” New Atlas, August 31, 2016. https://newatlas.com/anthropocene/45151/.

TEDTalks: Edward Burtynsky--TED Prize Wish, Share the Story of Earths Manufactured Landscapes, n.d.

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Blog Post #4: How do we see the world? Who are we? Who should we be? What should we do?

          Philosophy is the study of asking big questions about our nature and the nature of the world and trying to arrive at answers. Closely related, ethics concerns itself with what is right and wrong, what we ought to do, and who we ought to be. When applied to the environment, we are talking about how we view the world, how we act in accordance to this worldview, and what we should do differently to align ourselves with what is right. The 25th chapter of Living in the Environment by Tyler G. Miller and Scott E. Spoolman talks about commonly held environmental worldviews that get at who we are, our perceived nature of the world/environment/planet, and how we fit into it. As a supplementary reading, David Orr’s essay “What is Education For?  Six myths about the foundations of modern education, and six new principles to replace them, ” highlights the need for a specific kind of education—one where we are conscious of different perspectives and philosophies. I contend that our moral compass is what fills our sense of urgency to respond to issues and guides how we take action when responding. Therefore, Orr is right in that we need to go beyond the horizons of our own perspectives because the issue we face are multi-faceted and demand that we let go of our biases to limit our ignorance as much as we can.

          There are three main types of worldviews mentioned in the text. The first kind are the “human-centered worldviews.” As the name suggests, these perspectives prioritize human needs and wants. These worldviews generally view humans as the dominant species with the capacity and responsibility to manage the earth, often using natural resources and other life on Earth as means to our desires. At a glance, this perspective sounds selfish and cold. It includes the “stewardship worldview,” a perspective that places an ethical obligation on humans to protect other species and the condition of the Earth, which many of us would agree we have this obligation especially when we talk about what we should do to “manage” the climate crisis we find ourselves faced with. These conversations are often about discouraging “wrong” human behavior and promoting behavior that has less of a burden on the environment, such as low-impact economic growth. It should be noted that this worldview is different from the next ones in that the stewardship perspective places an obligation on humans to behave in a certain way; we have a responsibility to manage and protect because we are the dominating species in this world.

          Another popular type of worldview is the life-centered worldview. This perspective contends that we have an ethical duty to slow down the extinction of other species as a result of our harmful activities. This perspective calls for people to recognize the value of other life and views actions as morally wrong if they are harmful to other life.

          Finally, the third type of environmental worldviews is the earth-centered worldview. This worldview is broader in that it aims to preserve earth’s biodiversity, ecosystem services, and life support systems for all species. It does not believe we are in charge, rather it contends that we too are animals and subject to ecological processes, and to achieve this we need to behave more sustainably. An example of an earth-centered worldview is the environmental wisdom worldview which is very much in line with the authors’ worldview that we have an obligation to leave the earth just as good or better than we found it. These different worldviews are important to understand because they give us a sense of urgency (or lack thereof) to act. They also dictate what the is the “right” way to go about our environmental issues.

          Later in the chapter, the author’s highlight that being environmentally literate will help us make more ethically informed decisions about how we interact with the world. I thought this was interesting because the countries we consider to be more “educated” are also the nations that have greater footprints. However, the authors of the textbook argue for a specific kind of environmental literacy, namely one that offers a comprehensive understanding of “how the earth’s life-support system works, how our actions affect its life-sustaining systems, and how we can change our behavior toward the earth and thus toward ourselves” (Miller and Spoolman 2018, 688). The authors offer three important ideas to build this environmental literacy:

Natural capital support our economies and life on earth.

We have large ecological footprints that are rapidly growing.

There will be harmful, lasting consequences for exceeding the earth’s capacity to support our economies and life on earth.

The authors also define environmental literacy as the capacity to answer the following questions:

And at the same time showing a coherent understanding of the following concepts:

(Figure 1. Achieving environmental literacy, Living in the Environment, 2018)

        I thought it was interesting, strange almost, how the text laid this out as sort of “requirements” or a “how to” achieve environmental literacy. However, I am not sure how this is exactly useful. One would answer these questions already within the contexts of their respective worldview and not necessarily make them think more critically of their own actions. While I do think that it is a good to have some element of self-reflection, I think that it does not offer much else. When presenting my research to the public or in scholarly events, before anything I try to convey why that person should care about the work I am doing. I think there needs to be some element of why should one be concerned about my environmental responsibility? Every person’s relationship to the environment is shaped differently, and even more so in different cultural contexts, and thus, they will have varying reasons they find compelling to care for their ethical responsibility to the environment.

        David Orr’s essay offers a useful perspective on how we should approach environmental literacy that shares some commonalities with my own perspective. Orr first addresses the widely held belief that a lack of education contributes to environmental degradation. Orr disagrees and points out that educated people, those holding degrees from higher education institutions, largely contribute to the degradation of natural capital because they end up working for massive corporations with immense environmental footprints. Rather, Orr argues that we are not making compelling arguments through education as to why we should be concerned with the earth’s systems and natural capital. Second, Orr argues that education should not be a pursuit for facts, but rather a pursuit to be a better citizen of the world and “make the earth habitable and humane.”  Our education systems should be focused on the “production of people with moral courage” (Orr 2011). From personal experience, I have heard many young people my age complain about general education classes such as philosophy, literature, history, fine arts, among other courses as a waste and unnecessary. There are reasonable arguments against requiring these kinds of courses, but more often than not, students do not see the value in these courses to their professional and career goals. I find that our education system emphasizes the production of people that do some sort of labor and consequently fall short of communicating the importance of general education coursework. We have been conditioned to equate who we are with our professions or labor and forget our humanity in the process. In doing so, many professionals with higher education neglect to bridge the work they do with what they value, and thus are lacking in this “moral courage” Orr talks about.

Discussion question: Should higher education institutions implement curriculums that try to make its students “well-rounded” individuals, like the kind offered at Fordham? What are some benefits and drawbacks? How can it be improved?

Word count: 1241

Works Cited:

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott E. Spoolman. 2016. Living in the Environment: Nineteenth Edition, V-25. Canada: Cengage Learning.

Orr, David. “What Is Education For?” 2011. Context Institute. September 15, 2011. https://www.context.org/iclib/ic27/orr/.

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Blog Post #5: Economics, Politics, Law, & Sustainability

        This week’s readings are based on Miller’s Living in the Environment chapter 23, “Economics, Environment, and Sustainability,” and chapter 24 “Politics, environment, and sustainability.” Chapter 23 looks at how our economic systems are related to natural systems within the biosphere, and thus should adopt more sustainable economic activities that consider environmental harm or benefits from ecosystem services. Chapter 24 looks at government and its role in making societies more sustainable. These two chapters go hand in hand with each other because pushing our societies towards more sustainable outcomes usually entails government intervention in the form of environmental policy that proposes, funds, and enforces regulations, programs, and laws that grow and develop our economies sustainably. Although “man-made,” our economies need to be recognized as subsystems of the biosphere because of their direct relationship to natural capital and ultimately our systemic relationships and the quality of our lives. More importantly, we need to demand that our governments and influential economic figures view our economies as such and that they treat us as citizens before consumers.

        The first chapter, chapter 23, discusses markets and some of the challenging obstacles we are faced with when trying to transition into more environmentally sustainable economies. There are three ways we can classify economies: 1) a centrally planned economy is an economy where the government determines the production and the distribution of goods, 2) a mixed economy is an economy where private interests and government both determine how goods and services are distributed, and 3) a free-market economic system is one where all economic activities are determined through supply and demand with little to no government interference, using price signals to give value to a good or service as determined through the activities of sellers and buyers.

(Figure 1., Supply and demand curves for a saleable product in a free market, Miller and Spoolman, 2018)

        It was interesting to see a major issue tie in with last week’s reading of philosophical worldviews, and it pertains to how we view economies. Many experts regard our economies as subsystems of the biosphere. This is because economies rely on capital, namely natural capital which consists of natural resources and ecosystem services, human physical labor and intellectual skills, and manufactured capital which are the tools or means we use to convert our raw materials into our intended purpose. Industrialized countries generally depend “on a high-throughput economy, which attempts to boost economic growth by increasing the flow of matter and energy resources through the economic system to produce more goods and services,” generating a greater capacity to distribute goods and services to people but at the same time using natural capital for high-quality energy from the environment, and in return polluting through low-quality energy and wastes in the form of matter (Miller 632).

(Figure 2., Capital produces goods and services, Miller and Spoolman, 2018)

        Two prominent perspectives are that of the neoclassical economists and ecological economists. Neoclassical economists such as Alfred Marshall and Milton Friedman believe there is essentially no limit to economic growth because growth does not depend on the scarcity of natural capital as they can be replaced or worked around if depleted or degraded. Ecological economists such as Herman Daly and Robert Constanza, on the other hand, highlight that some natural resources, especially the ones we have a hard time putting a price on like clean air or water, have no substitutes and therefore means that there are limits to economic growth because the degradation of these natural resources are not factored into our economic activities but we ultimately depend on them for ideal social outcomes. These competing worldviews look at economies differently. The former sees natural processes and resources as subsets to our economies, whereas the latter regards economies as subset structures that depend on natural capital systems.

        We can see the types of economies as points on a spectrum, where a centrally planned is on one end, a free-market economy is on the complete opposite side, and a perfectly mixed economy is at the center. Usually, free markets do a decent job at distributing goods and services, however sometimes they may face “market failures,” when goods and services are not distributed efficiently and leads to unideal social circumstances, for instance, the degradation of public goods and services.  Here in the United Sates, we have a mixed economy where the government intervenes to achieve social aims, and this is where we see chapter 23 bridge into chapter 24.

        The government plays an important role in the transition into more sustainable societies because it can encourage sustainable economic activity through policy. However, this is obviously far more complex than it seems. In the US for instance, we value a fair and just democratic system that represents the people and hopefully has the best public interests in mind. However, this is not always the case and we see this type of government “compromised by groups or organizations that gain enough wealth and power to have more influence over government policies than the average citizen can have” (Miller and Spoolman 2018, 658). This makes politics complicated because we have very different perspectives on what policies should be enacted on top of an already complex process of public policy development. This process can be referred to as the “policy life cycle” and is defined by four general phases as illustrated in orange by the diagram below. In between each phase there are further steps that must be taken. For instance, after identifying an issue, a research process begins to better understand said issue.

(Figure 3., Policy life cycle, Miller and Spoolman, 2018)

          There are several tips analysts suggests should be used to guide environmental policy making. The suggestions I found most useful were the following:

The holistic principle: environmental issues are interconnected with other problems and we should focus on solutions that address the root causes instead of providing temporary relief. I think this also ties into the “triple bottom line principle” that calls for treating economic, environmental, and social issues as interconnected rather than considering each of these issues separately. For instance, if somebody were suffering from a bacterial infection, it would be ineffective to use deal with its symptoms seperately. We would prescribe antibiotics to get to the core of the problem which would ultimately relieve the symptoms as well.

The environmental justice principle:  when implementing policy, no one group should be disproportionately burdened by environmental stressors. Our policies should be just and not reactionary to the distress marginalized groups experience. There are countless examples of poor and underrepresented people who are or were directly affected by some environmental issue. It has historically taken our most vulnerable groups to endure these impacts in silence as their voices are shunned. More socioeconomically advantaged groups are often more readily and adequately responded to, or are less frequently exposed to these stressors in the first place    

The precautionary principle: if we have enough evidence that suggests some human activity is threatening human health or th environment, we should consider taking measure to discourage this activity. I think this was an aspect that was often overlooked in many cases where people suspected something was off in their communities, but their concerns were ignored. If people are concerned about something, it should be investigated thoroughly with the attention and care it deserves.    

          To bring the concepts in these chapters together, we can look at Ernest Partridge’s essay “Consumer or Citizen,” where he discusses our relationship with leaders in our country, whether they are elites or policy makers. It is important to distinguish whether we are being treated as consumers or citizens because it brings to light whether we are just means to the economic development of some interest or if we are being treated with the dignity citizens in a democratic nation deserve. If we want to see the latter, we must ensure we are enacting laws that protect the use of our natural capital in our economies because they have real implications for the conditions of our societies. The main takeaway from this essay is Partridge’s point that “we are being treated more and more as mere bundles of "gut preferences," by our political leaders, and by the oligarchy that selects, finances and thus "owns" these politicians.” Our political leaders study the most effective way to convince us of their agendas, meanwhile our most influential economic forces expect us to behave like sheep who acquire the tastes defined by oligarchs and depend on our inability to think critically. We need to see ourselves not only as autonomous individuals, but also as interdependent people who form a body politic and are concerned for others involved.

Discussion Question: How does a neoclassical economic perspective influence environmental policy? How can we encourage people to view the economy differently?

Word Count: 1429

Works Cited:

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott E. Spoolman. 2018. Living in the Environment: Nineteenth Edition, V-25. Canada: Cengage Learning.

Partridge, Ernest. “Consumer or Citizen?” Template with sidebar. Accessed February 23, 2020. http://gadfly.igc.org/politics/left/consumer.htm.

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Blog Post #6: Population Growth and Cities

          The rate at which the human population is growing is alarming. The world population grows by approximately 210,000 people daily (Population Clock). The world is rapidly developing and consequently, the global human population is being driven by a natural increase. This raises concerns regarding the environmental strains a rapidly growing population poses to natural capital and global ecosystems. Equally important, we should be concerned with cities who are increasingly becoming home to much of the world’s growing population. We are faced with the challenge of the environmental implications posed by rapidly growing populations paired with making our urban settings more livable and sustainable. Cities have great potential for managing large populations while offering its inhabitants dignified lives and mitigating environmental impacts. But probably most important is how this week’s readings pose some problematic modes of thought that put population growth at the epicenter of our environmental degradation and not as a symptom of unrestrained economic growth.

          The Impossible Hamster Video metaphorically speaks of this unrestrained economic growth. In nature, we see controlled patterns of growth, for instance, a hamster’s growth pattern, which doubles every week until it reaches a reproductive age. If the hamster were to keep doubling in size for an entire year, it would grow large enough to consume all of the world’s resources. This has something to say about a popular worldview people have regarding the economy; unrestrained economic growth has the same impact. Our population growth has direct relationships with economic growth and we seeing more and more the devastating impacts.

          Chapter 6 of The Living Environment by Miller and Spoolman discuss our rapidly growing human population and concerns with reaching a limit to this population growth due to the Earth’s inability to sustain our population. This concept is similar to that of a carrying capacity, which is the greatest population size a species can reach before the environment is unable to provide food, shelter, water and other needs. This concept might be a bit inhumane to apply to people because people should not only have their “basic needs” met. These should actually be rights. I thought it was interesting that instead, the term “cultural carrying capacity” was used and defined as “the maximum number of people who could live in reasonable freedom and comfort indefinitely, without decreasing the ability of the earth to sustain future generations” (Miller and Spoolman 2018, 122).  However, thinking about this critically still talks about humans with the same regard. With trying to sound ethical, I think Miller and Spoolman still fall short of realizing how this is insensitive, especially when saying “reasonable freedom and comfort” when we live in a world with massive wealth gaps and unclear definitions of what freedom and comfort even mean.

          In chapter 22, the textbook explains population trends in urban settings, major challenges faced, and how cities can be made more sustainable. Urbanization is a process that describes the development of cities and its resulting, surrounding communities (suburbs) due to urban sprawl. The text studies urbanization through metrics defined by percent population relative to a country or the world. There are other ways to measure urbanization and it generally depends on what exactly it is that you are studying. For instance, we might designate “urbanness” to a place based on the lack of green space it has, or its lack of wildlife, etc. These different metrics are useful when studying urban ecology and might be useful to consider different metrics to understand relationships in an urban context.

         As outlined in the text, there are three major trends regarding urban populations:

Globally, populations of urban areas are sharply increasing

Number and size of urban areas are increasing

Poverty is becoming more prevalent in urban areas

          By 2050, it is projected that 67% of the world population will live in cities. We expect to see an increase in the number of cities globally and a growth in the size of these cities. Finally, the number of people living in impoverished conditions is expected to triple by 2050. The text paints a generalized image of poverty, often displaying poverty as living in shanty towns or slums who “build shacks from corrugated metal, hunks of plastic, scrap wood, cardboard, and other scavenged building materials, or they live in rusted shipping containers and junked cars” and saying that it occurs more in less-developed countries without offering anything productive to say (Miller and Spoolman 2018, 612). Additionally, it speaks of poverty as an ailment that causes environmental degradation but speaks less of the consumption practices of more affluent people in urban areas, who definitely demand more inputs and produce more waste.

          The text discusses some of the environmental challenges experienced by urban settings. Some of these environmental problems dealt with a lack of vegetation and thus less ecosystem services, excessive noise and light, water issues, pollution and health complications, and local climate effects. I am particularly interested in local climate effects and water problems that are connected to a lack of vegetation. I designed a study, which I speak of in my practicum, where I look at the ecosystem dynamics in a ten year-old unmanaged green roof in the Bronx Zoo. Green roofs have countless ecosystem services they can provide to urban settings. Cities suffer from heat-islands which describe the concentration of heat in urban settings due heat retention in the types of surfaces such as asphalt roads, sidewalks, and other impervious materials that make up a large portion of the surface area in urban settings.  Moreso, these surfaces generate another kind of issue that deals with stormwater management due to their impervious nature, meaning they do not allow water to seep through. Consequently, stormwater that cannot seep through these surfaces runs off into waterways, directly or indirectly, carrying pollutants with it. It can even stress out old sewage infrastructure, like the kind we have in New York City and cause combined sewer overflows that can discharge raw sewage into nearby bodies of water. My study addressed two distinct investigations regarding the Center for Global Conservation’s greenroof in the Bronx Zoo and the water quality of the Bronx River in the context of stormwater management. I am a huge advocate for green roofs because of the countless ecosystem services they provide. They can help capture rainwater and also mitigate urban heat islands by reducing the temperature generated from heat absorption. They also bring urban dwellers and urban wildlife green spaces that are necessary for good health. These are one of the many solutions that can be implemented in urban design to make our cities more sustainable and more livable.

(Figure 1., Javits Center green roof, Audubon, 2016)     

        As soon as I saw this topic on the syllabus I was excited to sign up to do my presentation on it. I have lived in cities my entire life and am fascinated by them. Unfortunately, these two chapters were rather off-putting to read. I had qualms regarding the way poverty was discussed in these chapters. It is rather interesting to see that the kind of ideas perpetuated in the text are, in my perspective, shaped by the same systemic economic structures that have little consideration for poor and marginalized communities. It was truly almost ironic to see that play out in the text.

Discussion Question: What do you think about how poverty was discussed in the text.

Word Count: 1136

Works Cited:

“Current World Population.” Worldometer. Accessed March 11, 2020. https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/.

Foundation, New Economics. Vimeo, November 14, 2018. https://vimeo.com/8947526.

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott E. Spoolman. 2018. Living in the Environment: Nineteenth Edition, V-25. Canada: Cengage Learning.

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Blog post #7: Ecosystem Services and How To Appreciate Them

     After reading Miller and Spoolman’s chapter 9 of The Living Environment, it is evident that we are contributing to the extinction of wildlife and the ecosystem services they provide through our degradation of their ecosystems. Chapter 10 offers some insight as to how we are threatening these ecosystems as well as some solutions. I think that as a species with the capacity to reason that wildlife offer benefits through their ecosystem services, that keeping these ecosystems intact is not only beneficial for wildlife but also our wellbeing, and that we are damaging these systems, we have a moral obligation to restore and prevent further degradation of wildlife ecosystems. We can achieve this by understanding our impact and integrating this moral obligation into our laws and economic practices, understanding how we depend on these ecosystem services, protecting wildlife and wild places from human disturbance, focusing our attention to human threatened areas, and making space for wildlife in the spaces we already inhabit.

         In chapter 9, Miller and Spoolman talk about the importance of ecosystem services provided by other species to our societies. They start off the chapter with a case study about honeybees. The ecosystem service honeybees provide to us is pollination, which is responsible for “71% of vegetable and fruit crops that provide 90% of the world’s food and a third of the U.S food supply” (Miller and Spoolman 2018,192). The problem, however, is that honeybee populations have been declining since the 1980s, and since 2006, many honeybees in Europe and the United States have been going missing due to colony collapse disorder, when all the bees of a colony abandon it during inappropriate seasons. On the one hand, we depend on this species’ ecosystem service to be able to produce enough food. On the other hand, it is not a sustainable practice to depend on this single species for our food supply. This is the example often used to showcase how we our economies depend on ecosystem services provided by wildlife, and how its extinction has heavy implications for our societies.

(Figure 1. Honeybee pollinating, Miller and Spoolman, 2018)      

        Extinction and wildlife population decline is what this chapter is all about. “Extinction is a natural process and has occurred at a low rate throughout most of the earth’s history,” namely the background extinction rate (Miller and Spoolman 2018, 193). There is a difference between natural extinctions and extinctions we serve as catalysts for where we increase this extinction rate. When many species go extinction in a short period of time, this is what is referred to as a mass extinction, for instance the Permian-triassic extinction which was estimated to wipe out approximately 90% of life on earth. After reading this, I had a couple of questions. I wonder how high the extinction rate needs to increase to qualify as a mass extinction and if the Anthropocene is categorized as a geologic period, would the extinctions induced by human impact be considered a mass extinction? Additionally, how do we know what species we already naturally going extinct before we could say our behavior had something to do with it, and how do we know what natural extinctions we have accelerated?

         This part of the reading was supplemented by short Dailymotion video published by Geo Beats that talks about the decline in wildlife population in the last forty years. There has been a reported 50% average decline in wild animal populations, and some species go well beyond this average such as freshwater vertebrates (Dailymotion). This decline was attributed habitat destruction and to human consumption practices. The text reminds us of ways human accelerate species extinction through the use of the acronym “HIPPCO” (Miller and Spoolman 2018, 198) and stands for the following:

H – Habitat destruction, degradation, fragmentation

 I – Invasive species

P – Population growth and increased resource use

P – Pollution

C – Climate change

O – Overexploitation

         Chapter 10, the authors discuss the importance of sustaining ecosystems and the services that they offer. It is clear that these systems bring us countless human benefits in terms of our health and economies. Some of these services include, but are not limited to the support of energy flow and cycling of chemicals, air and water purification, reduction of soil erosion, absorption and release of water, their impact on climate, storing atmospheric carbon, and serving as a home for wildlife and at the same time offer renewable resources, recreational and industrial uses such as mining.

         I think many of our nations have been built on ideologies that inherently favor the exploitation of wildlife and ecosystem services to the point where we are so removed from caring about the impact we have on these systems. Our attention is never drawn to these issues until we are not directly harmed by our actions or until we see a graphic image on our cellphones of an animal experiencing some sort of distress. Not to mention, the animals we largely care for are those that we find value in, whether it be for aesthetic purposes, because we find it cute or beautiful, or because we want to exploit what it can do for us. It is important to unlearn these ways of thinking and start educating our people differently. I do think this is hard to do because many of our social structures are defined by power, which often implies the amount of wealth you have, how much capacity for consumption you have, how much you can participate in economic practices that are often harmful, etc. We are taught that our value in society is defined by wasteful consumption that contributes to this. I think even before unlearning and educating our people different comes regulating our economies differently. We need to factor in these ecosystem services that are not reflected in our economic activities. There needs to be a push towards full-cost pricing that reflects our damage to ecosystems as consumers and suppliers. Even beyond that, there need to be more laws in place that protect wildlife and we need to push for societies that are conscious of the harm they are inflicting. I think most of the time we are driven by this lack of connection to the impact we have because these effects play out far away from us. We need to see to believe. We need to be more graphic about the consequences our actions have because that is the only way we can make them hit home. Additionally, sadly, we need to convey these ideas in a way that makes people care. Undoing these horrible impacts on the world’s wildlife educating people on how this impacts them, requires new ways of thinking and unlearning, and being more aggressive when holding people accountable.

Discussion question: Do graphic images online help us be more evnironmentally conscious?

Word Count: 1105

Works Cited:

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott E. Spoolman. 2018. Living in the Environment: Nineteenth Edition, V-25. Canada: Cengage Learning

Beats, Geo. Dailymotion. Dailymotion, September 30, 2014. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x26ybub.