Enviro - Sustainability Principles 2

• conservation of biodiversity and ecological integrity
• Conservation of biodiversity and ecological integrity: Maintaining the variety of plant and animal species in an area, preserving the genetic differences within each population, and ensuring that the environment stays balanced and can adapt to changes over time, including the ability to heal itself.
• Efficiency of resource use: Use of smaller amounts of physical resources to produce the same product or service while minimising environmental impact.
• Intergenerational equity: Preserving natural resources and environment for the benefit of future generations.
• Intragenerational equity: Preserving natural resources and the environment for the benefit of the current generation.
• Precautionary Principle: taking preventive action in the face of uncertainty to prevent potential harm to the environment or public health. It emphasizes being cautious when there is a risk of serious or irreversible harm, even if scientific evidence is not yet conclusive.
• User pays principle: Calls upon the user of a service or resource to pay directly for the amount they use, rather than the cost being shared by all the users or a community equally.
• Precautionary principle: “We should not allow anything to happen that could lead to the irreversible loss of biological resources through ignorance of the impact or because we think that a resource is of no value”.
• Inter: future generations
• Intra: current generation
• conservation of biodiversity and ecological integrity: maintain abundance of species within a region, genetic diversity in a population, and the ability for an ecosystem to maintain abiotic and biotic factors, capacity for self-renewal, endurance of environmental conditions.
• Sustainability principles are basic rules that help us make choices to preserve the environment, support communities, and ensure a good life for both present and future generations.
• conservation of biodiversity and ecological integrity: maintain variety of plant and animal species in an area, genetic difference, environment has ability to adapt to changes over time
• efficiency of resource use: use smaller physical resources to create something with less harm to the environment
• intergenerational equity: preserve natural resources for future generations
• intragenerational equity: preserve natural resources for current generation
• Precautionary Principle: Prevention of irreversible loss of biological resource through ignorance
• User pays principle: pay directly for amount used
• Anthropocentrism: belief that humans are the central or most significant species on the planet
• Biocentrism: belief that biology is the central and driving science of the universe, and that humans are no more important than any other living thing
• Ecocentrism: The perspective that places greatest intrinsic value on species and their natural environments (rather than individual organisms) Humans are part of an intricate web of life
• Technocentrism: belief that humans are separate from nature and are able to manage nature for humanity’s advantage
• Ecocentrism: Valuing nature and its species more than individual creatures, seeing humans as part of nature's intricate system.
• ecologically sustainable development is the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs
• sustainability: the ability or capacity of something to be maintained or to sustain itself
• environment: the surroundings or conditions in which a person, animal, or plant lives or operates
• society: the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community
• economy: the state of a country or region in terms of the production and consumption of goods and services and the supply of money
• the 3 pillars of sustainability are: economic, social and environmental
• Economic sustainability is the approach whereby economic activities are conducted in such a way as to preserve and promote long-term economic well-being.
• Social sustainability involves a focus on the well-being of people and communities
• Environmental sustainability focuses on the well-being of the environment.
• This pillar includes air quality, clean water, and biodiversity = environmental pillar
• It's about promoting equity, human rights, access to education and health care, and decent work = social pillar
• it aims to create a balance between economic growth, resource efficiency, social equity and financial stability = economic pillar
• biosphere: the place on earth where all life exists
• hydrosphere: all the water found on Earth
• lithosphere: the outermost solid layer of the earth
• atmosphere: the gaseous envelope of air surrounding earth that protects life.
• challenges to sustainability principles - population, food, water, energy