Environmental Issues Todays

Recent Issues & Challenges

Environmental issues that are considered as a threat to the modern society in the world are discussed. Recent transition have affected the vulnerable sectors badly, the scientist, researchers and the experts see as a tough challenges to tackle these issues in the future. Such  major issues which are to be addressed are as follows.

• Climate Change
• Risk of Large Temperature Increase
• Risk of Irreversible GHG Emissions from Environment
• Sea Level Rise
• Air Pollution
• Ozone depletion
• Water Crisis
• Ocean & Coastal Threats
• Shrinking Wetland
• Genetic Engineering
• Forest Destruction and Deforestation
• Industrial Agriculture and Farm
• Desertification
• Habitat Destruction
• Toxic Chemical
• Nuclear Weapon & Nuclear Power
• Natural Resources Extraction & Depletion
• Hydraulic Fracturing
• World Hunger/ Food Crisis
• Endangered Species and Biodiversity Loss
• Animal Cruelty
• Overpopulation   

Climate Change

UNEP (United Nation Environment Programme) Report : To limit temperature increase to 1.5°C, we must drop our greenhouse gas emissions 7.6% each year between 2020 and 2030. This will take an all-hands-on-deck effort. Climate change, or global warming, is the greatest environmental threat we've ever faced. How we respond to this crisis will greatly impact both current and future generations and all other species.

The global carbon dioxide equivalent of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere has exceeded 400 parts per million. This level is considered a tipping point. "Carbon dioxide levels today are higher than at any point in at least the past 800,000 years. The last time the atmospheric CO2 amounts were this high was more than 3 million years ago, when temperature was 2°–3°C (3.6°–5.4°F) higher than during the pre-industrial era, and sea level was 15–25 meters (50–80 feet) higher than today."

A new UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report warns that unless global greenhouse gas emissions fall by 7.6% each year between 2020 and 2030, the world will miss the opportunity to get on track towards the 1.5°C temperature goal of the Paris Agreement.

The Effects of Climate Change

NASA report : Global climate change has already had observable effects on the environment. Glaciers have shrunk, ice on rivers and lakes is breaking up earlier, plant and animal ranges have shifted and trees are flowering sooner.

Effects that scientists had predicted in the past would result from global climate change are now occurring: loss of sea ice, accelerated sea level rise and longer, more intense heat waves. Change will continue through this century and beyond temperatures will continue to rise frost-free season (and growing season) will lengthen changes in precipitation patterns more droughts and heat waves hurricanes will become stronger and more intense sea level will rise 1-8 feet by 2100 arctic likely to become ice-free.

Risk of Large Temperature Increase

WMO (World Meteorological Organisation) report: Past 4 years warmest on record

The long-term warming trend has continued in 2018, with the average global temperature set to be the fourth highest on record. The 20 warmest years on record have been in the past 22 years, with the top four in the past four years, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Global warming

When carbon (CO2 or carbon dioxide) and other heat-trapping emissions are released into the air, they act like a blanket, holding heat in our atmosphere and warming the planet.

Overloading our atmosphere with carbon has far-reaching effects for people all around the world, including rising sea levels, increasing wildfires, more extreme weather, deadly heat waves, and more severe droughts.

Risk of Irreversible GHG Emissions from Environment

Arctic ice melt makes permafrost vulnerable

The absence of sea ice in the Arctic is closely connected to the melting of permafrost, according to a new study. Permafrost contains massive amounts of carbon which are likely to be released as climate change heats up the world. When this carbon enters the atmosphere as CO2 and methane gas, it will itself contribute to warming the globe.

As soils warm, microbes pump more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere

A teaspoon of soil can contain more microbes than there are people on the planet. Those microbes affect the climate by helping determine how much carbon is trapped in the soil and how much is released to the atmosphere. It’s a delicate balance, and one that scientists say is shifting as temperatures rise.

Sea Level Rise

Global Sea Level 

Global mean sea level has risen about 8–9 inches (21–24 cm) since 1880, with about a third of that coming in just the last two and a half decades. The rising water level is mostly due to a combination of melt water from glaciers and ice sheets and thermal expansion of seawater as it warms. In 2018, global mean sea level was 3.2 inches (8.1 cm) above the 1993 average—the highest annual average in the satellite record (1993-present).

Climate Change Impacts on the Environment

WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) report : The changing nature of the Amazon over time, global climate change and more deforestation will likely lead to increased temperatures and changing rain patterns in the Amazon, which will undoubtedly affect the region’s forests, water availability, biodiversity, agriculture, and human health. Between 30% and 60% of the Amazon rainforest could become a dry savanna.

Air Pollution

UNEP Report : Air pollution is broken down into ambient (outdoor) air pollution and indoor air pollution. This pollution comes from many sources, the majority of them a result of human activity. Air pollution has been called a major global health epidemic, causing one in nine of all deaths. It also has massive negative impacts on climate change and economies.

Ozone Depletion

NASA Explained : The stratospheric ozone layer protects life on Earth by absorbing ultraviolet light, which damages DNA in plants and animals (including humans) and leads to sunburns and skin cancer. Prior to 1979, scientists had not observed atmospheric ozone concentrations below 220 Dobson Units. But in the early 1980s, through a combination of ground-based and satellite measurements, scientists began to realize that Earth’s natural sunscreen was thinning dramatically over the South Pole each spring. This thinning of the ozone layer over Antarctica came to be known as the ozone hole.

Water Crisis

WHO Data & Facts : In 2017, 71% of the global population (5.3 billion people) used a safely managed drinking-water service – that is, one located on premises, available when needed, and free from contamination. 90% of the global population (6.8 billion people) used at least a basic service. A basic service is an improved drinking-water source within a round trip of 30 minutes to collect water. 785 million people lack even a basic drinking-water service, including 144 million people who are dependent on surface water.

Globally, at least 2 billion people use a drinking water source contaminated with faeces. Contaminated water can transmit diseases such diarrhea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid, and polio. Contaminated drinking water is estimated to cause 485 000 diarrhea deaths each year. By 2025, half of the world’s population will be living in water-stressed areas. In least developed countries, 22% of health care facilities have no water service, 21% no sanitation service, and 22% no waste management service.

Ocean and Coastal Threats

UNESCO Report : World's Low Oxygen: Scientists Reveal Dangers and Solutions in Broadest Study Yet

In the past 50 years, the amount of water in the open ocean with zero oxygen has gone up more than fourfold. In coastal water bodies, including estuaries and seas, low-oxygen sites have increased more than 10-fold since 1950. As the Earth warms, scientists expect oxygen levels to continue dropping in both of these zones. To halt the decline, the world needs to rein in both climate change and nutrient pollution, an international team of scientists assert in a new paper published January 5 in Science magazine.

The study comes from the Global Ocean Oxygen Network (GO2NE), a new working group created in 2016 by UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC), representing 21 institutions in 11 countries. The review paper is the first to take such a sweeping look at the causes, consequences and solutions to low oxygen worldwide, in both the open ocean and coastal waters. The article highlights the biggest dangers to the ocean and society, and what it will take to keep Earth’s waters healthy and productive.

Shrinking Wetlands

WWF Report : 

Montenegro dams to harm crucial bird, fish habitats

Dam projects planned in Montenegro will likely harm Lake Skadar, the largest lake in the Balkans and a protected wetland site that is home to crucial bird and fish habitats, according to a study by WWF and Green Home.

Ramsar Convention

The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands is the only environmental treaty for a particular type of ecosystem and the first global inter governmental treaty to combine conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. Signed in 1971, it originally focused on the conservation and wise use of wetlands primarily to protect water bird habitat. However, its basic tenets have broadened over the years to recognize wetlands, including coastal wetlands such as mangroves, coral reefs, and sea grass beds, as ecosystems that are extremely important for both biodiversity conservation and the well-being of human communities.

Genetic Engineering

ISAAA  (International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications) Report : GM Crops affects on Environment

Risk assessment procedures in considering the interactions between a GM crop and its environment. These include information about the role of the introduced gene, and the effect that it brings into the recipient plant. Also addressed are specific questions about unintentional effects such as:

•  impact on non-target organisms in the environment
• whether the modified crop might persist in the environment longer than usual or invade new habitats
• likelihood and consequences of a gene being transferred unintentionally from the modified crop to other species

Forest Destruction/Deforestation

Global Forest Resource Statement 2020 Report : An estimated 420 million ha of forest has been lost worldwide through deforestation since 1990, but the rate of forest loss has declined substantially. In the most recent five-year period (2015–2020), the annual rate of deforestation was estimated at 10 million ha, down from 12 million ha in 2010–2015. 

Forests face many disturbances that can adversely affect their health and vitality and reduce their ability to provide a full range of goods and ecosystem services. About 98 million ha of forest were affected by fire in 2015; this was mainly in the tropical domain, where fire burned about 4 percent of the total forest area in that year. More than two-thirds of the total forest area affected was in Africa and South America.

Insects, diseases and severe weather events damaged about 40 million ha of forests in 2015, mainly in the temperate and boreal domains.

Industrial Agriculture and Farm

• Depletion - Monoculture exhausts soil fertility, requiring costly applications of chemical fertilizers.
• Irrigation - Soils used to grow annual row crops and then left bare for much of the year have poor drought resistance, increasing irrigation costs.
• Erosion - Monoculture degrades soil structure and leaves it more vulnerable to erosion, resulting in costs for soil replacement, cleanup, and lost farmland value. 
• Lost biodiversity - Industrial farms don't support the rich range of life that more diverse farms do. As a result, the land suffers from a shortage of the ecosystem services, such as pollination, that a more diverse landscape offers.

Desertification

Desertification, also called desertization, the process by which natural or human causes reduce the biological productivity of dry lands (arid and semiarid lands). Declines in productivity may be the result of climate change, deforestation, overgrazing, poverty, political instability, unsustainable irrigation practices, or combinations of these factors.

 Slightly less than half of Earth’s ice-free land surface—approximately 52 million square km (about 20 million square miles)—is dry lands, and these dry lands cover some of the world’s poorest countries. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) notes that desertification has affected 36 million square km (14 million square miles) of land and is a major international concern. According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, the lives of 250 million people are affected by desertification, and as many as 135 million people may be displaced by desertification by 2045, making it one of the most severe environmental challenges facing humanity.

Habitat Destruction

Habitat loss poses the greatest threat to species. The world's forests, swamps, plains, lakes, and other habitats continue to disappear as they are harvested for human consumption and cleared to make way for agriculture, housing, roads, pipelines and the other hallmarks of industrial development. Without a strong plan to create terrestrial and marine protected areas important ecological habitats will continue to be lost.

Toxic Chemical

EWG (Environmental Working Group) report : 

The Pollution in Newborn

A benchmark investigation of industrial chemicals, pollutants and pesticide in umbilical cord blood.

In the month leading up to a baby's birth, the umbilical cord pulses with the equivalent of at least 300 quarts of blood each day, pumped back and forth from the nutrient- and oxygen-rich placenta to the rapidly growing child cradled in a sac of amniotic fluid. This cord is a lifeline between mother and baby, bearing nutrients that sustain life and propel growth.

Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Power

In the last decade, however, with growing public awareness about climate change and the critical role that carbon dioxide and methane emissions plays in causing the heating of the earth's atmosphere, there has been a resurgence in the intensity of the nuclear power debate. Nuclear power advocates and those most concerned about climate change point to nuclear power's reliable, emission-free, high-density energy, alongside a generation of young physicists and engineers working to bring a new generation of nuclear technology into existence to replace fossil fuels. On the other hand, skeptics point to nuclear accidents such as the death of Louis Slotin, the Windscale fire, the Three Mile Island accident, the Chernobyl disaster, and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, combined with escalating acts of global terrorism, to argue against continuing use of the technology.

Natural Resources Extraction & Depletion

Resource extraction involves any activity that withdraws resources from nature. This can range in scale from the traditional use of pre-industrial societies to global industry. Extractive industries are, along with agriculture, the basis of the primary sector of the economy. Extraction produces raw material, which is then processed to add value. Examples of extractive industries are hunting, trapping, mining, oil and gas drilling, and forestry.

The depletion of natural resources is caused by 'direct drivers of change' such as Mining, petroleum extraction, fishing, and forestry as well as 'indirect drivers of change' such as demography (e.g. population growth), economy, society, politics, and technology. The current practice of Agriculture is another factor causing depletion of natural resources. For example, the depletion of nutrients in the soil due to excessive use of nitrogen and desertification.

Hydraulic Fracturing for natural Gas & Oil 

Hydraulic fracturing, informally referred to as “fracking,” is an oil and gas well development process that typically involves injecting water, sand, and chemicals under high pressure into a bedrock formation via the well.

When developing oil and gas well pads, the vegetation and soil are removed to level the areas for drilling and operations. The new assessment approach, called the disturbance automated reference tool set, or DART, is used to examine recovery patterns after well pads are plugged and abandoned to help resource managers make informed decisions for future well pad development.

The recovery of well pads following oil and gas development is an area of growing importance because recent technological advances such as hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling have initiated rapid increases in development and production. Previous studies estimate that about 11,583 square miles of land in central North America were cleared for oil and gas related purposes between 2000 and 2012.

World Hunger - Food Crisis

UN World Food Program Data : Every day too many men and women across the globe struggle to feed their children a nutritious meal. In a world where we produce enough food to feed everyone, 821 million people – one in nine – still go to bed on an empty stomach each night. Even more – one in three – suffer from some form of malnutrition.

Endangered Species and Biodiversity Loss

WWF Report : Biologists estimate there are between 5 and 15 million species of plants, animals, and micro-organisms existing on Earth today, of which only about 1.5 million have been described and named. The estimated total includes around 300,000 plant species, between 4 and 8 million insects, and about 50,000 vertebrate species (of which about 10,000 are birds and 4,000 are mammals).

Animal Cruelty

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animal) report : Each year, more than 100 million animals—including mice, rats, frogs, dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs, monkeys, fish, and birds—are killed in U.S. laboratories for biology lessons, medical training, curiosity-driven experimentation, and chemical, drug, food, and cosmetics testing. Before their deaths, some are forced to inhale toxic fumes, others are immobilized in restraint devices for hours, some have holes drilled into their skulls, and others have their skin burned off or their spinal cords crushed. In addition to the torment of the actual experiments, animals in laboratories are deprived of everything that is natural and important to them—they are confined to barren cages, socially isolated, and psychologically traumatized. The thinking, feeling animals who are used in experiments are treated like nothing more than disposable laboratory equipment.

Overpopulation

The United Nations predicts the world population will reach 7 billion on October 31, 2011, and continue exploding till its hits 10 billion by century’s end. Global population doubled from 1 billion to 2 billion between 1800 and 1930, then exploded over the past five decades — doubling from 3.5 billion in 1968 to nearly 7 billion now.

According to a May 2011 U.N. report, the global human population will likely exceed 10 billion by 2100. This projection is higher than previous estimates, which predicted the population would peak at slightly more than 9 billion in 2050 and then begin to decline.

Population growth has an enormous impact on biodiversity, the suite of plant and animal species that make up our physical world. As the world’s human population grows unsustainably, so do its unyielding demands for water, land, trees and fossil fuels — all of which come at a steep price for other life forms already being forced into remote corners, deprived of food sources or out competed by introduced species. Most directly, population growth has led to massive habitat loss, over hunting and interruption of migration.