Our Future Environment

This morning in my Environmental Planning course at Columbia part of our discussion focused on the driving forces of environmental change and the positive and negative role of cities. The discussion touched on many economic and population statistics but a few ideas stuck out to me:
1::According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) “the combination of high variability in environmental conditions and relatively high levels of poverty leads to situations where people can be highly vulnerable to changes in ecosystems, although the presence of these conditions has led to the development of very resilient land management strategies. …Approximately 10–20% of the world’s drylands are degraded (medium certainty) directly harming the people living in these areas and indirectly harming a larger population through biophysical impacts (dust storms, greenhouse gas emissions, and regional climate change) and through socioeconomic impacts (human migration and deepening poverty sometimes contributing to conflict and instability). Despite these tremendous challenges, people living in drylands and their land management systems have a proven resilience and the capability of preventing land degradation, although this can be either undermined or enhanced by public policies and development strategies.
2::“Approximately 60% (15 out of 24) of the ecosystem services evaluated in the MA are being degraded or used unsustainably.” Although many of the degraded services (freshwater, erosion, etc.) are typically researched by social scientists and planners I was particularly interested in the inclusion of spiritual and religious, aesthetic values and recreation/ecotourism as degraded services. I suppose this is due to my interest in qualitative research and use of the natural environment for recreation.
3:: Urbanization (city growth) plays a large role in driving environmental change. Urban areas provide many social services to a dense population and can play both a positive and negative role in the interaction of disadvantaged persons and the environment. Cities can both affect environmental degradation and act as a source of environmental mediation.

Filed under: environmental planning on February 13th, 2008