ENVIRONMENTAL

SUSTAINABILITY
CHY1006, LT, 2 Credits
Dr Shiv Manjaree Gopaliya
Assistant Professor and Program Chair (ME in AI and Robotics)
School of Mechanical Engineering, VIT Bhopal University
shivmanjaree@vitbhopal.ac.in, 9078276162
 Course Outcomes
Students will be able to:

CO1: Recognize and explain global environmental problems and their

connection with human activities.
CO2: Develop respect for nature and living beings and to help maintain
ecological balance.
CO3: Understand the causes and implications of environmental
pollution and develop sustainable solutions.
CO4: Analyze interrelationships between consumerism, societal,
education and sustainable development.
CO5: Utilize their engineering knowledge and principles to understand
the interrelation between for sustainability issues and energy
resources.
 Course Outcomes
 Module 1:

Students will be able to:

CO1: Recognize and explain global environmental problems

and their connection with human activities.
 Evaluation Plan
Quiz
10 marks
Environmental (min 4, max 6)
Sustainability
CHY1006 Tutorial
10 marks
(min 5)

LT Course
Group activity
05 marks
(min 3)

Assignment
10 marks
(2 of 5 marks each)
 Module 1

Environmental Problems, their causes and sustainability

 No civilization has
survived the ongoing
destruction of its
natural support
system. Nor will ours.

Lester R Brown
 Important questions to be answered
from Module 1

 What are some principles of sustainability?

 How are our ecological footprints affecting the earth?
 Why do we have environmental problems?
 What is an environmentally sustainable society?
What are some principles of sustainability?
 What is an environment?
 The environment is everything around us. It includes
the living and the non-living things (air, water, and
energy) with whichEnvironmental
we interact in a complex web of
relationships that connect us to one another and to the
Science
world we live in.
Integration of natural sciences
(biology, chemistry etc.), social
 Despite our many scientificeconomics
sciences (geography, and
technological
etc.) and humanities (ethics)
advances, we are utterly dependent on the earth for
clean air and water, food, shelter, energy, fertile soil,
and everything else in the planet’s life-support system.
 3 goals of
Environmental Science
To find ways
To understand
To learn how to deal with
how we
life on earth environmenta
interact with
have survived l problems
the
and thrived and live more
environment
sustainably
 What is environmental sustainability?

 Environmental sustainability is the responsibility to conserve

natural resources and protect global ecosystems to support
health and wellbeing, now and in the future. Because so
many decisions that impact the environment are not felt
immediately.

 In other words environmental sustainability is the practice of

interacting with the planet responsibly. We do it to avoid
depleting natural resources and compromising the future
generation's ability to meet their daily needs.
 • Biological science that • The living
studies how living things
interact with one another things are
and with their called
environment. organisms.

Ecology Organisms

Ecosystem Species
• It is a set of organisms
within a defined area or • Each organism
volume that interact with
one another and with their
belongs to a
environment of non living species.
matter and energy.
 Question

What is the difference between

‘environmental science’ and
environmentalism’?
What are some principles of sustainability?

Concept 1: Nature has Concept 2: Our lives

been sustained for and economies depend
billion years by relying on energy from sun and
on solar energy, on natural resources
biodiversity and and ecosystem services
chemical cycling provided by the earth

Concept 3: We could
shift toward living more
sustainably by applying
full cost pricing,
searching for win-win
solutions and
committing to
preservation of earth’s
life support systems for
future generations
 Principles of sustainability:
Concept 1
Nature has been
sustained for billion
years by relying on
solar energy, Bio -
biodiversity and
chemical cycling diversity

Solar Chemical
energy cycling
 • Sun warms the planet and provides energy
that plants use to produce nutrients.
Solar energy • Sun also powers indirect forms such as
wind and water flow through which we
get electricity.
• Variety of genes, organisms, species and
ecosystems in which organisms exist and
Bio-diversity interact.
• It also provide countless ways to adapt to
changing environmental conditions.
• Circulation of chemicals necessary for life
from the environment through organisms
Chemical and back to environment.
cycling
• Little waste in nature, because waste of
one organism is nutrient for another.
 Principles of sustainability:
Our lives and Concept 2
economies depend on
energy from sun and
on natural resources
and ecosystem
services provided by
the earth Natural capital

Key components of
Natural resources
sustainability

Natural/ecosystem
services
 Principles of sustainability:
Concept 3
(social science principles of sustainability)

Full cost
From economics
pricing

Win-win
From political sciences
solutions

A
responsibility
From ethics
to future
generations
 Resources: Renewable or Not
Anything that we can
obtain from environment

Resource
to meet our needs and
wants

Useful to us with some

Directly available for effort and
use technological
ingenuity

Petroleum, minerals,
Solar energy, wind, surface
underground water, cultivated
water, edible wild plants
plants
 • Example: solar energy because its
Inexhaustible continuous supply is expected to run
resource for 6 billion years.

• It can be replenished by natural

Renewable processes within hours to centuries.
resource Example: forests, fishes, fresh water.

• The highest rate at which we can use

a renewable resource indefinitely
Sustainable yield without reducing its available supply.

Exhaustible or • We can deplete these resources much

faster than nature can form them.
non-renewable Example: oil, coal, copper, aluminum.
resource
From an environmental and sustainability
viewpoint, the priorities for more sustainable
use of non-renewable resources
Explain how this
Step 1: Refuse sequence if
followed, will
help in
Step 2: Reduce environmental
sustainability?

Step 3: Reuse

Step 4: Recycle
How are our ecological footprints affecting the earth?
 Environmental degradation / natural
capital degradation
Concept:
As our ecological
footprints grow, Depleting
we are depleting
and degrading
more of the
Degrading
earth’s natural
capital

Wasting

We are living
unsustainably
Environmental degradation / natural
capital degradation
Global Pollution
environmental
issues
Global warming
Overpopulation
Waste disposal
Deforestation
Ozone layer depletion
Major environmental problem: Pollution

Air pollution Water pollution Soil pollution

Radioactive
Noise pollution
pollution
 Single, identifiable
sources

Point sources
Smokestack of industrial
plant, drainpipe of
factory, exhaust pipe of
automobile
Two sources of
pollutants

Dispersed and often

difficult to identify

Non-point sources
Pesticides blown into
the air, trash flowing
from land to water
streams
 How to deal with pollution?

Cleaning up or diluting
pollutants after we have
Pollution produced them
cleanup
Example: having tall
smokestacks in industries

Efforts focused on greatly

reducing or eliminating the
production of pollutants Pollution
prevention
Example: pollution control
laws, Clean Ganga initiative
 Tragedy of the commons
:degrading commonly shared renewable resources

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA-NC

Ecological footprints: Environmental impacts

• Wealth, which allows to consume

Affluence large amounts of resources far
beyond their basic needs.
• Amount of land and water that are
needed to supply a person with
Ecological renewable resources and amount of
footprint land and water needed to absorb and
recycle the wastes and pollution
produced by such resource use.
Per capita • Average ecological footprint of an
footprint individual in a given country or area.
 Environmental Impact Model: IPAT

 This model includes the per capita use of both renewable and non-renewable
resources.

Population

Less developed
countries
Affluence
Key factors in total (economies)
environmental
impact

More developed
Affluence
countries
 Activity:
What do you understand from the picture
shown below?
Red arrow:
generalized
harmful impacts

Green arrow:
generalized
beneficial impacts
Why do we have environmental problems?
Reasons behind environmental problems
Concept 1:
Major causes are
population growth,
unsustainable
resource use,
poverty, avoidance
of full cost pricing
and isolation from
nature
Concept 2:
Our environmental
worldviews play a
key role in
determining whether
we live unsustainably
or more sustainably
 Failure to include
harmful
environmental
costs of goods
and services in
their market
Wasteful and prices
unsustainable Poverty
resource use

4 major
Increasing
Population causes of
isolation from
growth environmental
nature
problems
Endangered Asian elephants
are being ride and learning
about threatened Barasingha
deer
 People have different views about
environmental problems and their solutions
 Your environmental worldview is your set of assumptions or values
reflecting how you think the world works and what you think your
role in the world should be.

Planetary management Environmental wisdom

Stewardship worldview
worldview worldview
• Nature exists mainly to • We should encourage • We are part of and
meet our increasing environmentally dependent on earth’s
needs and that we can beneficial forms of life support systems
use our technology to economic growth and which exists for all
manage earth’s life discourage species, not just for
support systems in the environmentally us.
distant future. harmful forms.
What is an environmentally sustainable society?
 Renewable
resources like
air, water,
plants etc.
provided by
Living earth’s natural
sustainably More capital.

means living environmentally

on natural
income sustainable
societies protect
natural capital and
live off its income
It also means
not deplete ng
or degrading
earth’s natural
capital
 Group Discussion

 How a more sustainable future is possible?

Thank You!!!!