$8, will not pay more thanks

350 words! Turabian format, author date style NOT ENDNOTES NOT FOOTNOTES, use at least THREE sources

The focus this week is on the relationship between the environment and development with sustainable development being the goal. Sustainable development is focused on three priorities: 1) maintaining the ecological system; 2) providing for the sustainable use of resources; and, 3) maintaining biodiversity (Griffiths, O’Callaghan and Roach 2008).

 

Explain the environmental situation in INDONESIA and provide a link to a video from a reputable source that showcases the situation. As an alternative, you may use a newspaper or journal article instead of a video.

 

The video should be 5 minutes or less in length. If you provide a longer video please direct students to the 5 minutes that should be viewed.

LESSON 5 – Development and the Environment: Sustainable Development is the Goal

The environment and sustainable development are two separate, but linked concepts. I often see explanations on sustainable development that gloss right over the environment as if it is so well understood that explanation of it is considered overkill – no pun intended!

The environment is a conglomeration of several complex ecosystems that span the world. How humans interact and, as a result, impact each ecosystem is worth looking into. It is a good beginning to understanding what sustainable development really implies. To get a quick idea about the environment, please watch this video from CrashCourse on 5 human impacts on it. For a more in depth review of ecology, please visit this website .

With that refresher on the environment and how we impact it, let’s dive into the concept of sustainable development. It is defined as, “the ability to continue to improve the quality of life of those in the industrialized countries, and, particularly, those in the less developed countries while simultaneously protecting Earth’s biosphere” (Rourke and Boyer 2010, G–12). Notice that the definition has three components: 1) increasing the quality of life for those in the industrialized countries; 2) increasing the quality of life for those in the developing countries; and, 3) protecting the Earth’s biosphere (Rourke and Boyer 2010). With the “what” of sustainable development established, the question is “how”?

How is certainly tricky to answer. Industrialization and the exploitation of natural resources underwrote the western model for development. It doesn’t really provide a path for developing countries today though because it was detrimental to the environment, which violates the third part of the definition above. Paths to development today, at least sustainable development, must be newly forged. One option that has been tossed around is to restrict further development (Rourke and Boyer 2010), but that clearly violates part 2 of the definition provided above. Another option that has been considered is to simply invest in the technologies needed to allow for sustainable development (Rourke and Boyer 2010). Unfortunately, most developing countries don’t have the capital to underwrite something like that so who is going to pay the bill? Also, protecting the environment and achieving sustainable development is plagued by perceptions related to today versus tomorrow (Zerbe 2013). Here is a video to help us explore this idea . It is important because how we perceive the problem impacts our level of willingness to address it. Problems perceived as having immediate, disastrous results are likely to garner the national will needed to promptly fix them. Lesser problems take a back seat to bigger problems of the day. As you watch the video, reflect on how important environmental degradation is to you and how it impacts your feelings about the concept of sustainable development.

References

Rourke, John T, and Mark A Boyer. 2010. International Politics on the World Stage. 8th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

Zerbe, Noah. 2013. 5.5 Environment and development. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti5PSrCQkmM (accessed September 11, 2014).