ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE

ENVIRONMENT = the surroundings or conditions in which a person,

animal, or plant lives or operates.
= the natural world, as a whole or in a particular geographical area,
especially as affected by human activity.
SCIENCE = the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the
systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and
natural world through observation and experiment.
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE
= the branch of science concerned with the physical, chemical, and
biological conditions of the environment and their effect on organisms
=  is the field of science that studies the interactions of the physical,
chemical, and biological components of the environment and also the
relationships and effects of these components with the organisms in
the environment.
 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE

3 main goals:
1. learn how the natural world works
2. understand how we as humans interact with the environment 3.
determine how we affect the environment and finding ways to deal
with these effects on the environment
Module-1 Understanding of Our Environment
Prepared Buy: Florante C. Robles, PTRP

LearningOutcomes
After studying this chapter, you should be able to:
1.1 Explain what environmental science is, and how it draws on different kinds of knowledge.
1.2 List and describe some current concerns in environmental science.
1.3 Identify some early thinkers on environment and resources, and contrast some of their ideas.
1.4 Outline some ways that poverty and resource distribution
affect our environment.
1.5 Describe sustainable development and its goals.
1.6 Explain some key points of environmental ethics.
1.7 Identify ways in which faith-based groups share concerns for
our environment
Case Study:

In 70 percent of Chinese cities, air pollution exceeds national standards.

Sixteen of the world’s 20 smoggiest cities are in China (fig. 1.1).
• Acid precipitation (resulting mainly from sulfur emitted from dirty coal-burning electric
power plants) afflicts one-third of the country. An estimated 400,000 people die each year
from respiratory illnesses and other health effects of air pollution. China is now the world’s
largest producer of numerous pollutants, including carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and
chlorofluorocarbons.
• Water pollution is equally serious.
• Fully 70 percent of China’s rivers and lakes don’t meet national water quality standards, and
about half of these are so contaminated they can’t be used even for agriculture.
• Even more worrying, half of Chinese cities don’t have enough water to meet demands, and
300 million people (25 percent of the country’s 1.2 billion) live in areas with severe water
shortages.
• One-third of the country’s land has been degraded by unsustainable farming, grazing, and
logging.
What is the Environmental Science?
Humans have always inhabited two worlds:
1. One is the natural world of plants, animals, soils, air, and water that
preceded us by billions of years and of which we are a part.
2. The other is the world of social institutions and artifacts that we
create for ourselves using science, technology, and political organization.
Both worlds are essential to our lives, but integrating them successfully
causes enduring tensions.
Where earlier people had limited ability to alter their surroundings, we now
have power to extract and consume resources, produce wastes, and modify
our world in ways that threaten both our continued existence and that of
many organisms with which we share the planet.
To ensure a sustainable future for ourselves and future generations, we
need to understand something about:
1. how our world works
2. what we are doing to it
3. what we can do to protect and improve it
Environment (from the French environner: to encircle or surround) can be defined as:
(1) the circumstances or conditions that surround an organism or group of organisms
(2) the complex of social or cultural conditions that affect an individual or community.
Environmental science = then, is the systematic study of our environment and our proper place in
it. Environmental science is mission-oriented, that is, it seeks new, valid, contextual knowledge about
the natural world and our impacts on it, but obtaining this information creates a responsibility to get
involved in trying to do something about the problems we have created.
As you study environmental science, you should learn the following:
• awareness and appreciation of the natural and built environment;
• knowledge of natural systems and ecological concepts;
• understanding of current environmental issues; and
• the ability to use critical-thinking and problem-solving skills on
environmental issues
Our environment Present Condition (We face many serious environmental problems)
With more than 6.5 billion humans currently, we’re adding about 75 million more to the
world every year. While demographers report a transition to slower growth rates in most
countries, present trends project apopulation between 8 and 10 billion by 2050.
The impacts of that many people on our natural resources and ecological systems is a
serious concern.
A. Clean Water
Water may well be the most critical resource in the twenty-first century. Already at least 1.1
billion people lack an adequate supply of safe drinking water, and more than twice that many
don’t have modern sanitation.
Polluted water and lack of sanitation are estimated to contribute to the ill health of more
than 1.2 billion people annually, including the death of 15 million children per year.
About 40 percent of the world population lives in countries where water demands now exceed
supplies, and by 2025 the UN projects that as many as three-fourths of us could live under
similar conditions.
B. Food Supplies
Over the past century, global food production has more than kept pace with human population
growth, but there are worries about whether we will be able to maintain this pace (fig. 1.4).
Soil scientists report that about two-thirds of all agricultural lands show signs of degradation.
United Nations estimates that some 850 million people are now chronically undernourished, and at
least 60 million face acute food shortages due to natural disasters or conflicts
Energy
How we obtain and use energy is likely to play a crucial role in our environmental future. Fossil fuels (oil,
coal, and natural gas) presently provide around 80 percent of the energy used in industrialized countries (fig.
1.5)
Supplies of these fuels are diminishing, however, and problems associated with their acquisition and use—
air and water pollution, mining damage, shipping accidents, and geopolitics—may limit what we do with
remaining reserves.
Cleaner renewable energy resources—solar power, wind, geothermal, and biomass—together with
conservation, could give us cleaner, less destructive options if we invest in a appropriate technology.
Climate Change
Burning fossil fuels, making cement, cultivating rice paddies, clearing forests, and other
human activities release carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” that
trap heat in the atmosphere.
Over the past 200 years, atmospheric CO2 concentrations have increased about 35
percent. By 2100, if current trends continue, climatologists warn that mean global
temperatures will probably warm 1.5° to 6°C (2.7°–11°F).
Although it’s controversial whether specific recent storms were influenced by global
warming, climate changes caused by greenhouse gases are very likely to cause increasingly
severe weather events including droughts in some areas and floods in others.
Already, we are seeing dramatic climate changes in the Antarctic and Arctic where seasons
are changing, sea ice is disappearing, and permafrost is melting. Rising sea levels are
flooding low-lying islands and coastal regions, while habitat losses and climatic changes are
affecting many biological species.
Air Pollution
Air quality has worsened dramatically in many areas. Over southern Asia, for
example, satellite images recently revealed a 3-km (2-mile)-thick toxic haze
of ash, acids, aerosols, dust, and photochemical products regularly covers
the entire Indian subcontinent for much of the year.
Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen estimates that at least 3 million people die each
year from diseases triggered Buy air pollution. Worldwide, the United
Nations estimates that more than 2 billion metric tons of air pollutants (not
including carbon dioxide or wind-blown soil) are emitted each year. Air
pollution no longer is merely a local problem.
Biodiversity Loss
Biologists report that habitat destruction, overexploitation, pollution, and introduction of exotic
organisms are eliminating species at a rate comparable to the great extinction that marked the end of
the age of dinosaurs.
The UN Environment Programme reports that over the past century, more than 800 species have
disappeared and at least 10,000 species are now considered threatened. This includes about half of all
primates and freshwater fish together with around 10 percent of all plant species.
More than three-quarters of all global fisheries are overfished or harvested at their biological limit.
At least half of the forests existing before the introduction of agriculture have been cleared, and
much of the diverse “old growth” on which many species depend for habitat, is rapidly being cut and
replaced by secondary growth or monoculture.
 Signs of Hope

Finding solutions to these problems requires good science as well as individual and collective actions.
Becoming educated about our global environment is the first step in understanding how to control our
impacts on it.
1. Health = Many cities in Europe and North America are cleaner and much more livable now than they
were a century ago. Over the last 20 years, the average number of children born per woman worldwide
has decreased from 6.1 to 2.7.
By 2050, the UN Population Division predicts that all developed countries and 75 percent of the
developing world will experience a below-replacement fertility rate of 2.1 children per
woman. This prediction suggests that the world population will stabilize at about 8.9 billion rather
than 9.3 billion, as previously estimated.
The incidence of life-threatening infectious diseases has been reduced sharply in most countries during
the past century, while life expectancies have nearly doubled on average. Smallpox has been completely
eradicated and polio has been vanquished except in a few countries. Since 1990, more than 800 million
people have gained access to improved water supplies and modern sanitation.
2. Habitat Conservation
Deforestation has slowed in Asia, from more than 8 percent during the
1980s to less than 1 percent in the 1990s. Nature preserves and protected
areas have increased nearly fivefold over the past 20 years
3. Renewable Energy
The European Union has pledged to get 20 percent of its energy from
renewable sources (30 percent if other countries participate) by 2020. Former
British Prime Minister Tony Blair laid out even more ambitious plans to fight
global warming by cutting carbon dioxide emissions in his country by 60
percent through energy conservation and a switch to renewables.
4. Freedom of Information
Over the past two decades, the world has made dramatic progress in opening up
political systems and expanding political freedoms. During this time, some 81 countries
took significant steps toward democracy.
5. International Cooperation
Currently, more than 500 international environmental protection agreements are now
in force. Some, such as the Montreal Protocol on Stratospheric Ozone, have been highly
successful.
Others, such as the Law of the Sea, lack enforcement powers.
Perhaps themost important of all these treaties is the Kyoto Protocol on globalclimate
change, which has been ratified by every industrialized nation except Australia and the
United States
Conservation and Environmentalist
Many of our current ideas about our environment and its resources were
articulated by writers and thinkers in the past 150 years.
We can divide conservation history and environmental activism into at least
four distinct stages:
(1) pragmatic resource conservation
(2) moral and aesthetic nature preservation
(3) a growing concern about health and ecological damage caused by pollution
(4) global environmental citizenship
Each era focused on different problems and each suggested a distinctive set of
solutions.
Nature protection has historic roots
Plato = complained in the fourth century b.c. that Greece once was blessed with
fertile soil and clothed with abundant forests of fine trees. After the trees were
cut to build houses and ships,
however, heavy rains washed the soil into the sea, leaving only a rocky
“skeleton of a body wasted by disease.”
Mostafa K. Tolba, former Executive Director of the United Nations
Environment Programme has said, “The problems that overwhelm us
today are precisely those we failed to solve decades ago.”
British plant physiologist, Stephen Hales, for instance, suggested that
conserving green plants preserved rainfall. His ideas were put into
practice in 1764 on the Caribbean island of Tobago, where about 20
percent of the land was marked as “reserved in wood for rains.”
In 1905, Roosevelt, who was the leader of the populist, progressive movement, moved the
Forest Service out of the corruption-filled Interior Department into the Department of
Agriculture.
Pinchot, who was the first native-born professional forester in North America, became the
founding head of this new agency.
The basis of Roosevelt’s and Pinchot’s policies was pragmaticutilitarian conservation.
They argued that the forests should be saved “not because they are beautiful or because they
shelter wild creatures of the wilderness, but only to provide homes and jobs for people.”
Resources should be used “for the greatest good, for the greatest number for the longest
time.”
This pragmatic approach still can be seen today in the multiple use policies of the Forest
Service.
Environmental quality is tied to social progress
Many people today believe that the roots of the environmental movement are elitist—
promoting the interests of a wealthy minority, who can afford to vacation in wilderness.
Gifford Pinchot, Teddy Roosevelt, and John Muir all strove to keep nature and resources
accessible to everyone, at a time when public lands, forests, and waterways were increasingly
controlled by a few wealthy individuals and private corporations.
Aldo Leopold, a founder of the Wilderness Society, promoted ideas of land stewardship
among farmers, fishers, and hunters.
One of the core concepts of modern environmental thought is
sustainable development, the idea that economic improvement for
the world’s poorest populations is possible without devastating the
environment.
Dr. Wangari Maathai of Kenya. In 1977, Dr. Maathai founded the Green Belt
Movement in her native Kenya.
They have planted more than 30 millionmtrees while mobilizing communities for
self-determination, justice, equity, poverty reduction, and environmental
conservation.
In her acceptance speech, she said, “Working together, we have proven that
sustainable development is possible; that reforestation of degraded land is possible;
and that exemplary governance is possible when ordinary citizens are informed,
sensitized, mobilized and involved in direct action for their environment.”
Human Dimensions of Environmental Science
Because we live in both the natural and social worlds, and because we and our
technology have become such dominant forces on the planet, environmental science
must take human institutions and the human condition into account.
The World Bank estimates that more than 1.4 billion people—almost one-fifth of the
world’s population—live in extreme poverty with an income of less than (U.S.)$1
per day (fig. 1.12).
These poorest of the poor often lack access to an adequate diet, decent housing,
basic sanitation, clean water, education, medical care, and other essentials for a
humane existence.
The poorest people are often forced to meet short-term survival needs at the
cost of longterm sustainability.
Others migrate to the grimy, crowded slums and ramshackle shantytowns that
now surround most major cities in the developing world. With no way to dispose
of wastes, the residents often foul their environment further and contaminate
the air they breathe and the water on which they depend for washing and
drinking.
 Sustainable Development

Can we improve the lives of the world’s poor without destroying our shared environment?
A possible solution to this dilemma is sustainable development, means “meeting the
needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet
their own needs.”
We can’t deplete resources or create wastes faster than nature can recycle them if we
hope to be here for the long term.
Development means improving people’s lives.
Sustainable development, then, means progress in human well-being that can be
extended or prolonged over many generations rather than just a few years.
To be truly enduring, the benefits of sustainable development must be available to all
humans rather than to just the members of a privileged group.
Environmental Ethics
Do you have similar responsibilities to take care of your environment?
To conserve energy? To prevent the extinction of rare species?
Why? Or why not?
Your position on these questions is partly a matter of ethics,
or your sense of what is right and wrong.
Some of these ideas you learn early in life; some might change
over time.
Ethical views in society also change over time.
One of the assumptions of science, including environmental science,
is that we should allow ourselves to ask any question, because
it is by asking questions that we discover new insights about
ourselves and about our world.
We can extend moral value to people and things
One of the reasons we don’t accept slavery now, as the ancient Greeks did,
is because most societies believe that all humans have basic rights.
The Greeks granted moral value, or worth, only to adult male citizens within their
own community.
Women, slaves, and children had few rights and were essentially treated as property.
Over time we have gradually extended our sense of moral value to a wider and wider
circle, an idea known as moral extensionism (fig. 1.21).
In most countries, women and minorities have basic civil rights,
children cannot be treated as property, even domestic pets have
some legal protections against cruel treatment.
Some people extend moral value to include forests, biodiversity,
inanimate objects, or the earth as a whole.
How we treat other people, animals, or things, can also depend on
whether we believe they have inherent value—an intrinsic right to exist,
or instrumental value (they have value because they are useful to someone
who
matters).
 Brief Summary
We face many environmental dilemmas, but there are also many opportunities for improving lives without damaging
our shared environment.
China’s growth and innovation provide examples of those challenges and opportunities. Both in China and globally, we
face air and water pollution, chronic hunger, water shortages, andother problems.
On the other hand, we have seen important innovations in transportation, energy production, food production, and
international cooperation for environmental protection.
Environmental science is a discipline that draws on many kinds of knowledge to understand these problems and to
help find solutions—which can draw on knowledge from technological, biological, economic, political, social, and many
other fields of study.
There are deep historic roots to our efforts to protect our environment. Utilitarian conservation has been a common
incentive; aesthetic preservation also motivates many people to work for conservation.
Social progress, and a concern for making sure that all people have access to a healthy environment, has also important
motivating factors in environmental science and in environmental conservation.
Inequitable distribution of resources has been a persistent concern. Growing consumption of energy,
water, land, and other resources makes many questions in environmental science more urgent.
Sustainable development is the idea that we can improve people’s lives without reducing
resources and opportunities for future generations.
This goal may or may not be achievable, but it is an important ideal that can help us
understand and identify appropriate and fair directions for improving people’s lives
around the world.
Ethics and faith-based perspectives often inspire people to work for resource
conservation, because ethical frameworks and religions often promote ideas of fairness
and or stewardship of the world we have received.
One important ethical principle is the notion of moral extensionism.
Stewardship, or taking care of our environment, has been a guiding principle for many
faith-based groups. Often these groups have led the struggle for environmental justice for
minority and low-income communities.
Reviewing Learning Outcomes (Assignment)

1. Buy viewing your area environment, list five important

environmental issues in your area.
What kinds of actions might you take to improve your local situation?
2. Suppose a beautiful grove of trees near your house is scheduled to be
cut down for a civic project such as a swimming pool.
2.1 Would you support this?
2.2 Why or why not?
2.3 Which of the environmentalist described in this moduler best
describes your attitude?
3. Examine figure 1.16.
Describe in your own words how increasing wealth affects the three
kinds of pollution shown.
Why do the trends differ?
4. Do you think indigenous people are important in preserving
and protecting our environment?
Do they have unique knowledge about nature and inalienable rights
to traditional territories?