Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
resources, or in some cases the governmental stability to adapt to the conse-
quences of climate change.
An all-inclusive phenomenon, climate change is revolutionizing our world-
view. All those of us who live on this planet and all our communities will have
to make gradual changes in our lives as measures are taken to contain the
effects of climate change. The entire biosphere and its biological diversity will
change and we will need to adapt accordingly to a completely new world.
The positive effect of climate change is that it challenges existing human
communities to view things in a holistic way. Since our entire way of exist-
ence, both public and private, will be affected by climate change, we can no
longer delude ourselves that our existing highly specialized modern societies
in which various policies and actors only view matters from the perspec-
tives of their respective agendas can be maintained. As a result of the
all-inclusive effects of climate change, nature is forcing us to recognize that
we form just one small part of the biosphere. Hopefully, we will see that every
human being is sitting in the same boat; no one is spared from the dramatic
effects of climate change, although in the short term, those on the front line
of climate change are the world's poorest, and there will even be some
(short-lived) 'winners' from climate change.
If industrial countries continue to fi ght for their way of life and standard of
living, and if developing countries continue to aspire towards the same stand-
ard of living in the long term, we can be fairly sure that the battle will be lost
before it has even begun. In this battle our only opponents are ourselves -
ourselves and the limited time available to us to make a change. It is vital that
we fully take on board that there is still hope of averting climate change and
its horrifi c effects with the choices that we make.
Questions and research tasks
1 What do you think are the greatest future challenges for international
environmental law? How should international environmental work
prioritize its reactions to different problems?
2 What do you consider to have been the major accomplishments of the
Rio +20 Conference towards improving international environmental
governance? Consider, in a wider perspective, how international environ-
mental governance could and should be changed.
3 What do you think is the most crucial challenge that humanity faces,
among all of our global problems? What is the most diffi cult environ-
mental problem? What is the major cause of this environmental problem?
What could we do to resolve the problem?
4 Some scholars promote the attachment of economic values to environ-
mental goods so that they can be better taken into account by the
international economic systems that dominate contemporary international
relations. What do you think might be the advantages and disadvantages
of this approach?
Search WWH ::
Custom Search