Geoenvironment Management and Sustainability - Sustainable Practices in Geoenvironmental Engineering - page 28

not sustainable. It is necessary to recognize that renewable geoenvironmental natural
resources can be easily threatened and can become ineffective as a resource. A good case
in point is water . Pollution of receiving waters will render such waters unacceptable for
human consumption, therefore rendering this renewable geoenvironmental resource use-
less. The following items are some of the major issues facing us as we seek to maintain the
life support base that provides us with the various goods and services:
• Depletion of nonrenewable resources or natural capital is a reality. Energy pro-
duction relying on fossil fuels is an example of how nonrenewable resources are
continuously depleted.
• Industrial wastes and wastes streams will need to be managed, and it is likely that
some of the waste products will ind their way into the land environment, result-
ing thereby in threats to the health and welfare of biotic receptors.
• Loss of soil quality due to various soil degradative forces such as erosion and sali-
nization. In addition to reduction in capability of the soil for crop production, one
faces a loss in the capability of the soil to act effectively as a carbon sink.
• Depletion of agricultural lands will occur because of urbanization pressures, thus
requiring remaining agricultural lands to be more productive. Implementation
of high-yield practices may exacerbate the problem of pollution of both land and
water resources.
• Deforestation and inadequate replacement rates, thus contributing to the CO 2
imbalance.
• Contamination of groundwater and surface water resources can reach propor-
tions that render such sources as health threats to biotic receptors.
In the context of the geoenvironmental perspective of environmental management,
three particular points need to be stated in regard to the development-environment or
sustainable society problematique:
• Soil is a natural resource. In combination with the other geophysical features of
the land environment, they constitute at least 90% of the base for sustenance of the
human population and production of energy and goods. The depletion rate of the
natural capital, represented by all the natural resources, must be minimized.
• Technology and its contribution to environmental management. In addition to the
various remediation and impact avoidance tools that technology can develop and
contribute to environmental management, perhaps one of the more signiicant
contributions that technology can make would be the development of renewable
resources replacements for the nonrenewable resources that are being depleted.
• Protocols and procedures for management of changes in the environment: It is
becoming very evident that changes to the geoenvironment that are presently
occurring may reach proportions that require one to develop technology and new
social attitudes to manage the change. A particular case in point might be, for
example, global warming and the greenhouse effect.