Environmental Management Controlling Sustainable Development

Question: Discuss about the Environmental Management for Controlling Sustainable Development. Answer: Introduction: There are undergoing concerns to attain environmental sustainability by controlling negative impacts of society on the environment. Environmental sustainability entails achieving long-lasting rates of harvesting renewable resources, creating pollution, and depleting the non-renewable resources. If these rates cannot be attained in unlimited time in the future, the environment would be unsustainable to support quality life. There are natural processes affecting sustainability, but uncontrolled human activities worsen the impacts of such processes on the environment. The natural carbon cycle is the flow of carbon between the atmosphere, land, and oceans that maintain sustainable balance. This flow involves the movement of carbon gasses, particularly, carbon dioxide (Heimann, 2013). Land and vegetation emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The ocean and land extract part of this gas to maintain certain levels. Human activities influence this process leading to the enhanced carbon cycle. Activities such as deforestation affect the extraction of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere leading to increased volumes. Another process is natural greenhouse effect that involves emission and regulations toxic gasses such as methane, carbon monoxide, and other pollutants. Natural sources of these gasses include volcanic activities, decaying matter, and animal excretes (Casper, 2010). Accumulation of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere affects heat exchanges between the world and space leading to increasing temperatures. The enhanced greenhouse effect is due to human activities that release high levels of pollutant gasses. For instance, artificial greenhouses and industrial activities emit high levels of unwanted gasses to the atmosphere. Greenhouse gasses contribute to global warming and climate change. Global warming is the general rise in atmospheric temperatures due to the accumulation of heat energy. Global warming results when some of the heat from the sun or generated from the land does not escape to space (Loustau, 2010). Greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere absorb this heat and therefore lead to increasing temperatures. The greenhouses gasses also destroy the ozone layer that minimizes excess heat and harmful rays of the sun reaching the earth. The rate of heat absorption by the land and the water is slow and cannot sustain constant temperatures in the atmosphere. Global warming leads to climate change that has pervasive effects on living organisms. Climate change is an irreversible degradation of environmental conditions in many parts of the world. For instance, high temperatures lead to expanding deserts, the death of natural vegetation in many places, and destruction of water resources (Loustau, 2010). The weather patterns and seasons change in many places. As an example, some parts receive declining levels of rainfall that cannot support living organisms or agricultural activities. Consequently, people in these regions suffer from drought and famine. Climate change also leads to unusually heavy rainfall leading to floods in flat areas, around river banks, and coastal lands. Climate change also leads to melting of the glacier in Polar Regions that leads to rising sea levels and flooding in coastal areas. The changes experienced in many regions are due to environmental unsustainability. Natural and artificial processes regulating the conditions on earth cannot adequately control pollution, attain moderate rates of non-renewable resource depletion, or and the creation of renewable resources (Loustau, 2010). Human activities of extracting resources from the environment surpass the rate of forming new resources. Consequently, the environment degrades leading to declining quality of life. Therefore, the society has great influence on the environmental changes. In conclusion, human beings have to develop effective intervention programs to control their impact on the natural carbon cycle, greenhouse effect, and global warming. Although these processes take place naturally, artificial activities raise the rates of change, yet there are no adequate measures to cope with undesirable consequences. People in all regions should support practices that conserve the environment and promote sustainability. Reference List Heimann, M. 2013. The Global carbon cycle. Berlin, Springer-Verlag. Loustau, D. (2010). Forests, carbon cycle and climate change. Paris, Ed. Quae. Casper, J. K. (2010). Greenhouse gases: worldwide impacts. New York, Facts On File.