CVEN4104 Week 1 NOTES

Environmental sustainability focusses on the consumption of material resources, atmospheric

climate change, changes in land use and the loss of biodiversity.

Material resources are natural assets either extracted or modified anthropogenically for utilities and
to create economic value by:

• Can be used directly, used to produce other materials, used to generate energy, etc
• Natural resources measured in physical units and monetarily.
• Resource consumption is inevitable requirement of growth

Linked to economic growth and environmental effects.

Resource consumption rate increases with an increase in the standard of living.

▪ By 2025, humanity could consume 140 billion tons of these per year.

Growth of the population: Increasing exponentially since the industrial revolution (1.7%/year,
expecting to exceed 9 billion by 2050). This increase is mainly occurring in developing countries (5.6b
in 2009 to 7.9b in 2050)

FORMULA: 72 / Growth rate in % per year = Doubling time in years.

▪ Resource growth is driven by both population and economic growth and high levels of
consumption.

Ecological footprints measure the human demand on the Earth’s ecosystems.

▪ It is the area of land and water needed to sustain a person or population

Average emissions for the Earth is 1.5 Earth

▪ Earth can renew 2.1 hectares per person and less than 0.8 threshold for high human
development.

Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns
over periods ranging from decades to millions of years.

Can change in average weather conditions or in distribution of weather around average conditions.

▪ Climate change: Factors include variations in solar radiation received on earth, oceanic
circulation, plate tectonics, volcanic activity, human-induced alteration of the natural world
(global warming)