Sustainable Development Goals

CCC8013 The Process of Science

Lab 5
Intended Learning Outcomes
By the end of this tutorial, student should able to:
• Know what are the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
• Understand why SDGs are important
 What are the biggest challenges
faced by people around the world
today?

https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/illustration-with-global-warming-problem_6907477.html
We all know that we face big challenges in today’s
world:
• Poverty • Polluted oceans
• Hunger • Unsustainable cities,
• Dirty water wastage of resources
• Climate change • War, fighting and instability
• Countries never work
• Damaged habitats
together or agree on
anything
Moving toward an unsustainable future…
 Sustainable development meets the needs of the
current generation without compromising the needs
of future generations (United Nations Brundtland Commission 1987)
 Sustainable Development Goals

https://sdgs.un.org/

They are a plan agreed by all world leaders to build a greener, fairer,
and better world by 2030, and we all have a role in achieving them.
The SDG wedding cake

The Biosphere/nature play a foundational role for our

societies, economies, and the quality of life
Conserving biodiversity – Life below water and on land
fundamental for achieving other SDGs

The co-benefits (blue) and trade-offs (red)

between biodiversity (SDG 14 & 15) and other SDGs (1-13, 16 & 17)
Example: Bees and coffee

Pollination

How are they related?

The economic value of coffee
industry
• Coffee is a common goods in the global
commodities market
• Their flowers are pollinated by a variety of insect
(mainly wild bees and managed honeybees)
• Huge economic value. Estimated to be in excess
of US$80 billion/year
• Support millions of farmers throughout the
tropic, and supports a vast supply chain into the
developed world
How many coffee beans we produce annually?
• Worldwide coffee production: 176.684 million
coffee bags*
• Each coffee bags: 60kg
• One coffee bean: ~0.1 gram
• Number of bean in each bag: 600,000 beans

• Total of beans produced:

• 600,000 x 176.684 million bags =
• 106,010,400,000,000 beans
* 2020/21 data obtained from Foreign Agricultural Service/USDA
How hard bees need to work to wake us up in
the morning?
• One coffee bean (seed) results from a single
pollination event
• Deposition of pollen on a coffee flower’s stigma
• There are two ovules per flower to be fertilised

• Coffee is on average 50% self-pollinating

(though outcrossed coffee is better quality)
• One visit of flower by bee can pollinate both ovules

A conservative estimation: 106,010,400,000,000 beans / 2 / 2

= ~26.5 trillion visits
How conserving insect pollinators can
contribute toward SDG 15 ?

https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal15
Let’s check the targets and indicators under
SDG15, and find out more!
What you know about SDG 14?
• Reduce marine pollution by
2025, since much of the
pollution comes from human
activities on land
• Enact laws that prohibit illegal
fishing, overfishing, and other
destructive fishing practices
• Minimize and address the
impacts of ocean acidification,
including through enhanced
scientific cooperation at all levels
• By 2020, conserve at least 10 per
cent of coastal and marine areas
 What do you think
happened before and what
might have happened after
the photo was taken?
 Waste ends up in the ocean
• Waste can be intentionally, carelessly, or naturally
(e.g., typhoon) dropped into the sea.

• It is estimated that 8,000,000 tones of plastic waste

end up in the ocean every year.

• like having five shopping bags of trash on every foot

of coastline around the globe.

• Plastic is one of the main waste products that end

up in the sea.
 Where are the
plastics?
• Many of the objects in the ocean
end up in giant accumulation zones
called 'gyres’.

• These are massive areas where

waste gathers, that are formed by
ocean currents.

• There are five known gyres, two in

the Pacific Ocean, two in the Atlantic
Ocean and one in the Indian Ocean.
Plastic Ocean
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju_2NuK5O-E
 Marine life is often affected, by ocean waste
?

• Birds, fish and other sea creatures can become trapped in plastic bags,
netting or packaging and may get injured or die.
• Marine mammals and birds can end up swallowing waste in the water.
Eating waste can lead to illness.
• Some of the marine debris may not directly harm the sea life that
swallows the waste, it can result in harmful toxins entering the food
chain.
 The biosphere/nature play a
foundational role for our societies,
economies, and our quality of life
Class exercise: Lesson from the past
Explore Easter Island
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwwpSypNPro
Will we go the way of
Easter Island?
• Read the "Paradise Found" story by
Andrew Nikiforuk
• https://files.constantcontact.com/91c9
c61d001/fa06de56-45fb-42bf-9b8f-
7934d9a48fd7.pdf

• 5 - 6 students to form a group

• Discussion the question on the next
slide (30 mins)
• Complete the worksheet
 Questions
1. Where is Easter Island located?
2. What is Easter Island’s best-known attraction?
3. What similarities does James Brander see between the economies of the early
civilizations on Easter Island and the Canada of today? And how this fit into situation
in Hong Kong?
4. Outline the sequence of events as they unfolded on Easter Island between 1) 400
and 1400 AD; 2) 1400 and 1500 AD
5. What does the author mean by a “Malthusian correction”?
6. Summarize what James Brander means by the phrase “Easter Island Syndrome.”
7. What is the message in this essay for us? Are we listening?
 Next week:
Our ecological footprint