Resource

Management
Prof. Ji HAN
College of Sustainability and Tourism

Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University

 Resources and environmental pollution

1. How Resource Use Causes Pollution

2. Resources and Air Pollution

CONTENTS
3. Resources and Water Pollution

4. Resources and Land/Soil Pollution

How Resource Use
Causes Pollution
Resource use can destroy landscape, like here the construction of a pipe line
Source: Reinhard T / Fotolia.com
 Resource use and environmental pollution

Resource
use
How does resource use cause environmental pollution?
Resources and Air
Pollution
Air pollution
from sources
to impacts
Sources
of some
key air
pollutant
Impact of wildfires on air quality: An example from Alaska
• Fires emitted visible pollution in the
form of smoke, soot, ash, and other
harmful pollution such as carbon
monoxide and hydrocarbons, plus
nitrogen oxides, all of which, along
with sunlight, are needed to make
ozone.
• High levels of ozone in the
troposphere, closer to ground level,
can injure or destroy living tissue.
• From June to August, the fires
produced approximately 30 teragrams
of carbon, roughly equal to all the
human-generated carbon monoxide
for the entire continental United
States during the same period.
• NASA estimated that the boost in
carbon monoxide and other fire-
emitted pollutants increased ground-
level ozone by up to 25% in the
northern continental United States,
Alaska’s 2004 wildfire burned over 11 million acres and by up to 10% in Europe
Impact of indoor air pollution
• Indoor air pollution accounts
for 4.3 million deaths, 18% of
heart disease and 33% of all
lower respiratory infections
globally.
• It in particular affects women,
children, the sick and elderly,
and those in low-income
groups, as they are often
exposed to high levels of
pollutants from cooking and
heating
Where is the world in taking action to improve air quality?
 Policy instruments for mitigating air pollution
1. Planning regimes
Binding action plans and agreements to achieve standards or emission ceilings through
environmental assessments
• U.S. State Implementation Plans and multi-state regional planning organizations
• European Union Clean Air Policy Package
• Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution
• Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution
Policy instruments for mitigating air pollution
2.“Command and Control”performance standards
Require accountability frameworks for tracking progress
• US Environmental Protection Agency New Source Performance Standards
• European Union Industrial Emissions Directive 2010
• Korean Emission Limit Values for point sources

3. Market interventions
Taxes, fees, subsidy reform or market-based permit allocations
• European Emissions Trading System
• US EPA Acid Rain Program
• China new national emissions trading scheme
 Policy instruments for mitigating air pollution
4. Public information
Product labelling, national monitoring programs and air quality forecasting, and citizen
science initiatives
• US EPA ENERGY STAR labelling program
• World Air Pollution: Real-time Air Quality Index (OpenAQ)

5. Cooperative frameworks and partnerships

Between countries and across sectors to voluntarily
reduce emissions
• UN Clean Air Initiative,
• UNEP International Declaration on Cleaner Production
• Global Methane Initiative
• Climate & Clean Air Coalition
Resources and
Water Pollution
Water
pollution
from sources
to impacts
Trends in organic pollution (biological oxygen demand concentrations) in rivers
between 1990-1992 and 2008-2010
 Proportion of population using improved sanitation facilities in 2015

• Over 80% of the world's wastewater is released to the environment without treatment.
• Globally, 58% of diarrhoeal disease – a major driver of child mortality – is due to a lack of access to clean
water and sanitation.
• Every year, 57 million years of life are lost or lived with disability due to poor water, sanitation, hygiene and
agricultural practices
Management strategies to water pollution
1. Improving understanding of water quality

• Developing international data protocols, standard data formats and data - sharing arrangements;
• Developing standards and a recommended schedule for monitoring;
• Strengthening regional, national and local capacity to collect, manage and analyze water quality
information, particularly in developing and emerging economies;
• Establishing , maintaining and expanding monitoring networks in transboundary basins;
• Ensuring that monitoring networks are able to take into account new circumstances and needs, such as
climate change;
• Improving monitoring technology, including real-time in situ monitoring, expanding the number and
types of indicators monitored, and reducing cost and improving reliability of sampling tools and data
analysis;
• Linking water quality and water quantity monitoring for comprehensive understanding and management
of water resources.
Management strategies to water pollution
2. Improving education, communication and advocacy

• Increasing global and local culturally sensitive education and awareness-building campaigns;
• Educating individuals and the community about the links between behavior and water quality impacts;
• Training practitioners and providing technical assistance for the effective implementation of best practices
to prevent and manage water pollution;
• Developing water management capacity through formal education programs that focus on training future
water and sanitation experts;
• Building the capacity of local governments to make improvements in wastewater management and
drinking-water treatment;
• Engaging in advocacy to demonstrate to local and national governments the social, environmental and
economic benefits of improved water quality
Management strategies to water pollution
3. Improving financial and economic approaches

• Undertaking more analyses of the benefits and costs of water quality;

• Promoting application of polluter pays and beneficiary pays principles, ensuring reinvestment in water
quality improvements;
• Developing consumer and investor campaigns to encourage all users to reduce water pollution;
• Expanding financing for proven, cost - effective water and wastewater treatment infrastructure
( engineered and natural ), at multiple scales;
• Considering the use of innovative economic instruments such as payments for ecosystem services , as
appropriate;
• Avoiding inappropriate subsidies for water infrastructure and services;
• Implementing user fees within sustainable cost recovery policies that recover full capital, operation and
maintenance costs and incentivize water use.
Resources and
Land/Soil Pollution
Land/Soil
pollution
from sources
to impacts
Impacts of land pollution

• The primary pollutants of concern in land and soil include heavy metals such as lead,
mercury, cadmium and chromium, persistent organic pollutants and other pesticides, and
antibiotics used for livestock management.

• These degrade soil biodiversity and functioning, and can reduce agricultural productivity,
thus negatively impacting livelihoods, disease control and food security.

• They can also cause a variety of non-communicable diseases, and even death in humans
and wildlife
 Gold mining and its health impact

The Lancet Commission report

on pollution and health
estimates that in 2016, 17
million people (65% in Africa)
are exposed to mercury in
small-scale gold mining, with
an average of 2.96 disability
adjusted life years.
Management strategies to land/soil pollution
1. Exclusion
In areas with high levels of pollution where there is a high potential for exposure, and there are
insufficient funds available to remediate the site, exclusion of all access to the site may be the
only solution.
The site with the newly constructed trench and fence
• Suzak A is hazardous waste storage
site constructed during the Soviet era,
which contains about 3000 tons of
waste with a high concentration of
DDT.
• The waste had been buried and
covered in topsoil. Since 1989 the site
has had minimal security and was
being “mined” for the DDT, which was
being sold in local markets as a
pesticide.

Hazardous waste storage site. Suzak A, Kyrgyzstan

Management strategies to land/soil pollution
2. Capping with clean soil, hard surface, or other containment material
If the future activities on the site are unlikely to disturb the underlying soil and the hydrogeology
of the site allows it, it could be an option leave the polluted soil in situ and to seal the area of
pollution with an impermeable layer
Capping a plot with clean soil, Dong Mai Village, Vietnam

• Population of Dong Mai village suffered from

chronic lead poisoning from decades of recycling
used lead acid batteries.
• In 2008, the recycling activities were relocated to
an industrial area away from the town, however the
concentration of lead in the surface soil of the
villagers’ plots remained high.
• Following consultation with the villagers and
authorities, it was decided that capping with clean
soil represented the most effective method to
protect the villagers’ health.
• The polluted soil of 39 plots was covered with a
membrane and then a 30 cm layer of clean soil
Management strategies to land/soil pollution
3. Change of land use
Where sites are not suitable to be returned to agricultural, residential, commercial or industrial
use, conversion for renewable energy generation is an option.

• The US EPA has established the “Re-Powering”

program to encourage the use of polluted sites
such as landfills and mine sites for renewable
power generation.
• The program’s website includes case studies and
guidance for establishing such projects.
• The map shows landfills, superfund sites, mine
sites and brownfield sites in US where renewable
energy generation has been established.
• In 2019 the program included 327 sites with a total
installed renewable energy generating capacity of
1710 megawatts

Re-Powering program in USA

Management strategies to land/soil pollution
3. Change of land use
In cases where agricultural land has become more heavily polluted and it is no longer safe to
grow crops for human or animal consumption, it may be possible to continue agriculture with
the cultivation of non-edible crops for fiber (e.g., cotton), trees for timber

• Berg Aukas mine, which extends approximately 21 An abandoned mine, Berg Aukas, Namibia.
km2, produced lead, vanadium and zinc from 1920
until its closure in 1979.
• As the pollution was widespread, the government
decided that remediation was not an immediate
option, but that safeguarding human and animal
health was a priority.
• The local farmers were sensitized to the location of
the polluted areas and given advice on risk
mitigation including avoiding crop production in the
most polluted areas and changing the horticulture
from root vegetables to less vulnerable crops such
as maize, tomato and pepper in the less polluted
areas.
 Ji HAN
Email：jhan@apu.ac.jp