Sustainability Studio For United Nations Environment Assembly

Issue as a Challenge

Write about the Sustainability Studio for United Nations Environment Assembly.

One of the Earth’s most significant natural resources is its atmosphere that contains air, without which plants and animals could not survive. For sustaining the plants, animals and human beings in the environment, pollution should be taken care of.  Sustainability can be defined as the process of maintaining a certain level. The current issue in this paper is the sustainability of Air pollution. Air pollution is relates to the poor air quality in the surroundings (Sueyoshi and Yuan, 2015).

Before doing the research on this topic, I considered the sustainability factors which is judged only in the companies in which the strategies are made to survive the business for the long term without any problems or hard conditions. However, the concept of sustainability is applicable to the whole environment including the human and non-human lives in the habitat. The sustainability is not a rigid or a narrow concept and not confined to a single factor or thing but reflects on various other issues also. Sustainability is wider in nature and covers various aspects of surrounding in which protecting the environment the sustainability is not only found in the business but also seen in environment protection (Janssens-Maenhout et al., 2015).

According to the research, WHO (World Health Organization) reported that in 2012, 7 million people died due to exposure to air pollution. From this incidence, this will be considered as the largest single environmental risk (World Health Organization, 2016). United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) in 2014, tried to improve the quality of air by making some measures. These measures give priority to sustainable development, identifying that clean air is critical to protecting human health. This measure also helps in the protection of climate, human health, and ecosystem. 

Air pollution can be taken as a challenge for the environment. Air pollution caused due to natural and manmade sources. Human sources include the vehicles, industries, and factories, residential and commercial areas. It affects the human as well as surroundings. Air pollution can cause the death from respiratory diseases, chronic fatigue, and other diseases such as heart disease. The polluted environment also affects the vegetation and reduces the biodiversity (Liu et al., 2015).

There are many challenges faced at managerial and technical levels. The management challenges include the lack of integrity, directions, and coordination between the ministries and organization that are related in reducing the air pollution. There is a lack of participation of the public in programmes to reduce air pollution. Another challenge that has found is the sanctioning of the funds required to introduce the programs to lowering the pollution (Dora et al., 2015).

Mitigation measures

Technical challenges faced include the use of poor quality fuel in the machines, which creates harmful gases in the surrounding. Use of old technology is also the reason to have air pollution in the environment. Other challenges that the authorities are facing the not providing the use of pollution control technologies in the vehicles (Yigitcanlar, Dur and Dizdaroglu, 2015). 

The issue can be mitigated by using a number of means, which would be, employed. This will help in preventing and reducing the emissions of air pollutants.

• Application of best available control technology, as required by PSD permit
• Make less use of motor vehicles or equipment, which make the air pollution.
• Choose a fuel-efficient vehicle, which is run on hydrocarbons and have fewer chances of polluting the environment.
• Reduction in the carbon emission generated by the projects help to improve the working conditions
• Use of unleaded gasoline in cars
• Share a ride or involve in car-pooling to reduce the pollution
• Keep the car in a good condition to run while eliminating the emission of smoke in the environment.

All these are the ways in which the good quality air can be there in the society and can protect the society (Janic, 2017).  

All those persons who have the interest in the matter of environment are the stakeholders for the environment. In the case of pollution in the environment, all those persons who live in the environment, ecosystems are stakeholders. All these are considered the stakeholders and are affected by the air pollution in the environment (Rao et al., 2017).

The person which gets affected by actions, objectives, and policies implemented in the environment are stakeholders. It refers to someone with a stake, someone who stands against a loss or gain. Stakeholders can be risk losers, risk gainers, risk perpetrators, and risk managers. The common stakeholders in the environment include individuals, corporates, government, and communities.  Control and decision making in the community are done by the stakeholders.  Company are also contributing in developing the sustainable environment.

All levels of government department plays an important part in managing Australia’s air quality. To guarantee a clean air for future, Australia’s environment Ministers established the National Clean Air Agreement to help the governments prioritize national actions to address the air quality issues. In Australia, states and territories are taking the primary responsibility for observing and handling the quality of air in near future. They try to maintain the standards of air quality to protect the health of the individual. In addition, a new step has been taken by the Australia government in which national issues have been highlighted regarding the fuel quality and vehicle emissions. These issues are taken concern by the authorities to make the quality environment with fresh air in the surrounding (Doppelt, 2017).

Another step taken by government of Australian is to establish a national approach on the issues that have been identified that the noxious emissions from the outdoor powered equipment and propulsion marine engines through the product Emissions Standards Act 2017 and Product Emission Standard Rules 2017. Australia is the one, which is setting the standards to protect the environment from harmful gases and contents (Network for business sustainability, 2010).

Stakeholders

From the research, another example of the airline’s industry can be taken. Most of the airline companies like Qantas checks the fuel efficiency and carbon emission levels. They are using the different units to record the fuel emission with reporting in miles and some in kilometers. Airlines are taking notice and working to improve the corporate sustainability reporting (Miller et al., 2007).

Many NGO like Union of Concerned Scientist provides the solution to reduce the harmful emissions. The organization tries to reduce the emission by encouraging the participants in the public and inspire the political leaders to make a comprehensive strategy for climate (Breezo Meter, 2018).

In some of the places, there arises the problem of respiratory diseases due to the polluted air. Various communities are finding to plant more trees in the area to get the fresh air. This will help to preserve the nature and boost the environmental awareness in the society. Panasonic company is also the one contributor in this theme by giving the fund to plant more trees in the areas where needed. In this campaign, more than 5700 trees have been planted and at present, many farmers are earning from this also and living their livelihood. 

Conclusion

From the above discussion, it can be concluded that the sustainability in the environment is the main issue. This issue is related to the pollution created by the humans and other sources. This affects the lives of the individuals. The major problem is air pollution that affects the living of an individual. It considered being as a challenge for the society and its other stakeholders. This issue can be resolved by the use of various new technologies. This technology includes the application of best available control technology, as required by PSD permit, choose a fuel-efficient vehicle, which is run on hydrocarbons and has fewer chances of polluting the environment. If these measures are implemented in, the surrounding will protect the environment from harmful air pollution. Some stakeholders are taken some steps to mitigate the risk of polluted air in which major contribution is given by the government and corporates by introducing new policies and programmes in society. These stakeholders are governments, NGO’s, corporates, and communities. All these take some step to take resolved with the problem of poor quality of air in the environment. 

References

Breezo Meter. (2018) Six NGOs Fighting Air Pollution – Getting Involved [online] Available on: https://blog.breezometer.com/ngos-fighting-air-pollution [Accessed on: 27^th July 2018]

Doppelt, B. (2017) Leading change toward sustainability: A change-management guide for business, government and civil society. Oxon: Routledge.

Dora, C., Haines, A., Balbus, J., Fletcher, E., Adair-Rohani, H., Alabaster, G., Hossain, R., de Onis, M., Branca, F. and Neira, M. (2015) Indicators linking health and sustainability in the post-2015 development agenda. The Lancet, 385(9965), pp.380-391.

Janic, M. (2017) The sustainability of air transportation: a quantitative analysis and assessment. Oxon: Routledge.

Janssens-Maenhout, G., Crippa, M., Guizzardi, D., Dentener, F., Muntean, M., Pouliot, G., Keating, T., Zhang, Q., Kurokawa, J., Wankmüller, R. and Denier van der Gon, H. (2015) HTAP_v2. 2: a mosaic of regional and global emission grid maps for 2008 and 2010 to study hemispheric transport of air pollution. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 15(19), pp.11411-11432.

Liu, J., Mooney, H., Hull, V., Davis, S.J., Gaskell, J., Hertel, T., Lubchenco, J., Seto, K.C., Gleick, P., Kremen, C. and Li, S. (2015) Systems integration for global sustainability. Science, 347(6225), p.1258832.

Miller, K.A., Siscovick, D.S., Sheppard, L., Shepherd, K., Sullivan, J.H., Anderson, G.L. and Kaufman, J.D. (2007) Long-term exposure to air pollution and incidence of cardiovascular events in women. New England Journal of Medicine, 356(5), pp.447-458.

Network  for business sustainability. (2010) Identify, prioritize powerful environmental stakeholders [online] Available on: https://nbs.net/p/identify-prioritize-powerful-environmental-stakeholder-69ded363-1051-42b4-aa15-00f859c9be8d [Accessed on: 27^th July 2018]

Rao, S., Klimont, Z., Smith, S.J., Van Dingenen, R., Dentener, F., Bouwman, L., Riahi, K., Amann, M., Bodirsky, B.L., van Vuuren, D.P. and Reis, L.A. (2017) Future air pollution in the Shared Socio-economic Pathways. Global Environmental Change, 42, pp.346-358.

Sueyoshi, T. and Yuan, Y. (2015) China’s regional sustainability and diversified resource allocation: DEA environmental assessment on economic development and air pollution. Energy Economics, 49, pp.239-256.

World Health Organization. (2016) WHO releases country estimates on air pollution exposure and health impact [Online] Available on:  https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/27-09-2016-who-releases-country-estimates-on-air-pollution-exposure-and-health-impact [Accessed on 27th July 2018]

Yigitcanlar, T., Dur, F. and Dizdaroglu, D. (2015) Towards prosperous sustainable cities: A multiscalar urban sustainability assessment approach. Habitat International, 45, pp.36-46. 

Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:

Turnitin Report

Formatting

Title Page

Citation

Outline

Place an Order