- 4 dimensions : Economics + societal dimension (how our communities work, culture, civil society) + natural environment + political/government systems
- in 1950, world population about 2.5 billion people - around 7.8 billion in 2020 (= 75 to 80 million each year)
- the rule of 70 = 70 divided by the growth rate (in %) gives the number of years to double the size of the economy
- 1972 the Stockholm Conference
- The Brundtland Commission in 1987 brought the concept of sustainable development to the world by introducing its most famous definition, that sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
- widespread deforestation especially in the tropical areas of the Amazon, the Congo Basin and the Indonesian archipelago
- In 1992, at the Rio Eart Summit, a major treaty was agreed by all the world's governments to head off the big dangers of human induced climate change. The treaty is called the UNFCCC : the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The first major attempt to put this treaty into implementation came with what's called the Kyoto Protocol signed in 1997. This was an agreement to implement the treaty. Under the treaty, it said that the high income countries should take the lead and then, the middle income and low income countries will come in afterwards. The US Senate said "we won't go along with the Kyoto Protocol because it puts a burden on the USA that it doesn't put on China and other middle income countries and that's unfair".
- Environmental challenges adressed at the Rio Earth Summit (June 1992) : 1) Global warming 2) protect biodiversity 3) combat mass land degradation
- dryland regions : Afghanistan, the Gulf region, the Middle East, Iraq, Syria, the Sahel of Africa
- September 25th 2015 : the Agenda 2030 and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals were adopted. The SDG 17 covered the 3 key pillars sustainable development: prosperity, social inclusion and environmental sustainability
- December 12th 2015 : the Paris Climate Agreement : huge triumph with 193 governments and 196 signatories
- High income group : countries that are above the $12000 per person threshold. It is about 1 in 7 in the world, roughly 15% of the world's population living in high income countries
- purchasing power parity
- GINI coefficient between 0 and 1. 0 meaning complete equality, everybody has the same income, and 1 is exactly the case of 1 person in the country having everything. Countries rather equal with a broad middle class like a lot of countries in Scandinavia have a GINI coefficient around 0.25. Countries that are much less equal have a GINI coefficient around 0.5 or 0.6
- Cantril ladder: measures life satisfaction by asking the respondent to imagine their life in the best possible light and to describe their hopes and wishes for the future, and rank their current position as rungs on a ladder
- There is 2 major ways that economic growth proceeds in the world : the first one based on continuing innovation, and the second one based on closing a gap that has opened up by taking on the technologies of those advanced countries that have already been able to use them. The first one is called Endogenous growth, meaning growth from within the system itself where technological advance gives rise to more technological advance.
- We need now a 6th wave, a wave of sustainable technologies. Ways to produce energy, ways to mobilize energy, ways to transport ourselves, ans transport goods that take the massive pressures and the destructive forces off of our ecosystems.
- Exemple of Rwanda : Rwanda's parliament is not only more than half women, but has the highest porportion of women in its parliament in comparison with the rest of the world.
- Thomas Robert Malthus wrote a pivotal publication in 1798 called the Principle of Population. A kind of neo-Malthusianism emerged in 1972. In 1972, there was the first ever global conference on growth and the natural environment in Stockholm : the UN Conference on the Human Environment. It was the first time that global leaders said maybe we do face limits.
- The Limits to Growth (1972): this book was the first major essay of the second half of the 20th century. It posited that industrial society was heading towards a threshold, a kind of Malthusian overshooting where human population and economic activity would grow so much that it would lead to a subsequent collapse because nature could not support what humanity was up to.
- Warning signs of breaching planetary boundaries : 1- Ozone depletion 2- Warming trends and increased atmospheric CO2 3- Ocean acidification 4- Biodiversity loss
- The 9 Planetary Boundaries : Climate change - Ozone depletion - Ocean acidification - Biogeochemical flows - Freshwater use - Atmospheric aerosol loading - Land-system change - Biosphere integrity - Novel entities (chemical pollutants)
- L'Anthropocène est une époque de l'histoire de la Terre qui a été proposée pour caractériser l'ensemble des événements géologiques qui se sont produits depuis que les activités humaines ont une incidence globale significative sur l'écosystème terrestre.
apr 6 2020 ∞
dec 7 2020 +
dec 7 2020 +