Environment, Climate Change and Development

In this day and age, there isn’t a single country that isn’t focusing on internal development in order to grow economically, politically and socially. The weight of this idea holds greatly for countries especially in our competitive global society, and countries aren’t the only entities that have adapted this idea, domestic and multinational companies as well as organizations are also focused on finding new means of development.

When discussing development, we must realize that the environment we live in is the key to what we want to achieve and it is definitely something we must care for and improve in order to improve ourselves and to rise on a larger scale as well. With climate change and the lack of environment protection laws that we still face today, it is no wonder that we have not been heading in the right direction for the past years in terms of agreeing our global and domestic improvement and caring for the environment. This however is all changing now once global entities have realized the importance and the link between the two. One cannot improve without the other, neither can it be separate from one another, between the environment will always go as one of the sub-categories of development and therefore there should be measures taken in order to set a strategy of evolution and advancement. Sustainable development is based on three pillars, which are economic, environmental and social sustainability.Recently, the United Nations has announced their 17 sustainable development goals in order for all countries and other entities to follow and get to the point of where we should be in our education, health, environment protection, justice, human rights, sustainable energy, equality and global partnership. It focuses on and tries to cover everything for us all to upgrade our lives and be smart in the resources we use and how to deal with the problems we might face like climate change and economic unrest. These development goals were created and listed at the UN Sustainable Development Summit in 2015, where world leaders have included some goals which were taken as the now popular SDGs,apart from any political or economic means of improving countries and their betterment, in order to achieve these goals by the year 2030 and ensure that future generations are not deprived of the benefits of development, we must take action now and ensuring we have a restored environment is one of the main factors in doing so. The current environmental issues we have today, according to the United Nations studies and research done across many different agencies are as follows: Issues related to global warming, pollution and the depletion of natural resources. Global warming is a permanent and quickly developing form of climate change that affects the earth due to our industrial pollution, greenhouse gas emission, and defects and openings in the ozone layer. It has been proven time and time again that the earth’s temperature is increasing fast, and it has been for the past century without a pause. It has also been concluded that unless we find new sources of renewable energy, and stop pollution in our air, water and land, there would be serious and permanent damage that we will face not only in the environment but also in our health. For both climate change and the depletion of resources combined with the world’s overpopulation, with the first leading to a lower production of agricultural products and the second meaning that instead of attending to everyone, there is not enough even for half of the world’s population, very soon the mass population will not only face a shortage of food but most importantly the shortage of having enough resources to carry our development processes in all number of its forms.

This should make us think very well, what is our progress going to look like without the means of fulfilling even our basic needs? How can we speak of development and growth when we are yet to reach the bar of ensuring people the right for food and basic materials used in order to survive? And how can we ensure that the future generations will have anything left if we do not care for the very thing providing us all with all that we need and that is all revolving around the concept and protection of environment and the changes that must be done now in order to have the foundation for change and true development.