Defining Environment
The study of the environment is the study of the relationship between man and nature. It is studied because humans develop themselves at the cost of other living beings. As a result, he is entangled in a trap where his very existence is in danger.
Environment means all that nature has gifted to humankind. At the same time, it is also independent of the walls engraved on the Earth by politics. To define the environment in simple terms, it comprises land, air, rivers, sea, ponds, forests and all flora and fauna on Earth. But it is much more than these lovely trees and tiger conservation.
It is the effect of all those ecological relationships on Earth which exist at a given time in history. Thus it is not only a natural resource but also the relationship of male, female and all living organisms, including small insects or microorganisms and giant whales or elephants with their biotic and abiotic environments, interdependence and mutual survival.
Nature never discriminates or categorizes its users, and its resources are available for all kinds of uses, but mankind has developed a unique technology and an opaque financial empire that nurtures the example of evolution to counteract nature. It has created forces in opposition to nature by creating that it suppresses nature instead of cultivating human’s relationship with nature.
Discussing the Main Issues of Environmental Disputes
The following are the main issues of Environmental Dispute –
- (A) Lack of resources and underdevelopment
- (B) Interdependence of Nations
- (C) Sustaining Development
- (D) Changing Landscape of National Security
- (E) Environment and Development Debate
(A) Lack of resources and underdevelopment
The Stockholm conference of 1972, followed by the publication of “The Limits to Growth”, negate the rapidly increasing technology. Also, Rachel Carson’s book “The Silent Spring” shook the apathy and silence of those people.
Barry Commoner writes, “Mankind has broken out of the life cycle, it is not because of necessity, but because of it.” As is done by social institutions, which are created to conquer the nature of being, these are the means of acquiring wealth, as opposed to those who rule nature.”
Attempts by underdeveloped and developing countries to catch the West on par with the frequency of economic miracles led them to poverty, indebtedness and a slow decline in the supply of essential goods. The debt accumulation caught developing countries in the web of developmental poverty. Such countries were forced to use the environment excessively to eliminate the possibility of their liquidation.
Even debt services comprised six and seven percent of their national product. Worldwide, more than eight hundred million people live below the poverty line without local malnutrition and primary health care. As industrialization and urbanization develop, people in poor areas lose their habitat and resources.
(B) Interdependence of Nations
Nature has no walls; therefore, rivers, forests, mineral wealth, wildlife, rich marsh vegetation and tribal communities are spread from one country to another, and their ecological contract exceeds their political wall. Therefore, any activity of one state leads to a wave of unrest in other neighbors. For example, the Indus River region between India and Pakistan is home to some rare species of fish and swamps and also acts as a natural wall for sea waves.
Any act of pollution, excessive flow or destruction of marsh vegetation affects the resource flow of other countries and the natural security of their coastline.
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Red Cross Society are horrified to see the increasing numbers of ecology around the world. The sovereignty of the state is constrained by these free natural rights of the Earth, which are inalienable and immutable.
The centrally planned and controlled economy and the confusion caused by superstitions on the development policy of free traders have created a bad struggle for the environment. In WTO meeting at Seattle and Geneva, the protest generated by the emotional response indicates that the environment will remain politically immense, and it will affect global politics, as all natural resources used by the king are not equitably distributed and in response to the level of their equitable use have failed to comply.
(C) Sustaining Development
Sustaining is another issue for environmental dispute that reminds us that once the environment is lost, it is not only difficult but sometimes impossible to recover it. Therefore its use should be justified. Scientific studies have also shown that it is difficult and sometimes impossible to recover a lot of energy loss. Environmental economist Georgescu Roegen (1971) writes that according to the “Third Law of Thermodynamics”, free energy once converted into latent energy cannot be recovered.
Thus irresponsible development may turn out to be regressive rather than occurring in the long run. Therefore, nation’s policies must follow basic principles, which contain the basic idea of maintaining.
- 1. The issue of carrier affordability: “Aldo Leopold” was one of the early authors to define it as the saturation point at which grazing animals of a particular species approach the point where there is a general and continuous decline in pasture quality. Couldn’t support more people without it.
It applies to chemical applications on air and Earth or excessive flow of rivers and seas, which reduces the availability of food by slow degradation of productive land and is also excellent in fishing. Pollution in the air shortens the life span of the productive population and increases the health budget. Therefore, production and consumption externalities must be factored into development and business decisions.
- 2. Issues of intra-production and inter-production equity and justice: The use of the earth’s resources can be the luxury of only a few powerful nations which are in the forefront of technology. These resources, such as air, water, oil should be distributed equitably. Nations have to follow environmental standards to protect and conserve these resources. Help each country create such institutions and rules and conservation campaigns.
Conservation entitles future generations to these resources because it belongs to all who live on them and those who are to come. Therefore, the present generation will have to pay the price of taking the luxury of the limited power of the Earth, who will later be the inhabitants of this destroyed Earth.
- 3. Habitat rights of communities and wildlife: The displacement of human and subhuman population from their habitat disturbs the life cycle of natural ecosystems. Aldo Leopold has made beautiful views on the relationship of land and nature. He writes; “Civilization is not a slave to a stable and perpetual earth, as is often understood.
It is a state of mutual and interdependent cooperation between the human organism and other organisms, plants and soil, which can break at any moment if one fails. The plundering of the land has ousted the nations and may do so again when the opportunity arises. A government that does not protect the right to housing breaks the cycle of sustainable life because even the smallest microorganism that lives there plays a role in the life cycle of the community there.
(D) Changing Landscape of National Security
The Environmental contingency is defying both meteorological forecasts and indigenous conscience. The last century was the warmest in the past 600 years, as well as the five and fourteen warmest years since the 1860s, 1980s and 1998.
Some of the worst environmental disasters such as floods, droughts and earthquakes occurred only in the last century. The number of submergence and ecological refugees in more and more low-lying areas of the world is increasing uncontrollably.
“Global warming” and “greenhouse” are the terms that have surprised decision makers by astonishing studies. The world is serious about these unexpected developments, as revealed by the landmark study of the Brundtland Commission (1987).
An international group led by Helmut Schmidt, former chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, also conducted the study. A view has been given to make changes in these reports.
This is a vision in which this new vision of international politics, protected with strategy from the roots of violence like poverty, environmental injustice and inequality, has not been dramatized, sentimentalised, as much as it has done in the field of use of environmental resources.
In “Politics Among Nations” (1948), Hans Morgenthau emphasized the need for military power as a festival royal to achieve security. Universally it has been understood as the principle of military strategy and war of arms expansion.
It was found that these wars are related to the problem of economic injustice and political repression, upper-class selfishness, caste hyper nationalism, increasing national capitalism, slavery and agrarian slavery.
Eckhardt Kriependoff (1987) described “realism” as the American approach to security, which merely maintains the status quo of power without prompting the creative force to generate power by means other than military means.
Despite the reflected American bias in realistic security research, there are still many believers in the Third World. The national priority shifted from ecological empowerment to building security because the environment has a long gestation period and is of little immediate political benefit.
The result is imaginary security that becomes permanent insecurity for helpless citizens. Environmental issues have become a high-grade political problem as they have grown in complexity and lack a unified political sphere to support them. The degree of degradation, depletion and degradation of environmental resources varies in different countries, so the scale of priority of these problems is also different.
(E) Environment and Development Debate
The protection of the environment has always been linked to the apparent slow pace of the industrial process. This is because of the very simple methodology and cheap procedures that affect the extent of resource acquisition community rights.
When “The Limits to Growth” was published in the USA, there was organized an aggressive war against environmentalists, describing them as anti-industrialisation, anti-development and anti-effort.
He believes these developments are opposed to each other, and one cannot achieve both simultaneously. This debate is the result of two different systems or value systems in which the concept of environment was ensured in developing countries.
However, there is class meaning in protection, in the view that the social power generated in it may threaten the vulnerable stage, which makes up the livelihood of 40 percent of the world’s people. In India, it has been called beautiful tree and tiger conservation.
Developed nations are absolving themselves of their responsibility to subsidize environmentally clean technology while, on the other hand, waiving their burden of limiting biodiversity exploitation and climate change. Due to the effluents caused by the chemical industry, agribusiness, biotechnological research and abundant program of nuclear weapons, etc., due to this, only a few sources of the South were destroyed.
Symbolic expression in the forms of ozone hole, greenhouse effect and sea level rise became the reality of stimulating industrialization, which was adopted by developed nations. This major weakness derived from that source in environmental history took the world to a stage where solutions were often found along with new problems.
Twenty-six main resolutions and 109 recommendations were passed at the Stockholm conference. But the revision, which took place after ten years, revealed that not only population explosion has stunted development but also due to the concentration of biotoxin (Daxin) in air, water and land, which has polluted the Earth beyond human control.
The 1980 World Conservation Strategy offered a better approach to problem investigation in which developmental processes were combined with the environment for the first time. Thus the known divide between development, the foundation of both interconnectedness and interdependence, was eliminated, and a three-pronged course of action was suggested in the following areas:
- Maintenance of essential ecological processes and support systems
- Conservation of genetic diversity,
- Sustainable use of species and ecosystem.