Environmental Affairs

Lesson 1: Introduction to key environmental issues today

Participation, Information and Understanding

Successful understanding and management of complicated environmental issues, especially at regional levels, needs to be based on participatory approaches. Through strategic partnerships and open dialogue, ideas can be shared and feed into participatory development agendas, policies can be promoted among stakeholders and implementation of environmental priorities can be much improved.

Managers need commitment to facilitate access to development and environment-related information, alongside broad knowledge of current environmental issues to help improve planning, coordination and analysis of policy from a multi-disciplinary, cross-sectoral and notably, from a regional perspective.

Regrettably, managers do not always live up to this ideal, with the frequent result that both the environment and the local people who depend on it, lose out. The importance of involving local stakeholders, ordinary people whose livelihoods depend on specific environment and its resources, is crucial for successful environmental management.

The environment is far too important to be left to the experts and politicians to decide over and to manage. Participatory environmental management is the central approach for ensuring that preserving, protecting, and sustainably utilizing the environment and its resources has a reasonably good chance to succeed. Generally speaking,

“A sustainable environment is one in which the natural environment, economic development and social life are seen as mutually dependent - and the interaction between them contributes to the sustainability and enhancement of the quality of people's lives and the natural environment.”

However, access to information, knowledge of technical details and scientific findings and their interpretations are often beyond the reach of those who need to be involved in making environmental decisions. While individuals can deepen their knowledge of environmental matters, few will be able to gain professional- or expert level skills experiences. It is through participatory institutions such as NGOs and networks that local people can effectively interact with Governments and private sector stakeholders.

--------------------------------------- Human Development Report ------------------------- Politics matter for human development. Reducing poverty depends as much on whether poor people have political power as on their opportunities for economic progress. Democracy has proven to be the system of governance most capable of mediating and preventing conflict and of securing and sustaining well-being. By expanding people's choices about how and by whom they are governed, democracy brings principles of participation and accountability to the process of human development. http://hdr.undp.org/ ---------------------------------------

The perhaps most –spoken of, but among the general public the probably least known about environmental accord, is the Kyoto protocol. Without many words, it can be explained very briefly:

Kyoto - A summary

· 138 countries agreed to the protocol, including 38 developed countries who agreed to binding targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions

· The EU has begun turning the treaty into law, forcing member states to a collective cut in emissions of 8% from 1990 levels by 2010. The UKs legal target will be 12.5%.

· The protocol will come into force as soon as 55 countries have passed it into national law and countries with a total of 55% of the emissions of the industrialised world have ratified. This is expected as early as 2002.

· $500 million of new funds a year will be provided by the industrialised world to help developing countries adapt to climate change and to provide new clean technologies.

· Industrialised countries will be able to plant forests, manage existing ones and change farming practices, and thereby claim credits for removing CO2 from the atmosphere.

· An international trade in carbon will be started. Companies saving carbon by building clean technologies will be able to claim credits which can be sold as tons of carbon saved on the international commodity markets.

· Countries will have to submit their plans for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and update progress to give early warning if they are failing to reach their targets.

· If countries fail to reach the first set of targets by 2012 they will have to add the shortfall to the next commitment period plus a 30% penalty. They will also be excluded from carbon trading and be forced to take corrective measures at home.

Source: J. Meek and P. Brown, The Guardian 24/7/01 ------------------------------------