Global commons
Global commons include the earth's shared natural resources, such as the high oceans, the atmosphere and outer space and the Antarctic in particular.
[6] The term "global commons" is typically used to indicate the earth's shared natural resources, such as the deep oceans, the atmosphere, outer space and the Northern and Southern polar regions, the Antarctic in particular.
For example, the carbon dioxide emissions that drive climate change continue to do so for at least a millennium after they enter the atmosphere[15] and species extinctions last forever.
They also take an incremental approach to solutions where sustainable development principles suggest that environmental concerns should be mainstream political issues.
In addition to providing significant means of transportation, a large proportion of all life on Earth exists in its ocean, which contains about 300 times the habitable volume of terrestrial habitats.
Specific marine habitats include coral reefs, kelp forests, seagrass meadows, tidepools, muddy, sandy and rocky bottoms, and the open ocean (pelagic) zone, where solid objects are rare and the surface of the water is the only visible boundary.
The organisms studied range from microscopic phytoplankton and zooplankton to huge cetaceans (whales) 30 meters (98 feet) in length.
The human body of knowledge regarding the relationship between life in the sea and important cycles is rapidly growing, with new discoveries being made nearly every day.
[21] The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has identified several areas of need in managing the global ocean: strengthen national capacities for action, especially in developing countries; improve fisheries management; reinforce cooperation in semi-enclosed and regional seas; strengthen controls over ocean disposal of hazardous and nuclear wastes; and advance the Law of the Sea.
[22] Further, the Pew Charitable Trusts Environmental Initiative program has identified a need for a worldwide system of very large, highly protected marine reserves where fishing and other extractive activities are prohibited.
Stratospheric ozone depletion due to air pollution has long been recognized as a threat to human health as well as to the Earth's ecosystems.
EPR seeks to shift the responsibility dealing with waste from governments (and thus, taxpayers and society at large) to the entities producing it.
It is implemented by the European Monitoring and Evaluation Programme (EMEP), directed by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE).
After more three decades of work the Vienna Convention and Montreal Protocol were widely regarded as highly successful, both in achieving ozone reductions and as a pioneering model for management of the global commons.
Global dimming is thought to have been caused by an increase in particulates such as sulfate aerosols in the atmosphere due to human action.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), established in 1988 to develop a scientific consensus, concluded in a series of reports that reducing emissions of greenhouse gases was necessary to prevent catastrophic harm.
These changes can allow the transmission of diseases from subarctic animals to Arctic ones, and vice versa, posing an additional threat to species already stressed by habitat loss and other impacts.
Climate models tend to reinforce that temperature trends due to global warming will be much smaller in Antarctica than in the Arctic,[30] but ongoing research may show otherwise.
[31][32] Management of outer space global commons has been contentious since the successful launch of the Sputnik satellite by the former Soviet Union on 4 October 1957.
There is no clear boundary between Earth's atmosphere and space, although there are several standard boundary designations: one that deals with orbital velocity (the Kármán line), one that depends on the velocity of charged particles in space, and some that are determined by human factors such as the height at which human blood begins to boil without a pressurized environment (the Armstrong line).
In 1976 eight equatorial states (Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Congo, Zaire, Uganda, Kenya, and Indonesia) met in Bogotá, Colombia to make the "Declaration of the First Meeting of Equatorial Countries," also known as "the Bogotá Declaration", a claim to control the segment of the geosynchronous orbital path corresponding to each country.
The ISS is arguably the most expensive single item ever constructed,[37] and may be one of the most significant instances of international cooperation in modern history.
It was also planned to provide transportation, maintenance, and act as a staging base for possible future missions to the Moon, Mars and asteroids.
In the 2010 United States National Space Policy, it was given additional roles of serving commercial, diplomatic[38] and educational purposes.
The World Wide Web, as a system of interlinked hypertext documents, either public domain (like Wikipedia itself) or subject to copyright law, is, at best, a mixed good.
