Sustainability studies
Programs include instruction in sustainable development, geography, environmental policies, ethics, ecology, landscape architecture, city, regional planning, economics, natural resources, sociology, and anthropology.
[5] The commission was appointed to examine the consequences of global environmental change and was chaired by Norway’s Prime Minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland.
[7] Several definitions have been proposed since then (refer to (Pezzoli, 1997) among others), but after years of debate, researchers asserted that sustainability assessments ought to: integrate economic, environmental, social and increasingly institutional issues as well as to consider their interdependencies; consider the consequences of present actions well into the future; acknowledge the existence of uncertainties concerning the result of our present actions and act with a precautionary bias; engage the public; include equity considerations (intragenerational and intergenerational).
[6] Five years later, in 1997, this framework helped lead to the creation of the Kyoto Protocol, a plan in which wealthy nations pledged to reduce their carbon emissions.
[9] The IPCC also explained that a rise in temperatures would trigger catastrophic results in the form of intense natural disasters, unpredictable weather, and food shortages.
The world is currently on course to reach 3 degrees Celsius of global warming, and scientists have 12 years to impose significant changes to prevent this from happening.
Individuals studying sustainable development could be focused on reducing the climate in which catastrophic global warming would take place and understanding how policy decisions link to other areas such as urban planning, sociology, economics, and ecology.
[15] Climate change events like natural disasters, increased temperatures, and unpredictable weather patterns disproportionately impact lower-income and impoverished communities.
An example of an environmental justice issue in the United States is the lack of properly working septic tanks in Lowndes County, Alabama.
In her book Waste: A Woman's Fight Against America's Dirty Secret, Catherine Coleman Flowers explains the environmental issues that this impoverished community faces.
A predominantly African American area, many residents have lived with raw sewage in their backyards because they cannot afford to buy or install a septic system.
Robinson tells the story of Constance Okollet, a resident of Uganda, who is facing seasons of floods and droughts regularly, making food and clean water difficult to come by.
