Perhaps more than any other category, the most important part of sustainable development will be preventing conflict over fresh water. Whether that means protecting existing supplies from being contaminated or making the most efficient use of fresh and waste water, sustainable development seeks to find fully renewable ways to run water desalination plants in much of the world.

Fresh Water As Eco-Renewable Resources

Fresh water has become a scarce commodity in many areas already hit by climate change. Areas that have counted on spring and summer rains have been hit by drought through what should be reliably wet years of a solar minimum.

Sustainable development seeks to encourage water conservation as well as delivering sustainably collected fresh and clean water to areas where the local water supply has already been impacted by drought or pollution. Even in areas where fresh water is plentiful, preventing agricultural or sewage contamination during storms is a major and growing concern.

Oceans And Seas In Relation To Eco-Renewable Resources

The state of the oceans is inextricably linked to the state of the planet as a whole. The state of the oceans and the potential impacts of the on-going catastrophic collapse of ocean ecosystems are reaching a pitch that we haven’t seen on any other environmental issue other than the build-up of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.

As the polar ice caps continue to melt away into the oceans, a massive amount of heavier and very cold freshwater is being dumped into the ocean. This not only raises sea levels, but also can interfere with the currents that keep the ocean well-oxygenated and productive. The vast dead zones now spreading out from our coastlines appear to be largely the result of the vast rivers of chemicals, fertilizer runoff and sewage we’re pouring into the sea.

But most troubling of all is ocean acidification, the result of relying on the oceans to absorb the CO2 that we spew into the atmosphere. There is increasing evidence that the problem of ocean acidification is worsening rapidly, foreshadowing potential impacts that could be catastrophic for all life on Earth.

Sustainable Development Fund For Education And Awareness

As has been noted in the case of wildlife conservation, when the situation is explained clearly to ensure that people are educated and aware of what is at stake, most people choose to conserve nature. This process of education and awareness takes time and resources and funding is required to educate everyone, sometimes over long period of time.

Sustainable Development Fund For Cleaning Toxic Chemicals

Until laws were passed in the 1970s, it was legal to just dump toxic chemicals effluent pretty much anywhere. The highly toxic sludge that were once cast out into the environment as a steady stream are now concentrated and buried on land. They take up less space but are a larger problem if containment breaks. This sort of storage disruption can and does happen as a result of hurricanes on the Gulf of Mexico.

Much of it went into rivers, now present in river sediments that are churned up by super storms. Though many of the worst sites were cleaned up in the 1990s with sustainable development funding, it will still be a long way to clean up former chemical factories and manufacturing facilities throughout the world. Funding is still required to continue with the cleaning. If even a few of the especially bad storms of the sort predicted by climate change models landed on a sensitive area, these concentrated toxins would leach into the groundwater supply.

Sustainable Development Fund For Alternative Design

If suburbs are going to be a part of the 21st century, then they will have to be modified fundamentally to reduce and eventually eliminate wasteful energy usage. Suburban houses are getting bigger while families are getting smaller. Even with energy-saving insulation and double-paned windows installed, these houses use far more energy to heat and cool.

Safe and lovely suburbs are often environmentally unfriendly. The design concept of vast distances and homogeneity in suburban development causes waste. Few suburban areas are designed for mass transit, making personal car ownership a near-necessity in those areas. The further out people stay, the more time they spend in travelling to work with their cars. This is an “energy disaster” and sustainable development fund is required for alternative design to ensure that suburbs are self-contained communities. These communities will have to adjust to being towns of their own with all the services that people need within a short distance.

Sustainable Development Fund For Better Land Use

Suburban lands are responsible for the largest “land grab” of formerly agricultural areas ever seen. In most countries, they account for a good deal of recently developed areas and now cover vast reaches of the countryside.

Consider the humble suburban lawn. This modified form of pasture, though regularly mowed, is not maintained for any tangible reason other than that making home owner feel good or proud. Mention is often made of sun bathing, though few past college age are willingly to strip down to worship the sun from the front lawn. Rules also have to be changed for home owners and condo associations allow re-design for environmental friendliness.

Climate Change Has Created Chaos

Not to scare us but in terms of what the last several generations have done to the planet, there are frightening consequences being realized today. Climate change has created chaos in many places. Droughts, forest fires, floods, hurricanes and other problems impact towns and cities to the point where the devastation will never be forgotten. Many natural disasters that have happened in recent years can be directly attributed to the fact that our planet has been sorely abused.

Our Actions Help Or Hurt The Environment

Every time we take certain actions, we can either help or hurt the environment. We have choices that when made, can contribute to harmony or to chaos. Environmental responsibility belongs to everyone and everyone can make a positive difference in how the future shapes up for our kids and our grandkids.

We can make changes to improve the planet and help impact many areas including wildlife, agriculture and air quality. With environmentally sustainable practices in agriculture and manufacturing, we can slowly make a difference.

Everyone Must Be Environmental Responsible

If we want to learn to make a difference we need to know more than just what’s wrong in the world. We need to know the root causes and a bit about history and how we have to ensure certain mistakes are never repeated. Knowing about the problems and about the consequences of inaction is important, too.

Learn how we can be less dependent on petroleum products and how that can impact our future in a positive way. We need to get knowledgeable about energy efficiency so we can slowly replace our appliances with more efficient ones. We should swap out our incandescent light bulbs today for more energy efficient lighting and we need to help the energy problem at home and at work.

There are comprehensive resources available everywhere that will help us learn what we can do to change the world for the better. There are so many things we can do to extend the life of our precious planet and provide cleaner air for our children and neighbors and when we take on new and better habits, we empower our family and friends to do the same.

Sustainability Is Important For The Rural

This is a challenging task as environmental sustainability is so frequently at odds with the interests of the rural who are more concerned about communities or business success. To breach the gap, sustainable development seeks to make the health of the environment a paramount concern for the livelihood of both business and pleasure.

Climate Change And Rural Living

In some rural places climate change has taken the form of lost summers, floods and hurricanes. In other places, the rain has been very stubborn about falling at all. Rural homes and farm alike need to compete for water during drought years. The threat of climate change is so profound that if nothing were done, there would be little left for anyone in the rural to live with or to do business with.

Bringing Sustainable Solution To Rural

With education and continued dialog, the rural can be made aware of the importance of sustainable development. Firm but gradual changes can be established with a business climate where people demand accountability in their daily decisions.

One of the most secretly energetic and common building materials in the rural is concrete. Made of cement and fill rocks, this material require a great deal of heat and electricity to transform from its constituent components into something that is the foundation of most homes. Rural people need to be made aware of more cost effective alternatives and environmental friendly solutions. This is just one example of how sustainable development for rural living can be introduced.

Migration Of Urban Into Suburban Living

Though there are also recent demographic statistics to suggest a movement back to downtowns, the larger shift to suburban living remains. What many are not aware of is their high exposure to ecological disasters at suburban living.

As communities continue to expand outward from the city core, the effects of sprawl has resulted in settlement patterns into hazardous areas that were once farmland, forested lands or open space. Scenic areas that are frequently known as high hazard areas are also becoming popular. Specific examples include barrier islands, coastal property, rivers and streams, steep sloped areas and woodlands.

Migration Of Rural Into Suburban Living

In less developed countries, suburban living are exposed to yet another kind of ecological disasters. Not only are they exposed to earthquake, hurricane and flood, many suburbia is doomed to be crushed under their own waste debris. The ground-levels of both heavy metals and ozone pollution can be stunningly high in many suburbs.

While suburban residents’ exposures to ecological disaster are much higher, they are also the least prepared due to their social and political conditions. People with rural lifestyle are always prepared for emergencies as it is part of rural living. Rapid urbanization and migration are changing what were truly rural 20 years ago to suburban. Many residents are now expecting to be taken care of as their understanding and their respond to disasters are no longer the same.

Major Players in Sustainable Development

Sustainable development requires the input of all the major stakeholders in the climate change solution phase. That means that governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other concerned parties cannot set about on a sustainable course of action until some sort of agreement is reached with any party that might raise an objection that could put the project in danger.

Major stakeholders in the climate debate include just about everyone, but some special groups that have been very active include native and indigenous peoples, residents of island nations, commerce and business groups, environmental activists and human rights campaigners, to name just a few.

Global Funding For Sustainable Results

Sometimes public input on policy changes can keep the bill that is politically expedient from becoming a law that appeases everyone and fixes nothing. Since the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, there is now greater emphasis on seeing results to combat climate change. The challenge for governments and all stakeholders is to measure and report on the results of their sustainable development partnerships and initiatives.

Governments are encouraged to report regularly on the results of the funding partnerships and initiatives. Stakeholders, governments, business associations and interest groups sit down regularly to state their concerns on how climate change mitigation is being handled. By sharing results, a transparent and positive feedback loop is created, enabling everyone to scale up and replicate those efforts that work.

More Need To Be Done By The Governments

It is hard to know how to judge whether this is about to change or not. However, increasing international and domestic social pressure can certainly have an impact. Governments are beginning to understand that it is important to get responsible scientific advisors to help them craft useful and efficient environmental policies that will be acceptable to a voting populace.

As an example, in United States, election candidates are now touting themselves as the “green” candidate. Many are showing records to prove that they are able to gain industry support of their program on sustainable development and other matters of ecological importance. Election promises are made on government spendings to invest in quality research to train a generation of qualified advisors.

Local And International Efforts On Sustainable Development

To combat climate change, understanding of the subject and their impact on lives at stake is important. Since these issues are all related as part of sustainable development, some nations are building support for domestic sustainable development, making it more likely now for more international agreements to be established on all issues related to climate change. The international agreements on limiting carbon dioxide emissions are quick in coming.

University Research In Climate Change

Universities that are involved in climate change research usually engage a small army of graduate students and some university professionals to craft the experiments that result in useful data. These experiments are most often carried out by the system of grant applications and publishing. For this reason, industry and government alike have the ability to influence and direct research into areas they feel require more study.

Climate Change Research With Long Term Goal

In the case of industry, university researches in most cases are used by a particular business or trade to compliment their in-house research on a particular aspect of climate change. Unfortunately, in some cases, these researches are slanted with a business purpose to discredit a competing theory that would have dire business consequences. It is therefore important for the university to put in place a responsible audit function to ensure that all researches achieve the long term goal of sustainable development