| Human beings are now considered more endangered by environmental security issues. The environment is strictly associated with security of all life on earth along with humans, considered as foremost infiltrators towards the earth’s environmental degradation. Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are mainly originated by household usage of refrigerators, air-conditioners and AC usage during transportation, cleansing agents in the electronic industry, and foam filled furniture manufacturing. Despite these human environmental issues, it is also considered that humans are responsible for ozone depletion and global warming. For example, in China an average person emits 2.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year while in America this amount is 24 tonnes per person.
The anthropogenesis of the environment could be ascertained by looking at these figures. At preset, China’s population is 1.3 billion (UN, 2006) while that of the US is 300 million (US, 2006). China has around 77 percent more individuals than the USA according to the given figures. The carbon dioxide emission from China is 2,860 million tonnes per annum compared the US’s emission of CO2 of 7,200 million tonnes per annum, placing China second in the emission of CO2 after the US. It is interesting for optimists about the Kyoto Protocol that the US alone emits 60.3 percent more carbon dioxide per person annually than China. Global warming and ozone depletion are both due to the greenhouse effect in which carbon dioxide plays a central role. The attributes for the emission of carbon dioxide are required to be explored in order to understand how 23 percent population emits 60 percent more carbon dioxide. These attributes start a North-South controversy, which have started after the Stockholm Conference of 1972. North mostly blames the overpopulation dynamics of the South as the cause of major environmental problems while the South in counter-arguments blames the North’s lifestyle. In this debate, population and development are major concerns. Development at the individual level is enhancing the prolonged environmental degradation, which could be reduced by sustainable development. Sustainable development should work on equal patterns in order to maintain control on transactional patterns of the environment, giving would-be equal North-South. Notwithstanding the environment as a matter of international politics, debates like the Stockholm Conference, resulting United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), and Kyoto Protocol — as least unanimous discourses — are lessons for the advocates of sustainable development.
Other anthropogenic aspects of environmental degradation are human mobility, transportation, industrialisation, and deforestation. Climate change is defined as the deviation from natural settings due to human-induced activities. Different types of diseases are also associated with environmental degradation, e.g. the Chernobyl nuclear incident in 1986 has caused the threat of cancer with more odds for inhabitants of that affected area. That event was seen due to the rapid explosion of nuclear radioactive material but we do not acknowledge the everyday radiations with tiny increments as threat resulting in an impetus towards entropy.
The diseases that are associated with the environment are chronic like cancer, congenital anomalies, infertility, especially male infertility as in some European countries this infertility is about 15 percent among couples, and also congenital malformation. These health problems are linked with chemical pollution resulting from the poorly regulated market of chemicals. However, the seriousness of these health-related environmental effects are discussed in “The Paris Appeal — International declaration of diseases due to chemical pollution” delivering three very important messages: the development of numerous current diseases is a result of the deterioration of the environment; chemical pollution represents a serious threat to children and to humanity’s survival; and as our own health and that of our children and future generations is under threat, the human race itself is in serious danger.
On the one hand the environment has influenced common people and on the other disrupted international politics as well. The environment has found its place even in purely economic and financial institutes’ agenda. Starting from Bretton Woods, all intergovernmental organisations (IGOs) and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have environment in their mission statements. This should have developed a concept of environmental regimes. By regime we mean that a collection of legal, institutional and political processes through which governance is made. Here we take only environmental governance. A new question arises eventually, “Who governs the global environment”? Social and political obstacles have meant that many international environmental regimes have not lived up to expectations. If international mechanisms are not always up to the task, and if countries see a few incentives to ‘go it alone’, what alternatives are there for finding co-operative solutions to these problems?
In the past, debates about international environmental policy focused on the role of governments that signed up to agreements and treaties. In today’s more interconnected world, a wider range of different players influences decisions. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs), corporate and financial interests, and consumers’ and citizens’ groups have won a louder voice in influencing decisions. They also have a bigger hand in delivering actions. With this enhanced voice, economic disparity could also be removed.
The writer is a student of International Relations at National University of Modern Languages (NUML), Islamabad (when i was)
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