Environmental Sustainability

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Environmental sustainability

Introduction

Environmental sustainability includes all those steps and decision makings that are aimed to protect the environment and natural. The main emphasis of environmental sustainability is on protection and preservation of the capability and capacity of the environment to sustain human life. At present, environmental sustainability has become an important global issue and people are understanding and realizing the impact of individuals and businesses on environment. Environmental sustainability involves making responsible and environment friendly decision that can result in reduction of those negative impacts on organizations. Simply it is not about reducing wastages amount or utilizing less amount of energy, but it involves a wholesome activities and processes that can result in making the businesses completely environment sustainable in coming days.

Environmental sustainability is, currently, a hot issue that has earned much attention from different media and relative governmental sectors. Such a huge coverage of media and governmental departments is due to the fact that there has been extensive research is being conducted on the impact of business activities of environment. Long term implication, although, of this issue is still debatable and not fully developed and understood, but all stake holders are agreed to take immediate steps that can reduce the impacts on environmental sustainability. Businesses are perceived as the major contributor of this global problem that is why they are considered to act as a leader is the field of environmental sustainability. There are many environmental areas that are negatively impacted by businesses, but few important are given below.

•Businesses damage woodlands and rainforests by agricultural clearing and logging.

•Businesses pollute and their over- fishing of lakes, rivers and oceans.

•They cause atmospheric pollution by burning of fossil fuels.

•By using unsustainable farming methods, they are responsible to damage cultivated and prime agricultural land.

Background

The origin of environmental sustainability dates back to the post world war, where ideal view of economic growth that is a technology driven, started to pop up. The concept of quality of environment was directly linked to economic growth and development. In 1960's, the movement got momentum when famous books like the Population Bomb by Paul R. Ehrlich and Rachel Carson's Silent Spring raised public awareness about the environment. Two schools of thoughts emerged from this debate. Club of Rome, a group of European Scientists and Economist, in 1968 was established. They in 1972 published Limits of Growth. This report forecasted the dire consequences due to human's unchecked using of resources of the earth. This report earned much criticism by contemporary economists because reports suggested abandoning the economic growth. This resulted in the formation of another group. In 1975 Worldwatch institute was established. This group acknowledged that the human race was too quickly growing and consuming up the resource with the same pace. Other groups also formed during this era to provide mankind with solutions to maintain and conserve environmental sustainability. They focused on less population, slowing economic growth and growth control.

In 1969, with the passage of National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) the first national policy for the protection of ...