Sustainability of eco systems and the need for responsible development practices.

Sustainability of eco systems

The sustainability of the ecosystem is very essential to support the life on earth. The capacity of the ecosystems to maintain their essential functions, processes and retain their biodiversity in the full measure over the long term the ecosystem sustainability. It included the following things

• Enhanced climate regulation through the rebalancing of the carbon cycle.
• Protection of essential ecosystem including enhanced food and water security, the public health and the societal wellbeing.
• Reduction of risks further ecosystem degradation and subsequent societal disruption.

Preservation of the natural environment is very essential for maintaining the economic sustainability. The component is water, energy, air, climate, biodiversity, land and forest.

Four Principles of Ecosystem Sustainability

• For sustainability, ecosystems use sunlight as a non-deplete able nonpolluting form of energy.
• For sustainability, ecosystems break down and recycle all the wastes as nutrients.
• For sustainability, Herbivorous populations must be kept in check so that overgrazing and the destruction of the ecosystem do not occur.
• Biodiversity is healthy for ecosystems.

The need for responsible development practices

Every factor which is related to development should be responsible for responsible development practices to make the development sustainability.

Carbon Trading

The carbon trade is an idea that came about in response to the Kyoto Protocol. The idea behind carbon trading is quite similar to the trading of securities.

Carbon Buyers:

European buyers now represent the bulk of the purchases of emission reductions with a combined 60% of total volume purchased between January 2004 and April 200 5. Within this group, the Government of the Netherlands (through its various agencies and intermediaries except the CFB (Center, and programs established within Rabobank, the International Finance Corporation, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the Corporation Andina de Foment o) is the largest single buyer with 16%, followed by private firms from the United Kingdom (12%). All other European purchasers combined account for 32% of the total volume purchased. The s h are of Japan (mostly private Japanese entities) has diminished from 29% (Jan. 2003 –Dec. 200 4) to 21% (Jan. 2004 – April. 2005). Interestingly, two-thirds of the volume purchased from Europe was purchased by private firms, against one-third by governments (mostly The Netherlands, Den mark, Sweden, and Austria).

Carbon Seller:

The largest seller of ERs is Asia (45% from January 2004 to April 2005). Latin America is second with 35% of the volume supplied. Projects in OECD countries which include both JI projects in New Zealand and voluntary activities in U.S. rank third with 14% while transition economies rank fourth at 6%. These aggregate figures, however, are strongly influenced by the dynamics of HFC23 destruction projects, which are few in number but very large in volume, and for the moment, to our knowledge at least, all located in Asia. In fact, Latin America is by far the largest supplier of ERs from projects other than HFC23 destruction (46%). Asia’s share of notHFC-based ERs is stable (28% from Jan. 2004 to April 2005, against 28% from Jan. 2003 to Dec. 2004), and is lower than Latin America’s.



Benefits from Carbon Trading

The benefits of carbon trading are listed below:

1) The reduction in overall cost of meeting emission reduction targets.
2) The progressively improved definition of a price for carbon, particularly as the market, becomes more liquid and active with assuming that all carbon certificate products are fungible meaning that they are equivalent ways of addressing emission reduction.
3) The opportunity to generate the income from activities that previously attracted no additional revenue such as investment in reduction emission, renewable energy, greenhouse friendly fuels and carbon sequestration.

References:
1. Mackenzie L. Davis & David A. Cornwell, “Introduction to Environmental Engineering”, McGraw Hill.
2. Gilbert M. Masters, Standford University, “Introduction to Environmental Engineering and Science”, Printice Hall.
3. Stephan Konz, Kansas State University, “Work design”, Grid Publishing Inc., Colombus, Ohio
4. C. S. Rao, “Environmental Pollution Control Engineering”, New age International (P) Limited, Publishers, India.