ENVR S320 Environmental Impact Assessment (Free Courseware)

Environmental issues and sustainable development

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) is a widely used tool for assessing the environmental implications of projects, policies and plans. It is also an integral part of the decision-making processes involving environmental issues. With the growing importance of environmental protection and an awareness of pursuing sustainable development, applying EIA techniques has become more important and compelling.

We will start this free courseware module by introducing some of the current environmental issues facing Hong Kong, China and the world as a whole. Following on from this, we will introduce the concept of sustainable development. These background issues illustrate why environmental impact assessments are necessary in the first place, and what role they play in sustainable development.

Environmental issues in Hong Kong, China and around the world

To set the scene for why environmental impact assessment exists, we need a basic understanding of some of the major environmental issues facing us both globally and at a local level. We will start with a global perspective as we look at climate change, the loss of habitat/biodiversity, and the depletion of resources. We will then come closer to home as we examine the issues facing China, in particular the rapid increase in urbanization. Finally in this section, we will take a closer look at issues specific to Hong Kong, such as its dense population which creates the need for sensible land use planning.

Global environmental issues

You have probably read or heard about climate change in the newspapers or on television, perhaps in reference to the meetings in Copenhagen in late 2009, etc. Climate change is the consequence of our neglect of and damage to the environment since the industrial revolution and our relentless and increasing appetite for fossil-fuel based energy. It is an imminent global environmental issue that not only affects us now, but will likely continue to affect us throughout the 21st century. Climate change is caused by global warming , which is caused by the emission of greenhouse gases. We will discuss climate change as an emerging environmental crisis later in Unit 10 so we won’t go into detail on this issue here.

In this section, we focus on two critical issues: habitat/biodiversity loss and depletion/over-exploitation of resources. These are caused directly by human activities such as the clearance of rain forests for land and timber, and over-extraction of ground water for potable use; as well as indirectly as a result of pollution from human activities, such as air pollution resulting from acid rain causing deforestation and discharge of chemicals into the ocean destroying coral habitats.