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Grand Challenges for Sustainability exam summary
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Summary for the exam of Grand Challenges for Sustainability. Includes the lectures, notes, practicals, clips, youtube videos.
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Grand Challenges for SustainabilityWeek 1
Q&A - introduction
Unequal, crowded, degraded world calls for a need for sustainable development
Video Clip Lectures: What is sustainable development?
Clip 1: Intro to sustainable development
Sustainable development dimensions
- Economic
- prosperous
- Societal
- Societal inclusions
- Natural environment
- Environmental sustainability
- Political governance systems
- Equality, trusting one’s government, well governed
How can we take sustainable development as a goal?
Clip 2: Economic growth and progress
Aspects of sustainable development:
- On a global average, welfare increased due to economic growth.
- Poorer countries should aim for this
- Population growth
What does growth mean?
- The rule of 70: take 70 and divide it by growth rate gives you the number of years to
double the size of the economy.
Population growth correlated with the industrial revolution, where the steam machine was
developed.
Economic growth + rapid population growth → expansion of economic activity and total output
produced on the planet + massive increase on the impact on the planet
,= great challenge of sustainable development
- Advantage:
- improved health has also come alongside economic growth and population
growth.
- Life expectancy increased
Conclusion:
First pillar of sustainable development, economic well being, is achievable and can help improve
life. Challenge: Economic growth should be inclusive, and environmentally sustainable.
Clip 3: Continuing poverty
Poverty is a multi-dimensional concept; lack of income, of basic health services, of basic
amenities (safe water, sanitation, health services), no decent education
Concentrated poverty in the world: South Africa and South-Asia (India, Bangladesh, etc.)
People living in poverty and poor areas face risks of epidemic diseases, violence, terrorism,
mass migration, environmental disasters
Due to poverty, more diseases and shorter life expectancy, so high mortality rates of young
children.
- Highest disease burden in center tropical africa
Number of countries that reached middle income status: important pockets of poverty that need
to be relieved, while at the same time there’s also a wealthy part of the population. The contrast
is very high
Clip 4: Environmental threats
Humans have become a threat to ourselves due to increased economic activity, which has
become overwhelming.
Extreme storms, hurricanes, typhoons, floods, droughts, forest fires, heathwaves, acidification.
These have become normal to the world.
Anthropocene = the human age of the planet, the dangerous way that humanity is changing
the planet.
Main drivers of disasters is
- Human’s consumption of coal, oil and gas → increased CO2 emissions. While it always
fluctuated, since the last few hundred years, it has increased more extensively.
- The way we use water
- Using artificial fertilizer which influences the nitrogen cycle, acidifying the oceans
Planetary boundaries
,Clip 5: Paths
Business as usual: continuing the course that we’re on right now, what world can we expect?
- It offers: mortality falling, technological innovation, economic growth
- However, there are risks: planetary boundaries are trespassed and non inclusive
economic growth
Sustainable development
- Technological innovation (electric vehicles charged by renewable clean electricity)
- Getting off the addiction of cole, oil and gas
- Problem solving, global effort needed.
Moving from a business as usual trajectory to a sustainable development trajectory.
Lecture 1 - Economic growth
Intro
We are living in a crowded, unequal and degraded planet with a lot of output, and is projected to
keep on growing. Wealth is unequally distributed. We are living in the anthropocene, which
threatens the earth due to human activity. Risk of trespassing planetary boundaries
SDGs help guide the future course of development, 3 are related to economic growth
- Good jobs and economic growth
- Innovation and infrastructure
, - Reduced inequalities
Economic growth as...
- the cause of sustainability problems
- the key to eradicating poverty as poor countries can develop
- part of the solution
→ Are there limits to growth?
We first need to understand where growth comes from, what do economies need to grow?
Big questions:
- Why are we so rich and they so poor?
- What is the engine of economic growth?
- Is our standard of living sustainable?
Measuring economic development and the standard of living
GDP = market value of total production of goods and services within a country in a given year. It
also includes the total consumption
= measure of living
Three corrections of gdp are needed
1. Divide by population (GDP per capita)
2. Correct for inflation (real vs. nominal GDP) throughout years
- Nominal GDP is using current prices
- Real GDP is the production value that prices in a certain base year, so it is
adjusted to inflation.
3. Correct for international differences in price levels (PPP = Purchasing Power Parity)
- For example, the big mac index
- In the netherlands, big mac index is 3.75 euros and in the US it is 5.51
dollar, exchange rate is 5.51/3.75=1.47 dollar/euro
- If GDP per capita is 10 times higher in one country than in another country, but
price levels are twice as high as well, this needs to be accounted for when
comparing these two countries
→ preferred measure: GDP per capita at PPP in constant prices
- Still only a rough indicator of true ‘well being’/life satisfaction, happiness’
- But it is highly correlated with broader measures
- Hence, we will use GDP per capita as a useful summary statistic for wellbeing
History of economic growth
From the wind of the 18th century, no economic growth, output was at subsistence level
From the industrial revolution (end of the 18th century), unprecedented and sustained economic
growth → growth of output
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