Essay Globalization Consumerism And Sustainable Development Environmental Sciences Essay

Essay Globalization Consumerism And Sustainable reading Environmental Sciences EssaySustainable development has been a globally paradigm in unalike argonas. Citizens manners-style has an outstanding relationship with the sustainability of a city. In live environment bea, world-wide experts obligate adopted the docket 21 and tried to find the appropriate modal value to achieve a sustainable living life style. According to Agenda 21, the major cause of the enshroudd deterioration of the global environment is the unsustainable imitate of expending and production, particularly in industrialized countries, which is a matter of grave concern, aggravating p all overty and im equalisers. However, as the global population change magnitude, how to balance the relationship amidst resources supply and demand is still a research question. For communities and individuals, special attention should be paid to the demand for natural resources generated by unsustainable inlet and to t he efficient use of those resources consistent with the goal of minimizing depletion and cut down pollution. In former(a) words, the communities and individuals should look for an appropriate living style towards achieving sustainable goal. Although government has been put such(prenominal) efforts to encourage good deal to do whatever reduction of pollution, reduction of aptitude consumption, and waste recycling, actually at that place is still a long distance to reach the goal of sustainability, and there should be a series of fundamentally changes for individuals to adopt to pursue a green, sustainable society.GlobalizationGlobalization means quite varied things to different people. In general, globalization is a process that promotes world-wide exchanges of national and cultural resources. It includes economic globalization, social cultural globalization, and environmental globalization. In recent decades, the world securities industrys have become more and more integr ated. As Lindert and Williamson 2011 pointed out, world food market integration is not a overbold phenomenon, but it has steadily increased since the 1820s if we exclude the period between the two World Wars. A long correlation between the globalization of outside(a) markets and environmental degradation is quite obviously. The globalization of markets also brought about the globalization of environmental problems. Global climate change, ozone layer, reduction of biodiversity, over consumption of natural resources, desertification are all global environmental degradation brought after the economic globalization. The industrial revolution use large amount of natural resources as materials in the process, as well as the deterioration of their quality as a consequence of pollution. The acceleration of economic growth led to the increasing of world population that promoted the deterioration of environment.Lifestyle and sustainabilityConcept of sustainable developmentThe imaginati on of sustainability means that something is keep for a period of long time. The concept of sustainable development came out of the join Nations Conference on Human Environment in 1972.() Since the publication of the UN Brundtland Commission reportOur Common Futurein 1987, the concept of sustainability has become associated with the integration of economic, social, and environmental development to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of coming(prenominal) generations to meet their own needs. The convocation was held to let all nations agree to act to reduce pollution unitedly to share the resources equally. Since 1972, it has become clear that what we do has an impact on the environment, from the climate change, desertification, and the destruction of forests to the disappearance of species. By introducing the word sustainable, the discussion on environmental development got a social and economic dimension, especially by the inclusion of the North- Sou th dialogue and discussion of the rights of in store(predicate) generations. This finally led to the world community retention the linked Nations Convention on Education and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992 where the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Framework on Climate Change, the Rio Declaration and 38 of the 40 chapters of Agenda 21 were agreed. The United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) was set up to review progress in the implementation of Agenda 21 and other UNCED schedules. The Commission meets every year and more than 1,000 N.G.Os are accredited to go in in the Commissions work.Concept of lifestyleThe concept of lifestyle comes from social science and refers to a bundle of practices or ways of behaving that are meaningful for individual as well for the community. Lifestyle includes different ways of acculturation with others and different oddballs of consumption of everything, from houses to clothes, food, and leisure t ime activities. Lifestyle could reflect individuals attitude and values and at the very(prenominal) time signals these to others through visible, or conspicuous, consumption. Sustainable lifestyle squirt thus be defined as bundles of practices that are tied unitedly by attitudes related to sustainable development, or as ways of living that in practice lead to sustainable development.In 1992 at the UN Conference in Rio de Janeiro, there was an international agreement on promoting sustainable development and thus also promoting sustainable lifestyle. Following the line of the Brundtland report, the conference reached consensus on the so-called Agenda 21 programme, which contains detailed guidelines and objectives, in a nonlegally binding language, and advice on how NGOs, citizens, and other actors can be involved in the process. The slogan was act topical anesthetic -think global and during the 1990s local anesthetic Agenda activities were initiated in many countries by both auth orities and NGOs. In 2007-08 such initiatives received renew interest, with global climate being steep on the political agenda. Local Agenda 21 was no longer a catchword, though the concept of sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles was then used together with climate discussions. The processes of Local Agenda 21 build on the idea that changes must come from below, from changes in the common life of ordinary consumers.Current lifestyleWhen talking about living lifestyle, tobacco use, myopic nutrition, obesity, elevated stress, and suboptimal sleep will come into ones mind, these are major contributors to the pandemic of lifestyle-related conditions, morbidity, and premature death (E dean) preventable lifestyle-related conditions such as ischemic heart disease, chronic bronchitis, and emphysema (largely smoking related), hypertension, stroke, type 2 diabetes mellitus, and some cancers, are not only leading causes of disability and premature death in high-income countri es, but increasingly in middle- and low-income countries.(stop) Compared to the impact of environment brought from lifestyle, the bad lifestyle seems to have much effect on individuals health. However, from long-term sight, bad lifestyle will bring waste of resources, pollution of environment and at last delay the development of society.When talking about the lifestyle related to consumerism, green consumerism should be advocated. What is green consumerism? In short, who and wherefore buy. current global levels of domestic energy consumption and waste production have been acknowledges as important contribution to detrimental environmental change (United Nations 1998) Political and academic interest in this component of sustainable development implementation has stimulated manages in post-industrial nations concerning the social practices of contemporary consumerism (Macnaghten and Urry 1998) and how we will live in the future (De Young 1993) n response there has been a call for t he development of national policies and strategies to encourage changes in consumption patterns (UNCED 199264). One approach has been the promotion of environmentally-friendly lifestyles which often take the form of media or community exhorts (for throw out analysis see Hobson 2001). These campaigns encourage individuals not only to decrease the amount consumed, but also to warp the nature of goods consumed (lUCN/UNEP/WWF 1991 Librova 1999).Changing Lifestyles Towards SustainabilityFrom a policy perspective, it is relevant to discuss how to promote more sustainable lifestyles. Changes can be initiated from the bottom-up, where people experiment with changing lifestyles, or from the top-down, where authorities make initiatives to promote changing lifestyles. politics can promote changes by political initiatives such as economic incentives or green taxes and through information and labeling of green products and campaigns focusing on changing attitudes. Furthermore, authorities ca n focus on establishing the visible infrastructure which supports sustainable lifestyles public transportation, renewable energy production, recycling waste system, and so on. What follows describes, first, the people who have made fundament changes to their lifestyles and, second, evaluations on initiatives to get ordinary people to change their lifestyle in a more sustainable direction.In the last couple of decades, some citizens have chosen more radical lifestyle changes and have joined so-called eco-villages. Some of the catchwords of this approach are closed cycles and self-sufficiency wet and waste should be recycled, energy locally produced from renewable resources, and the technologies organised in neighborhoods to strengthen and revitalize local social life. The ecological vision is followed by the social vision of a holistic everyday life a life that is not split between work, family, and home. In this sense, the eco-villages follow in the footsteps of the collectivist private road of the 1960s and 1970s and are a reaction against the lifestyle in detached suburban houses. Furthermore, in some of the eco-villages there is a spiritual relation with nature and an ethical concern for future generations. The people deciding to build and live in these eco-villages thus establish other physical, social, and cultural structures around their everyday life as part of living a sustainable lifestyle. In the environmental bowl over, it has been questioned to what extent this type of experiment is part of a broader solution to sustainable development or whether these structures are only discriminate pockets. Some of the utility(a) technological solutions, such as solar heating or wind power, had their hesitating first beginnings in these alternative environments. However, some of the eco-villages and other grassroots experiments had such alternative visual expressions that skill have frightened the not-so-dedicated others from choosing sustainable lifest yles. This raises the question of whether sustainable lifestyles are only for those who want to live an alternative life or whether they should be mainstreamed and made available for a broader audience. In the twenty-first century, however, this debate might seem less topical, as grassroots approaches and more mainstream approaches to sustainable lifestyles appear to converge many another(prenominal) public initiatives have tried to persuade citizens to live a more sustainable life, and there are also examples of studies following the extent to which these types of efforts have an effect. In general, social science approaches dealing with these issues can be divided into psychological and sociological approaches. As an example of the psychological approach, a take aim performed by Abrahamse and others in the Netherlands followed the effects of an Internet-based tool that used a combination of tailored information, goal setting, and feedback on households direct and validating ener gy consumption. An evaluation after 5 months showed that households gained a significant direct energy saving of 5%, whereas there was no measurable effect on indirect energy consumption. It is thus possible to document a small but significant relation between knowledge and action.From a sociological approach, the UK campaign Action at home, which is part of the Global Action Plan that originally developed in the United States during the late 1980s, has been evaluated by Hobson, and this evaluation questions the simple relation between knowledge and change of behavior. The Action at home campaign was a 6-month voluntary programme where households were provided with information, support, and feedback in a local setting enabling local support and networking between participants. An evaluation based on qualitative interviews suggests rethinking the ideas on information, barriers, and behavioural change. cultivation should be seen as a much more constructivist approach, where people u se and develop arguments through conversations with others, quite a than by receiving objective knowledge. The focus should be on the whole array of social structures sustaining specific behaviors, preferably than on only barriers to action, and finally the understanding of behavioral change should rather focus on how debate can bring unnoticed routines that are never consciously thought of.Though there are disagreements in the understanding of behavior and the role of information between the social and the psychological approach, it is possible to suck up some general recommendations on how to best persuade people to change to a more sustainable lifestyle Communication should be as specific and personalized as possible, and information should be as adjusted to the lifestyle of the citizens as possible, thereby making the advice meaningful and useful for the citizens attitudes and practices.With climate change high on the political agenda, especially before the climate summit con ference in Copenhagen in 2009, sustainable lifestyles have gained renewed interest among the public, politicians, and academics. Will this interest be a short bobble followed by resignation? Will it be the start of mainstreaming sustainable lifestyles so they spread and become the norm? Or, will there continue to be a development fuelled by the tension between initiatives by different actors? Sustainability is a contested concept, and developments in the structures and practices of everyday life continue to change and thus provide new challenges for what a sustainable lifestyle is or should be. In the future, there is also a need to continue experimenting, debating, and developing new approaches to sustainable lifestylesLinking lifestyle and climate change literatureThe concept of lifestyle in the behavioural sciences has been studied in connection with social class 31,81,64 -66,86,87,47 , culture-specific consumption patterns 22,30,52,79 as well as individual choice 25,7,6 . Socia l theorists have described how the disappearance of norms and economic limitations, mass consumption and themarket have gradually removed restrictions and made the individual lifestyle a more appropriate way to describe differences in action, world views and consump-tion. Research suggests that the consumption behavior of individuals constitute a more or less coherent con-sumption pattern because individual tastes and prefer-ences conform to socially determined structures 13,19.The fact that conspicuous consumption 17,77 is seen asa status symbol of wealthy people makes the less afflu-ent aspire to emulate this lifestyle 5 . Individuals useconsumer goods to preserve their position in the socialhierarchy 12. A convergence of lifestyles has been speed by homogenisation in the human system overtime and space due to the globalization of the builtenvironment, occupations, industry, trade and advertis-ing. Lifestyle is also described in an operational sensethrough the correlation betwee n the level and pattern ofconsumption and socio-economic and demographicparameters such as age, family size, occupation, income,gender, education and ethnicity. Consequent energy andemission outcomes vary widely ( Table 1) calling for moreinclusive action strategy to countermand leakages. The focus ofchange needs to be on the hotspots and patterns of energyconsumption. Attempts to change energy consumptionpattern are likely to lead to a change in energy consump-tion behaviour that make up the complete pattern. In theenergy literature in the late 1980s, the energy researchersintroduced the lifestyle concept into the study of energyconsumption and established a positive correlation be-tween better lifestyle and high-energy consumption forboth households and individuals. Kaya identity 34 hasbeen used to show how both the individual and aggregateconsumption pattern are an important driver of emissionlevel along with the technology choice. Recent literatureSuggestion