ABSTRACT
All the environmental issues covered in this book are, by defi nition, made up of physical and human elements. e approach throughout is to analyse both the physical problems and the human responses to understand why the issues are issues, and how solutions can be found. Although particular issues are apparent at particular spatial scales, all have some manifestation on the global scale. In the case of climatic change brought about by atmospheric pollution, the issue aff ects the entire planet because the atmosphere is a globally functioning system. In other cases, more localized issues have become so commonplace or aff ect such a signifi cant fraction of the total global resource that, cumulatively, they occur worldwide. Examples of such cumulative issues include biodiversity loss (through its worldwide distribution of change) and soil erosion (by aff ecting a large proportion of agricultural land). Since so many environmental issues now are of a global nature, many believe that the time has come for a complete rethink of the way we view these issues, for a change in the philosophy that lies behind the ways in which people interact with the environment, and for a change in the methodology with which the interactions occur. e approach most widely advocated by this rethink is sustainable development, and this chapter looks in more detail at the need for sustainable development and some of the ways in which it might work.
