Climate Change & Sustainable Development
Every socio-economic development activity consequence of the increasing amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. These increased GHGs accumulate in the atmosphere and disrupt the natural energy balance between the incident solar radiation and re-radiation from the earth. This results in the raising of temperature in the earth’s surface and causes a change in the climate. This change will persist for a long period in the future and enforce stresses on the human lifestyle and natural systems.
Climate change ultimately affects socio-economic development and also directly disturbs the natural systems, in the form of non-climate stresses such as changes in land use leading to deforestation, wildfires, and land degradation.
Climate change and sustainable development are interrelated in a continuous sequence, categorized by substantial time delays. Adaptation actions can diminish the impacts of climatic events and disasters both on human and natural systems. While mitigation reduces the potential amount of greenhouse gas emissions. Development actions strongly support the capacity to both adapt to and mitigate climate change in any province. Likewise, adaptation and mitigation strategies are dynamically associated with the fluctuations in the climate system and the prospects for ecosystem restoration, food production, and long-standing economic development.
Thus, climate change impacts are part of the larger question of how complex social, economic, and environmental sub-systems interact and develop prospects for sustainable development. Economic development affects ecosystem balance and, in return, is affected by the degradation of the ecosystem. Poverty can be the outcome of this environmental degradation.
Material and energy-intensive lifestyles and continued high levels of consumption supported by non-renewable resources, as well rapid population growth are not likely to be consistent with sustainable development. Similarly, extreme socio-economic inequality within communities and between nations may undermine social cohesion in promoting sustainability and making effective policy responses.
Meanwhile, socio-economic and technology-related policy decisions made for non-climate-related reasons have significant implications for climate policy and climate change impacts along with other environmental issues. Consequently, critical impact thresholds, and vulnerability to climate change impacts, are directly connected to environmental, social, and economic conditions, and institutional capacity.
