DHS Environment (Lecture Notes)

GP Lecture: The Environment (T3W6 2024) ------------------------------------------- CONTENTS 1. Definition 2. Value and Importance 3. Environmental challenges 4. Who is to be blamed? 5. Saving the Environment 6. CR Evaluation Framework 7. Enduring Understandings ------------------------------------------- 1. Definition An environment is the combination of all of the physical, chemical, and biological factors acting upon an organism or an ecological community. The interaction of these factors determines the form and survival of living things and of the environment itself. (Encyclopedia Britannica) ==================== 2. Value and Importance Importance: This is our home planet. Given that there is no other habitable planet that is comparable (not at least within the next few centuries), our existence depends on it. It is the source of all that we need to sustain life and we need to conserve it to ensure the continued functioning of modern life and society as we know it. What value does the environment have for us? • Ecological value: Natural ecological systems support the natural processes that allow for life on earth. They ensure biodiversity, climate management, water management, natural resource management, and others. Currently, we are staring our very extinction in the eye because for a span of a few hundred years, we forgot nature’s ecological value. • Economic value: Provisioning of raw materials for products that range from our basic needs to luxury goods and services, as well as energy, all of which help make up our current modern lifestyle. Besides that, our economies are driven by industries that derive their raw materials from nature, including forestry, agriculture and pharmaceutics. For Singapore, it contributes significantly to the tourism section through the intangible benefits it brings. Recently, with the efforts to save the environment, new sectors have emerged, such as carbon trading, green technology and recycling.

• Cultural value: Many cultures imbue elements in their natural environment with symbolism and significance, that continues to be important today. These help shape the identity of many peoples. E.g. Grand Canyon’s wild, dramatic and almost harsh beauty represents America’s Wild Wild West, which the first frontiersmen conquered. • Aesthetic Value: • We appreciate nature for the beauty of its landscape, flora and fauna with many artists inspired by it. E.g. Van Gogh’s painting - ‘Starry Night’. • When we come face to face with the wonders of nature, we feel a visceral emotional response such as awe, wonder and joy. In that moment, we are removed from the quotidian concerns of life, the mundane routine details that can be almost soul-deadening. E.g. More dramatically, for Victor Frankl, nature’s beauty took him away from the cruelties of life in the concentration camps. • There is a beauty in knowing that we are in the midst of greatness- t