Environmental Sustainability in Developing Countries

Running head: ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES 1
Environmental Sustainability in Developing Counties
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Environmental Sustainability in Developing Countries
Sustainable development is generally defined as the development that achieves its
obligation without affecting the ability of the future generation to meet their basic needs for
survival. There is mutual dependency in the areas of sustainability that are intertwined and they
include: environment, economy and the society that we live in thus their effects overlap and
when there is change in one of those key fields it will greatly have an impact on the other two
(Sneddon, Howarth and Norgaard, 2006). This essay illustrates that developing countries have
unsustainable environment due to industrialization and the urge of the countries to be more
advanced in terms of technology. Similarly, this has led to ignorance of majority of the
developing countries in terms of conserving environment and thus has focused their attention
towards development and economic growth.
Generally, the non-renewable energy source has triggered more harm than good to our
lovely environment and the entire ecosystem. The fossil fuels that are found in our ecosystem
have a great impact to our environment when handled in appropriately include: natural gas, coal
and petroleum (oil). The combusted fossil fuels contribute to a larger percentage of air pollution
by producing CO2 that has impact on the living organisms occupying that locality when emitted
to the ecosystem (Lotfalipour, Falahi and Ashena, 2010). Fossils fuels were formed from the
living organisms that once lived in the ancient years and thus form part of the ecosystem. In the
last few years’ majority of the developing countries have depended on the fossil fuels to
propagate their economy to the level of the developed states thus in the process end up emitting
greenhouse gases (Searchinger, et al. 2018). The effects of greenhouse gases have been widely
witnessed and thus have impact to our environment leading to climatic changes and higher
temperature making the developing countries to look for other renewable sources of energy that

ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
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can be substituted instead. Similarly, department of Economic and Social Affairs in the UN
emphasize that climatic change is one of the biggest challenges in the developing countries that
needs to be tackled with before vision 2030.On the other hand, high temperatures lead to variable
precipitations that is associated with the climatic changes which threatens the rate of food surplus
in the developing countries. Accessibility to clean water is a necessity that every citizen of a
country wishes nevertheless, they are more frequent floods that contaminate the waters and are
all linked to the varying climatic changes. This effect impairs economic growth specifically in
low income dependent countries. Nonetheless according to Paris Agreement in 2015, the
international community has tried to set goals and mechanisms that will aid in tackling the
climatic havocs thus by holding the increase in the global temperature to below 2 degrees that is
above pre industrial levels. Seemingly, for these goals to be transformed to reality there must be
a dramatic cut in the fossil fuels. Despite all the negative impacts that may result from the fossil
fuels, larger percentage of African countries still have the notion that for their economic growth
to raise they have to depend on the fossil fuels.
On the other hand, renewable energy aids a majority of the developing countries by
providing them with wind power, geothermal energy, biomass and solar energy thus helps to
reduce the dependency on natural gas and oil (Kanagawa and Nakata, 2008). It has come to the
realization of the developing countries that investing on the renewable energy source is
affordable and does not have any negative impact on the ecosystem as compared to the fossil
fuels that greatly destroys the environment. Additionally, renewable energy is vital and
beneficial when the developing countries invest in it since cost of transmission is low compared
to the fossil fuels and can be transmitted to the local and rural remote areas with ease. Theirs has
been interest in the renewable energy production and transmission in the recent years due to the