CMU101 Essay: Environmental Responsibility, Challenges, and Solutions

This essay provides a comprehensive analysis of environmental responsibility, defining the concept and exploring its significance in the context of growing global challenges such as pollution, climate change, and resource scarcity. It examines the ethical and moral obligations of individuals and institutions, including corporations, in relation to environmental protection and sustainable development. The essay discusses the evolution of societal attitudes towards environmental issues, highlighting the role of activism and increasing public awareness. It also critically assesses the instrumental gaps and shortcomings in current approaches to environmental responsibility, such as unequal resource distribution and infrastructural challenges. Furthermore, the essay emphasizes the importance of international cooperation, strict regulations, and mass movements to ensure that environmental responsibility is taken seriously across the globe. The essay concludes by summarizing the key arguments and emphasizing the need for a holistic approach to environmental stewardship.

Running head: ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY
ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author Note

1ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY
The respective paper is an essay on the definition, scope, explanation and evaluation of
the concept known as environmental responsibility. Environmental responsibility can be defined
as the ways by which many institutional investors and stakeholders (business and society)
evaluate their responsibility towards environment and ecosystem. With the ever evolving and
new kinds of problems such as growing world population, increased pollution, global warming
and greenhouse effect and scarcity of resources, the ecological crisis has taken up a monstrous
part in the society that is affecting the anthropocene tremendously. Therefore, different countries,
nationalities, communities and societies are taking the matters of environmental depletion
solemnly and working together to tackle the issues in a sustainable manner (Epstein 2018). The
respective paper provides an introspection, analysis and review regarding environmental
responsibility and its significance in the society and anthropocene in general.
As humans, our responsibility towards environment is ethical and morally obligatory. As
humans, our duty and accountability towards the environment is one of such aspects in human
life that most of the individuals are aware of but few of them acknowledge and work for its
betterment. However, as the world has progressed with the help of science and technology,
attitude of people towards the environment and ecology has also changed. With the increase in
general consciousness and spread of knowledge, people have begun questioning the condition of
the ecosystem and ecological balance in the society. Many activists have come out who have
been vocal about the environmental rights and responsibilities of the human beings and the
anthropocene as a whole. However, despite of several efforts, we as a society has failed to cope
up with the monstrous environmental degradation and depletion happening all over the world.
The capitalist society has given rise to new kinds of “wants” and “preferences”. With the new
kinds of “wants”. “needs” and “preferences”, the resources of the earth are harnessed and

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exploited to satiate the required want of the society in order to gain profit. With such
unprecedented rate of exploitation of natural resources, the world has started witnessing scarcity
of resources at such as extent that certain resources have become endangered and extinct. As the
resources get depleted, the civilization is seeing an impending doom of its existence. Such
factors have contributed towards environmental responsibility in the case of corporate houses as
well as the general society (Mitchell 2013).
The present generation should understand and acknowledge the fact that the world is not
only theirs but it is for the upcoming generation as well. As a responsible generation, the present
society should make efforts to see to the fact that the environment is utilized in a way that
development of civilization happens with minimum or less exploitation of the ecosystem. Such
development, which is popularly known as sustainable development, need to be incorporated
across the globe in order to survive and thrive in the ecosystem and habitat. Different corporate
sectors, private, public and government sectors have taken up Corporate environmental
responsibility as a part of their “corporate social responsibility” where they have pledged to carry
out business without creating a major harm to the environment. Capitalism, chrony capitalism
and imperialism has started exhibiting concerns regarding their exploitative behavior towards
nature and how they can curb their exploitation. Throughout the world, various organizations and
institutions have been build up that are actively working towards improvement and betterment of
the environment. The respective institutions and organizations have been funded and supported
by many business and political houses. There has been an active participation of the masses as
well, recently, on the topics such as climate change and global warming (Winter and Koger
2014).

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However, it has also to be considered that environmental responsibility has certain
intrinsic and instrumental gaps, or shortcomings in its approach, function and operations. The
world views environmental responsibility as the fundamental responsibility of every individuals
residing in the world. The current environmental approaches are centered on addressing the
contribution of the world to climate change, waste management and water management
(Maynard 2019). The respective policies tend to be multidimensional and multifaceted, yet, the
approaches do not reach to all the sections of the society. The low and lower middle income
groups of the society have few access to environmental conservation methods and resources at
all. It has to be understood that to utilize the resources well, the resources need to be distributed
uniformly. However, with unequal distribution of resources due to economic disparities and
prejudices in the society, the environmental problems and issues have increased to a greater
extent. Moreover, the marginalized sections of the society have few access to education and
enlightenment. They do not understand the urgency of environmental conservation as they have
little or no knowledge regarding such issues. Therefore, such matters are the instrumental and
extrinsic matters that hamper the process of environmental responsibility across the globe. On
the other hand, some countries have infrastructural issues when it comes to environmental
management. Certain countries in the world are playing foul regarding the concept and issues of
climate change recently where they are disregarding the reality of climate change by terming it
as a “hoax” for certain political and administrative gain (Kühne 2019). In such situation, the only
way by which such issues can be tackled is a uniform, strict law that would solemnly judge the
society on the basis of how it treats its environment and bigger mass movements and protest
movements that would ensure that the people and individuals of the society across the globe

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takes the matters of environmental responsibility and accountability seriously and solemnly
(Satterfield et al. 2013).
The respective paper concludes to be an essay on the definition, scope, explanation and
evaluation of the concept known as environmental responsibility. The respective paper has talked
in details about the need for environmental responsibility in every spheres and every institutions
across the globe, including business houses, governments and public sectors, and also the
importance and significance of the same. The paper has also presented an argument regarding the
gaps or problems that is faced while performing environmental responsibility and how can such
issues be tackled.

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References:
Epstein, M.J., 2018. Making sustainability work: Best practices in managing and measuring
corporate social, environmental and economic impacts. Routledge.
Haefele, E.T., 2013. Representative government and environmental management. RFF Press.
Kühne, R.W., 2019. Climate Change: The Science Behind Greta Thunberg and Fridays for
Future.
Maynard, M., 2019. Generation Change. OUR CHILDREN.
Mitchell, B., 2013. Resource and environmental management. Routledge.
Satterfield, T., Gregory, R., Klain, S., Roberts, M. and Chan, K.M., 2013. Culture, intangibles
and metrics in environmental management. Journal of environmental management, 117, pp.103-
114.
Winter, D.D.N. and Koger, S.M., 2014. The psychology of environmental problems: Psychology
for sustainability. Psychology press.