Sustainable Development and Urban Environment

Since the industrial revolution, progress of our species has been improving exponentially, while the planet’s environment has been doing the opposite. Production has been increasing greenhouse gases, air pollutants and draining resources. However, certain production has been benefiting economies, reducing poverty, and improving the life of people in certain ways. Making production sustainable, it is important to retain a balance between the triad of environmental sustainability, economic sustainability, and social sustainability. When it comes to production, environmental sustainability as mentioned above, is often the one which suffers. Being economically viable in our time and age is no longer enough, part of the focus has to be shifted to the workers and the environment. Ensuring a healthy environment for both the workers and people around its surrounding context is extremely important, while also providing socially rewarding outcomes to its workers. The control of air pollu...

Poverty is currently one of the hardest obstacles we as a people have to overcome to achieve sustainable development. With nearly half the population living in poverty, eradicating it seems a distant way in the future. Poverty greatly affects both economic and social sustainability. With those living in abject poverty unable to receive appropriate living and sanitation conditions, affecting their health and well-being, a lack of social support, community resilience and many more. The current capitalist system has seen to benefit many countries over the past few decades. With countries like South Korea, India and China, who has opened up their markets, they have seen a great deal of progression within their nation to move away from poverty. Though starting out with a miniscule pay, people of poverty has been given opportunities to pick up skills and increase productivity within the nation. Economic growth within the free-market would also benefit those in poverty by retaining oppo...

As someone born and raised in Singapore, one of the major problems we face and something that is taken for granted by many around the world is water security. Singapore being an extremely small nation has had trouble finding a sustainable resource of water for its residents since the island country was still under the colonisation of the British. For the past century, Singapore’s main resources of water has been a water agreement between their neighbouring country of Malaysia and Singapore. This agreement allows Singapore to purchase water off the Malaysian state of Johor. Since then, Singapore has been looking for alternatives to not heavily rely on its neighbouring country for such an important resource. Singapore currently has four different sources of water, the first being the current trade agreement with Johor. The second is NEWater, a form of water treated from used water (including sewage water), clean enough for drinking purposes. Thirdly, water catchment areas, where ra...

In the recent years, there has been initiatives of reforestation around the globe as an attempt to achieve environmental sustainability. The benefits of planting trees within an urban area is tremendous and not only to the environment but the health and well-being of the residents. Trees as we know, assists in reducing the carbon dioxide and air pollutants found in our urban cities. This contributes to an environmentally sustainable environment and helps mitigate climate change. Similarly, the potential of reforestation within urban areas can help reduce the overall temperature in cities which in turn can reduce the power usage for cooling systems within households. The potential of larger plantation areas might also mean more suitable environments within urban areas for the plantation of fruits and vegetables, further reducing greenhouse gases admitted from transportation of produce from agriculture areas far from the city. The reduced air pollutants within the city also contrib...

I stumbled upon a video recently that briefly puts to the test of a couple of people as to which part of a standard coffee cup (plastic lids with paper cups) is recyclable. Many of them stared blankly into the cup with confusion evident in their eyes, places both parts of the coffee cup amongst the recyclable contents. This had me realise, despite learning about recycling since young, knowing what to recycle and what not to recycle beyond the common paper, cupboard and aluminium cans, is an enormous question mark. After decades of advocating recycling, I believe it has reached the conscious side of people where majority of people would actively attempt to sort their trash into recyclables and non-recyclables. However, many contaminated articles frequently end up falling into the recycling bins, articles such as plastic and garbage bags, garden waste, rubbish and food scraps. This causes a problem as these contaminants will affect the recycling process. Most recycling management c...

With scientific advance, renewable energy is becoming more accessible. Biofuel, biomass, geothermal, hydropower, solar energy, tidal power, wave power, and wind power are examples of different forms of renewable energy. A complete switch to renewable energy would mean energy security for the present and the future, less greenhouse gas emissions, improved public health from reduced air and water pollution, and possibly more stable energy prices, all contributing factors for a sustainable future. However, what is the possibility of the world running solely on renewable energy? If so what are the issues we may face? Many cities have a sustainable plan for the future to be able to run completely on renewable energy within the time frame of 2030-2050. These plans might sound ideal, but there might be an underlying problem to it. The average energy consumption in cities are immense, this means two possible scenarios. The first being, a huge amount of energy saving policies would have to ...