Environment

Word "environment" is most commonly used describing "natural" environment and means the sum of all living and non-living things that surround an organism, or group of organisms. Environment includes all elements, factors , and conditions that have some impact on growth and development of certain organism. Environment includes both biotic and abiotic factors that have influence on observed organism. Abiotic factors such as light, temperature, water, atmospheric gases combine with biotic factors (all surrounding living species). Environment often changes after some time and therefore many organisms have ability to adapt to these changes. However tolerance range is not the same with all species and exposure to environmental conditions at the limit of an certain organism's tolerance range represents environmental stress.

Environmentalism is very important political and social movement with goal to protect nature environment by emphasizing importance of nature role in protection of the environment in combination with various actions and policies oriented to nature preservation. Environmentalism is movement connected with environmental scientists and many of their goals. Some of these goals include: 1. to reduce world consumption of fossil fuels 2. to reduce and clean up all sorts of pollution (air, sea, river...) with future goal of zero pollution 3. emphasis on clean, alternative energy sources that have low carbon emissions 4. sustainable use of water, land, and other scarce resources 5. preservation of existing endangered species 6. protection of biodiversity Future of our planet lies in our hands First goal reducing the world consumption of fossil fuels is very important to fight against climate change and global warming phenomenon. Fossil (non renewable) fuels are mainly responsible for global warming as during the combustion of fossil fuels carbon dioxide (one of the greenhouse gases) gets released into the atmosphere. In fact reducing the emission of carbon dioxide is the most important thing if we want to successfully fight global warming. Reducing and cleaning up pollution is also very important task. Every day we hear the news about tremendous pollution of our air, seas, rivers. Pollution creates unhealthy environment, and often causes many health problems and different diseases. Third goal is very obvious. World needs a lot of energy and if we want to reduce the use of fossil fuels then we should have some other alternative energy sources to satisfy world energetic needs. These alternative energy sources such as wind energy, solar power and hydroenergy, have all great potential, and are also ecologically acceptable. However their use is still negligent on global scale and fossil fuels are still dominant energy sources. Water is precious but also scarce resource that needs to be

preserved for future generations. Sustainable use of water, land and other resources is therefore vital to enable future life of our planet. The number of endangered species is lately increasing rapidly and many species have become extinct in the last 50 years or so. Preservation of endangered species is important to save number of ecosystems and to protect biodiversity of our planet. Biodiversity is very important in enabling the life on earth since all species are connected in perfectly balanced circle, each with their very own role. Humans are not owners of this circle but only one small part that needs even the smallest parts of this circle for its proper functioning. However we seem to be forgetting this more often than not.

Environmental economics Why do we use economics in environmental policy?

The main reason is that in our society the environment has become a scarce resource. Since economics is about how to tackle scarce resources, it can often be useful when dealing with environmental problems. One way of using economics is to ensure that the costs and the benefits of environmental measures are well balanced. Although it is difficult to estimate costs and benefits, there is an increasing demand that this is done before new environmental policy is decided on a European level. With the use of market-based instruments, environmental goals can sometimes be reached more efficiently than with traditional command and control regulations.

Externalities

A major cause of environmental degradation is the presence of external environmental costs. Open access to many environmental resources, which are regarded as common property by economic agents, means that these agents lack incentives to take the full costs of environmental degradation into account. Such costs will tend to increase over time as resources are degraded or depleted and thus become scarcer.
Sustainable growth. Economic growth is influenced by the relative scarcity of environmental resources, as the environment is used for the extraction of material inputs and the disposal of residuals. Establishing a meaningful definition of sustainable growth is a first step in analysing the interactions between the environment and economic growth. It is conceivable that the degradation of environmental resources might significantly reduce future consumption potential. On the other hand, measures taken to reduce environmental degradation may entail costs in terms of foregone production and consumption. There is thus a cost-benefit trade off that needs to be clarified.

Ecological problems climate change global warming Pollution Deforestation endangered animals.

Philippines Environmental Issues

Environment - uncontrolled deforestation especially in watershed areas; soil erosion; current issues: air and water pollution in major urban centers; coral reef

degradation; increasing pollution of coastal mangrove swamps that are important fish breeding grounds
Environment party to: Biodiversity, Climate Change, Climate Change-Kyoto international Protocol, Desertification, Endangered Species, Hazardous Wastes, agreements: Law of the Sea, Marine Dumping, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship

Pollution, Tropical Timber 83, Tropical Timber 94, Wetlands, Whaling signed, but not ratified: Air Pollution-Persistent Organic Pollutants

Environment definition- http://ecologicalproblems.blogspot.com/2008/08/environment-definition-andmeaning.htmlenvironmental economics-http://ec.europa.eu/environment/enveco/index.htm F:\dev eco\CIA - The World Factbook -- Philippines.mht