In Harmony With Nature

Suhaas Sabella

The recent occurrence of COP28, the annual meeting of the world’s political leaders coming together to set out an action plan to tackle various environmental issues, brought much significance, as well as many questions. As the world’s population grows at an alarming rate, it is being reflected in the rapidly rising demand for goods and the accelerating extraction of the world’s resources. With it results the lasting impacts of waste, water usage and carbon emissions. While these summits try to take an initiative in aiming to balance environmentally conscious efforts to save the planet as well as catering for the needs of the global population, is sustainable development actually viable?

COP28’s intentions of reducing the negative environmental impact on our planet seemed far, with governments delegating a "transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner". While this does seem to show that governments are more aware of this climate issue, the agreement neither forces countries to pursue this action, nor does it specify a time frame, therefore limiting the urgency of the matter. These ‘simplistic’ agreements continue to be disregarded- the Paris agreement of 2015 called for ‘fossil fuels to be phased-out', yet globally, government spend more than two times as much of the global GDP on fossil fuel subsidies than they do on education.

Other actions involved the wider availability of carbon capture and storage techniques, where huge technologies ‘suck in’ carbon. In any case, they don’t discourage the use of natural resources. If anything, they promote manufacturers to use more, as they would believe there is less of an effect on the environment.

This clearly shows that there is a lack of true consideration towards the state of the climate from the people in the world who have the most power to take action. Until there is a sense of urgency, not just to acknowledge but to actually agree upon them, then sustainable development will not happen. Yes, countries would develop, but in the long term there would be no more resources to use, no more species intact and humanity will slowly cease.

Moving onto the impacts of climate change, a significant proportion of these impacts have been directed at LICs, who are experiencing the worst of the droughts, floods and other impacts of climate change, with HICs such as China and the USA mainly to account for this. This prevents these poorer countries from developing and instead shifting their focus onto alleviating the impacts and damage it has caused. In the long term this will also come back to bite higher-income countries as well. Droughts and floods, along with infertile soils will slowly deplete the world’s food sources. The metals and fossil fuels extracted from the ground to make goods like phones and cars will deplete at some point. Fresh and potable water will deplete to the point where showering and cleaning dishes will become tedious. The luscious greenery and biodiversity will soon be reduced to dry emptiness, faster than we know it.

Sustainable development is crucial in order for humans to live ‘in harmony with nature’ without damaging it, for many years to come. But that opportunity for humans and nature to co-exist is disappearing. Yes, it is important that humanity develops and that our needs are satisfied but sustainable development allows nature to also develop. Unless there is a proper urgency to take action before the tipping point, sustainable development will never be viable, whatever action is taken place then.