Sustainable development

Climate change

Sustainable development is a way of meeting the needs of present day generations without compromising the capacity of future generations to meet their needs, for instance by improving the quality of water and the environment, by minimizing the differences in the standard of living throughout the world, and by changing certain ways of living and consuming. UNESCO is helping to open up an avenue of sustainable development focused on human beings and based on respecting the rights of human and democratic principles, on solidarity, dignity, sharing and equality.

1987. The Brundtland Commission defined for the first time the concept of sustainable development before the United Nations.

1992. Government met in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) for the first Earth Summit (United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development). The summit focused on the key question of how to reconcile the demands of the present day with expectations for the future. There were many debates and alarming observations concerning the current state of our planet and the likely evolution of living conditions. To set the problems aright, more than 150 countries worked on a common programme for the twenty first century, called the ‘Action 21 Programme’. Since then this programme has served as the basis for measuring the progress of the made in change in question.

Carbon

Sea Pathfinder

Warm Shallow Water

2002. From 26 August through  to 4 September in Johannesburg, South Africa, 129 States, including some 100 Chiefs if State and 60,000 delegates, met under the aegis* of the United Nations fir the World Summit on Sustainable Development, also called ‘Rio+10’.Particioants reported on the projects that are needed right now. Despite the reluctance of rich countries to commit to figures and dates, this second Earth Summit accomplished at least two objectives: it made a collective decision to lower greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2 percent within the next 10 years, and many States become aware of the urgency of remedying the ills of our planet. Healthy oceans and coastal regions are vital to sustainable development and poverty reduction. This is why, as mentioned earlier, the Action 21 Programme has an entire chapter devoted to the world’s oceans. Their well-being is essential to the survival of living things and to the cultural, social and economic prosperity of human population. To safeguard our survival or re-establish it we must learn how to manage the world’s oceans and coastlines, basing our decisions on scientific knowledge. This concerns all the countries of the world because:    

One country alone cannot study and monitor the world’s oceans on a continuous basis but it should at least be able to tackle the problems that touch its littoral. Subsequent to extensive urban growth in the 1970s, Brazilian cities such as Sao Paulo and its surrounding areas still have major air and water pollution problems. Their beaches are suffering today because the most polluting industries have been relocated on the littoral. All countries depend either directly or indirectly on the world’s oceans for survival and each must thus assume responsibility for its current condition. In addition, countries for which the economy and living conditions depend directly on the ocean must be provided with the means to solve problems on the local leave.

Wind and currents

Wind Power

The sun heats the upper layer if the world’s oceans to a depth of 20 to 30 meters. In doing so it causes the evaporation of enormous quantities of water, which escapes into the air in the form of water vapour. This transfer od heat between the ocean and atmosphere, which is really a transfer of energy*, causes the air to stir, forming winds. Winds are responsible for creating some of the currents that keep ocean water moving. The three types of ocean currents are surface currents, density-driven or thermohaline currents and slope currents.  

                                                                             

Wind Making Current

                    The action of the wind on the water’s surface creates surface currents. But these don’t move just any which way. Blowing along the equator, the trade winds create east-west current. When they reach the continents these currents run along their edges. Due to the spinning of the earth, currents that meet continents are deviated to the right in the northern hemisphere and to the left in the southern hemisphere (Carioles effect), creating the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic and the Australian current in the pacific.

            Density-driven or thermohaline currents are deep currents driven by differences in seawater density, caused by variation in salinity and temperature. These currents are vary cold (around 0°C) and they are much slower than surface currents. It takes several centuries for them to circle the globe.

                                                     

Antarctic Ocean Circulation

                                                                 

    Step-1

                                                                         

Step-2

In 1992, governments from around the world met in Rio de Janerio for the United Nation conference on the Environment and development. This marked the first debate on the question of how to satisfy current needs without harming those of future generations (sustainable development). The conference drafted a very thick report called the Action 21 programme; chapter 17 is devoted in its entirety to the world’s oceans, reminding us that the ocean is indispensable for life.

             The last noticeable of the three currents are the slope currents. They can be explained by the fact that the ocean’s surface is not flat but sloped 2 to 3 meters. This slope increases in the presence of atmospheric low-pressure systems. Currents are created to compensate for these differences in an attempt to make the sea level. The ocean currents and the drain in your bathtub circulate water in the same direction because of the spinning of the earth. In the northern hemisphere water swirls clockwise; in the southern hemisphere it swirls counter-clockwise!

The Oceans: Balancing our climate

                                                                                                                

Greenhouse Effect Photo

The world’s oceans play an important role in regulating world climate. So much so that they have been referred to as weather’s ‘steering wheel’. They act in several ways. First of all, oceans store heat when it is too hot either during the summer or and during the day and then release heat in another season or at night. But oceans are not just storage tanks. They are also vehicles: currents carry heat in great quantities from hot regions to cold regions. And when the heart returns the atmosphere, marine breezes push it towards the continents. This is why it is often warmer closer to the ocean than farther inland. The Gulf Stream, for instance, carries warm water from the tropics and warms up the west coats of Europe. This is the reason the climate in western Europe is much milder than in central Europe.

                                                                   

Sunlight Effect

                                                                 

Sea warm water

                                                                 

Atmospheric

                                                                   

Ice Land animal

                                                                   

Weather Testing

         Rainfall is also directly linked to the oceans. The evaporation of seawater fills the air with water vapour and this creates clouds. The amount of evaporation controls could frequency and size. In the tropics evaporation is so grate during the day that when the sun sets and the air cools down, storm clouds form and cause short and violent downpours. Around 380,000 cubic kilometers of water evaporate from the surface of seas and oceans each year and only one-quarter of this amount falls on the continents. The relationship between the world’s oceans and the atmosphere is extremely complex: winds and currents criss-cross and cause all kinds of climatic variations, from simple sea breezes to terrible hurricanes, which can be devastating. One such variation is called ‘EI Nino’. This large scale oceanic phenomenon occurs in the pacific and upsets the climate over that entire region of the globe, sometimes affecting even greater areas.