Anthropology
Assignment Instructions
(Page 1 of Chapter 13, on Culture and Sustainability, of your textbook poses the question, “What political, economic, and cultural factors are prohibiting world leaders from agreeing on solutions to global environmental challenges?” (Brown, Tubelle de Gonzalez, and McIlwraith, 2017).
Textbook Reference:
Palmer, C. (2017). Culture and Sustainability. Brown, N., Tubelle de Gonzalez, L., & McIlwraith, T. (2017). In Perspectives: An Open Invitation to Cultural Anthropology (pp. 1–20). Arlington, VA: American Anthropological Association.
For this assignment you will write a letter, to the world leader of your choice.
The letter should be about potential solutions to global environmental challenges.
Please include the following:
Describe political, economic, and cultural factors you see as prohibiting world leaders from agreeing on solutions to global environmental challenges.
You will need to support your points with information from the textbook.
Be sure to consider the political, economic, and cultural factors from a broad, anthropological perspective.
Argue for a recommended next steps for the world leader. Describe clear next steps and keep your recommendations grounded in a broad anthropological perspective or support your recommendations from an anthropological perspective.
The letter should be double-spaced and formatted in Times New Roman 12 point font.
The letter should be 1-to-3 pages.
Be sure to cite any factual sources you used (including your textbook) with parenthetical, in-text citations.
Include an APA-style reference page as well
ANSWER
Dear Ms Inger Andersen,
I am sure you and your whole organisation understand that we are now caught in the middle of the very war we have revered for years with the environment. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC), a panel commissioned by both UNEP and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reports that failure to mitigate and adapt to climate change will be “the most impactful risk” facing the world in the coming years worse than the water crisis and weapons of mass destruction (IPCC.ch). You must have seen the record-breaking news that just this month, in the United States, a record heatwave was observed in the South West and it must have struck you the same way it did us, that we were now in a full-blown out war where the risk was our very existence. I would like to take this opportunity and share my thoughts on potential solutions to global environmental challenges and political, economic, and cultural prohibiting world leaders from agreeing on solutions to global environmental challenges.
Human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels for transportation, electricity and heat are responsible for the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The US has tried many ways to prevent global warming with the help of the Clean Power Plan, which was supposed to reduce carbon pollution from power plants as well as the Paris climate agreement so global levels of climate change would begin to decrease. When it comes to the topic of handling climate change, and by extension, global warming, two strategies can be applied, mitigation or adaptation. Measures to mitigate comprises actions aiming at the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and therefore refers to dealing with the causes while measures to adapt are actions aiming at the reduction of vulnerability to the effects of the change and therefore addresses a reaction to the impacts. This is the part where world leaders have continuously failed to agree on one strategy for everyone.
A conflict between the two strategies, mitigation of human behaviour and adaptation has stalled many environmental conservation implementation strategies. While adaptation is local and almost private with immediate and clear benefits, mitigation is global and very public and its effects have far much-reaching consequences making the frontrunner of the two. Mitigation also brings about the variable of the economy where many rich countries bear the resources and choose to reduce emissions and benefit the entire world or to adapt and leave others behind (Rodney 2016). As of now, most of these countries have chosen to avoid mitigation and largely favoured adaptation leaving the rest of the world to fate.
Scientifically, choosing to adapt will only serve for a very short while. Consider greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere from automobiles and factories and the earth’s surface continues to warm up. Ice on the Polar Regions melts in an irreversible process releasing gigatons of heat and trapping methane which further accumulated more natural greenhouse gases and increase atmospheric temperatures even further in a continuous destructive loop that cannot be reversed. By this point, any attempt to adapt will be rendered useless against the fierce impacts of climate change to the levels of extinction of a variety of species on the earth’s surface.
This is where my appeal to the Executive Director, UNEP, comes in. As a branch of the United Nations, UNEP is tasked with the mandate of ensuring global cooperation. As the head of the UNEP, you must bring the entire world to an agreement on which way to best take on climate change. The size of the economy should not be a variable in this fight where the rich have their means and the poor have no options. If we are going to save our planet, it has to be all hands on deck.
References
IPCC.ch. Climate Change 2014. Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Retrieved on 18th July 2020 from https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/ar5_wgII_spm_en-1.pdf
IPCC.ch. Mitigation of Climate Change from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, page 4. Retrieved on 18th July 2020 from https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5_summary-for-policymakers.pdf
Rodney J. Keenan, Craig Nitschke. (2016) Forest management options for adaptation to climate change: a case study of tall, wet eucalypt forests in Victoria’s Central Highlands region. Australian Forestry 79 96-107.
