Climate Change and Developing Countries - Issues and Policy Implication - Environment Assignment Help

Assignment Task :

SECTION A (60) Read the article below and answer the questions follow. 

Climate Change and Developing Countries: Issues and Policy Implication Although climate change is increasingly becoming clearer as a practical phenomenon by the day, its academic conceptualization is still fluid. This is because it has largely remained an academic and policy issue. For this reason, its conceptualization has been shrouded in high sounding technical lexicon that makes comprehension very challenging. Climate change is a consequence of anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHG) Emissions related to resource consumption and production processes, which simultaneously influences the productive basis of the economy and human living conditions. According to Rhaji (2012, 3), climate change is a pattern of change affecting global or regional climatic conditions, as measured by changes in such factors as average temperature and rainfall, or an alteration in frequency of extreme weather conditions. This variation may be caused both by natural processes and human activity. The problem or phenomenon of climate change arises because the concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) produced by human activity has increased significantly (Spore, 2008). Some of the major features of climate change include natural resource depletion, reduction of the Ozone layer, and global warming. These features are, to a larger extent, mutually reinforcing. Of the three, global warming has attracted a lot of attention so much that it is often seen as synonymous with climate change. It suffices to state at this point however, that climate change is a long-term phenomenon, and may take at least seventy years to manifest. 

Global Warming This refers to the palpable increases in global temperature that causes the atmosphere to be warmer. According to Nicholson (1998, 158), the earth is getting warmer principally because of human activity which results to the release into the atmosphere of certain gasses, mainly Carbon Dioxide, CO2. As large quantities of these gasses concentrate in the atmosphere, they trap heat, which would have escaped if much of those gasses were not in the atmosphere, thereby raising the temperature of the earth. this is what is referred to as the Green House effect. Some of the major effects of global warming include rising of sea level, more frequent violent and catastrophic storms, hurricanes, etc. As earlier mentioned here, human activity is the chief driver of climate change, and in this regard, deforestation has been fingered as one of the main contributing factors of global warming. A brief look at the role of forests in maintaining environmental balance will suffice here. Forests play quite a number of significant roles in maintaining the equilibrium of, not just the environment, but in the entire system of planet earth. for instance, forests play very cardinal roles in maintaining soil fertility, and by implication in guaranteeing food security, among others. This is normally done through the storing and transpiration of water for precipitation. Forests also serve as natural habitat for a lot of animals and plants. For example, the forests in Gabon alone is said to contain over 8000 plant species, almost 200 mammals and over 670 species of birds. Furthermore, forests communities, who often depend on it to meet their basic needs. But most of all, forests are said to play determining roles in carbon sequestration, where they act as nature’s store house for CO2. Deforestation does not only lead to the disruption of these vital life support processes, it also is a major source of Green House Gases emission in to the atmosphere thereby aggravating global warming. 

Climate Change: Issues and Policy Implications for Developing Countries Mitigating the challenges of climate change requires both national and international collaboration amongst relevant key actors. This is so because a number of environmental problems defy national boundaries to affect, often in a challenging manner, the entire geographical fabric of the international economic and political systems. This necessitates the adoption of some measures of international agreements and conventions. Secondly, global 

environmental change is inextricably linked to national and international systems of production, distribution and consumption. Indeed, as Hurreii and Kingsbury, (1992:3) rightly observed, the increasing generation of environmental problems and the effective and efficient workings of the international economy engendered by globalization cannot be separated. Thus, this integrating aspect of global climate change necessitates a corresponding integrated international agreement and framework to both manage international environmental problems and deal with environmental problems within national confines in a manner that will not place individual states, or a group thereof, at any political or competitive disadvantage. The closely interwoven relationship between climate change on one hand, and domestic and international economic, social, and political spheres on the other generate a multiplicity of impacts requiring a multi-dimensional approach for its effective management. Among the dominant issues on the agenda of developing countries and in the discourses on climate change is the lack of capacity of the international framework for managing environmental problems to enforce its numerous agreements due largely to an ability to extract compliance, especially from industrialized countries. Often, this leaves developing countries at the receiving end. While they contribute relatively insignificant proportions of the causations of climate change generally, this group of countries bears the brunt of the costs of mitigating climate change. This becomes obvious when we consider the relative scientific and technological weakness of the developing countries who also lack the financial, and other logistics capacity to mitigate the effects of global warming. The apparent insatiable hunger for raw materials by developed and newly industrializing economies, such as Brazil, Russia, India, China, etc is a growing source of concern. While this category of countries invades developing countries in search of raw materials, often oil, timber and other resources in return for development assistance, developing countries, desperately in need of development assistance, often oblige them. In the process of exploring and/or exploiting natural resources, vast forest and other natural resources are depleted and abused in the developing countries’ quest for primary sources of energy. Obviously, this convergence of interests leaves the environment worse off, and developing countries bear the biggest amount of adverse consequences. The issue at stake therefore, is one of hard choices for developing countries. Should developing countries refuse the offer of generous development assistance which compromises the need for sustainable use of resources? 

After several rounds of negotiations, it is more compelling and desirable for developing countries to adopt policy frameworks that will respond to their domestic exigencies first before those of the international system. It is therefore strongly suggested that environmental policies must be people-friendly, people-centred and people- driven. Source: Maikasuwa. A. S. (2013). Climate Change and Developing Countries: Issues and Policy Implication. Journal of Research and Development Vol. 1, No.2, 2013 

QUESTION 1 (40)

1.1 Making reference to the article above, discuss the climate change issues and its policy implications on developing countries. (20) 

1.2 Forests play very cardinal roles in maintaining soil fertility and food security. Examine the key policy challenges and bottlenecks hindering a greater contribution of forests to food security. (20) 

This Environment Assignment  has been solved by our Environment  Experts at My Uni Paper. Our Assignment Writing Experts are efficient to provide a fresh solution to this question. We are serving more than 10000+ Students in Australia, UK & US by helping them to score HD in their academics. Our Experts are well trained to follow all marking rubrics & referencing style.

Be it a used or new solution, the quality of the work submitted by our assignment experts remains unhampered. You may continue to expect the same or even better quality with the used and new assignment solution files respectively. There’s one thing to be noticed that you could choose one between the two and acquire an HD either way. You could choose a new assignment solution file to get yourself an exclusive, plagiarism (with free Turnitin file), expert quality assignment or order an old solution file that was considered worthy of the highest distinction.