GuíaBurros: Approaching the debate on: climate change, ecological crisis and sustainability E-Book

Rosmel Rodríguez

• Herausgeber: Editatum
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Spanisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 116

Beschreibung

This is a book that has a main goal to disclose information in an easy way about the ecologic crisis and climate change, phenomenon that are the great threat of the XXIst century. They both affect the whole planet and could change life as we know it, risking future and present generations. This essay encourages to think about the vulnerability of a world that is still getting over a pandemic, and a world that is facing big international geopolitical challenges. It is also an informative book that intends to raise awareness to the reader, pointing out the importance of protecting and preserving the environment, so we can assure the natural balance of our common home, planet Earth.

Leseprobe

GUÍABURROS: APPROACHING THE DEBATE ON: CLIMATE CHANGE, ECOLOGICAL CRISIS AND SUSTAINABILITY

ROSMEL RODRÍGUEZ and MIGUEL LUIS LAPEÑA

www.cambio-climatico.guiaburros.es

© EDITATUM

© ROSMEL RODRÍGUEZ

© MIGUEL LUIS LAPEÑA

Queda prohibida, salvo excepción prevista en la ley, cualquier forma de reproducción, distribución, comunicación pública y transformación de esta obra sin contar con la autorización de los titulares de propiedad intelectual. La infracción de los derechos mencionados puede ser constitutiva de delito contra la propiedad intelectual (art.270 y siguientes del Código Penal). El Centro Español de Derechos Repográficos (CEDRO) vela por el respeto de los citados derechos.

En la redacción del presente libro mencionamos logotipos, nombres comerciales y marcas de ciertas empresas u organizaciones, cuyos derechos pertenecen a sus respectivos dueños. Este uso se hace en virtud del Artículo 37 de la actual Ley 17/2001, de 7 de diciembre, de Marcas, sin que esta utilización suponga relación alguna del presente libro con las mencionadas marcas ni con sus legítimos propietarios. En ningún caso, estas menciones deben ser consideradas como recomendación, distribución o patrocinio de los productos o servicios o, en general, contenidos titularidad de terceros.

Primera edición: abril de 2023

Te invitamos a registrar la compra de tu libro o e-book dándote de alta en el Club GuíaBurros, obtendrás directamente un cupón de 2 € de descuento para tu próxima compra.

Además, si después de leer este libro lo has considerado útil e interesante, te agradeceríamos que hicieras sobre él una reseña honesta en cualquier plataforma de opinión y nos enviaras un e-mail a [email protected] para poder, desde la editorial, enviarte como regalo otro libro de nuestra colección.

www.editatum.com/op/registro-guiaburros/?id=gb-177

About the authors

Rosmel Rodríguez Barroso is a Venezuelan political scientist dedicated to environmental activism in Europe. He is currently European Climate Pact Ambassador, he also a lecturer at the Central University of Venezuela in the field of political ecology.

He is a PhD candidate at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, he holds a postgraduate course in management for Sustainable Development from the University of Cambridge and another postgraduate course at the London School of Economics in public policy analysis, and a MBA at the EUDE Business School-Camino Jose Cela University, Madrid.

Focused on environmental awareness and dissemination, he writes articles for different digital magazines in Spain, Portugal, and France, as well as participating in international conferences addressing the debates on climate justice, ecological justice, and socio-environmental conflict resolution.

Miguel Luis Lapeña Cregenzán diploma in Business Studies, postgraduate in Business Management, postgraduate in Leadership, also holds a university degree in conflict resolution and peacekeeping.

He has held the position of councillor for culture, youth and economic development of Fraga town council (Huesca, Spain), as well as mayor of Fraga 2015-2019. He currently is the general manager of planning and economic development of the Government of Aragón (Spain), he also European Climate Pact Ambassador.

Miguel Luis has written more than sixty articles about social responsibility, circular economy, sustainability and management in medium-sized and family businesses. He’s also the author of the book GuíaBurros: 2030 Agenda. The great challenge of sustainable development.

He is part of the United Nations Project UN Volunteers, and is also a member of Global Academy: Global Goals as a researcher on SDG 8, SDG 12, and SDG 16.

Acknowledgements

It is important to remember and honor all the environmental activists who have fought and given their lives to preserve and protect our planet. From defenders of wildlife and oceans, to those working on mitigating climate change and promoting sustainability, these brave individuals have been instrumental in raising awareness and protecting our common home.

They often face great risks and dangers, from intimidation and violence to imprisonment and murder. But they continue to work tirelessly to protect our shared home, inspiring others to join the fight.

We remember all environmental activists who have lost their lives and offer our gratitude and respect to those who continue to work towards a sustainable and healthy future for our planet and all the life forms that inhabit it.

We would like to thank all the organizations that have supported us, especially Directorate-General for Climate Action of the European Union, and the Think Net Sostenibles.Org, as well as the ngo ZORA (Movimento Associativo de jovens marcoenses), and the publisher Editatum for making this project a reality.

Rosmel Rodríguez and Miguel Luis Lapeña

Introduction

The book you are now holding has as a main goal raising awareness and disclosing information, in the easiest way possible, on the ecological crisis that breaks out as the great threat of the XXI century, affecting the whole planet and all the living things within. This monster can change life as we know it, putting in great risk both present and future generations.

This is a book that invites you all to reflect on the vulnerability of a world that is still suffering the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, a world that is facing a global geopolitical challenge due to the war conflicts that are taking place at this very moment. It also intends to make you reinforce your talent.

This book is also an information source whose aim is to enrich and form an idea of the current situation this planet is living.

You’re holding a work that promotes climate the action principle, and has a goal the democratisation of the access to this information in this one book, easy to understand, that presents the importance of protecting and preserving the environment, so we can ensure the natural harmony of the Earth, our home.

The authors values are very similar in terms of climate action, sustainability and social commitment against ecological crisis. It’s been born from all the debates had about said issues, where they merge their academic studies, activism and work to reach the dissemination of all those experiences by means of these pages, that intend to give an approach, in an easy and amusing way to the environmental difficulties. It also serves as background information so the reader can penetrate in these matters and promote climate action.

Rosmel Rodríguez and Miguel Luis Lapeña have been publishing together, over these last years, several op-ed articles in Think Nets, blogs and via social networks. They have also been part of several seminars and conferences in Spain and abroad, always from their expertise field of sustainability and 2030 Agenda values. Within these lines, you will travel through the main environmental problems and challenges leading to the basic concepts and strategies that try to give both explanations and solutions to this global problem.

The authors show the importance of the youth, the NGOs and all the communities organised in the climate action as, through their training and awareness, they’re the real leaders against these huge life-threatening difficulties we’re facing.

The world’s current climate situation is very complex, and that’s why this writing is born, to highlight the problem of global warming and, specially, because now it’s the time to work all together and responsibly to reach world agreements concerning climate change, as most of them have paid only lip service.

From this starting point, the authors took the next step, enthusiastically writing this book, which focuses on acting, contributing and explaining several issues within ecological crisis, 2030 Agenda and sustainability, and trying to help and comprehend both the environmental situation and its consequences. Environmental awareness and the joint action of everyone involved in the fight against climate change will be the best bet.

This outreach work intends to highlight the importance of discussing these issues in civil society, both in public and private sectors. Working for this generation and try to make this world ameliorate the one and only goal. This should be the main concern for the different countries, institutions, international and national organisations with fierce commitment.

This work has been carried out with enthusiasm and in coordination, putting in value several sustainable development goals to reach its target: raise awareness and encouraging public-private collaboration.

To finish up this introduction, the authors invite you to read this book, sharing it and divulge its information, deepening its debates to, once and for all, preserve this planet and all living creatures.

Now it’s time to read, reflect and work all together in our mutual home, the Earth. This is our message for you: we need to take action and commit ourselves to society and the environment.

The authors

Approach to climate change

Most of us have seen, read or heard about the uncommon climate phenomenon all over the planet. Weather is warmer than usual, the different seasons are more and more inconsistent, loss of harvests is a threat to entire towns and villages, outbreaks of diseases that were already eradicated, mass extinction and endangerment of animal and plant species and all the consequences of continuous heat waves.

With all this going on us, the authors, can powerfully claim that we are living the worst consequences of the change of the planet’s natural processes. This discouraging situation raise a number of questions: What is going on? What is that climate change thing? How did this happen? What is its cause? What is the actual situation of the planet? This chapter will outline all these questions about the very complex phenomenon considered to be the greatest threat of the XXI century. That is why we invite you, the reader, to give it a good thought.

Climate is usually something hard to explain, as we usually think of it as short-term variations in the weather, and we tend to only remember extreme climate events such as heat waves, cold snaps, storms, drought or torrential rainfall. But climate is, in its simplest definition, a measurement determined by the average atmospheric weather values analysed throughout the years. We can observe certain normal changes in the patters of the different climate variable, as they are not always strictly static. We should underline that this planet’s climate has changed a lot throughout history, although this changes, usually caused by the planet’s natural processes and rarely by external agents, occur gradually over thousands of years. A good example is the famous story of the meteorite that impacted the Earth’s surface, and the gasses and dust in the biosphere that drastically changed the environmental harmony of the time and provoked the extinction of countless living things, among which were dinosaurs.

Climate change can be understood as a variation of these average conditions, only in an accelerated manner, way far from the natural development of the planet and caused by external elements. That is to say, this phenomenon is mainly caused by the impact of the human being in the planet; it has an anthropogenic origin.

Today, climate change is the main topic in most of the countries’ agenda, as it is a global problem, a problem that knows no borders and without solution in isolated areas. This is a problem shared by all countries. That is why the climate crisis has to be approached as a global problem that requires both national and international cooperation to develop plans and strategies to curb the effects of climate change.

But this is not a recent concern, we have been seeing this coming for the last fifty years. In this book we’ll take the definition of climate change given in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC): “The climate changes, directly or indirectly attributed to human activities, that alters the global atmospheric composition, adding the natural variability of the climate in the face of comparable weather”.

The develop of mankind has been largely based on the use of natural resources and the change of the environment to satisfy our needs. To understand better the impact of the human activity in the planet we must look back more than two hundred and fifty years, during the industrial revolution, when human activity over the planet starts to intensify, hen this industrial development would transform society as never seen before. This meant a before and after in the history of humanity. A major population increased was registered, innovations in agriculture and animal farming encouraged a higher production of food, progress in transport and infrastructure were key to commercial development, to mass production, and a greater connectivity across the globe. All this to mass exploitation of natural resources. We knew these resources were limited, but progress had a price.

We’ve been living beyond our means as a consumer society, we use way more resources that the planet can regenerate, exceeding the biophysical limits and risking the planet’s natural harmony, as well as its internal functioning and self-regulation.

These actions caused such a big impact on our planet that a change in the geological era occurred: we moved from the Holocene era, when human civilisation developed in a post-glacial period, with a more or less constant and stable weather for over 11000 years, to this new geological era called by scientists the Anthropocene.

The Anthropocene is understood to be a period marked by major geological changes drove by human activity. Scientists and writers state that from, the XIII century onwards, the planet lived this geological era characterised by important climate changes, pollution and loss of biodiversity, leading to huge social crisis and challenges; characterised as well for being so linked with human activity that, from 1950 onwards caused abrupt changes in the planet’s natural functioning inclinations.

These changes take place at the same time than industrial activity and globalisation that, together, contributed significantly to he peaks in human activity, such as commerce and connectivity, as well as the economic growth of emerging countries like Brazil or India.

The Earth’s weather has been characterised by fluctuations having different causes within their own internal mechanisms. One of these regulatory mechanisms would be the greenhouse effect, a natural rise in the average temperatures in the planet’s surface, keeping part of the solar energy thanks to the gases present in the atmosphere: carbon dioxide (CO2), water vapour (H2O), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and ozone (O3).