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Current State of Global Energy

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The World Energy Outlook 2021 from the International Energy Agency (IEA) examines the shifts in global energy demand and the challenges associated with achieving net zero emissions by 2050. Here is an 800-word summary addressing the questions on changes in energy demand and main challenges in the future. Changes in Global Energy Demand Over the Last 50 Years In the last five decades, global energy demand has grown significantly, driven largely by economic expansion, population growth, and urbanization. This demand increase spans fossil fuels, which remain dominant, though renewables have grown rapidly in recent years. Until the early 2000s, fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas accounted for around 80% of total energy supply, with limited contributions from renewable sources. Factors such as industrialization in developing countries, particularly in Asia, led to an increase in coal demand due to its role in power generation and industry. The oil demand trajectory was more volatile, i...
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Reflections on UN SDGs implementation

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The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are 17 Global Goals outlined by the UN as a universal call to action to eradicate poverty, safeguard the environment, and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity by 2030. The different goals are based on a principle of interconnectedness with each other where different causality relations might influence the outcome of one over the other. Based on this doctrine UN countries must develop a framework aimed at maximizing potential synergies and disrupting foreseen trade offs in order to achieve the most optimal payoff. To this regard, there is a whole branch of the UNDP specializing in support on SDGs integration in order to tackle upcoming challenges in the most efficient and comprehensive way and provide guidance to different stakeholders on potential approaches, methods, capabilities and spaces to go from to lead systems changes on a daily basis. Globally, the latest available data on the 140 measurable targets shows moderate if not in...
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The Water Challenge: Global North and Global South

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A recurrent issue in the drinking water management of countries in the Global South is the lack of cooperation between stakeholders, gaps of knowledge in policy documents, ineffective enforcement strategies and finally low quality data collection on surface and groundwater condition. Linked to the disconnection of different scales to bring awareness at grass root level implementation, water pollution remains a growing challenge in need of intersectional collaboration to achieve a comprehensive management system (Awoke 2016, Ongley 1994). In order to tackle such problem statement recurrent in the Global South, an interesting application is given by the self-governance of water pollution as a common. Specifically through the individual treatment of rural water pollution (ITRWP), positive health impacts have been reported on the populations. To achieve an equitable health outcome regardless of socioeconomic status, policy alignment must be coordinated at all scales: the government must pr...
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What happened with the Ozone Hole?

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  The Ozone (O3) layer is a naturally produced coat in the stratosphere resulting from the division of oxygen molecules. The purpose of such blanket is to protect planet Earth through the absorption of damaging UV radiation (Royal Geographic Society ).  It was only in the 1980s that scientists started to measure a peculiar hole being created in the ozone concentration above the South pole (Royal Geographic Society). The reason for this phenomenon is the insertion of chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs for short), halons, and carbon tetrachloride containing chlorine and bromine, which, due to their resistance, can live long in the atmosphere until reaching the stratosphere layer and damaging the ozone blanket (Solomon 1988). The reason why this hole generated above Antarctica specifically lies in the deep drop of temperatures during the winter and spring time which allows water vapour to condensate in stratospheric clouds (PSCs). Special reactions occurring within PSCs ...
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The concept of waste now and in the past

"The history of waste mirrors that of the societies that produced it and their relationship with the environment and the resources they mobilized" (Barles 2014). The collection of human and animal waste was first addressed by the Romans through their creation of the cloaca maxima, a sewer system built in the city of Rome to address the clean up of polluted urban spaces discharging the latrines of the city directly into the Tiber river. Later on, this expanded and evolved throughout Europe for example as pit privies in the Middle Ages which were underground reservoirs of urban waste. The inaccurate disposal of human and animal waste as well as disorganization of the urbanities led to an increase in urban pollution. The problem with European cities at the time was the unpaved streets which resulted in formation of putrid mud elevating the surface level through dumping of waste and rubbish and therefore decreasing the health status of urban areas. This led to the rise of the con...
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Evolution of Tragedy of the Commons

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Background: The tragedy of the commons is a concept that describes the depletion of a shared resource due to overuse by individuals acting in their own self-interest: The term was first introduced by William Forster Lloyd in 1833, who used the example of cattle herders sharing a common parcel of land on which they were each entitled to let their cows graze. He postulated that if a herder put more than his allotted number of cattle on the common, overgrazing could result. For each additional animal, a herder could receive additional benefits, while the whole group shared the resulting damage to the commons. If all herders made this individually rational economic decision, the common could be depleted or even destroyed, to the detriment of all. The concept was later popularized by ecologist Garrett Hardin in his 1968 essay titled “The Tragedy of the Commons”. Hardin argued that should a number of people enjoy unfettered access to a finite, valuable resource such as a pasture, they will t...
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Is waste generation the same over time?

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Before the Industrial Revolution People developed the skills to make and maintain the things they owned, e.g. women sewed and knitted while men built and repaired -> Stewardship of material goods The production cycle of goods was also different from today, functioning as more of a closed loop, within which merchants and peddlers didn’t just sell goods, they reclaimed what the family couldn’t reuse and turn them into new goods From 0 to 1750 world population grew from 160 million to 700 million, up to then no relevant sustained growth in per capita income or production was experienced with a world population remaining mostly rural  The slow increase in technological advances was not reflected in an increase in the standard of living as it is for modern times, but instead it reflected in a slow population growth with a more or less stagnant division of wealth The Industrial Revolution The course of the industrial revolution birthed our term for the transition from stable to accele...
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