Answer:
Scientists have theorized that fugitive emissions of methane from fracking wells could make gas worse than coal pollution for the climate. Fracking wells also leak volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which cause asthma, cancer, and severe illness. ... The researchers pinpoint oil and gas development as the main source.
1. Endangered species conservation
The problem: Southeast Asia sits almost entirely in the tropics, and as such, is covered in rich, dense, biologically diverse jungle. As a result of a wide number of factors — from poaching to deforestation — many native species are endangered.
2. Air pollution
The problem: Air pollution is a global problem, but Southeast Asia does have among the worst air pollution in the world, only behind East Asia and Indiasrc. The region is prone to relatively frequent “hazes,” which are the result of widespread fires. These fires are generally started intentionally by either small-scale farmers or companies trying to clear land of trees so they can exploit it the following year.
3. Destruction of coral reefs
The problem: Southeast Asia is known for its incredible coral reefs, and, subsequently, its incredible diving. The area known as the “Coral Triangle” — mostly centered on the islands of Oceania — is the most biologically diverse marine environment in the worldsrc. Unfortunately, the reefs of Southeast Asia have been seriously degraded over the past several decades.
This is the result of several factors: First, the ocean absorbs about a quarter of all the carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere each yearsrc. While this actually helps reduce the effects of global warming temporarily, it also means that more of that carbon is going to be converted into carbonic acid, increasing the ocean’s acidity level over time. This acidification fundamentally weakens coral reefs, making them more prone to disease, and less likely to recover from disturbances.
The second factor is overfishing. Not only does the widespread removal of fish species harm the coral reef ecosystem, but many of the methods used to catch the fish harm the system itself, such as blast fishing (the use of dynamite), and cyanide fishing (using sodium cyanide to stun the fish and capture them for personal aquariums).
A third factor is actually dive tourism. When divers visit coral reefs, they’ll often interfere with the ecosystem in a way that can damage it — whether by walking on the reefs or taking specimens home for themselves.
4. Deforestation
The problem: As cities and populations grow, more land area is needed. Often, this area is created out of forests. In Southeast Asia specifically, given its position in the tropics, much of the forest that’s destroyed is rainforest, one of the most biologically diverse ecosystems on the planet. Rainforests are not only home to more than half of the world’s plant and animal speciessrc, but they also provide over a quarter of our natural medicinessrc, and they absorb over a quarter of our planet’s carbon dioxidesrc.
So naturally, the effects of deforestation of rainforests can be catastrophic — not only does it destroy plant and animal habitats, but it also accelerates climate change and potentially deprives us of undiscovered life-saving medicines.
5. Water security
The problem: The world as a whole may well be close to reaching “peak water,” the point where we start consuming fresh water faster than it can be replenished.
6. Increased urbanization
The problem: Southeast Asia is not immune to the global shift away from rural living and towards city living, and this shift carries a good number of potential environmental consequences, especially if it’s not guided by smart and sustainable policies. Urbanization can result in overcrowding, pollution, poor sanitation, and political instability — which in turn could lead to violent conflict, which is never good for the environment. Additionally, if cities are planned poorly, massive urban sprawl is often the result, which in Southeast Asia would bring about more deforestation, habitat destruction, and carbon emissions.
Answer:
A multitude of meanings is attached to the idea of development; the term is complex, contested, ambiguous, and elusive. However, in the simplest terms, development can be defined as bringing about social change that allows people to achieve their human potential. An important point to emphasise is that development is a political term: it has a range of meanings that depend on the context in which the term is used, and it may also be used to reflect and to justify a variety of different agendas held by different people or organisations. The idea of development articulated by the World Bank, for instance, is very different from that promoted by Greenpeace activists. This point has important implications for the task of understanding sustainable development, because much of the confusion about the meaning of the term 'sustainable development' arises because people hold very different ideas about the meaning of 'development' (Adams 2009). Another important point is that development is a process rather than an outcome: it is dynamic in that it involves a change from one state or condition to another. Ideally, such a change is a positive one - an improvement of some sort (for instance, an improvement in maternal health). Furthermore, development is often regarded as something that is done by one group (such as a development agency) to another (such as rural farmers in a developing country). Again, this demonstrates that development is a political process, because it raises questions about who has the power to do what to whom.
Development transforms the environment
But development is not simply about the interactions between human groups; it also involves the natural environment. So, from another point of view, development is about the conversion of natural resources into cultural resources. This conversion has taken place throughout the history of human societies, although the process has generally increased in pace and complexity with time. If we use a system diagram to illustrate - in very general terms - what an economy does, we see that the basic function of an economy is to convert natural resources (in the forms of raw materials and energy) into products and services that are useful to humans (see 2.1.1). Inevitably, because conversion processes are never totally efficient, some waste is produced which is usually discarded into the environment as various forms of pollution. Therefore, the environment is both a source and a sink in relation to economic processes: it is a source of raw materials and energy and a sink for pollution.
2.1.1 A representation of a generalised economy

Source: unit author
Resources, energy, and waste
An example of this type of conversion would be the extraction of crude oil from the North Sea, its fractionation and distillation in oil refineries, and its conversion to petroleum or diesel. In turn, those products (petrol and diesel) are converted - through combustion processes - into useful work (such as transportation) whilst the waste products are released into the atmosphere as greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide). If we add together all of the conversion processes that occur, for instance, in a given country, we would have a sense of the total input and output of that national economy. This could be expressed in terms of the total natural resources and energy consumed, the total products and services created and the total pollution generated. (In fact, the total value of the finished products and services created in a given country is expressed using a
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