- The case study I chose to focus on was air pollution and transportation in Mexico. Mexico City has a problem with air pollution that is attributable to the car use there. This air pollution problem is growing and leading to negative health effects. Transportation contributes to about half the city’s total emission, so they tried to implement a program that would not allow cars to be used on a certain day. Not allowing people to drive their cars one day a week ended up doing the opposite of what it was supposed to. This program was inconvenient for the people because they couldn’t get to wherever they needed to be on certain days, so it would cause them to drive more on the days they were able to drive. A result of this program was increased demand for gasoline which meant that people weren’t driving any less and may be driving more than before. This issue involves environmental justice because the development of cars in this area has caused harm to people through negative health effects of air pollution. http://personal.colby.edu/personal/t/thtieten/air-mex.html
- A case study that I researched was one in Greece that tried to solve the problems of putting wastewater directly into the ocean and high withdrawals of groundwater. There are large drink companies in Greece that used to just dump their wastewater into the sea. This led to a cement factory taking the wastewater instead of letting it go to sea. The factory uses this water to de-dust the gases from the cement kiln. This caused the cement factory to use less groundwater because the wastewater can be used the same way. It also offers a more environmentally friendly way for the drink company to dispose of their wastewater. This issue relates to the topic of sustainable development. Water is not an unlimited resource and the less water that is wasted now will lead to more being available in the future. http://www.lafarge.com/en/greece-a-partnership-reuse-waste-water-our-industrial-process
- I come from a town in the suburbs of Philadelphia called Doylestown. Doylestown still experiences development problems like the ones in Mexico City and Greece, but on a much smaller scale. Being a fairly wealth area, Doylestown has many residents who own a car and in many cases more than one. The emission from these cars has an effect on air pollution, but it does not cause any negative health effects for the drivers of these cars. People in Doylestown are contributing to air pollution, but nothing is being done about it because its effects are not noticeable in the area. If the town decided to restrict which days people could drive their cars it would have similar results to Mexico City because it would be ineffective in decreasing the emissions. Doylestown doesn’t have a drink company that has plants in the area, but does use a lot of groundwater. The town’s main source of water is groundwater and any other source of water would be beneficial to reducing the amount of groundwater needed. If Doylestown reused water from a plant or factory of some kind, it would be benefit the town the same way it was in Greece.
3 thoughts on “Development Case Studies”
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Hello Bryan, my name is Doug and one case study that I looked at was Wind Power in Denmark. I noticed that Mexico is having a lot of problems with air pollution, which is causing a negative effect on air quality. I think if they are able to reduce the number of cars and factories as well as implementing this renewable energy source of wind power, they could greatly increase air quality. Denmark has seen countless improvements with both cost and energy efficiency, which allows them to have an energy source that is sustainable.
You can check out my post at http://sites.psu.edu/geog30/2016/02/24/sustainable-impr…ts-douglas-apple/ to look in depth about how Denmark has formed this renewable energy source.
Hello Bryan
My name is Justin. I researched the issues of illegal logging in Africa that led to deforestation, as well as the pollution in the Chesapeake Bay that led to huge decline of the natural water filters, oysters. The oyster issue is resulted in higher levels of pollution similar to the car incentive in Mexico city. I really found the way Greece implemented the use of waste water in cement production. this sustainable development is something the world needs to take note of and integrate into their societies.