scholarly journals Islamic Perspectives on Reducing Meat Consumption to Promote Earth’s Sustainability

ICR Journal ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-174
Author(s):  
Daud Abdul-Fattah Batchelor

Livestock farming and meat consumption, especially red meat, both have a severe impact on the Earth’s environment and sustainability, causing forest destruction, wildlife extinctions, excessive greenhouse gas emissions, and global climate change. Currently, as a protein source for the world’s rapidly expanding middle class populations, increased meat consumption will likely put excessive strain on Earth’s well-being, exceeding planetary boundaries of safety. Although God Almighty provided livestock for human benefit, today considerations of protecting the higher objectives (maqasid) of Islamic shariah, the fiqh principle (qawa’id) of reducing harm, and also promoting social equity and physical health, require Muslims to reduce meat consumption and live more simply, like the Prophet (pbuh) and his Companions, who were ‘semivegetarians’. The review of animal sacrifice in Islam, particularly during the annual Eid ul-‘adha celebration, confirms that Islam strongly promotes these practices. However, the alternative to sacrificing (fasting for Tamattu’ and Qiran pilgrims) should be availed upon wherever possible, not just during Eid ul-‘adha. Mujtahids should investigate in which situations, such as following large-scale human calamities or cases of severe environmental harm, Islam may permit the giving of sadaqah or other aid instead of the traditional sacrifice.

2014 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonard Sandin ◽  
Astrid Schmidt-Kloiber ◽  
Jens-Christian Svenning ◽  
Erik Jeppesen ◽  
Nikolai Friberg

Abstract Freshwater habitats and organisms are among the most threatened on Earth, and freshwater ecosystems have been subject to large biodiversity losses. We developed a Climate Change Sensitivity (CCS) indicator based on trait information for a selection of stream- and lake-dwelling Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera and Trichoptera taxa. We calculated the CCS scores based on ten species traits identified as sensitive to global climate change. We then assessed climate change sensitivity between the six main ecoregions of Sweden as well as the three Swedish regions based on Illies. This was done using biological data from 1, 382 stream and lake sites where we compared large-scale (ecoregional) patterns in climate change sensitivity with potential future exposure of these ecosystems to increased temperatures using ensemble-modelled future changes in air temperature. Current (1961~1990) measured temperature and ensemble-modelled future (2100) temperature showed an increase from the northernmost towards the southern ecoregions, whereas the predicted temperature change increased from south to north. The CCS indicator scores were highest in the two northernmost boreal ecoregions where we also can expect the largest global climate change-induced increase in temperature, indicating an unfortunate congruence of exposure and sensitivity to climate change. These results are of vital importance when planning and implementing management and conservation strategies in freshwater ecosystems, e.g., to mitigate increased temperatures using riparian buffer strips. We conclude that traits information on taxa specialization, e.g., in terms of feeding specialism or taxa having a preference for high altitudes as well as sensitivity to changes in temperature are important when assessing the risk from future global climate change to freshwater ecosystems.


Author(s):  
Kenza KHOMSI 1,2 ◽  
Houda NAJMI 2 ◽  
Zineb SOUHAILI 1

Temperature is the first meteorological factor to be directly involved in leading ozone (O3) extreme events. Generally, upward temperatures increase the probability of having exceedance in ozone adopted thresholds. In the global climate change context more frequent and/or persistent heat waves and extreme ozone (O3) episodes are likely to occur during in coming decades and a key question is about the coincidence and co-occurrence of these extremes. In this paper, using 7 years of surface temperature and air quality observations over two cities from Morocco (Casablanca and Marrakech) and implementing a percentile thresholding approach, we show that the extremes in temperature and ozone (O3) cluster together in many cases and that the outbreak of ozone events generally match the first or second days of heat waves. This co-occurrence of extreme episodes is highly impacted by humidity and may be overlapping large-scale episodes.


1996 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 263-281
Author(s):  
Paul Loubere

The objective of this exercise set is to integrate knowledge from several scientific disciplines and learn something interesting about the way the world works. I want to use some basic principles from physics, biology, and geology to see how a large scale planetary process, the transport of heat over the earths surface, operates and has operated over time. This topic is of basic scientific interest, and it has real importance to the growing societal interest in global climate change. This applies whether natural variation in climate or human induced change are under discussion. The set of exercises that follows will examine how energy is absorbed by the earth from the sun; how and why this energy is distributed over the earth's surface; what controls energy distribution; how we can track the energy distributing process using the oceanic microfossil record; and what that record shows us about variation of heat distribution with time. This is an exercise in global climate change because the climate system is driven by the heat distribution process.


1999 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-84
Author(s):  
Jinro Ukila ◽  
Moloyoshi Ikeda

The Frontier Research System for Global Change—the International Arctic Research Center (Frontier-IARC) is a research program funded by the Frontier Research System for Global Change. The program is jointly run under a cooperative agreement between the Frontier Research System for Global Change and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The aim of the program is to understand the role of the Arctic region in global climate change. The program concentrates its research effort initially on the areas of air-sea-ice interactions, bio-geochemical processes and the ecosystem. To understand the arctic climate system in the context of global climate change, we focus on mechanisms controlling arctic-subarctic interactions, and identify three key components: the freshwater balance, the energy balance, and the large-scale atmospheric processes. Knowledge of details of these components and their interactions will be gained through long-term monitoring, process studies, and modeling; our focus will be on the latter two categories.


2019 ◽  
Vol 374 (1778) ◽  
pp. 20190032 ◽  
Author(s):  
John I. Spicer ◽  
Simon A. Morley ◽  
Francisco Bozinovic

Documenting and explaining global patterns of biodiversity in time and space have fascinated and occupied biologists for centuries. Investigation of the importance of these patterns, and their underpinning mechanisms, has gained renewed vigour and importance, perhaps becoming pre-eminent, as we attempt to predict the biological impacts of global climate change. Understanding the physiological features that determine, or constrain, a species' geographical range and how they respond to a rapidly changing environment is critical. While the ecological patterns are crystallizing, explaining the role of physiology has just begun. The papers in this volume are the primary output from a Satellite Meeting of the Society of Experimental Biology Annual Meeting, held in Florence in July 2018. The involvement of two key environmental factors, temperature and oxygen, was explored through the testing of key hypotheses. The aim of the meeting was to improve our knowledge of large-scale geographical differences in physiology, e.g. metabolism, growth, size and subsequently our understanding of the role and vulnerability of those physiologies to global climate warming. While such an aim is of heuristic interest, in the midst of our current biodiversity crisis, it has an urgency that is difficult to overstate. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Physiological diversity, biodiversity patterns and global climate change: testing key hypotheses involving temperature and oxygen’.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu. G. Bespalov ◽  
K. V. Nosov ◽  
P. S. Kabalyants

AbstractGlobal climate change, along with other large-scale consequences of human impact upon the nature, increases the risk of biosafety threats associated with the disturbance of stability of communities of living organisms. In this regard, the topicality of the challenge of developing methods for monitoring and correcting homeostasis mechanisms that can support this stability is a problem of premium importance.The work aims at investigation of techniques of remote detection of toxic cyanobacteria clumps in water area, with the use of dynamical modeling.


2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (32) ◽  
pp. 61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Chini ◽  
Peter Stansby ◽  
Mike Walkden ◽  
Jim Hall ◽  
Judith Wolf ◽  
...  

Assessment of nearshore response to climatic change is an important issue for coastal management. To predict potential effects of climate change, a framework of numerical models has been implemented which enables the downscaling of global projections to an eroding coastline, based on TOMAWAC for inshore wave propagation input into SCAPE for shoreline modelling. With this framework, components of which have already been calibrated and validated, a set of consistent global climate change projections is used to estimate the future evolution of an un-engineered coastline. The response of the shoreline is sensitive to the future scenarios, underlying the need for long term large scale offshore conditions to be included in the prediction of non-stationary processes.


Author(s):  
Stepan Pozniak

Soils are one of the most important, basic resources that is essential for the creation of a large number of goods and services that are an integral part of the ecosystem and human well-being. Soils, both actively used and others, provide ecosystems services which are important for regulating of the global climate and for large-scale regulation of various natural resources. About 33 % of global soil resources are degraded due to erosion, pollution, compaction, salinization, acidification, dehumidification and other adverse processes associated within appropriate management of ground water resources. About 33 % of global soil resources are degraded due to erosion, pollution, compaction, salinization, acidification, dehumidification and other adverse processes associated with inappropriate management of soil resources. Excessive lowing of the land fund, non-compliance of modern agricultural systems, neglect to agronomic land use norm sand ecology, lack of proper system of soil fertility management contributes to the development of degradation processes. The degradation is almost inevitable companion of humanity for many centuries of its development. Of course there are differences in this process, and they depend on the level of development of society, the understanding of the patterns of soil formation, and the state of the economy. Providing the rational, scientifically grounded use of soil, Ukraine, possessing a huge reserve of soil fertility, may be one of the world leaders in the production of high-quality food products. However, unfortunately, the soil does not occupy a privileged position in society. It is considered exclusively from the utilitarian side as a means of getting of agricultural products. The most important thing for the survival of humanity is the attitude of people to the soil, which is formed by culture, economic and social system of society. In the modern world, when the interconnection of elements in the mechanism of the world economy intensifies and the number of the population is steadily increasing, the management of soil resources plays more important role than ever before. Societies that have almost exhausted their environmental potential are often forced to maximize their crops to feed the population, regardless of the depletion of the soil and the need to protect and preserve it for next generations. Key words: soil, degradation, use of the soils, fertility, ecological crisis, society, soil area.


2021 ◽  
pp. 355-404
Author(s):  
Alan Boyle ◽  
Catherine Redgwell

This chapter looks, inter alia, at how international law has been used or could be used to help tackle the most significant environmental challenge of our time. This challenge is global climate change. Not many topics provide a good illustration of the importance of a globally inclusive regulatory regime focused on preventive and precautionary approaches to environmental harm—or of the problems of negotiating one on such a complex subject. Solutions to global climate change have not been easily forthcoming. The chapter looks at the efforts of the international regulatory regime to address these challenges by recourse to novel ‘market based’ mechanisms and differential treatment. An example is the post-Kyoto scheme for reducing greenhouse gas emissions through ‘nationally determined contributions’. In the end, the chapter argues, it is likely to be technology that enables us to grapple with the causes of climate change, not law, but law can drive technological change, as it has with ozone depletion and acid rain.


Author(s):  
Gabriela Carpejani ◽  
Anna Silvia Assad ◽  
Lucia Rodrigues Godoi ◽  
Jaret Waters ◽  
José Baltazar Salgueirinho Osório de Andrade Guerra

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