Contemporary Issues in Environment

 

Globalization and Cross Cultural Issues

Globalization

- Globalization refers to the free movement of goods, services, capital and information across the national boundries.
- It helps in extending social relations across the world.
- It is caused due to advancement in transportation and communication.
- It is an ongoing process by which regional economics, societies and culture are integrated through a global network of communication and trade.

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Benefits of Globalization

1. Increase in innovation
2. Rich cultural exchange
3. Improved living standards
4. High average income
5. Global market

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Effects of Globalization

1. Permanent economic shift
2. Increasing homogeneity
3. Job insecurity in developed countries
4. Fluctuation in price due to competitive market
5. Cultural degradation due to influence of modern culture

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Cross Culture

- Culture refers to the ideas, customs and social behavior of the particular people or society.
- Cross culture is defined as the initiative to increase understanding of different group or society so as to develop effective communication and marketing efforts to reach out customers outside its traditional market.
- It refers to the forms of interaction between members of different cultural groups.

- The successful international trade depends upon the smooth interaction of employees from different cultures and regions. So, positive cross cultural experience is very important.
- Cross cultural competence helps the individuals to adapt effectively in cross cultural environments.

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Public Private Partnership (PPP)

- Public private partnership is the government service or private business that is operated and funded through a partnership of government and one or more private sector companies.
- It involves a contract between a public sector authority and a private party.
- The main aim of PPP is to provide service to the public in more efficient and cost effective manner.

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Importance of PPP

- PPP helps in the development of public sector infrastructure in more efficient and cost effective manner.
- It allows both government and private sector to work for public and generate timely solutions to the problems.
- It provides a unique collaborative way for public management.
- It also helps in globalization.
- It ensures balance between risk and reward for both government and private sector through risk sharing mechanism.

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Safety, Risk and Benefit Analysis

Safety

- Safety refers to the condition of being protected from physical, social, financial, emotional, occupational or educational failure, damage, error, accidents or harm.
- It defines the controlled mechanism to achieve acceptable level of risk.
- Safety is the first thing to maintain while delivering any engineering products.
- For eg: during the development of any software product by an engineer, he/she must review the risks involved in the project. He/she must guarantee that the product will not harm any people or society in any way.

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Risk

- Risk is the potential that a chosen action will lead to a loss.
- Every project has some sort of risk associated with it.
- Risk management is the process to identify, evaluate and prioritize risks and then coordinate so as to minimize, monitor and control the probability or impact of the risks on the projects.
- The sources of risk are financial uncertainty, project failure, legal liabilities, accidents, natural disasters, and so on.

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Risk-Benefit Analysis

- Risk benefit analysis is the analysis made by comparing the risk of a situation to its related benefits.
- A certain level of risk is acceptable in any project.
- A project is undertaken if the risk in the project is in acceptable level and has more benefits.

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Development and Environment

Sustainable Development

- Sustainable development is defined as the development activities that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
- It concerns development activity with respect to environment and economic growth.

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Environmental Impact Assessment

- Environmental impact assessment is the assessment of the possible positive and negative impact that a proposed project may have on the environment.
- It helps to predict environmental impacts at early stage in project planning and design.
- It helps in finding the proper control solutions to reduce adverse effects of the project on environment.

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EIA Process

1. Screening (Determining whether EIA is needed or not)
2. Scoping (Determining the scope for EIA)
3. Prediction and Mitigation (Prediction and mitigation of various environmental impacts)
4. Management and Monitoring (Plan for managing and monitoring environmental impacts)
5. Audit (audit of EIA process is carried out after implementation)

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SWOT Analysis

- SWOT stands for Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats.
- SWOT analysis is a strategic planning method used to evaluate strength, weakness, opportunities and threats involved in a project.
- It helps to identify all the internal and external factors that are favorable and unfavorable to achieve the objectives of the project.
- Strength and weakness determine the internal factors.
- Opportunities and threats determine the external factors.

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Conflict and Dispute Management

- Dispute occurs when one party claims or demands while the other party contradict the claim.
- Dispute is caused in engineering profession for the following factors:
1. Cost in time, money and lost opportunities
2. Image and uncertainty
3. Behavior
4. Employment and cash flow

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Process to resolve dispute

1. Amicable settlement
2. Adjudication (An arbiter reviews evidence and argumentation, to come to a decision)
3. Dispute resolution board
4. Arbitration (Method of resolving disputes outside the court; a dispute is submitted in agreement of both parties, to one or more arbitrators who make a binding decision on the dispute)
5. Litigation (Court)

- Any dispute should be settled amicably.
- If the dispute can not be solved amicably, adjudicator should be used. (price up to one hundred million rupee)
- Otherwise, a 3 member dispute resolution committee should be established. (price more than one hundred million rupees)
- If a person is not satisfied with decision from adjudication or dispute committee, such dispute should be resolved through arbitration pursuant to prevailing law.

- The disputes leading to arbitration includes:
1. Late payment by employer
2. Denial to pay interest on late payment even if provided in contract
3. Instructions given to contractors are unclear
4. Delay in providing design