Industry/the Environment/Human Rights
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Human rights are the fundamental freedoms essential to living a full life. Regardless of your sex, race, ethnicity, national origin, economic status or sexual orientation, human rights belong to all people. Throughout history and still today, not everyone enjoys full realization of these rights.
The relationship between the natural environment and human culture is a two-way street. Too often, only one part is asserted: that the form of the natural environment influences (or, in extreme cases, determines) the human culture of a place. Mountains may prove obstacles to communication, but transport technology overcomes the barriers. Climate may limit the growth of certain crops, but irrigation or greenhouse protection can extend a plant's natural limits. As human technology expands, people are able to adapt to the limitation once placed by the natural environment. Besides technological adaptation, humans have increasingly modified their natural environment, shaping it to their needs. Clearing forests for agriculture or grazing, paving surfaces for urban areas, damming rivers, exploiting minerals, polluting air, streams and oceans, are all examples of the permanent changes to the natural world resulting from human culture. In this unit we will explore the relationship and interactions between industry, the environment and human rights. We will wrestle with difficult issues like environmental racism and corporate social responsibility. Essential Questions
Thematic Topics in This Unit |
Enduring Understandings
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The role of technology in the emergence of the Industrial Revolution
New inventions and technologies played an important role in the Industrial Revolution. They changed the way things were powered, how goods were manufactured, how people communicated, and the way goods were transported. These new developments allowed the industrial revolution to grow rapidly and spread throughout Europe and the United States. Urbanization: Factories, Urbanization and Exploitation
Environmental justice is usually defined in terms of nondiscriminatory protection from exposure to environmental toxins or hazards. However, it is more useful to recognize the underlying social determinants leading to inequities that result in environmental injustices. This means that environmental justice is intimately linked to questions of development, human rights, and democratic accountability. Environmental Racism is a type of discrimination where people of low-income or minority communities are forced to live in close proximity of environmentally hazardous or degraded environments, such as toxic waste, pollution and urban decay. |
Social organization through the eyes of Capitalism, Communism, and Socialism
As the Industrial Revolution expanded, industrial nations sought new markets for their goods in other parts of the world. Capitalist nations became imperialist nations, extending their rule over other countries or territories. New types of economic systems developed. For example, capitalism expanded in the United States; socialism in Great Britain and France; and communism in the Soviet Union. Some of these economic systems emerged in response to industrialization, urbanization, and worker alienation. Unit Vocabulary:
Tycoon, Muckraker, Revolution, Environment, Sustainability, Environmental Racism, Corporation, labor, Migration, Urbanization, Advocacy, Pollution, Demographic, Toxicity, Remediation, Gentrification, Ghetto, Infrastructure, Ecosystem, Technology, Factory |
resources
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The Universal Declaration of Human Rights . Click Here