AP®︎ World History: Topic 9.3 Flashcards

High-yield crops, irrigation, fertilizers, pesticides, and mechanization increased food production but could deplete water, increase soil salinity, and pollute soil and water

Coal, petroleum, and natural gas burned for industry, electricity, and transportation, releasing air pollutants and greenhouse gases

Large-scale removal and conversion of forests, causing habitat loss, erosion, disrupted water cycles, and increased atmospheric carbon dioxide

Forest loss driven by Brazilian roads and settlement policies, logging, mining, cattle ranching, soybean farming, and global commodity demand

Declining biological and economic productivity of drylands due to pressures such as overgrazing, overcultivation, deforestation, poor irrigation, and drought

Semiarid region south of the Sahara where drought, population pressure, marginal farming, overgrazing, poverty, and state policies contributed to land degradation

Soviet river diversions for cotton irrigation shrank and salinized the sea, collapsing fisheries and producing toxic dust, unemployment, illness, and water disputes

Intensified disputes over limited water, land, forests, fisheries, minerals, and energy, whose outcomes depend on access, institutions, and political decisions

Harmful atmospheric substances from industry, power plants, vehicles, household fuels, mining, and burning that cause disease, smog, acid rain, and environmental damage

Deadly 1952 smog caused when cold weather trapped coal smoke over London, leading to thousands of excess deaths and support for the Clean Air Act of 1956

Contamination by sewage, industrial waste, mining runoff, oil, plastics, fertilizers, and pesticides that harms ecosystems, food supplies, and human health

Natural process in which atmospheric gases absorb and re-radiate heat; human emissions strengthen it and raise global temperatures

Heat-trapping gases—including carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and manufactured gases—whose rising concentrations strengthen the greenhouse effect

Climate change caused mainly by human activities, especially fossil-fuel combustion, industrial production, agriculture, and deforestation

The principle that environmental benefits, harms, and decision-making power are distributed unevenly among social groups and communities

Principle that all states share responsibility for climate change but have unequal obligations because of differing historical emissions, wealth, and capacity

The 1997 climate agreement that placed binding emissions targets mainly on developed countries, reflecting their greater historical responsibility

The 2015 climate agreement using nationally determined commitments to keep warming well below 2°C and pursue a limit of 1.5°C.

Growing withdrawals from rivers, lakes, and aquifers for agriculture, cities, industry, and rising living standards reduced water available to other users

The long-term increase in Earth’s average global temperature

Broader long-term changes in precipitation, weather patterns, ice cover, sea level, oceans, and ecosystems, including global warming