The climate change and environmental degradation has posed some grave threats to the environment. According to UN Water, some 1.1 billion people worldwide lack access to water, and a total of 2.7 billion find water scarce for at least one month of the year. The recent IPCC’s “Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C” revealed that the impacts and costs of 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming will be far greater than expected. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says a 1.5°C average rise may put 20-30% of species at risk of extinction. If the planet warms by more than 2°C, most ecosystems will struggle. Coral reefs are projected to decline by a further 70-90% at 1.5°C.

A number of technological solutions are at place to mitigate the effects of climate change. These technologies have helped humankind to find solutions to the problems posed by the climate change. However, in a world where climate change, air and water pollution, biodiversity loss, water scarcity, ozone depletion, and other environmental problems overlap, a fix in one arena can cause trouble or pose challenges in another.

• Desalination technology: Desalination has become a solution for many cities located in coastal areas. The saline water from the sea is treated and the water is made potable. More than 16,000 desalination plants are scattered across the globe producing fresh water, according to a first global assessment of the sector’s industrial waste.
• Challenges posed: The plants produce more briny toxic sludge than fresh water. For every litre of fresh water extracted, a litre-and-a-half of salty, chemical-laden sludge called brine is dumped—in most cases—into the ocean. That’s enough to cover the state of Florida in a 30-centimetre (one-foot) layer of slime.
• Hydro Fluoro Carbons to protect ozone depletion: The 1987 Montreal Protocol banned industrial chemicals (CFCs) dissolving stratospheric ozone, which protects us from the Sun’s dangerous ultraviolet rays. To replace the forbidden molecules, used in aerosols and refrigerants, scientists invented a new category known as HFCs.
• Challenges posed: But there was a small problem that didn’t emerge until much later: the substitutes—while harmless to the ozone layer—were dangerous greenhouse gases, thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide or methane. That meant a new, protracted round of negotiations over an amendment calling for the phase of HFCs, which was finally adopted in 2016.
• Bio-fuels: The rise in oil prices in the 1970s, and later the looming threat of climate change, boosted the production of bio-fuels made from corn, sugarcane and palm oil. It seemed like a great idea: planet-warming CO2 released into the atmosphere when the bio-fuels were burned would be partially offset by the CO2 absorbed while the plants were growing.
• Challenges posed: The energy needed to transform and transport plant-based fuels undercuts their original purpose. To make matters worse, the newly emerging market created a perverse incentive to cut down tropical forests—far more efficient at soaking up CO2—to make way for sugarcane and palm oil trees. When it comes to climate change, projections for how humanity can cap global warming under two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) assume a major role for bio-fuels. But recently scientists have calculated that an area up to twice the size of India would be needed to cultivate them, which may not leave enough land to grow food.
• Wind farms: There are some 350,000 wind turbines scattered across the globe producing more than 500 gigawatts of clean, green energy and supplying four percent of global electricity demand.
• Challenges posed: But wind farms are also bird killers: up to 328,000 birds—especially those that fly at night—are felled every year by fast-spinning blades in the United States alone, where there are some 50,000 turbines. They also disrupt ecosystems.
• Case Study: A scientific study of wind farms in the Western Ghats, a UNESCO-listed range of mountains and forest spanning India’s west coast, found that predatory raptor birds were four times rarer than in adjacent areas. Their absence cascaded down the food chain and radically altered the density and behaviour of the birds’ prey. There was, in particular, an explosion in the raptors’ favourite meal: fan-throated lizards.
• Solar energy: Photovoltaic solar panels absorb sunlight to generate electricity. This has powered many homes in developing and under-developed countries. It has shown the potential to reduce the consumption of coal for electricity generation.
• Challenges posed: However, the solar panels pose a challenge. A study by French investigative journalist Guillaume Pitron reveals this. The fastest growing renewable energy source includes critical metals and minerals that require a lot of energy to extract and often leave a trail of environmental devastation in their wake. Wandering the world to research his book “The Rare Metals War”, Pitron said he saw mountains in southern China “cut in half vertically,” and “toxic lakes” in Inner Mongolia.

Conclusion:

The need of the hour is to create solutions that are sustainable. The solutions themselves shouldn’t pose further challenges, easily scalable and cost saving.  Better Research and Development techniques with right validation is the way ahead before deployment on large scale.