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neurologyYou need to know

• Sustainability means meeting people’s needs now without damaging the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
• The three pillars of sustainability are social sustainability, economic sustainability, and environmental sustainability.
• China introduced the One Child Policy in 1979 to slow rapid population growth and reduce pressure on food, housing, jobs, schools, healthcare, and natural resources.
• The Chinese government enforced the One Child Policy through rules, incentives, monitoring, and penalties rather than relying only on public advice.
• The One Child Policy was intended to support sustainability by reducing pressure on resources and public services while China developed economically.
• The One Child Policy slowed China’s population growth, but it also created serious social and economic consequences for families and society.
• Major consequences of the One Child Policy included pressure on families, restrictions on personal rights, a gender imbalance, and an ageing population.
• Economically, slower population growth reduced some pressure on public spending, but an ageing population and smaller working-age population increase labour shortages, pension costs, and healthcare costs.
• The One Child Policy may have reduced environmental pressure by slowing growth in demand for land, water, food, energy, housing, and transport.
• The smaller households encouraged by the One Child Policy can use more housing, energy, and appliances per person because resources are shared among fewer people.
• The size of the One Child Policy’s environmental effect is uncertain because birth rates were already falling, while industrialisation, urbanisation, and rising consumption also changed China’s resource use and pollution.
• A policy is not automatically sustainable just because it solves one problem; it must be judged across social, economic, and environmental impacts.
• Dubai was once a small desert settlement based mainly on fishing, pearling, and trade.
• Dubai developed rapidly into a global tourist city because of oil wealth, its location, government planning, major building projects, and investment in transport and tourism.
• Tourism has brought Dubai jobs, income, investment, and global importance.
• Tourism brings social benefits to Dubai by supporting jobs, improving transport and leisure facilities, and increasing opportunities for cultural exchange.
• Tourism in Dubai can create social costs, including congestion, pressure on services, unequal access to its benefits, concerns about migrant workers’ working and living conditions, and tension between rapid cultural change and local traditions.
• Tourism in Dubai creates sustainability challenges because it depends heavily on energy use, air travel, water demand, desalination, and large-scale construction.
• Sustainable tourism aims to bring economic benefits without damaging the environment or reducing local people’s quality of life.
• Dubai has tried to make tourism more sustainable through public transport, renewable energy, conservation projects, and greener buildings.
• Dubai’s tourism is best described as partly sustainable because it brings major economic benefits but also creates long-term environmental challenges.
• The Artemis project is a NASA-led space programme, with international partners, aiming to return humans to the Moon and support longer-term space exploration.
• Humans want to return to the Moon for science, technology development, possible resources, international cooperation, and preparation for future Mars missions.
• The Moon is a difficult place for sustainable living because it has no breathable atmosphere, extreme temperatures, radiation risks, and very limited essential resources.
• Humans living on the Moon would need oxygen, water, food, energy, shelter, and waste management systems.
• A Moon base would have very high construction, launch, and resupply costs, although using local resources and recycling materials could reduce costs over time.
• Building and supplying a Moon base could affect Earth’s atmosphere through rocket emissions, while construction, waste, and resource extraction could disturb lunar landscapes and sites of scientific value.
• A sustainable Moon base would need a closed-loop system where resources are reused and recycled as much as possible to reduce reliance on supplies from Earth.

• Classify impacts of a decision or development as social, economic, or environmental, using accurate evidence for each category.
• Explain how a policy or project affects sustainability by linking causes, actions, and consequences across the three pillars of sustainability.
• Evaluate whether China’s One Child Policy was sustainable by weighing intended benefits against social, economic, and environmental costs.
• Evaluate whether tourism in Dubai is sustainable by comparing economic benefits with environmental pressures and social effects.
• Describe how Dubai changed over time by linking its past economy, oil wealth, location, government investment, and tourism development.
• Design a sustainable Moon base by selecting realistic systems for water, food, energy, shelter, and waste management.
• Justify Moon base design choices using sustainability principles, including resource recycling, reduced reliance on Earth, human wellbeing, and cost efficiency.
• Evaluate a Moon base design by identifying strengths, weaknesses, and an overall judgement about how sustainable it is.
• Write a balanced sustainability judgement that considers evidence for and against a decision before reaching a supported conclusion.