Environmental Protection and Quality of Life

Introduction

To properly analyze the connection between quality of life and environmental conditions, it is necessary to consider all human activities leading to environmental pollution. Rapid urbanization and population growth due to industrialization and technological development, higher expectations caused by a higher standard of living, differences between expectation levels and actual consumption patterns, a lack of public environmental awareness of the negative environmental impacts, as well as excessive consumption of resources make the goals of protecting the environment and improving the quality of life all the more difficult to achieve.

Nowadays, there is a growing awareness of how the environment can impact individual lives. People have long been concerned about environmental degradation and pollution. Environmental protection can ensure the full preservation of environmental quality, biodiversity, and geodiversity, and the rational use of natural resources, which is a basic condition for sustainable development, a healthy life, and good quality of life.

A large part of individual quality of life depends on the quality of the living surroundings. Such quality of life, which relies on the environment, is a good criterion of sustainability since environmental, economic, and social development can be considered sustainable only if they support individual quality of life. The environment in which one lives plays a major role in influencing one’s behavior; hence it affects experiences, decisions and wellbeing, ultimately affecting one’s quality of life (Rastogi et al., 2021).

The relationship that comes to the forefront is that between the individual and the environment, as the environment determines how different socially-conditioned needs are to be met. The objective living conditions, which determine how the needs are being expressed and met, are a common topic in sociological studies. Such an approach to quality of life allows the different environmental effects on the individuals to be studied, including the effects from the physical as well as social and economic environments (De Groot & Steg, 2006). Moreover, in addition to diagnosing the effects of the state of the environment, the quality-of-life principle can also be used to analyze the impact of environmental changes on individuals. This is of paramount importance, considering that continuous environmental change is an integral aspect of sustainable development. With their mere existence, humans act on and alter the environment, adapting it to themselves and their own needs. Unlike other living organisms, humans create and connect cultural, social, economic, and political events.

Conceptually, quality of life is closely related to sustainable development, because sustainability refers to a balance between environmental, social, and economic qualities, which is why the concept should be introduced as an evaluation measure of sustainability and the environment at an individual level. Quality of life is defined as a range within which individual needs are met, which depends on the physical, social, and economic environments (Diener, 2000). It could be argued that quality of life reflects the social dimension of sustainable development. The idea of quality of life of healthy individuals was first brought into focus by WHO in 1993 (WHO, 1993). Due to the increasing significance of environmental conditions for the concept of quality of life, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe drafted an additional protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights concerning the right to a healthy environment (Council of Europe, Parliamentary Assembly, 2009).