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It is my sincere desire to see environmental issues take a strategic place in the program of any government. Environmental issues should be a central concern in the 21st century. Most social and economic issues will have a major environmental component. Environmental issues require new ways of approaching and resolving problems both locally and globally. It is becoming increasingly imperative that people have a well-developed environmental literacy. That is, people must have a strong working knowledge of how the natural systems of our planet work and how human activity affects and may be harmonized with the environment. They need to develop habits of mind that will enable them to become wise, empowered people who will act to keep their environment healthy and functioning in order to meet the needs of all its citizens.
The challenge starts by allowing environmental literacy emerge as a major task for us as a society. Many parts of our society - including home, family, school, community, church, workplace, interest groups, and the media - can play a major role. I feel that acquisition of environmental literacy is a developmental process, taking place over a lifetime; that is, there are degrees of environmental literacy that build and grow from simpler to more complex levels. It is aimed at developing a people that is aware of and concerned about the total environment and its associated problems, and which has the knowledge, attitudes, motivations, commitments and skills to work individually and collectively toward the solution of current problems, as well as the prevention of new ones.
The quality of the environment affects the quality of our lives. Our actions as youths have a cumulative impact on the quality of the environment that sustains us. Our future, and the future of generations yet unborn, depends on choices we make on a day-to-day basis. It is essential that our educational systems develop and nurture environmentally literate people. Environmental Sanitation is (a) the promotion of hygiene and, (b) the prevention of disease and other consequences of ill-health, relating to environmental factors. There are certain environmental factors include: disposal of human excreta, sewage, household waste and other waste likely to contain infectious agents, water drainage, domestic water supply, and housing. These are some of the problems that are found in some areas in my community.
?gThe health of a nation is the wealth of the nation?h: this is a statement that you would always hear from most people that have taken time to understand and plan their environment. Environmental Planning is the process of effectively structuring the environment to be stable and balanced anytime there is an intended change cause by human. It burns my heart, and it is quite pathetic and disheartening, that in my area, there is still a lot to be done to change the attitudes of the people in order to make them aware of their environment and the adverse effects they impose on the environment. I have lived here all my life and it has continued to change more to the worse aspect than for better. Humans, in most cases, stand as threats to the stability of their immediate environments; every human has effect on his society, and it could be either positive or negative, but it is the role of the government to combat all negative effects man places on his environment and maintain the positive ones on his society.
We need people to be aware of possible hygienic practices of the communities, basic knowledge, skills and human behaviours as well as social and cultural factors concerning health, life-styles and environmental awareness. These include: Personal hygiene (washing, dressing, eating, etc), Household cleanliness (kitchen, bathroom cleanliness, etc), community cleanliness (waste collection, common places, etc).
There are a number of ways to balance the human effects in my area. We need to take necessary incentives to reduce waste, and also establish relevant measures to manage those created ?gre-usability.?h There are good reasons for encouraging re-usability including: energy and raw material savings: many single-trip products are replaced by one re-useable one, thus reducing the need for the manufacture of new products, reduced disposal costs, costs savings for business and the consumer, and new market opportunities. Recycling saves natural resources, energy, our environment, disposal capacity and costs, and recycling is good business.
After identifying recycling as a possible way out of saving our environment from instability we must set initiatives that would handle the collection of recyclable materials and make available the required and adequate infrastructure. Every citizen of a country should considered that they all have roles and responsibilities in combating issues involved in waste generation, regulation, management and disposal, waste reduction, re-use, recycling, composting.
To ensure that environmental issues are taken seriously we would continue to encourage youth organizations to organize seminars, campaigns and press releases to educate and sensitize the general public on environmental awareness. The aims of this campaign should be to protect and improve the environment, and to integrate the environment with other policies across governments and in international forums. It is one of the four objectives of sustainable development. Actions to protect the environment also produce benefits such as housing (through improved energy efficiency of buildings), social progress (through action to combat fuel poverty) and economic growth (through more efficient use of resources, such as re-use, recycling and recovery of waste).
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Temitope Adeoye Oketunji
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Comments
a really good write-up wilson | Jun 23rd, 2003
i Think it was a well thought-out and organised article.Especially the way you tried to fuse "uncommon" subjects with more common ones.Keep it up!
Jeffrey | Nov 6th, 2003
Disguisting the way we treat our world and take it for granted, we think that the Earth will always be there for us. We pollute without mercy and do not even think of cleaning up the pollutions. Our floors are constantly littered with the garbage of today's generation of kids. We have absolutely no respect for the revolving sphere that we live on. Our planet is one big home, without it there probably would be no humans. The earth depends on us and we depend on it...... One cannot live without the other, think about it, without the Earth, where would we live? Without us? The Earth would be a vast jungle with no civilization to inhabit it and put its natural resources to use thus making it a desolate orb in a large universe.
A nice piece Faniyi Oluwagbemiga Gbentado | Jun 29th, 2004
Tope, I am really impressed with this article of yours.It's well-thought of. Environmental problems will continue to be a recurring issue until we start, not only to talk about it, but also to act accordingly. Thank you for the thought.
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