What is Environmental Degradation?
Environmental degradation is the disintegration of the earth or deterioration of the environment through consumption of assets, for example, air, water and soil; the destruction of environments and the eradication of wildlife. It is characterized as any change or aggravation to nature’s turf seen to be pernicious or undesirable. Ecological effect or degradation is created by the consolidation of an effectively substantial and expanding human populace, constantly expanding monetary development or per capita fortune and the application of asset exhausting and polluting technology. It occurs when earth’s natural resources are depleted and environment is compromised in the form of extinction of species, pollution in air, water and soil, and rapid growth in population.
Environmental degradation is one of the largest threats that are being looked at in the world today. The United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction characterizes environmental degradation as the lessening of the limit of the earth to meet social and environmental destinations, and needs. Environmental degradation can happen in a number of ways. At the point when environments are wrecked or common assets are exhausted, the environment is considered to be corrupted and harmed. There are a number of different techniques that are being used to prevent this, including environmental resource protection and general protection efforts.
Amazon-black-friday
Head over to Amazon for best Black Friday deals
Environmental-degradation
Environmental issues can be seen by long term ecological effects, some of which can demolish whole environments. An environment is a unique unit and incorporates all the living and non-living components that live inside it. Plants and creatures are evident parts of the environment, but it also includes the things on which they depend on, for example, streams, lakes, and soils.
Environmental surroundings get to be divided when technological advancement splits up areas of land. Some examples of this can include streets which may slice through woods or even trails which wind through prairies. While it may not sound all terrible on the surface, there are bad results. The biggest of these results are felt by particular animal and plant groups, the vast majority of which are specific for their bio-region or need a large area in order to make sure that their genetic lines are kept intact.
Causes of Environmental Degradation
Some environmental life species require substantial areas to help provide food, living space, and other different assets. These creatures are called area specific. At the point when the biome is divided, the vast patches of living space don’t exist anymore. It gets to be more troublesome for the wildlife to get the assets they need in order to survive. The environment goes on, even though the animals and plant life are not there to help sustain it properly.
1. Land Disturbance: A more basic cause of environmental degradation is land damage. Numerous weedy plant species, for example, garlic mustard, are both foreign and obtrusive. A rupture in the environmental surroundings provides for them a chance to start growing and spreading. These plants can assume control over nature, eliminating the local greenery. The result is territory with a solitary predominant plant which doesn’t give satisfactory food assets to all the environmental life. Whole environments can be destroyed because of these invasive species.
2. Pollution: Pollution, in whatever form, whether it is air, water, land or noise is harmful for the environment. Air pollution pollutes the air that we breathe which causes health issues. Water pollution degrades the quality of water that we use for drinking purposes. Land pollution results in degradation of earth’s surface as a result of human activities. Noise pollution can cause irreparable damage to our ears when exposed to continuous large sounds like honking of vehicles on a busy road or machines producing large noise in a factory or a mill.
3. Overpopulation: Rapid population growth puts strain on natural resources which results in degradation of our environment. Mortality rate has gone down due to better medical facilities which has resulted in increased lifespan. More population simple means more demand for food, clothes and shelter. You need more space to grow food and provide homes to millions of people. This results in deforestation which is another factor of environmental degradation.
4. Landfills: Landfills pollute the environment and destroy the beauty of the city. Landfills come within the city due the large amount of waste that gets generated by households, industries, factories and hospitals. Landfills pose a great risk to the health of the environment and the people who live there. Landfills produce foul smell when burned and cause huge environmental degradation.
5. Deforestation: Deforestation is the cutting down of trees to make way for more homes and industries. Rapid growth in population and urban sprawl are two of the major causes of deforestation. Apart from that, use of forest land for agriculture, animal grazing, harvest for fuel wood and logging are some of the other causes of deforestation. Deforestation contributes to global warming as decreased forest size puts carbon back into the environment.
6: Natural Causes: Things like avalanches, quakes, tidal waves, storms, and wildfires can totally crush nearby animal and plant groups to the point where they can no longer survive in those areas. This can either come to fruition through physical demolition as the result of a specific disaster, or by the long term degradation of assets by the presentation of an obtrusive foreign species to the environment. The latter frequently happens after tidal waves, when reptiles and bugs are washed ashore.
Of course, humans aren’t totally to blame for this whole thing. Earth itself causes ecological issues, as well. While environmental degradation is most normally connected with the things that people do, the truth of the matter is that the environment is always changing. With or without the effect of human exercises, a few biological systems degrade to the point where they can’t help the life that is supposed to live there.
Environmental-degradation-causes
Effects of Environmental Degradation
1. Impact on Human Health: Human health might be at the receiving end as a result of the environmental degradation. Areas exposed to toxic air pollutants can cause respiratory problems like pneumonia and asthma. Millions of people are known to have died of due to indirect effects of air pollution.
2. Loss of Biodiversity: Biodiversity is important for maintaining balance of the ecosystem in the form of combating pollution, restoring nutrients, protecting water sources and stabilizing climate. Deforestation, global warming, overpopulation and pollution are few of the major causes for loss of biodiversity.
3. Ozone Layer Depletion: Ozone layer is responsible for protecting earth from harmful ultraviolet rays. The presence of chlorofluorocarbons, hydro chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere is causing the ozone layer to deplete. As it will deplete, it will emit harmful radiations back to the earth.
4. Loss for Tourism Industry: The deterioration of environment can be a huge setback for tourism industry that rely on tourists for their daily livelihood. Environmental damage in the form of loss of green cover, loss of biodiversity, huge landfills, increased air and water pollution can be a big turn off for most of the tourists.
5. Economic Impact: The huge cost that a country may have to borne due to environmental degradation can have big economic impact in terms of restoration of green cover, cleaning up of landfills and protection of endangered species. The economic impact can also be in terms of loss of tourism industry.
As you can see, there are a lot of things that can have an effect on the environment. If we are not careful, we can contribute to the environmental degradation that is occurring all around the world. We can, however, take action to stop it and take care of the world that we live in by providing environmental education to the people which will help them pick familiarity with their surroundings that will enable to take care of environmental concerns thus making it more useful and protected for our children and other future generations.
What is Environmental Education?
Environmental Education (EE) is a methodology in which people pick up familiarity with their surroundings and secure learning, abilities, values, experiences, and passion, all of which will empower them to act – separately and aggregately – to take care of present and future environmental issues. It is the study of relationship and interactions between natural and human systems. In short, environmental education is provided so that people can have a better understanding of the world around them and know how to take care of it properly so that the world can be a better place.
According to Wikipedia,
Amazon-black-friday
Head over to Amazon for best Black Friday deals
“ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION (EE) REFERS TO ORGANIZED EFFORTS TO TEACH ABOUT HOW NATURAL ENVIRONMENTS FUNCTION AND, PARTICULARLY, HOW HUMAN BEINGS CAN MANAGE THEIR BEHAVIOR AND ECOSYSTEMS IN ORDER TO LIVE SUSTAINABLY. IT IS A MULTI-DISCIPLINARY FIELD INTEGRATING DISCIPLINES SUCH AS BIOLOGY, CHEMISTRY, PHYSICS, ECOLOGY, EARTH SCIENCE, ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE, MATHEMATICS, AND GEOGRAPHY. THE TERM IS OFTEN USED TO IMPLY EDUCATION WITHIN THE SCHOOL SYSTEM, FROM PRIMARY TO POST-SECONDARY.”
environmental-education
Environmental education is a complex field, and it covers a variety of different topics that are related to the environment. It even has some aspects of engineering in it, which means that a person can even start to understand how they can play a role in environmental engineering.
Environmental education furnishes individuals with the mindfulness required to build up organizations, comprehend NGO exercises, create participatory methodologies to urban planning, and guarantee future markets for eco-business. All of these are not only good for the environment, but they will also end up being very good for the economy as well, so everyone gets to benefit from the efforts of those who are going through environmental education. EE is taught in schools, communities and in centers like parks, zoos and museums.
Features of Environmental Education (EE)
Environmental Education:
1. Is a learning process that expands individuals’ information and mindfulness about nature’s domain and related difficulties, creates the vital abilities and mastery to address the difficulties, instilled confidence and stewardship and cultivates demeanor, inspirations, and responsibilities to settle on educated choices and make dependable moves in the field that they are working with.
2. Is a inter-disciplinary field that integrates fields such as biology, ecology, earth science, geography, atmospheric science and mathematics because understanding how environment works and keeping it healthy require knowledge and skills from many disciplines.
3. Includes all efforts to make general public aware of the knowledge of the environment and environmental challenges through print materials, media, brochures, bulletins, videos, or other media techniques.
4. Leads to responsible individual and group actions.
5. Provides information about specific environmental concerns or problems to the general public instead of specific group, religion or community.
6. Works to help you think critically, so that you aren’t sitting there trying to fit everything into a neat little box.
7. Involves students in different data-gathering techniques that help them to discuss, analyze, predict and interpret data about environmental issues.
8. Is study centered, promotes higher level thinking skills and relevant to student’s everyday lives.
9. Allows people to discuss about complex environment problems that has no simple answers.
10. Is a process in which individuals gain information environmental awareness and acquire knowledge, skills, values, experiences, and determination which can help them to solve different environmental problems.
By being passionate about keeping the world around them safe, people will be more likely to apply their particular education to what they are doing, and they will work to take care of the world around them while they are building their company or organization up.
Environmental instruction upgrades basic analyzation, critical thinking, and compelling choice making abilities, and instructs people to weigh different sides of an environmental issue on order to settle on educated and capable choices. Environmental education does not advocate a specific perspective or game plan; instead, it allows you to make your own choices.
In short, it will help you look at any situation that you may be in and it will assist you in being able to make a decision that is beneficial for the environment. With a background in environmental education, you will have the environment at the forefront of your mind, so whatever plan you end up making, you will be able to adapt it so that it is more environmentally friendly and savvy.
purple-inchworm
Components of Environmental Education
There are a number of different parts to environmental education. The most common segments of environmental education that you will come across during your studies can include the following:
Awareness and Mindfulness: Mindfulness and affectability to nature’s turf and environmental difficulties that you may encounter as a result of being in the corporate sector today.
Knowledge and Learning: Learning and understanding of nature and environmental difficulties that are holding people back and/or causing the world to change in negative ways.
Attitudes: Disposition of sympathy toward nature’s domain and inspiration to enhance or keep up environmental quality, which will spill over into any plans that you make or anything else that you do that is related to the organization that you currently are working in or developing.
Skills: Aptitudes to recognize and help resolve environmental difficulties in a practical manner that matches up with the current trends and technologies that are out there today.
Participation: Investment in programs and projects that help reduce the effect of environmental difficulties, this making sure that the money you’re investing is going to help the environment instead of harming it.
So, environmental education is actually an incredibly important part of running a business, company, or organization. Without this vital component, companies would be a lot more reckless with natural resources and/or the land that they are using in order to move their company forward.
It empowers an individual, community, organization to enhance their decision making skill by weighing various sides of an issue and not advocating a particular viewpoint or action. With environmental education, you can be sure that your staff will be more mindful of the environment around them and that they will be more savvy when it comes to making plans that are more environmentally friendly and beneficial.
Environmental Concerns
Our Mother Earth is currently facing lot of environmental concerns. The environmental problems like global warming, acid rain, air pollution, urban sprawl, waste disposal, ozone layer depletion, water pollution, climate change and many more affect every human, animal and nation on this planet. Over the last few decades, the exploitation of our planet and degradation of our environment have gone up at an alarming rate. As our actions have been not in favor of protecting this planet, we have seen natural disasters striking us more often in the form of flash floods, tsunamis and cyclones.
Different environmental groups around the world play their role in educating people as to how their small actions when combined together can play a big role in in protecting this planet. If you look at the environment around us, you can see that there are a number of issues that come to our attention. Here are 25 of the most important environmental concerns to keep an eye on today.
Amazon-black-friday
Head over to Amazon for best Black Friday deals
Landfill_environmental_concern
Top 25 Environmental Concerns
1. Air Pollution: Pollution of air, water and soil take a huge number of years to recover. Industry and engine vehicle fumes are the most obvious toxins. Substantial metals, nitrates and plastic are poisons in charge of pollution. While water contamination is brought about by oil slicks, acid rain, and urban sprawl; air contamination is created by different gasses and poisons discharged by businesses and manufacturing plants and burning of fossil fills; soil contamination is majorly created by mechanical waste that takes supplements out of the soil.
2. Water Pollution: Clean drinking water is turning into an uncommon thing. Water is turning into a monetary and political concern as the human populace battles for this need. Waste from industrial and agricultural activities pollute the water that is used by humans, animals and plants.
3: Soil and Land Pollution: Land pollution simply means degradation of earth’s surface as a result of human activities like mining, littering, deforestation, industrial, construction and agricultural activities. Land pollution can have huge environmental impact in the form of air pollution and soil pollution which in turn can have adverse effect on human health.
4. Climate Change: Climate change is yet another environmental concern that has surfaced in last couple of decades. Environmental change has different destructive impacts that include, but are not limited to, the melting of polar ice, change in seasons, new sicknesses, and change in general climate situation.
5. Global Warming: Environmental asset abuse is also an important environmental concern. Fossil fuel utilization brings about discharge of greenhouse gasses, which causes environmental change. However, individuals are taking endeavors to move to renewable energy sources.
6. Deforestation: Our woodlands create new oxygen and additionally help in managing temperature and precipitation. At present, timberlands cover 30% of the area, but wooded areas are being lost on a regular basis because people are looking for homes, food, and materials. Deforestation is a huge problem and will just continue to get worse.
7. Increased Carbon Footprint: Temperature increases, like climate change, are the consequence of human practices, including the use of greenhouse gasses. When the atmosphere changes and the heat increases, it can cause a number of problems and start to destroy the world we live in.
8. Genetic Modification: Genetic modification utilizing biotechnology is called genetic engineering. Genetic engineering of food brings about expanded poisons and sicknesses as qualities from a hypersensitive plant can exchange to target plant. Some of these crops can even be a threat to the world around us, as animals start to ingest the unnatural chemicals and such.
9. Effect on Marine Life: The amount of carbon in the water and the atmosphere is continuing to be a problem in the world around us. The primary effect is on shellfish and microscopic fish, and it has similar effects to osteoporosis in humans.
10. Public Health Issues: The current environmental concerns represent a considerable measure of danger to well-being of people, and creatures. Dirty water is the greatest well-being danger of the world and poses a risk to the health and lifespan of people and animals.
11. Overpopulation: The number of inhabitants in the planet is arriving at unsustainable levels as it confronts deficiency of assets like water, fuel and food. Overpopulation is one of the most important environmental concerns.
12: Loss of Biodiversity: Biodiversity is yet another casualty due to the impact of human beings on the environment. It is the result of 3.5 billion years of evolution. Habitat destruction is a major cause for biodiversity loss. Habitat loss is caused by deforestation, overpopulation, pollution and global warming.
Deforestation_environmental_concern
13. Household and Industrial Waste: The over utilization of assets and formation of plastics are making a worldwide emergency of waste transfer. Developed nations are infamous for creating an unreasonable measure of waste or junk and dumping their waste in the seas and, less created nations.
14. Ozone Layer Depletion: The ozone layer is an undetectable layer of protection around the planet that secures us from the sun’s unsafe beams. Depletion of the critical Ozone layer of the air is credited to contamination brought about by Bromide and Chlorine found in Chlorofloro carbons (CFC’s). When these poisonous gasses each the upper parts of the atmosphere, they cause a gap in the ozone layer, the greatest of which is over the Antarctic.
15. Mining: Mining results in extraction of minerals from earth’s core. These minerals also bring out harmful chemicals from deep inside the earth to the earth’s surface. The toxic emissions from mining can cause air, water and soil pollution.
16: Natural Resource Depletion: Non-renewable resources are limited and will get expired one day. Consumption of fossil fuels at an alarming rate can lead to global warming which can further result in melting of polar ice caps and increase in sea levels.
17: Natural Disasters: Natural disasters like earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, cyclones, volcanic eruption can be unpredictable, devastating and can cause irreparable damage. They can cause huge loss of life and property ……….
18: Nuclear Issues: Radioactive waste is a nuclear fuel that contains radioactive substance and is a by-product of nuclear power generation. The radioactive waste is an environmental concern that is extremely toxic and can have devastating effect on the lives of the people living nearby, if not disposed properly. Radioactive waste is considered to be harmful for humans, plants, animals and surrounding environment.
19. Loss of Endangered Species: Human overpopulation is prompting the elimination of species and environmental surroundings and the loss of various biomes. Environmental frameworks, which took a huge number of years to come into being, are in risk when any species populace is huge.
20. Acid Rain: Acid rain happens because of the vicinity of specific poisons in the climate. Corrosive downpour might be brought about because of use of fossil fuels or volcanoes or spoiling vegetation which discharge sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides into the air.
21: Agricultural Pollution: Modern day agriculture practices make use of chemical products like pesticides and fertilizers to deal with local pests. Some of the chemicals when sprayed do not disappear and infact seeps into the ground and thereby harms plants and crops. Also, contaminated water is used for irrigation by farmers due to disposal of industrial and agricultural waste in local water bodies.
22: Light and Noise Pollution: Noise pollution is another common form of pollution that causes temporary disruption when there is excessive amount of unpleasant noise. Construction activities, industrialization, increase in vehicular traffic, lack of urban planning are few of the causes of noise pollution.
23. Urban Sprawl: Urban sprawl alludes to relocation of populace from high thickness urban ranges to low density provincial zones which bring about spreading of city over more rustic area. Urban sprawl brings about expanded movement, environmental concerns and well-being concerns.
24: Medical Waste: Medical waste is any kind of waste that is produced in large quantity by healthcare centers like hospitals, nursing homes, dental clinics and is considered to be of a bio-hazardous nature. The waste can include needles, syringes, gloves, tubes, blades, blood, body parts and many more.
25: Littering and Landfills: Littering simply means disposal of piece of garbage or debris improperly or at wrong location usually on the ground instead of disposing them at trash container or recycling bin. Littering can cause huge environmental and economic impact in the form of spending millions of dollars to clean the garbage of road that pollute the clean air.
Landfills on the other hand are nothing but huge garbage dumps that make the city look ugly and produce toxic gases that could prove fatal for humans and animals. Landfills are generated due to large amount of waste that is generated by households, industries and healthcare centers everyday
What is Environmental Management Systems (EMS)?
An Environmental Management System (sometimes referred to as an EMS) is an apparatus for dealing with the effects of an organization’s practices on nature. It gives an organized methodology to arranging and actualizing environmental safety measures. EMS involves establishment of programs and monitoring and measuring progress to meet desired objectives and targets.
More formally, EMS is a tool that is used to study the impact of organization’s activities on the environment. It helps an organization achieve its environmental goals through systematic, planned and documented manner. It monitors environmental performance that helps an organization to increase its business efficiency and reduce its carbon footprint.
Amazon-black-friday
Head over to Amazon for best Black Friday deals
future-ecology-environment-energy
According to Wikipedia,
” Environmental management system (EMS) refers to the management of an organization’s environmental programs in a comprehensive, systematic, planned and documented manner. It includes the organizational structure, planning and resources for developing, implementing and maintaining policy for environmental protection. ”
International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14001 is the most widely used standard for EMS.
What are the Main Features and Goals of an EMS?
An Environmental Management System screens environmental execution, like the way a money related administration framework screens use and salary and empowers consistent checks of an organization’s monetary execution.
An EMS incorporates environmental administration into an organization’s every day operations, long term practices, and other quality administration frameworks.
To create an EMS, an association needs to evaluate its environmental effects, set goals to help diminish these effects, and arrange how to accomplish the targets.
Obligations and reporting structure, both of which need to be dispensed to staff and administration to guarantee the EMS is actualized viably.
An environmental impact is recognizable proof and documentation of the real and potential environmental effects of an association’s operations. This might be attained through undertaking an environmental review.
An environmental review structures the premise of deciding an association’s environmental goals and targets. An association can find a number of benefits by doing regular environmental reviews and by constantly changing how they are doing things.
An environmental plan is an announcement of what an association expects to attain from an EMS. It guarantees all environmental exercises are reliable with the association’s destinations.
Environmental management plans will outline the systems and methodology which an association will use to reach its destination.
Reviewing environmental goals to analyze its environmental impact and continuous improvement of environmental performance is one the important feature of EMS.
Training, where the staff will be able to become acquainted with their obligations that are related executing the EMS and with the general environmental arrangement and destinations of the association. This gives staff the important expertise and inspiration for the successful usage of the EMS.
Documentation is important for everything that you are doing as part of your EMS. Everything ought to be reported alongside data that is showing the environmental impacts of the changes that the organization is making. Documentation is valuable for proving environmental changes to staff, investors, and other persons who play a role in the company in question.
The most essential part of an Environmental Management System is hierarchical responsibility. For a successful EMS to be created and executed, you require cooperation from the CEO and all staff. Basically, it’s to make sure that your company or organization is working as hard as they can to lessen their impact on the environment around them.
Audits and monitoring, which are done by survey reviews. These should be executed on a regular basis in order to guarantee that the Environmental Management System is attaining its goals and to refine operational strategies to meet this objective. That being said, they can also help your organization to find where they may be falling off track.
Operational and emergency procedures include all strategies that are going to be used in the process. These ought to be checked on to guarantee they are in line with the association’s environmental destinations and targets. Any progressions ought to be incorporated with the documentation.
What Are the Benefits of Having an EMS?
An EMS can help an organization in a number of different ways. Here are some of the most prominent benefits to having an EMS for your organization.
Environmental Management Systems can help to minimize environmental effects of an organization or company.
They can help to amplify the productive use of assets that the company has.
They are shown to help to reduce the amount of waste that a company produces.
EMS’s can help to give the public a good picture of the organization that you have and that you want to be.
They can play a very large role in constructing the consciousness of environmental concern among people within your organization and that utilize what your organization has to offer them.
Gain a superior understanding of the environmental effects of business exercises.
Expansion benefits and enhancement of environmental plan execution, through more productive operations.
5 Stages of EMS Cycle
An ISO 14001 environmental management system is the most commonly used framework that help organizations to manage their environmental impacts. The framework developed by ISO 14001 encourages a company to continuously improve its environmental performance through commitment, planning, implementation, evaluation and review. By design, the system runs in a continuous improvement cycle.
Below are 5 main stages of an Environmental Management System as defined by the ISO 14001 standard.
1. Environmental Policy: Top management of the company is committed to environmental compliance and continuous improvement and layouts the foundation of environmental policy.
2. Planning: The company then identifies environmental aspects such as air and water pollution that can have negative effect on the lives of the people. It develops targets and programs to achieve them. It also delegates responsibilities, identifies schedules and present a broad picture as to how it is going to achieve the defined objectives.
3. Implementation: This step involves implementation of the steps as laid down during the planning phase. The company identifies and completes training needs for all employees so as to make them aware of the company’s environmental policies. Apart from this, it documents the EMS through policies, establishes document control and implements emergency preparedness and response.
4. Evaluation: A company monitors environmental interactions, performs internal audit of the EMS, evaluate whether targets are being met and establish a non-conformance and corrective action system.
5. Review: Senior management of the company review the environmental policies and objectives, EMS performance and suggest improvements. This stage help management to identify the effectiveness of the EMS.
So, as you can see, there are a lot of great things about an environmental management system. If this sounds like something your business needs, take the time to start developing one at your company today.
Environmental degradation is the disintegration of the earth or deterioration of the environment through consumption of assets, for example, air, water and soil; the destruction of environments and the eradication of wildlife. It is characterized as any change or aggravation to nature’s turf seen to be pernicious or undesirable. Ecological effect or degradation is created by the consolidation of an effectively substantial and expanding human populace, constantly expanding monetary development or per capita fortune and the application of asset exhausting and polluting technology. It occurs when earth’s natural resources are depleted and environment is compromised in the form of extinction of species, pollution in air, water and soil, and rapid growth in population.
Environmental degradation is one of the largest threats that are being looked at in the world today. The United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction characterizes environmental degradation as the lessening of the limit of the earth to meet social and environmental destinations, and needs. Environmental degradation can happen in a number of ways. At the point when environments are wrecked or common assets are exhausted, the environment is considered to be corrupted and harmed. There are a number of different techniques that are being used to prevent this, including environmental resource protection and general protection efforts.
Amazon-black-friday
Head over to Amazon for best Black Friday deals
Environmental-degradation
Environmental issues can be seen by long term ecological effects, some of which can demolish whole environments. An environment is a unique unit and incorporates all the living and non-living components that live inside it. Plants and creatures are evident parts of the environment, but it also includes the things on which they depend on, for example, streams, lakes, and soils.
Environmental surroundings get to be divided when technological advancement splits up areas of land. Some examples of this can include streets which may slice through woods or even trails which wind through prairies. While it may not sound all terrible on the surface, there are bad results. The biggest of these results are felt by particular animal and plant groups, the vast majority of which are specific for their bio-region or need a large area in order to make sure that their genetic lines are kept intact.
Causes of Environmental Degradation
Some environmental life species require substantial areas to help provide food, living space, and other different assets. These creatures are called area specific. At the point when the biome is divided, the vast patches of living space don’t exist anymore. It gets to be more troublesome for the wildlife to get the assets they need in order to survive. The environment goes on, even though the animals and plant life are not there to help sustain it properly.
1. Land Disturbance: A more basic cause of environmental degradation is land damage. Numerous weedy plant species, for example, garlic mustard, are both foreign and obtrusive. A rupture in the environmental surroundings provides for them a chance to start growing and spreading. These plants can assume control over nature, eliminating the local greenery. The result is territory with a solitary predominant plant which doesn’t give satisfactory food assets to all the environmental life. Whole environments can be destroyed because of these invasive species.
2. Pollution: Pollution, in whatever form, whether it is air, water, land or noise is harmful for the environment. Air pollution pollutes the air that we breathe which causes health issues. Water pollution degrades the quality of water that we use for drinking purposes. Land pollution results in degradation of earth’s surface as a result of human activities. Noise pollution can cause irreparable damage to our ears when exposed to continuous large sounds like honking of vehicles on a busy road or machines producing large noise in a factory or a mill.
3. Overpopulation: Rapid population growth puts strain on natural resources which results in degradation of our environment. Mortality rate has gone down due to better medical facilities which has resulted in increased lifespan. More population simple means more demand for food, clothes and shelter. You need more space to grow food and provide homes to millions of people. This results in deforestation which is another factor of environmental degradation.
4. Landfills: Landfills pollute the environment and destroy the beauty of the city. Landfills come within the city due the large amount of waste that gets generated by households, industries, factories and hospitals. Landfills pose a great risk to the health of the environment and the people who live there. Landfills produce foul smell when burned and cause huge environmental degradation.
5. Deforestation: Deforestation is the cutting down of trees to make way for more homes and industries. Rapid growth in population and urban sprawl are two of the major causes of deforestation. Apart from that, use of forest land for agriculture, animal grazing, harvest for fuel wood and logging are some of the other causes of deforestation. Deforestation contributes to global warming as decreased forest size puts carbon back into the environment.
6: Natural Causes: Things like avalanches, quakes, tidal waves, storms, and wildfires can totally crush nearby animal and plant groups to the point where they can no longer survive in those areas. This can either come to fruition through physical demolition as the result of a specific disaster, or by the long term degradation of assets by the presentation of an obtrusive foreign species to the environment. The latter frequently happens after tidal waves, when reptiles and bugs are washed ashore.
Of course, humans aren’t totally to blame for this whole thing. Earth itself causes ecological issues, as well. While environmental degradation is most normally connected with the things that people do, the truth of the matter is that the environment is always changing. With or without the effect of human exercises, a few biological systems degrade to the point where they can’t help the life that is supposed to live there.
Environmental-degradation-causes
Effects of Environmental Degradation
1. Impact on Human Health: Human health might be at the receiving end as a result of the environmental degradation. Areas exposed to toxic air pollutants can cause respiratory problems like pneumonia and asthma. Millions of people are known to have died of due to indirect effects of air pollution.
2. Loss of Biodiversity: Biodiversity is important for maintaining balance of the ecosystem in the form of combating pollution, restoring nutrients, protecting water sources and stabilizing climate. Deforestation, global warming, overpopulation and pollution are few of the major causes for loss of biodiversity.
3. Ozone Layer Depletion: Ozone layer is responsible for protecting earth from harmful ultraviolet rays. The presence of chlorofluorocarbons, hydro chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere is causing the ozone layer to deplete. As it will deplete, it will emit harmful radiations back to the earth.
4. Loss for Tourism Industry: The deterioration of environment can be a huge setback for tourism industry that rely on tourists for their daily livelihood. Environmental damage in the form of loss of green cover, loss of biodiversity, huge landfills, increased air and water pollution can be a big turn off for most of the tourists.
5. Economic Impact: The huge cost that a country may have to borne due to environmental degradation can have big economic impact in terms of restoration of green cover, cleaning up of landfills and protection of endangered species. The economic impact can also be in terms of loss of tourism industry.
As you can see, there are a lot of things that can have an effect on the environment. If we are not careful, we can contribute to the environmental degradation that is occurring all around the world. We can, however, take action to stop it and take care of the world that we live in by providing environmental education to the people which will help them pick familiarity with their surroundings that will enable to take care of environmental concerns thus making it more useful and protected for our children and other future generations.
What is Environmental Education?
Environmental Education (EE) is a methodology in which people pick up familiarity with their surroundings and secure learning, abilities, values, experiences, and passion, all of which will empower them to act – separately and aggregately – to take care of present and future environmental issues. It is the study of relationship and interactions between natural and human systems. In short, environmental education is provided so that people can have a better understanding of the world around them and know how to take care of it properly so that the world can be a better place.
According to Wikipedia,
Amazon-black-friday
Head over to Amazon for best Black Friday deals
“ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION (EE) REFERS TO ORGANIZED EFFORTS TO TEACH ABOUT HOW NATURAL ENVIRONMENTS FUNCTION AND, PARTICULARLY, HOW HUMAN BEINGS CAN MANAGE THEIR BEHAVIOR AND ECOSYSTEMS IN ORDER TO LIVE SUSTAINABLY. IT IS A MULTI-DISCIPLINARY FIELD INTEGRATING DISCIPLINES SUCH AS BIOLOGY, CHEMISTRY, PHYSICS, ECOLOGY, EARTH SCIENCE, ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE, MATHEMATICS, AND GEOGRAPHY. THE TERM IS OFTEN USED TO IMPLY EDUCATION WITHIN THE SCHOOL SYSTEM, FROM PRIMARY TO POST-SECONDARY.”
environmental-education
Environmental education is a complex field, and it covers a variety of different topics that are related to the environment. It even has some aspects of engineering in it, which means that a person can even start to understand how they can play a role in environmental engineering.
Environmental education furnishes individuals with the mindfulness required to build up organizations, comprehend NGO exercises, create participatory methodologies to urban planning, and guarantee future markets for eco-business. All of these are not only good for the environment, but they will also end up being very good for the economy as well, so everyone gets to benefit from the efforts of those who are going through environmental education. EE is taught in schools, communities and in centers like parks, zoos and museums.
Features of Environmental Education (EE)
Environmental Education:
1. Is a learning process that expands individuals’ information and mindfulness about nature’s domain and related difficulties, creates the vital abilities and mastery to address the difficulties, instilled confidence and stewardship and cultivates demeanor, inspirations, and responsibilities to settle on educated choices and make dependable moves in the field that they are working with.
2. Is a inter-disciplinary field that integrates fields such as biology, ecology, earth science, geography, atmospheric science and mathematics because understanding how environment works and keeping it healthy require knowledge and skills from many disciplines.
3. Includes all efforts to make general public aware of the knowledge of the environment and environmental challenges through print materials, media, brochures, bulletins, videos, or other media techniques.
4. Leads to responsible individual and group actions.
5. Provides information about specific environmental concerns or problems to the general public instead of specific group, religion or community.
6. Works to help you think critically, so that you aren’t sitting there trying to fit everything into a neat little box.
7. Involves students in different data-gathering techniques that help them to discuss, analyze, predict and interpret data about environmental issues.
8. Is study centered, promotes higher level thinking skills and relevant to student’s everyday lives.
9. Allows people to discuss about complex environment problems that has no simple answers.
10. Is a process in which individuals gain information environmental awareness and acquire knowledge, skills, values, experiences, and determination which can help them to solve different environmental problems.
By being passionate about keeping the world around them safe, people will be more likely to apply their particular education to what they are doing, and they will work to take care of the world around them while they are building their company or organization up.
Environmental instruction upgrades basic analyzation, critical thinking, and compelling choice making abilities, and instructs people to weigh different sides of an environmental issue on order to settle on educated and capable choices. Environmental education does not advocate a specific perspective or game plan; instead, it allows you to make your own choices.
In short, it will help you look at any situation that you may be in and it will assist you in being able to make a decision that is beneficial for the environment. With a background in environmental education, you will have the environment at the forefront of your mind, so whatever plan you end up making, you will be able to adapt it so that it is more environmentally friendly and savvy.
purple-inchworm
Components of Environmental Education
There are a number of different parts to environmental education. The most common segments of environmental education that you will come across during your studies can include the following:
Awareness and Mindfulness: Mindfulness and affectability to nature’s turf and environmental difficulties that you may encounter as a result of being in the corporate sector today.
Knowledge and Learning: Learning and understanding of nature and environmental difficulties that are holding people back and/or causing the world to change in negative ways.
Attitudes: Disposition of sympathy toward nature’s domain and inspiration to enhance or keep up environmental quality, which will spill over into any plans that you make or anything else that you do that is related to the organization that you currently are working in or developing.
Skills: Aptitudes to recognize and help resolve environmental difficulties in a practical manner that matches up with the current trends and technologies that are out there today.
Participation: Investment in programs and projects that help reduce the effect of environmental difficulties, this making sure that the money you’re investing is going to help the environment instead of harming it.
So, environmental education is actually an incredibly important part of running a business, company, or organization. Without this vital component, companies would be a lot more reckless with natural resources and/or the land that they are using in order to move their company forward.
It empowers an individual, community, organization to enhance their decision making skill by weighing various sides of an issue and not advocating a particular viewpoint or action. With environmental education, you can be sure that your staff will be more mindful of the environment around them and that they will be more savvy when it comes to making plans that are more environmentally friendly and beneficial.
Environmental Concerns
Our Mother Earth is currently facing lot of environmental concerns. The environmental problems like global warming, acid rain, air pollution, urban sprawl, waste disposal, ozone layer depletion, water pollution, climate change and many more affect every human, animal and nation on this planet. Over the last few decades, the exploitation of our planet and degradation of our environment have gone up at an alarming rate. As our actions have been not in favor of protecting this planet, we have seen natural disasters striking us more often in the form of flash floods, tsunamis and cyclones.
Different environmental groups around the world play their role in educating people as to how their small actions when combined together can play a big role in in protecting this planet. If you look at the environment around us, you can see that there are a number of issues that come to our attention. Here are 25 of the most important environmental concerns to keep an eye on today.
Amazon-black-friday
Head over to Amazon for best Black Friday deals
Landfill_environmental_concern
Top 25 Environmental Concerns
1. Air Pollution: Pollution of air, water and soil take a huge number of years to recover. Industry and engine vehicle fumes are the most obvious toxins. Substantial metals, nitrates and plastic are poisons in charge of pollution. While water contamination is brought about by oil slicks, acid rain, and urban sprawl; air contamination is created by different gasses and poisons discharged by businesses and manufacturing plants and burning of fossil fills; soil contamination is majorly created by mechanical waste that takes supplements out of the soil.
2. Water Pollution: Clean drinking water is turning into an uncommon thing. Water is turning into a monetary and political concern as the human populace battles for this need. Waste from industrial and agricultural activities pollute the water that is used by humans, animals and plants.
3: Soil and Land Pollution: Land pollution simply means degradation of earth’s surface as a result of human activities like mining, littering, deforestation, industrial, construction and agricultural activities. Land pollution can have huge environmental impact in the form of air pollution and soil pollution which in turn can have adverse effect on human health.
4. Climate Change: Climate change is yet another environmental concern that has surfaced in last couple of decades. Environmental change has different destructive impacts that include, but are not limited to, the melting of polar ice, change in seasons, new sicknesses, and change in general climate situation.
5. Global Warming: Environmental asset abuse is also an important environmental concern. Fossil fuel utilization brings about discharge of greenhouse gasses, which causes environmental change. However, individuals are taking endeavors to move to renewable energy sources.
6. Deforestation: Our woodlands create new oxygen and additionally help in managing temperature and precipitation. At present, timberlands cover 30% of the area, but wooded areas are being lost on a regular basis because people are looking for homes, food, and materials. Deforestation is a huge problem and will just continue to get worse.
7. Increased Carbon Footprint: Temperature increases, like climate change, are the consequence of human practices, including the use of greenhouse gasses. When the atmosphere changes and the heat increases, it can cause a number of problems and start to destroy the world we live in.
8. Genetic Modification: Genetic modification utilizing biotechnology is called genetic engineering. Genetic engineering of food brings about expanded poisons and sicknesses as qualities from a hypersensitive plant can exchange to target plant. Some of these crops can even be a threat to the world around us, as animals start to ingest the unnatural chemicals and such.
9. Effect on Marine Life: The amount of carbon in the water and the atmosphere is continuing to be a problem in the world around us. The primary effect is on shellfish and microscopic fish, and it has similar effects to osteoporosis in humans.
10. Public Health Issues: The current environmental concerns represent a considerable measure of danger to well-being of people, and creatures. Dirty water is the greatest well-being danger of the world and poses a risk to the health and lifespan of people and animals.
11. Overpopulation: The number of inhabitants in the planet is arriving at unsustainable levels as it confronts deficiency of assets like water, fuel and food. Overpopulation is one of the most important environmental concerns.
12: Loss of Biodiversity: Biodiversity is yet another casualty due to the impact of human beings on the environment. It is the result of 3.5 billion years of evolution. Habitat destruction is a major cause for biodiversity loss. Habitat loss is caused by deforestation, overpopulation, pollution and global warming.
Deforestation_environmental_concern
13. Household and Industrial Waste: The over utilization of assets and formation of plastics are making a worldwide emergency of waste transfer. Developed nations are infamous for creating an unreasonable measure of waste or junk and dumping their waste in the seas and, less created nations.
14. Ozone Layer Depletion: The ozone layer is an undetectable layer of protection around the planet that secures us from the sun’s unsafe beams. Depletion of the critical Ozone layer of the air is credited to contamination brought about by Bromide and Chlorine found in Chlorofloro carbons (CFC’s). When these poisonous gasses each the upper parts of the atmosphere, they cause a gap in the ozone layer, the greatest of which is over the Antarctic.
15. Mining: Mining results in extraction of minerals from earth’s core. These minerals also bring out harmful chemicals from deep inside the earth to the earth’s surface. The toxic emissions from mining can cause air, water and soil pollution.
16: Natural Resource Depletion: Non-renewable resources are limited and will get expired one day. Consumption of fossil fuels at an alarming rate can lead to global warming which can further result in melting of polar ice caps and increase in sea levels.
17: Natural Disasters: Natural disasters like earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, cyclones, volcanic eruption can be unpredictable, devastating and can cause irreparable damage. They can cause huge loss of life and property ……….
18: Nuclear Issues: Radioactive waste is a nuclear fuel that contains radioactive substance and is a by-product of nuclear power generation. The radioactive waste is an environmental concern that is extremely toxic and can have devastating effect on the lives of the people living nearby, if not disposed properly. Radioactive waste is considered to be harmful for humans, plants, animals and surrounding environment.
19. Loss of Endangered Species: Human overpopulation is prompting the elimination of species and environmental surroundings and the loss of various biomes. Environmental frameworks, which took a huge number of years to come into being, are in risk when any species populace is huge.
20. Acid Rain: Acid rain happens because of the vicinity of specific poisons in the climate. Corrosive downpour might be brought about because of use of fossil fuels or volcanoes or spoiling vegetation which discharge sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides into the air.
21: Agricultural Pollution: Modern day agriculture practices make use of chemical products like pesticides and fertilizers to deal with local pests. Some of the chemicals when sprayed do not disappear and infact seeps into the ground and thereby harms plants and crops. Also, contaminated water is used for irrigation by farmers due to disposal of industrial and agricultural waste in local water bodies.
22: Light and Noise Pollution: Noise pollution is another common form of pollution that causes temporary disruption when there is excessive amount of unpleasant noise. Construction activities, industrialization, increase in vehicular traffic, lack of urban planning are few of the causes of noise pollution.
23. Urban Sprawl: Urban sprawl alludes to relocation of populace from high thickness urban ranges to low density provincial zones which bring about spreading of city over more rustic area. Urban sprawl brings about expanded movement, environmental concerns and well-being concerns.
24: Medical Waste: Medical waste is any kind of waste that is produced in large quantity by healthcare centers like hospitals, nursing homes, dental clinics and is considered to be of a bio-hazardous nature. The waste can include needles, syringes, gloves, tubes, blades, blood, body parts and many more.
25: Littering and Landfills: Littering simply means disposal of piece of garbage or debris improperly or at wrong location usually on the ground instead of disposing them at trash container or recycling bin. Littering can cause huge environmental and economic impact in the form of spending millions of dollars to clean the garbage of road that pollute the clean air.
Landfills on the other hand are nothing but huge garbage dumps that make the city look ugly and produce toxic gases that could prove fatal for humans and animals. Landfills are generated due to large amount of waste that is generated by households, industries and healthcare centers everyday
What is Environmental Management Systems (EMS)?
An Environmental Management System (sometimes referred to as an EMS) is an apparatus for dealing with the effects of an organization’s practices on nature. It gives an organized methodology to arranging and actualizing environmental safety measures. EMS involves establishment of programs and monitoring and measuring progress to meet desired objectives and targets.
More formally, EMS is a tool that is used to study the impact of organization’s activities on the environment. It helps an organization achieve its environmental goals through systematic, planned and documented manner. It monitors environmental performance that helps an organization to increase its business efficiency and reduce its carbon footprint.
Amazon-black-friday
Head over to Amazon for best Black Friday deals
future-ecology-environment-energy
According to Wikipedia,
” Environmental management system (EMS) refers to the management of an organization’s environmental programs in a comprehensive, systematic, planned and documented manner. It includes the organizational structure, planning and resources for developing, implementing and maintaining policy for environmental protection. ”
International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14001 is the most widely used standard for EMS.
What are the Main Features and Goals of an EMS?
An Environmental Management System screens environmental execution, like the way a money related administration framework screens use and salary and empowers consistent checks of an organization’s monetary execution.
An EMS incorporates environmental administration into an organization’s every day operations, long term practices, and other quality administration frameworks.
To create an EMS, an association needs to evaluate its environmental effects, set goals to help diminish these effects, and arrange how to accomplish the targets.
Obligations and reporting structure, both of which need to be dispensed to staff and administration to guarantee the EMS is actualized viably.
An environmental impact is recognizable proof and documentation of the real and potential environmental effects of an association’s operations. This might be attained through undertaking an environmental review.
An environmental review structures the premise of deciding an association’s environmental goals and targets. An association can find a number of benefits by doing regular environmental reviews and by constantly changing how they are doing things.
An environmental plan is an announcement of what an association expects to attain from an EMS. It guarantees all environmental exercises are reliable with the association’s destinations.
Environmental management plans will outline the systems and methodology which an association will use to reach its destination.
Reviewing environmental goals to analyze its environmental impact and continuous improvement of environmental performance is one the important feature of EMS.
Training, where the staff will be able to become acquainted with their obligations that are related executing the EMS and with the general environmental arrangement and destinations of the association. This gives staff the important expertise and inspiration for the successful usage of the EMS.
Documentation is important for everything that you are doing as part of your EMS. Everything ought to be reported alongside data that is showing the environmental impacts of the changes that the organization is making. Documentation is valuable for proving environmental changes to staff, investors, and other persons who play a role in the company in question.
The most essential part of an Environmental Management System is hierarchical responsibility. For a successful EMS to be created and executed, you require cooperation from the CEO and all staff. Basically, it’s to make sure that your company or organization is working as hard as they can to lessen their impact on the environment around them.
Audits and monitoring, which are done by survey reviews. These should be executed on a regular basis in order to guarantee that the Environmental Management System is attaining its goals and to refine operational strategies to meet this objective. That being said, they can also help your organization to find where they may be falling off track.
Operational and emergency procedures include all strategies that are going to be used in the process. These ought to be checked on to guarantee they are in line with the association’s environmental destinations and targets. Any progressions ought to be incorporated with the documentation.
What Are the Benefits of Having an EMS?
An EMS can help an organization in a number of different ways. Here are some of the most prominent benefits to having an EMS for your organization.
Environmental Management Systems can help to minimize environmental effects of an organization or company.
They can help to amplify the productive use of assets that the company has.
They are shown to help to reduce the amount of waste that a company produces.
EMS’s can help to give the public a good picture of the organization that you have and that you want to be.
They can play a very large role in constructing the consciousness of environmental concern among people within your organization and that utilize what your organization has to offer them.
Gain a superior understanding of the environmental effects of business exercises.
Expansion benefits and enhancement of environmental plan execution, through more productive operations.
5 Stages of EMS Cycle
An ISO 14001 environmental management system is the most commonly used framework that help organizations to manage their environmental impacts. The framework developed by ISO 14001 encourages a company to continuously improve its environmental performance through commitment, planning, implementation, evaluation and review. By design, the system runs in a continuous improvement cycle.
Below are 5 main stages of an Environmental Management System as defined by the ISO 14001 standard.
1. Environmental Policy: Top management of the company is committed to environmental compliance and continuous improvement and layouts the foundation of environmental policy.
2. Planning: The company then identifies environmental aspects such as air and water pollution that can have negative effect on the lives of the people. It develops targets and programs to achieve them. It also delegates responsibilities, identifies schedules and present a broad picture as to how it is going to achieve the defined objectives.
3. Implementation: This step involves implementation of the steps as laid down during the planning phase. The company identifies and completes training needs for all employees so as to make them aware of the company’s environmental policies. Apart from this, it documents the EMS through policies, establishes document control and implements emergency preparedness and response.
4. Evaluation: A company monitors environmental interactions, performs internal audit of the EMS, evaluate whether targets are being met and establish a non-conformance and corrective action system.
5. Review: Senior management of the company review the environmental policies and objectives, EMS performance and suggest improvements. This stage help management to identify the effectiveness of the EMS.
So, as you can see, there are a lot of great things about an environmental management system. If this sounds like something your business needs, take the time to start developing one at your company today.
What is Environmental Law?
Environmental law looks at all the factors that pertain to an economy and its production and industry to assess its impact on the environment and to propose regulations that will reduce environmental harm. It is mostly considered with regulations and treaty agreements between countries, corporations and public interest initiatives that work to promote the conservation of natural resources and to enhance energy efficiency.
According to Wikipedia,
“Environmental law – or “environmental and natural resources law” – is a collective term describing the network of treaties, statutes, regulations, and common and customary laws addressing the effects of human activity on the natural environment.”
Environmental law is necessary to combat issues related to the environment and conservation of natural resources. For instance – environmental laws pertains to issues like global warming, climate change, greenhouse gas emissions, acid rain, hunting of endangered species, deforestation, depletion of natural resources, pollution of water, air and soil.
In the United States, the chief government agency for administering environmental regulations is the Environmental Protection Agency. In most countries, states have their own environmental protection agencies that administer laws pertaining to issues of concern to the natural environment and to protect human health.
What is Involved in Measuring Environmental Law?
When researchers and monitors are assessing the environmental law of a person or community they are looking at how external elements are impacting the mental, emotional and physical health of the individual, and at large. They can come in to do assessments that are focused on decreasing epidemics or childhood morbidity, as well as to improve the overall preventative healthcare measures in the area. Environmental law regulations can extend to cover housing, transportation, food and water management as well. There is not one aspect of life that is not covered by environmental law as it recognizes the interrelation of all areas of economy and community on a person’s health state.
Components of Environmental Law
Waste Management
One of the major areas addressed by environmental law initiatives is waste management. This can take the form of helping to build or upgrade waste management systems to make sure that waste is not polluting ground water or causing the spread of disease. It can also take the form of managing radioactive waste materials. In areas of the world where industrialization is changing traditional community living, there may also have to be education programs done that demonstrate public health hygiene.
Food Production
Food production is another area covered by environmental law. Regulations will concern everything from how seed is harvested and prepared to what types of fertilizer and pesticides are used to nurture the crops to maturity. They will also examine processing, packaging and storage facilities for food products to ensure that all ingredients are safe for human consumption and there is less risk for contamination or spoiled food. In some instance, environmental law may also address transportation needs for food as the infrastructure in some areas of the world may make it difficult to get adequate food supplies to the population.
Water Reserves
Making sure that adequate drinking water, or potable water, is available to a community is another key issue with environmental law. Environmental law advocates will also look towards creating reserves of water that can be adequately protected from contamination. They don’t just look towards drinking and cooking water, but making sure there is adequate irrigation for crops as well.
Another aspect of water control is to make sure that proper drainage systems are in place. This has to do with the health concerns that can be caused by standing water and how it can promote the presence of disease carried by mosquitoes that can breed in standing water.
Pollution Control and Remediation
Environmental law is concerned with control of pollution on one hand and conservation of natural resources on other hand. It also have relevance to product design in the form of environmentally friendly materials, emission controls and energy efficient devices.
Flora and Fauna
Flora and fauna must be protected as they have been under constant threat by human activity. Environmental law may be enacted to protect biodiversity or as a special means for protecting species deemed important for other reasons. The need of the hour is to come up with new laws to protect endangered species from poachers, prohibition on killing or disruption of existing species and efforts to induce or support species recovery.
Mining
Environmental law also studies the impact of mining of natural resources from beneath the ground. The extraction of these minerals from the ground causes pollution in the air and water as chemicals come in contact of the environment. Mining also gets affected by various regulations regarding environmental impact of mining as well as health and safety of miners.
Emissions and Construction
Environmental law will also examine the condition and quality of housing and transportation in regards to its improvement and expansion. In recent times, an example of how environmental law helped to change and shape building policies is the focus on removing lead and asbestos from building. With transportation, it can become an issue of environmental law if a community is not served by public transportation or adequate infrastructure so they can reach the services and opportunities that exist around them. Also, the emissions regulations of transportation vehicles is also of concern.
Global Initiatives in Environmental Law
The United Nation is working to coordinate consistent environmental law applications by overseeing varies treaties and agreements between nations that will help to make sure that global efforts towards preserving the environment are effective. They oversee projects that involve everything from managing emissions controls to export and import restrictions, management of levels of known harmful substances and the development of environmental health programs.
One of the complicating factors about implementing global standards of environmental law is that so many developing countries need the existing, and polluting, manufacturing processes and may not have the financial ability to promote sustainable industries. By working together and gaining signatories for the environmental efforts, more can be done with the cooperation of developed countries to make sure that past mistakes are not repeated.
15 Easy Ways to Become More Environmentally Friendly
Learning to be more environmentally friendly is easier than you think. You don’t have to jump in by changing everything, start small to make the changes more sustainable and a part of your normal life. Here are 5 ways you can begin to become more environmentally friendly.
1. Become More Aware of Resources: Start by living with a greater awareness of the resources that you use in your daily life. Pay attention to how you choose to heat, to travel, to use water and use products that were made by manufacturing practices. Awareness is what will allow you to then begin to make environmentally friendly choices.
2. Practice Conservation: With your new awareness of how natural resources are used in your life start to practice conservation. This can be as simple as turning off the lights as you leave a room and as complex as making different choices when it comes to building your home. Learn here more about 15 green home building techniques.
3. Plant Trees: Trees are necessary for us to survive. They give oxygen, fruits, clean the air, provide shelter to wildlife, prevent soil erosion. A shady landscape around your home can help you to reduce consumption of energy and keep your home cool even during summers. Plant small trees around your home, don’t cut them unless it’s necessary, work with local environmental groups to plant more trees and educate others about the positive aspects of it.
4. Conserve Water: Water needs to be conserved as lot of energy is required to pump water from rivers or lakes into your home. Conserving water reduces the amount of energy that is needed to filter it. Few ways to conserve water are – take short showers, fix leaking pipes, keep the running tap close while you brush your teeth, recycle water in your home, use water saving appliances, collect rainwater in a rain barrel to water your lawn.
5. Change Your Travel Habits: Driving and flying are two areas where you can make a real impact with environmentally friendly practices. Choose fuel efficient travel options, travel less and try to pick more direct routes to save on fuel. If your office is near your home, try to ride a bicycle instead of a car.
6. Use Less Fossil Fuel Based Products: Find out what products and consumables you use that are made using fossil fuel based products and processes and use them less or replace them in your life.
plant-in-desert
7. Buy Locally Grown Products: An easy way to reduce your carbon footprint is to buy locally grown products. When you shop locally instead of buying products that were shipped from far away, you are actually supporting local dairies and farms. Apart from this, you can follow organic farming practices and can grow food on your own backyard and can sell surplus to your friends.
8. Reduce Use of Harmful Chemicals: Hazardous chemicals like paint, oil, ammonia and other chemical solutions when disposed openly, can cause pollution in the air and water as these chemicals can seep into the groundwater. The polluted air and water can have serious consequences on human health. They should be disposed off to a toxic waste site for safe disposal.
9. Composting: Composting is an easy process that takes remains of plants and kitchen waste and converts it into rich nutrient food for your plants that helps them grow. It reduces the amount of garbage that goes to the landfills which pollutes the air. This way it proves safe for the environment.
10. 3 R’s of Waste Hierarchy: The 3 R’s (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) waste hierarchy is the order of priority of actions to be taken to reduce the amount of waste generated and to improve overall waste management processes and programs. Reduce simply means reducing what is produced and what is consumed. Reuse items for a different purpose instead of sending them to landfills. To recycle something means that it will be transformed again into a raw material that can be shaped into a new item.
11. Bur Recycled Products: When you go out for shopping, try to buy products from market that are made up of recycled materials with minimal packaging i.e. the product should be environment friendly. Look into manufacturing processes to check if it was made from recycled materials or the use of plastics or chemicals was involved in its production.
12. Join Environment Groups: You may find different environmental groups in your city with whom you can join hands to protect mother earth and make the environment clean. A quick Google search can help you in finding such groups. You can also pull your friends and relatives and ask them for a helping hand.
13. Stop Littering: One of the common sight that we see everyday on streets is seeing people littering on roads. One of the ways to keep the environment and surrounding clean around you is to stop people from littering on roads. Instead, educate them to put trash and garbage in dustbins. The pile of garbage on road hampers the beauty of city and also pollutes the air.
14. Protect Wildlife: Human activity is leading to extinction of endangered species and habitats. Protect places like beaches and forests that are habitats for animals. Join hands with local forest department to protect animal habitat.
15. Educate Others: Educate others about the importance of living an environmentally friendly life. The more people share an awareness of the importance of the environment, the more we can do together to conserve it.
What is Environmental Health?
Environmental health entails grasping the effects of environment and human-made vulnerabilities/ hazards and insulation of human health and environmental systems from these hazards. This involves examining and evaluating the effects of chemicals made by humans to human health or wildlife and how the ecological systems impacts spread of illnesses. It can include everything from managing the use of pesticides to the quality of drywall used in construction.
It is a healthcare area that is gaining increasing attention around the world as there are more studies proving that the impact of environmental health extends beyond the individual and can determine the cost of public health care and the health of the local economy. In short, environmental health is the study of how environmental factors can harm human health and how we can identify and control such effects.
According to World Health Organization (WHO),
“Environmental health addresses all the physical, chemical, and biological factors external to a person, and all the related factors impacting behaviours. It encompasses the assessment and control of those environmental factors that can potentially affect health. It is targeted towards preventing disease and creating health-supportive environments. This definition excludes behaviour not related to environment, as well as behaviour related to the social and cultural environment, and genetics.”
When researchers and monitors are assessing the environmental health of a person or community they are looking at how external elements are impacting the mental, emotional and physical health of the individual, and at large. They can come in to do assessments that are focused on decreasing epidemics or childhood morbidity, as well as to improve the overall preventative healthcare measures in the area. Environmental health regulations can extend to cover housing, transportation, food and water management as well. There is not one aspect of life that is not covered by environmental health as it recognizes the interrelation of all areas of economy and community on a person’s health state.
Kinds of Environmental Hazards
Humans stumble across numerous environmental hazards every single day. To better understand environmental health, let’s classify them into four categories:
Biological hazards
Biological hazards emanate from environmental relations between organisms. Some examples of biological hazards include bacteria, viruses, fungi, spores, pathogenic micro-organisms, tuberculosis, malaria and so on. When these diseases and pathogens are transmitted between two or more organisms, we call it infectious disease. The real reason humans suffer from these pathogens and diseases is that they are being infested by other organisms, which is a natural process, but at the same time hazardous.
Physical hazards
These are physical processes which happen naturally in the environment, for example, natural disasters like volcanoes, earthquakes, droughts, landslides, blizzards, and tornadoes. Physical hazards are considered secret events, but not all are, for instance, a few like UV radiations are openly happening each day. Ultraviolet radiation is categorized as hazardous since too much exposure to it destroys the DNA and triggers health complications in humans such as cataracts and skin cancer.
Chemical hazards
They occur in ecological systems in two ways; human-made or natural. Examples of naturally occurring chemical hazards include mercury and lead, which are considered heavy metals. Human-made chemical hazards encompass lots of synthetic chemicals human produce such as pesticides, plastics, and disinfectants. A few organisms even generate natural chemicals, which are hazardous to the environment, for instance, elements contained in peanuts and dairy that trigger allergic reactions to humans.
Cultural hazards
They are sometimes referred to as social hazards. They originate from your locality, behavioral choices, occupation, and social-economic status. Examples of cultural hazards include cigarette smoking, which is detrimental to human health. Cigarette smoking is considered a behavior choice. If you reside in a neighborhood full of criminal activities, it is classified as a hazard based on your locality. In equal measure, your diet choice, workout habits, and main means of transportation all impact your overall health and the health of the ecological system around you.
environment-protection-from-various-environmental-issues
Critical Issues Related to Environmental Health
Environmental health addresses all human health related issues which include:-
Handling Issues of Disease Control
Disease mitigation and control is one main aspect affecting environmental health. This can be paraphrased as assisting to build up or improve waste management systems to prevent the possibility of waste polluting drinking water sources or triggering the spread of illnesses.
In parts of the globe that industrialization is revolutionizing the local community’s living standards, education programs might be initiated that display acts of public health hygiene. The materials and techniques related to the progress of industry are also linked to growth of infectious diseases if individuals that live there are not in synch with the requirements of proper hygiene and handling of waste items.
Food Management
Food management is a well-known issue that affects environmental health. Food management regulations will concern everything from how seed is harvested and prepared to what types of fertilizer and pesticides are used to nurture the crops to maturity. The authorities will also examine processing, packaging and storage facilities for food products to ensure that all food items are safe for human consumption and there is less risk for contamination or food spoilage.
In other scenarios, environmental health might also tackle the transportation requirement of food because the road or rail network in some countries may not be good enough to enable prompt reach of food supplies to the population.
Water Quality Issues
Guaranteeing that portable or enough drinking water will be readily obtainable to the local community is yet another main aspect of environmental health. Environmental health campaigners will look to find ways of developing water reserves that can be wholly cushioned from the possibility of contamination. These environmental advocates not only look towards drinking and cooking water, but making sure there is availability of enough water for crop irrigation.
Another aspect of water control is to make sure that proper drainage systems are in place. Ensuring appropriate drainage is in place is due to health concerns that may be instigated by stagnant water and how it can contribute to existence of diseases carried along by mosquitoes that commonly breed in stagnant water.
Housing and Transportation
Environmental health also looks at the quality and condition of transportation and housing. In recent times, an example of how environmental health helped to change and shape building policies is the focus on removing lead and asbestos from building. Transportation can become a concern for environmental health if the local community isn’t connected to any form of public transportation or there is no sufficient infrastructure to enable them access opportunities and services that are in proximity to them.
Apart from listed above, environmental health also address issues related to:
Air Pollution and how too much exposure to it can result in dangerous diseases like asthma and cancer.
Climate Change and its effects on our surrounding environment.
Exposure to toxic chemicals and how they impact human health.
Solid Waste Management which includes recycling facilities, landfills and composting.
Management of medical waste such as mitigation of dangerous materials from finding way to the ecological system.
Hazardous Materials Management.
Climate change and its grave impacts on the immediate environment
Environmental health also deals with aspects of climate change and how it impacts the environment. Climate change could cause:
Rising temperatures: If climate change is not mitigated, temperatures could go way up resulting in more heat waves and fires, severe droughts and rains are likely to be intense when they finally come, and this could cause severe floods.
Rising sea levels: Many take seas and oceans for granted. They slow down climate change and absorb greenhouse gasses and heat, which could be detrimental to human health. This becomes more pronounce each day, and marine life could be impacted, and sooner all kinds of life on the planet will be impacted.
Global initiatives in environmental health
The World Health Organization spearheads the largest global environmental health initiative in existence. Their focus is primarily on the prevention of epidemics and to improve infant and child morbidity rates in developing countries through increasing the healthfulness of the environment of the community. They oversee projects that involve everything from vaccination programs to water processing plant construction.
Anywhere that there is a community there is a need for an examination of the state of environmental health for that community, and the individuals it supports. The impact of individual health is what determines the health of the country’s economy in all aspects.
Statistics are stark, according to World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 12.6 million people died in 2012 due to working or living in an unhealthy environment. This figure represents 1 in 4 total worldwide deaths according to recent surveys by the same organization. Environmental health risk factors, for instance, water, air, climate change, ultraviolet rays, climate exposures, soil, and pollution play a role in over 100 injuries and diseases.
By centering on minimizing environmental and social risk factors, close to a quarter of the world’s disease burden can be mitigated. Some classic examples of measures that will ensure environmental health is on par include excellent hygiene measures, boosting safe water storage, efficient and reliable administration of toxic compounds at home and workplace. On top of that, affirmative action by sectors like agriculture, transport, and energy are needed promptly, in collaboration with the health sector, to deal with causes of social and environmental ill health that are out of reach of the health sector.
What is Environmental Sustainability and Sustainable Development?
While it may seem that environmental sustainability and sustainable development are one in the same, there is quite a few ways in which they diverge in their goals. They do have the same overall goal that of conserving natural resources and creating more energy efficient projects and practices – but the two groups that are focused on them may find themselves in disagreement about what the priorities of actions are. Having a better understanding of how they are different and the same can help you do know how to navigate dealing with both.
What is Environmental Sustainability?
The goal of environmental sustainability is to conserve natural resources and to develop alternate sources of power while reducing pollution and harm to the environment. For environmental sustainability, the state of the future – as measured in 50, 100 and 1,000 years is the guiding principle. Many of the projects that are rooted in environmental sustainability will involve replanting forests, preserving wetlands and protecting natural areas from resource harvesting. The biggest criticism of environmental sustainability initiatives is that their priorities can be at odds with the needs of a growing industrialized society.
Amazon-black-friday
Head over to Amazon for best Black Friday deals
Cycling
What is Sustainable Development?
Sustainable development is the practice of developing land and construction projects in a manner that reduces their impact on the environment by allowing them to create energy efficient models of self-sufficiency. This can take the form of installing solar panels or wind generators on factory sites, using geothermal heating techniques or even participating in cap and trade agreements. The biggest criticism of sustainable development is that it does not do enough to conserve the environment in the present and is based on the belief that the harm done in one area of the world can be counter balanced by creating environmental protections in the other.
According to Brundtland Commission in its 1987 report “Our Common Future”,
“Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
Sustainable development has 3 goals: to minimize the depletion of natural resources, to promote development without causing harm to the environment and to make use of environmentally friendly practices.
When are the goals of each not in agreement?
The goals of the two groups diverge when it comes to the development of endangered areas. For instance, there will be disagreements when it comes to developing construction practices on a wetland. The environmental sustainability focus would argue that the preservation of the wetland is more important than everything else. Sustainable development will show that by incorporating preservation areas, and contributing to the overall preservation of a different wetland area that the damage is balanced out. Sustainable development will also argue that the local economic benefits will lead to more funding to create environmental protection areas elsewhere.
What are the current practices that seek a balance?
Resolving these differences can be difficult. Very often, money and economy will prove to be the deciding factor. This doesn’t mean that one side loses and one side wins, but the environmental factors can influence the development design to create an approach that provides the best of both worlds, without completing adopting one approach over the other. The environmental sustainability plans may show the sustainable development engineers that there are aspects of their design that can be improved to lessen the impact of the project on the wetland area that would still be in existence. Through committing funds and development to protected areas that are not a part of the development, environmental sustainability projects that emphasize conservation and public education can advance further than they would have on their own.
What can be done to promote greater attention to both?
The best approach is to educate the consumers, and the industry, to leave behind an either/or approach to development and conservation and to take on a balanced ratio approach that seeks the best of both worlds. This is very hard to do as it requires an element of sacrifice be adopted by the present society. To this end you need both of the sides to come together to commit to creating regulations, incentive programs and tax credits that promote sustainable development while defining priorities for conservation in different areas that will also feed back into the local communities.
More research and development is also needed in the areas of sustainable development to create better engineering and construction options that are more in keeping with environmental sustainable goals. In the end, no one can afford to lose sight of the fact that the environment as we know it is steadily eroding and the future of everyone is dependent on the care we take today to preserve the resources that we know, so we have time to develop better ways of living in the world.
What is Environmental Engineering?
Environmental engineering refers to the use of scientific processes to help improve the Earth’s environment to provide healthier land, water and air for human use and to find ways to scale back on pollution sites. It uses the principles of biology and chemistry to develop solutions to environmental problems. The goal of environmental engineering is to integrate scientific and engineering principles to minimize air pollution and waste discharge from industries, clean up polluted sites, set up appropriate mechanism for waste disposal resulting from human activity and study the impact of proposed construction sites on environment.
Apart from this, environmental engineering promotes energy conservation and is also concerned with finding solutions in areas of public health such as implementing adequate sanitation facilities.
Topics involving environmental engineering include waste management, water supply, waste water treatment, air pollution, recycling, and disposal of wastes, protection from radiation, public health, environmental engineering law, and the effects of man-made projects on the environment.
Who are Environmental Engineers and What They do
Environmental engineers are specialists who study and perform environmental engineering. To this end, they take doctrines of engineering, science, biology and chemistry to formulate solutions to public health issues and environmental problems. Essentially, they study the effects technology has on the environment. They must also be leaders in protecting the future of the environment from climate change and availability of resources, dealing with toxic wastes, helping oceanic areas recover from oil spills, developing new methods of recycling, monitoring air pollution levels, protecting wildlife from environmental hazards, and to eliminate solid, hazardous, and radioactive wastes and contamination of the environment.
Environmental engineers also conduct research on waste management studies in which they evaluate the significance of hazard, advise on its treatment and develop regulations to prevent or mitigate mishaps. They also address local and global environmental issues such as climate change, global warming, waste management, acid rain, improving recycling, raising pollution levels, ozone depletion, deforestation and landfills.
Environmental engineers often work very closely with the EPA to diagnose problems with current policies and legislation as it relates to the environment on both national and local levels. One of the goal of EPA is to protect air, water and soil quality to mitigate the consequences of harmful effects on humans, plants and animals.
The two major areas of interest of environmental engineers include enhancing the availability of high quality water supplies and investigate the fate and transport of contaminants and their by-products emerging from air, water and soil.
Since 2012, the annual pay of environmental engineers has been approximately $80,000, according the Bureau of Labor. Environmental engineering also one of the fastest growing areas of engineering, with a rapidly accelerating growth employment rate. It is an excellent career opportunity to look into.
Scope of Environmental Engineering
The scope of environmental engineering is actually larger than one might think and largely deals with the topics that were listed above. It is broad and scope and deals with major issues such as the treatment of water and air pollution to smaller but still completely relevant issues like recycling everyday items and storing solid wastes in landfills.
The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) is the primary agency that works with environmental engineers to evaluate on these topics.
Environment Impact and Mitigation
Engineers and scientists apply scientific and engineering principles to evaluate if there are likely to be an adverse impact on water, air, soil, land quality, flora and fauna, ecological impact, noise impact or visual impact. The overall goal of environmental engineers is to identify, assess and evaluate the environmental impacts of man made plans, projects and laws to see if there are any affects whatsoever on water, air, habitat, agriculture, plants and animals, and the ecosystem. In this sense, environmental engineering encompasses the protection of human health and preserving the natural environment using scientific and engineering processes.
Solid Waste Management
Solid waste management deals with solid waste materials produced by human activity, whether straightforwardly or obliquely. Solid waste management also focuses on the recovery of resources to delay the human consumption of natural resources. Different methods are used to limit the harmful solids that are released into the environment. The objective of solid waste management is to reduce the harmful effects of solid, liquid or gaseous substances on the environment.
Solid waste management also encompasses reuse and recycling of everyday materials, the minimization of waste, the storage and transfer of wastes, disposing of solid wastes at landfills, and policies and regulations regarding the above.
Water Supply and Treatment
Environmental engineers work to portable and agricultural use. It is their job to assess water within a water basin and determine supply of available water, the cycles of water movement throughout the seasons, and the treatment of water for various uses. This is done to severely minimize the risk of diseases that can be caught from the drinking and/or contact of water. This is why water distribution systems are built to meet irrigation standards for civilian use.
Water Pollution
Water pollution is closely tied to water supply and treatment. It essentially deals with the waste put into water from sewer systems, outhouses and septics in both rural and urban areas. Environmental engineers design specific systems to carry the polluted water away from civilized areas and release the waste into the environment, most often into the ocean, and in more landlocked areas, rivers and lakes.
Air Pollution Management
Environmental engineers design manufacturing and combustion processes to ensure the air pollutants are at acceptable levels in the atmosphere where the toxins can have minimal effects on people. These include emissions from automobile exhausts, No2, So2, organic compounds, and organic acids.
Environmental engineers work variety of environments because of the nature of tasks. The employment of environment engineers is expected to grow from 15% to 22% by 2022. Apart from social and ecological impact, environmental engineers are also involved in protection of wildlife. They also work as consultants and provide their services to clients to protect our environment from various environmental hazards, and clean up hazardous sites.
Current Environmental Issues
It is high time for human beings to take the ‘right’ action towards saving the earth from major environmental issues. If ignored today, these ill effects are sure to curb human existence in the near future.
Our planet earth has a natural environment, known as ‘Ecosystem’ which includes all humans, plant life, mountains, glaciers, atmosphere, rocks, galaxy, massive oceans and seas. It also includes natural resources such as water, electric charge, fire, magnetism, air and climate.
Engineering developments are resulting in resource depletion and environmental destruction. Modern technologies used in the engineering and manufacturing industry have a major impact on our life in past few years. Due to the rapid changes in the engineering and manufacturing industry have been drastic changes in the environment. Learn how going green can help your business, hire the number 1 environmental speaker, Jim Harris.
Engineering and manufacturing industry have increased the use of materials like metals, plastic, oil and rubber. These are used in the production of numerous end products which can be associated with different industries such as Car production units, shipping industries, Cotton mills, plastics industries, Coal mining, heavy machineries and etc which are causing numerous arduous effects and are considered to be non-environment friendly.
Crucial environmental issues are no more a blame game. While most of us crib about dirty air, smelly garbage or polluted water, least do we know it is “us” who is responsible for this unfavorable circumstances leading to cautionary environmental issues.
Here are 10 significant current environmental issues, where human beings play an important role in its cause.
1. Pollution: More than half of the human population knows what is pollution, but we are still not ready to face its damaging consequences. Pollution is not only limited to water, soil and noise but has extended to light, visual, point and non-point sources. Human beings and their actions are majorly responsible for causing all types of pollution. Water pollution is essentially cause by oil spills, urban runoff and ocean dumping. Air pollution rises from burning of fossil fuels, hydraulic fracturing and gases emitted by vehicles. Water and soil pollution are majorly cause from industrial waste.
Air_pollution_issue
2. Climate Change: Climate change today is less of a natural process. It is rapidly occurring due to the ill effects of human actions responsible for disturbing and harmful out comings such as global warming, greenhouse effect, urban heat, coal industry etc. Climate change is not only changing the overall weather scenario, but has larger and harmful effects. Some of these include: melting of polar regions, occurrence of new diseases and permanent inhibition in growth of certain plants essential for human survival.
3. Global Warming: Global warming is another environmental issue which is increase in earth’s temperature due to effect of greenhouse gases called carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor and other gases. These gases possess heat trapping capacity that are needed to create greenhouse effect so that this planet remains warm for people to survive. Without these gases, this planet would turn be cold for life to exist.
During past several decades, the accumulation of greenhouse gases have grown rapidly, which means more heat gets trapped in the atmosphere and few of these gases escapes back into the space. These gases heat up the earth’s surface and this results in global warming. According to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports, the earth’s temperature has increased by 0.8 degrees Celsius over the past century. Global warming is a serious public health and environmental concern. Global warming can have long lasting effects which can result in melting of glaciers, climate change, droughts, diseases and increase in hurricanes frequency.
4. Deforestation: With population growing at a rapid pace, the demand for food, shelter and cloth has almost tripled in last few decades. To overcome growing demand, a direct action that we have come to recognize as “Deforestation” occurs. Deforestation means, clearing of forests or green cover for means of agriculture, industrial or urban use. It involves permanent end of forest cover to make that land available for residential, commercial or industrial purpose.
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), an estimated 18 million acres (7.3 million hectares) of forest are lost each year. The long term effects of deforestation can be severely devastating and alarming as they may cause floods, soil erosion, increase in global warming, climate imbalance, wildlife extinction and other serious environmental issues.
Overpopulation_issue
5. Overpopulation: This is a never-ending human tragedy which is responsible for causing all types of environmental issues. Water pollution, resources crisis, gender imbalance, pollution, land pollution, urban sprawling, deforestation, over production are some common examples of dangerous effects cause by overpopulation. Despite efforts taken by the government in terms of family planning in many countries, over population is difficult to control at international level. This has become more like a subjective concern and no method seems to be 100% efficient to resolve the problem of over population.
6. Industrial and Household Waste: At present, tons of garbage is produced by each household each year. Items that can be recycled are sent to local recycling unit while other items become a part of the landfills or sent to third world countries. Due to increase in demand for food, shelter and house, more goods are produced. This resulted in creation of more waste that needs to be disposed of. Most waste is buried underground in landfill sites. The presence of huge landfills sites across the city pose serious environmental concerns. It affects human health, degrades soil quality, effects wildlife, cause air pollution and results in climate change.
7. Acid Rain: Acid rain simply means rain that is acidic in nature due to the presence of certain pollutants in the atmosphere. These pollutants come in the atmosphere due to car or industrial processes. Acid rain can occur in form of rain, snow, fog or dry material that settle to earth. Acid rain may cause due to erupting volcanoes, rotting vegetation and sea sprays that produce sulfur dioxide and fires, bacterial decomposition and lightening generate nitrogen dioxide.
Acid rain can also be caused due to man-made sources which include combustion of fossil fuels which release sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides into the atmosphere. Acid rain can have devastating effects on aquatic life, forests, public health and architecture and buildings.
8. Ozone Layer Depletion: Ozone layer is a layer of gas that sits 25-30 km above earth’s surface. It mainly contains contain ozone which is a naturally occurring molecule containing three oxygen atoms. This layer is present in the stratosphere and prevents too many harmful UV (ultra violet) radiations from entering the earth. Ozone layer is capable of absorbing 97-99% of the harmful ultraviolet radiations that are emitted by sun.
However, during last several decades, human and industrial activity has contributed a lot which has resulted in considerable reduction in the ozone layer of the atmosphere. The main cause of depletion of ozone layer is determined as excessive release of chlorine and bromine from man-made compounds such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons), halons, CH3CCl3 (Methyl chloroform), CCl4 (Carbon tetrachloride), HCFCs (hydro-chlorofluorocarbons), hydrobromofluorocarbons and methyl bromide are found to have direct impact on the depletion of the ozone layer.
9. Genetic Engineering: Genetic modification of food, human and animal organs seems like the gem of science and technology but this has major harmful effects. Biotechnology is an impressive technology but limiting is use is the need of the hour. Genetic engineering is a controversial subject and has seen more ill impacts than the benefits it brings to mankind. Genetic pollution and alteration of food produce not only have harmful effects on human beings, but are responsible for crucial concern known s as ‘genetic modification’.
10. Urban Sprawl: Not only India and China are classic examples of over population and urban sprawl leading to land degradation. Today almost all countries are using the land irresponsibly to meet the ever-growing demand of the greedy human wishes. The expansion of industrial areas has not only led to land degradation and soil pollution, but the habitat destruction is a terrible misery. Natural environment consisting of flora and fauna is indiscriminately destructed and lost completely instead of being replaced. This in the long run has harmful impact for human survival and cause serious environmental issue.
What is Environmental Science?
Environment is an evergreen subject because it matters a lot to our daily lives. It’s where we live, eat, breathe, and bring up our children. Our life support systems entirely rely on the well-being of every organism living on planet earth. This is why a lot has been written and spoken about protection and conservation of the environment. There are even high-value courses dedicated to the study of environment. A typical example is environment science.
Environmental science is a field that deals with the study of interaction between human systems and natural systems. Natural systems involve the earth itself and life. Human systems are primarily the populations of the earth.
Environmental science is the academic field that takes physical, biological and chemical sciences to study the environment and discover solutions to environmental problems. Sciences used in environmental science include geography, zoology, physics, ecology, oceanology, and geology. Environmental science also branches out into environmental studies and environmental engineering. It provides integrated and interdisciplinary approach to the study of environmental problems.
Environmental studies are the study of social sciences to understand human interactions with the environment.
Environmental engineering is the focus on analyzing and deducing problems with the environment and the effect of man-made programs on the environment, and for finding solutions to help protect and preserve the environment by disposing of pollution in the air, water, and land.
Environmental science involves different fields of study. Most often, the study of environmental science includes the study of climate change, natural resources, energy, pollution, and environmental issues. In environmental sciences, ecologists study how plants and animals interact with each other, chemists study the living and non-living components of the environment, geologists study the formation, structure and history of earth, biologists study the biodiversity, Physicists are involved in thermodynamics, computer scientists are involved in technical innovations and computer modelling and biomedical experts study the impact of environmental issues on our health and social lives.
The growing complexity of environmental problems are creating a need for scientists with rigorous, interdisciplinary training in environmental science. Environmental scientists and specialists use their knowledge of the natural sciences to protect the environment and human health. They must have a solid background in economics, sociology and political science.
Environmental_science
Importance of Environmental Science
To realize that environmental problems are global
Environmental science lets you recognize that environmental problems such as climate change, global warming, ozone layer depletion, acid rains, and impacts on biodiversity and marine life are not just national problems, but global problems as well. So, concerted effort from across the world is needed to tackle these problems.
To understand the impacts of development on environment
It’s well documented and quantified that development results in Industrial growth, urbanization, expansion of telecommunication and transport systems, hi-tech agriculture and expansion of housing. Environmental science seeks to teach the general population about the need for decentralization of industries to reduce congestion in urban areas. Decentralization means many people will move out of urban centers to reduce pollution resulting from overpopulation. The goal is to achieve all this sustainably without compromising the future generation’s ability to satisfy their own needs.
To discover sustainable ways of living
Environmental science is more concerned with discovering ways to live more sustainably. This means utilizing present resources in a manner that conserves their supplies for the future. Environmental sustainability doesn’t have to outlaw living luxuriously, but it advocates for creating awareness about consumption of resources and minimizing unnecessary waste. This includes minimizing household energy consumption, using disposals to dispose of waste, eating locally, recycling more, growing your own food, drinking from the tap, conserving household water, and driving your car less.
To utilize natural resources efficiently
Natural resources bring a whole lot of benefits to a country. A country’s natural resources may not be utilized efficiently because of low-level training and lack of management skills. Environmental science teaches us to use natural resources efficiently by:
Appropriately putting into practice environmental conservation methods
Using the right tools to explore resources
Adding value to our resources
Making sure machines are maintained appropriately
Thorough training of human resources
Provision of effective and efficient supervision
Using the right techniques to minimize exploitation
To understand behavior of organisms under natural conditions
Behavior is what organisms manifest to respond to, interact with, and control their environment. An animal exhibits behavior as the first line of defense in response to any change of environment. So, critical look at organism’s behavior can offer insightful information about animal’s needs, dislikes, preferences and internal condition providing that your evaluation of those observations firmly hinge on knowledge of species’-natural behavior.
To shed light on contemporary concepts such as how to conserve biodiversity
Biodiversity is the variety of life on earth. The present rate of biodiversity loss is at an all-time high. Environmental science aims to teach people how to reverse this trend by:
Using sustainable wood products
Using organic foods
Embracing the 3R’s, reduce, reuse, and recycle
Purchasing sustainable seafood
Supporting conservation campaigns at local levels
Conserving power
Minimizing consumption of meat
Utilizing eco-friendly cleaning products
To understand the interrelationship between organisms in population and communities
Organisms and humans depend on each other to get by. Environmental science is important because it enables you to understand how these relationships work. For example, humans breathe out carbon dioxide, which plants need for photosynthesis. Plants, on the other hand, produce and release oxygen to the atmosphere, which humans need for respiration. Animal droppings are sources of nutrients for plants and other microorganisms. Plants are sources of food for humans and animals. In short, organisms and humans depend on each other for survival.
To learn and create awareness about environmental problems at local, national and international levels
Environmental problems at local, national and international levels mostly occur due to lack of awareness. Environmental science aims to educate and equip learners with necessary environmental skills to pass to the community in order to create awareness. Environmental awareness can be created through social media, creating a blog dedicated to creating awareness, community centered green clubs, women forums, and religious podiums.
Components of Environmental Science
Ecology
Ecology is the study of organisms and the environment interacting with one another. Ecologists, who make up a part of environmental scientists, try to find relations between the status of the environment and the population of a particular species within that environment, and if there is any correlations to be drawn between the two. For example, ecologists might take the populations of a particular type of bird with the status of the part of the Amazon Rainforest that population is living in.
The ecologists will study and may or may not come to the conclusion that the bird population is increasing or decreasing as a result of air pollution in the rainforest. They may also take multiple species of birds and see if they can find any relation to one another, allowing the scientists to come to a conclusion if the habitat is suitable or not for that species to live in.
Geoscience
Geoscience concerns the study of geology, soil science, volcanoes, and the Earth’s crust as they relate to the environment. As an example, scientists may study the erosion of the Earth’s surface in a particular area. Soil scientists, physicists, biologists, and geomorphologists would all take part in the study.
Geomorphologists would study the movement of solid particles (sediments), biologists would study the impacts of the study to the plants and animals of the immediate environment, physicists would study the light transmission changes in the water causing the erosion, and the soil scientists would make the final calculations on the flow of the water when it infiltrates the soil to full capacity causing the erosion in the first place.
Atmospheric Science
Atmospheric science is the study of the Earth’s atmosphere. It analyzes the relation of the Earth’s atmosphere to the atmospheres of other systems. This encompasses a wide variety of scientific studies relating to space, astrology and the Earth’s atmosphere: meteorology, pollution, gas emissions, and airborne contaminants.
An example of atmospheric science is where physicists study atmospheric circulation of a part of the atmosphere, chemists would study the chemicals existent in this part and their relationships with the environment, meteorologists study the dynamics of the atmosphere, and biologists study how the plants and animals are affected and their relationship with the environment.
Environmental Chemistry
Environmental Chemistry is the study of the changes chemicals make in the environment, such as contamination of the soil, pollution of the water, degradation of chemicals, and the transport of chemicals upon the plants and animals of the immediate environment. An example of environmental chemistry would be introduction of a chemical object into an environment, in which chemists would then study the chemical bonding to the soil or sand of the environment. Biologists would then study the now chemically induced soil to see its relationship with the plants and animals of the environment.
Environmental science is an active and growing part of the scientific world accelerated by the need to address problems with the Earth’s environment. It encompasses multiple scientific fields and sciences to see how all interchange and relate with one another in any of the above four components.
two hands save the earth white ecological
Top 5 Environmental Science Careers
Environmental Scientist
An environmental scientist performs research to pinpoint, minimize the grave impacts of, or get rid of hazards and pollutants to the environments or the health of the globe’s population. His or her main aim is to protect and conserve Mother Nature. The average annual salary of an environmental scientist is $67, 400. Environmental scientist jobs are normally full time, including working over 40 hours a week. Their main workplaces are laboratories and outdoor field works. You need impeccable skills set to be an environmental scientist including communication skills, reading comprehension, and self-discipline.
Environmental Engineer
An environmental engineer finds solutions to problems in the environment by leveraging his or her knowledge of soil science, engineering, biology, and chemistry. His or her area of focus includes control of pollution, recycling, and Public health aspects. A bachelor’s degree in environmental engineering is required to become an environmental engineer. Environmental engineers take home an annual salary of about $83,360. An environmental engineer should be able to:
Offer suggestions for maintaining and beefing up environmental performance
Find out, evaluate and apply storm water good management practices for municipal, industrial and construction stormwater programs
Evaluate environmental regulations and seek counsel with applicability determination
He or she should document all environmental incidences
Develop and keep in line environmental management systems to conform to air and permit regulations.
Lead from the front in the negotiation and of permit applications
Liaise with regulatory bodies, prepare required documentation, organize any testing sessions and provide more follow-up documentation needed.
Environmental Biologist
An environmental biologist deals with ecosystem and wildlife that reside in it. However, environmental biologist focuses a lot on the biological side of any ecosystem, which means his or her duties are more inclined to biology. To qualify as an environmental biologist, you need a bachelor’s degree in environmental biology. The duties of an environmental biologist include:
Administering biological and project schedules using scientific techniques, statistical tools and in-depth knowledge in the domain
Scheduling and conducting biological experiments and follow up with field and laboratory operating processes
Pinpoint project technicalities and counteract them effectively without compromising resources and time
Bring up findings of experiments to colleagues and stakeholders
Ensure scientific integrity by working with a team in conjunction with peer review data
Environmental Geologist
Environmental geology is a field of study that blends the main cornerstone of environmental science and puts more emphasis on geology and how to apply it in real world scenario to solve environmental problems. An environmental geologist goes beyond interest in environment and correlation between humans and wildlife in it. He or she also focuses on fossil fuels, non-renewable resources, minerals and the earth’s crust.
An environmental geologist will spend most of his or her work life serving as a consultant, assisting in the mitigation of soil and ground water contamination by determining the right location for new landfills and drawing up a plan for underground waste disposal. He or she also ensures water supplies and soils that are responsible for growing food stay clean and uncontaminated without affecting or limiting accessibility to any organism or animal that relies on them for survival. The average annual salary for an environmental geologist is $89 700.
Environmental Biotechnologist
This professional synchronizes engineering and biology to create and utilize procedures that correct contaminated sites. For instance, there is a wide range of bacteria, microbes, and fungi that are able to consume pollutants and later break them down into safe elements over time. An environmental biotechnologist finds out, utilize and create necessary microbes for correcting a specific area and the pollutants unique to it. Contaminated soil might be corrected or remedied on site or loaded into containers and transported for treatment. Environmental biotechnologists perform the following duties:
Develop plant-based bioplastics
Transform plants into biofuels
Draw up correction plans for specific sites that abide by environmental regulations
Develop procedures to convert waste into biogas or other cleaner sources of energy
Develops cleaner industrial processes by substituting chemicals with biological processes
Utilize GIS (Geographic Information Systems) to pinpoint contaminated sites and distribution of pollutants
Typically, one needs to have master’s and doctorate degrees to qualify as an environmental biotechnologist. However, the exponential growth of the domain has opened up a whole lot of opportunities for those having bachelor’s and associate’s degrees.