It is good to know that now more and more people are getting aware about environmental issues and even started acting upon it in their effort to save their beloved environment.
Many years ago, the top environmental concerns were only global warming and anything to do with carbon foot print, but now the public are more aware about other issues such as food safety, health safety and many more which are directly related to our surroundings and environment as well.
Here are the list of top environmental concerns of the public in 2012/2013.
1. Contamination of drinking water: As the population grows, the clean drinkable water reserves become limited and scarce. With the increase of the human population as well, more of our drinking water resources become polluted by human waste, industrial waste, sedimentation and many other reasons which is why more and more people are concerned about contamination of our clean water resources.
2. Water pollution: Our water courses are so easy to be polluted so much so that it is not easy to find for a clean water source which you can drink directly without risking the chance of getting poisoned or ingesting parasites into the body. Currently, this issue has boost a lot of scientific research and industry to help manage and reduce this problem, turning our dirty water into clean and usable water for our daily usage.
3. Soil contamination: Soil contamination could be caused by industrial toxic waste, biological toxic waste, soil infertility and other substance or materials being present in the soil which makes the soil unusable for agriculture and other development. This is an important issue to tackle as now we have less land available to all of us as our human population grows.
4. Wildlife conservation: Now more and more people are aware about endangered animals and extinct animals and we all are trying to prevent it from happening because most of us are animal lovers and we appreciate these wildlife as well as wild plants to be present with us on Earth. Tons of animal and widllife conservation groups has been popping up for the past several years to protect our wildlife around us.
5. Air pollution: Air pollution is also a major concern as now more and more people are having respiratory diseases which are commonly linked to our polluted airs. Gone are the days when the air in the cities are fresh and cool, now things are different. Smogs and fine particles are floating in the air clogging up our lungs and causing many respiratory problems. But this has also boost many scientific research on how to reduce the air pollutants as well as creating environmental friendly products which contribute less to air pollution such as hybrid cars, increase efficiency of public transport etc.
6. Biological pollutants: Biological pollutants includes bacteria, parasites, viruses, molds, mildew, dander, dust, mites, pollen, ventilation and many more which are threats to human health.
7. Carbon foot print: Tons of articles has been written about carbon footprint and now the coolest environmentally thing to do is always to reduce your carbon foot print in your daily activities to slow down the effect of global warming.
8. Climate change: Climate change is actually a normal process however due to the explosive number of the human population escalating within several decades ago, our climate is changing too fast for our surroundings to adapt to it. Climate change has been linked to the cause of extreme weathers, melting of the polar ice caps and the extinction of many wildlife in the forest and ocean.
9. Consumerism: Now the tag line for this would be to reduce, reuse and recycle where the public are encouraged to buy less and reuse more to reduce waste and maximized the usage of the items which are already around us. It is also a great way to save money.
10. Dams and the effect of dam building towards the environment: The purpose of building dams is to control the water levels as well as to harness energy from moving water which is also known as hydroelectric. Hydroelectric is one of the renewable energy available thus there are plenty of dams had been built around the world to harness this renewable energy such as in Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia and many more. However not all is good about damming up our rivers and streams as it changes the surroundings of the river as the river and the hills get flooded. Communities living in the area has to be relocated and the wildlife along the river will be destroyed which is why dams has been receiving many negative response lately.
11. Ecosystem: Ecosystem is a very general word related to our environmental working as a system which includes our surrounding and us such as the animals, plants, humans, and non living things (rocks, mountains etc) around us. The main theory of an ecosystem is that our survival intertwine with each other and we need each of the component to survive. With this concept, the sustainable living concept is derived which place the importance of living harmoniously with our environment.
12. Energy conservation: For many years, the human population has been depending on fuel and petroleum as our main source of energy. But because it is depleting as it is a non renewable energy and also it is one of the major causes of climate change and global warming, the public are encourage to reduce the usage of energy thus reducing the need for petroleum and also use alternative energy such as reusable energy (solar, geothermal, hydroelectric etc).
13. Fishing: Over fishing is a very important issue that need to be tackled seriously. As the human population rises, the demand for protein has increased thus more fish is needed to provide to this demand. However this has caused our ocean to be over fished, leaving our ocean quite empty and fishless (this is said in an exaggerated manner but has some truth to a certain extend). Thus fisherman and scientist around the world are finding ways to create sustainable fishing method as well as alternative fishing method/ production such as aquaculture.
14. Food safety: As more and more people are getting aware about pollutants and pollution, the poblic has also start to focus on the safety of their food and anything else which they are consuming. Over the past few decades, several major cases of food contamination has been the cause of death to people. This includes the mad cow disease, China melamine issue, E.coli contamination and many more.
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15. Land degradation: There are many causes of land degradation such as logging, over usage of the soil through unsustainable agriculture practices, soil contamination through waste disposal etc. All these then makes the land becomes unusable or eroded. The question is why bother over land degradation? Well it is because with a piece of land, we can do many things. We can grow food, we can develop the land for human development or we can conserve the land for wildlife. Also land degradation has cause many other indirect problems such as river sedimentation, landslides, reduced wildlife population, increased human-wildlife conflicts for communities living near the surroundings of the rain forest floods and many more which affects the human daily life & safety.
16. Intensive farming: So what is intensive farming? Intensive farming is the agriculture practice of using our soil/ land at an intensive rate so much so that we have depleted our land of its nutrients and it becomes infertile and plants are not able to grow on these soil anymore. Intensive farming is known as an unsustainable manner of agriculture. Once the soil is infertile, the farmers will have to shift to other places which had fertile soil to start farming again. However this is bad because in the future, the next land which they will be farming will be depleted of its nutrient as well. Intensive farming can be tackled using sustainable farming practices.
17. Logging: Logging is crucial as we need wood for many of our products used by humans. However logging should be done in a sustainable manner to ensure we always have trees for our future, the soil does not degrades and it have minimal impact towards our environment and the wildlife. Currently many logging activities conducted around the world are conducted in a unsustainable manner and this raises serious concerns within the public and conservationist.
18. Over population: Usually this term over population refers to the human population and not other population such as the bird or the dog population and other animals and plants population. So why is it such a big issue? Due to over population, most of our resources are depleting which are crucial to our survival and our waste are building up. Tons of environmental issues are linked to over population thus it is important to know how to live in a sustainable manner.
19. Ozone depletion: Ozone depletion was once a growing concern. It is still a concern but ever since most countries has banned the used of chloroflourocarbon (CFC) products, ozone depletion has been discussed less within the public compared to other topics such as food safety etc. However, most of the public knows that our ozone is depleting thus the risk of skin cancer is increasing. So more and more people are using sun block lotion as a method to reduce the destructive effect of the sun UV rays on their skin.
20. Resource depletion: These resources are referring to food, water, energy and any other resources which are needed for the survival of us, the humans. The main reasons to resource depletion is mainly causes by overpopulation and pollution.
21. Management of waste: Most of the waste in this Earth is created by human and their daily activities. Currently we have a major issue of managing the waste as we have too many of them. If the waste are not managed well, it can causes diseases and many other environmental issues.
22. Sustainable living: Sustainable living is now the most popular way to live even though many find it difficult to live an ideal life through sustainable living ways. But we hope that through sustainable living, we are able to reduce the environmental issues and stress which we humans are causing towards the Earth and hope that one day we are able to live harmoniously with our surroundings.
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