2.Human have possibility to overcome the environmental crisis
3. The world today is facing shortage of resources, especailly food, energy and water. Developed countreis consume a lot more resources than undeveloped countries. If undeveloped countries consume like developed countries as thier living standards go up, the earth will be out of its carrying capacity, it says. This article says that restrain of consumption rate of third-world countires is not the point. It focuses on restoring nomal consumption rate in developed contries. It also mentions that if we promote awareness of environmental problem and excercise political will in right way, there is hope for the sustainable future. I think that countries with rapidly growing economy should not be suspected as main cause of shortage of resources. The main cause is structure of capitalism which promotes consumption and leads people to think consuming much is well-being. People naturally pursues easy way of living and industries are usually tied closely with politic. therefore, reforming industries and educating people to spontaneously choose eco-friendly way will need some time. I hope we will not be too late. --------------
January 2, 2008 Op-Ed Contributor What’s Your Consumption Factor? By JARED DIAMOND Los Angeles
TO mathematicians, 32 is an interesting number: it’s 2 raised to the fifth power, 2 times 2 times 2 times 2 times 2. To economists, 32 is even more special, because it measures the difference in lifestyles between the first world and the developing world. The average rates at which people consume resources like oil and metals, and produce wastes like plastics and greenhouse gases, are about 32 times higher in North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia than they are in the developing world. That factor of 32 has big consequences.
To understand them, consider our concern with world population. Today, there are more than 6.5 billion people, and that number may grow to around 9 billion within this half-century. Several decades ago, many people considered rising population to be the main challenge facing humanity. Now we realize that it matters only insofar as people consume and produce.
If most of the world’s 6.5 billion people were in cold storage and not metabolizing or consuming, they would create no resource problem. What really matters is total world consumption, the sum of all local consumptions, which is the product of local population times the local per capita consumption rate.
The estimated one billion people who live in developed countries have a relative per capita consumption rate of 32. Most of the world’s other 5.5 billion people constitute the developing world, with relative per capita consumption rates below 32, mostly down toward 1.
The population especially of the developing world is growing, and some people remain fixated on this. They note that populations of countries like Kenya are growing rapidly, and they say that’s a big problem. Yes, it is a problem for Kenya’s more than 30 million people, but it’s not a burden on the whole world, because Kenyans consume so little. (Their relative per capita rate is 1.) A real problem for the world is that each of us 300 million Americans consumes as much as 32 Kenyans. With 10 times the population, the United States consumes 320 times more resources than Kenya does.
People in the third world are aware of this difference in per capita consumption, although most of them couldn’t specify that it’s by a factor of 32. When they believe their chances of catching up to be hopeless, they sometimes get frustrated and angry, and some become terrorists, or tolerate or support terrorists. Since Sept. 11, 2001, it has become clear that the oceans that once protected the United States no longer do so. There will be more terrorist attacks against us and Europe, and perhaps against Japan and Australia, as long as that factorial difference of 32 in consumption rates persists.
People who consume little want to enjoy the high-consumption lifestyle. Governments of developing countries make an increase in living standards a primary goal of national policy. And tens of millions of people in the developing world seek the first-world lifestyle on their own, by emigrating, especially to the United States and Western Europe, Japan and Australia. Each such transfer of a person to a high-consumption country raises world consumption rates, even though most immigrants don’t succeed immediately in multiplying their consumption by 32.
Among the developing countries that are seeking to increase per capita consumption rates at home, China stands out. It has the world’s fastest growing economy, and there are 1.3 billion Chinese, four times the United States population. The world is already running out of resources, and it will do so even sooner if China achieves American-level consumption rates. Already, China is competing with us for oil and metals on world markets.
Per capita consumption rates in China are still about 11 times below ours, but let’s suppose they rise to our level. Let’s also make things easy by imagining that nothing else happens to increase world consumption — that is, no other country increases its consumption, all national populations (including China’s) remain unchanged and immigration ceases. China’s catching up alone would roughly double world consumption rates. Oil consumption would increase by 106 percent, for instance, and world metal consumption by 94 percent.
If India as well as China were to catch up, world consumption rates would triple. If the whole developing world were suddenly to catch up, world rates would increase elevenfold. It would be as if the world population ballooned to 72 billion people (retaining present consumption rates).
Some optimists claim that we could support a world with nine billion people. But I haven’t met anyone crazy enough to claim that we could support 72 billion. Yet we often promise developing countries that if they will only adopt good policies — for example, institute honest government and a free-market economy — they, too, will be able to enjoy a first-world lifestyle. This promise is impossible, a cruel hoax: we are having difficulty supporting a first-world lifestyle even now for only one billion people.
We Americans may think of China’s growing consumption as a problem. But the Chinese are only reaching for the consumption rate we already have. To tell them not to try would be futile.
The only approach that China and other developing countries will accept is to aim to make consumption rates and living standards more equal around the world. But the world doesn’t have enough resources to allow for raising China’s consumption rates, let alone those of the rest of the world, to our levels. Does this mean we’re headed for disaster?
No, we could have a stable outcome in which all countries converge on consumption rates considerably below the current highest levels. Americans might object: there is no way we would sacrifice our living standards for the benefit of people in the rest of the world. Nevertheless, whether we get there willingly or not, we shall soon have lower consumption rates, because our present rates are unsustainable.
Real sacrifice wouldn’t be required, however, because living standards are not tightly coupled to consumption rates. Much American consumption is wasteful and contributes little or nothing to quality of life. For example, per capita oil consumption in Western Europe is about half of ours, yet Western Europe’s standard of living is higher by any reasonable criterion, including life expectancy, health, infant mortality, access to medical care, financial security after retirement, vacation time, quality of public schools and support for the arts. Ask yourself whether Americans’ wasteful use of gasoline contributes positively to any of those measures.
Other aspects of our consumption are wasteful, too. Most of the world’s fisheries are still operated non-sustainably, and many have already collapsed or fallen to low yields — even though we know how to manage them in such a way as to preserve the environment and the fish supply. If we were to operate all fisheries sustainably, we could extract fish from the oceans at maximum historical rates and carry on indefinitely.
The same is true of forests: we already know how to log them sustainably, and if we did so worldwide, we could extract enough timber to meet the world’s wood and paper needs. Yet most forests are managed non-sustainably, with decreasing yields.
Just as it is certain that within most of our lifetimes we’ll be consuming less than we do now, it is also certain that per capita consumption rates in many developing countries will one day be more nearly equal to ours. These are desirable trends, not horrible prospects. In fact, we already know how to encourage the trends; the main thing lacking has been political will.
Fortunately, in the last year there have been encouraging signs. Australia held a recent election in which a large majority of voters reversed the head-in-the-sand political course their government had followed for a decade; the new government immediately supported the Kyoto Protocol on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Also in the last year, concern about climate change has increased greatly in the United States. Even in China, vigorous arguments about environmental policy are taking place, and public protests recently halted construction of a huge chemical plant near the center of Xiamen. Hence I am cautiously optimistic. The world has serious consumption problems, but we can solve them if we choose to do so.
Jared Diamond, a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, is the author of “Collapse” and “Guns, Germs and Steel.” --------------------- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/opinion/02diamond.html?pagewanted=print
3. While I was searching an article from the eccofeminism perspective, I got this article. This article is about the women and environment relationship in Kashmir. Article is written simple language of simple matter, but with micro analysis. How woman are suffered from environment degradation and how they are contributing to protect environment. According to article from their suffered of drinking water, fuel to cook and scarcity of daily life, women are becoming skillful to protect the environment. Also article explains the relationship of women and nature since the immemorial time. It argues both are dominated by the existing systems. Women work as equal their mail counterparts but get fewer wages. Women have no access to the resources. And author compares this subordinate situation of women I think this article is an example of ecofeminism. Women are closer to nature and natural beauty than men. They can contribute better in preserving the precious resources thereby contributing a great deal towards the well-being of the entire humankind, writes Kawnser-ul-Yaqoob God has created so many living and non-living beings. But the living beings, particularly human beings, intentionally are more responsible for environmental destruction than any other species. Importance was given to almost all cultures for environmental protection. So it is very much necessary to safeguard the environment as far as possible and it is our responsibility to handover safe environment to our future generations.
Women and nature
Woman is a part and parcel of environment. She contributes a lot in so many ways for the environmental protection. Women revolutions in developed countries are helping so much to protect the environment. The women, particularly from hilly region or rural areas, are the victims due to the age-old fatalism. So it is needless to say that these women should be educated to bring them out from these orthodox clutches. They should be provided with proper training to create suitable awareness and insight into the new demands in the physical and social environment. When compared to men, women have more direct relationship with their immediate environment. Regularly they collect their own life re-quirements like fuel, water, food; like leaves, roots, fruits, fish etc. Their activities are also confined. Women tend to rear the cattle. They grow or collect grass for their domestic animals—particularly dairy ani-mals and birds. So, women have a close view of the animals as well as with the flora and fauna of that region by living with them.
Even in the past primitive society also, women had a good relationship with the nature. Only men used to hunt and kill the animals for food whereas women used to collect forest resources to meet their life requirements. Men also cut trees for preparing coal or for construction by seeing from the business point of view.
Women and water
Women act as suppliers and consumers of water. Women have more knowledge about the existence and quality of water available in the local environment. They carry water so many times in a day and it requires so much time and energy. As a result they feel responsible for using the water in an economical manner. So consumption of water at family level is more associated with the female folk in their daily life. Moreover, women are involved in preparing the food and related items. The water required in cooking, cleaning etc. is the concern of women.
Women and resources
Women use widely the forest resources. They buy articles made out of wood, wool, rock, shells, thorns or ivory etc. Just for fashion either on their clothing or jewellery. Decorative pieces prepared out of some spe-cies like snakes, rabbits, squirrels, iguana etc. Due to this, these may disappear from the environment. The awareness to avoid the capture and killing of these species for the sake of entertainment or luxury is necessary. Otherwise they will be out of sight and become extinct. Unless women deny the use of these things it is not possible to protect these species. Even in the modern societies the use of some varieties of sanitary napkins, towels, cosmetics, creams and powders containing some poisonous mer-cury and hydro-quinines should be abandoned. Even the powder milk for the infants used is really threatening, leading to diarrohea due to the im-purity in unboiled water. Mothers need to be educated about all these negative consequences leading to health hazards.
Women and work
Majority of women work as labourers either in the agricultural farms, industries or mines even for lesser wages. They need training in sparing their time and materials in these fields and good economic return for the amount of work they do.
Women and society
Now women are entering into the gainful employment. That – they are looking after their job requirements besides fulfilling their family responsibilities. Moreover, they are contributing to their family income. The roles played traditionally by women are disintegrating and modifications are taking place. As a result the nature of work attended by women has changed drastically. The reasons for this are migration of men, green revolution, publicity of high yielding crops, mechanization, urbanization including industrialization leading to pollution, lessening the cultivable land and other natural resources etc. From this point of view also they need to be oriented towards these changing times.
Women and technical knowledge
Women are involved in collection of firewood, water, materials and engaged in cooking and meeting the requirements of family members for hours together in addition to their traditional responsibilities like rearing, caring and bearing children. Besides this they have to work in their own workplaces for longer durations. They get very little time in due to several difficulties. They need to be exposed to the several gadgets avail-able to save time and to spend their time in an effective manner to get more benefits. Several petty things take away the time of a housewife. These traditional means of cooking, water collection, grinding, firewood collection etc., need to be replaced by modern technological devices and non-conventional energy resources for their optimum use to improve their living and health conditions. For all these purposes technical knowl-edge is required which need to be provided for information, use and repair of these devices.
Women and population
Women can control population explosion through family welfare education. Standard of life can be improved only by limiting the chil-dren. Even today the status of women is decided on the number of male children they possess. The menstrual cycles, childbirths, early marriages, economic and social factors are responsible for population growth. Women need to be exposed to the various evil consequences of popula-tion growth and the need for small family by adopting various methods to control the birth of children as it is considered to be the main reason for environmental destruction as well as pollution. There is an immediate need to plan programmes to create awareness among women to move further without causing environmen-tal destruction and to work for environmental construction, which was already affected, to develop socially, culturally, economically and industrially. They should be provided knowledge about the resources, their management, selection of materials, implementation, control and evalu-ation of different procedures and appropriate environmental technology should reach the ordinary women through various women’s organizations for environmental protection.
3. As we all know, DDT is widley used in Korea 30-40 years ago to clean environment where we live. we sprayed it to humans directly sometimes to exterminate insects. We never thought it would be so harmful to humans and environment. Even though we banned DDT, it is still showing up in some animals in Antartica. It is so evident that chemicals accumulation is still going on. Chemicals travel trough food chain and they will reach up to us. Science and technology give us not only convenience, but also endless anxiety with fear. ------------------------------
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The pesticide DDT, banned decades ago in much of the world, still shows up in penguins in Antarctica, probably due to the chemical's accumulation in melting glaciers, a sea bird expert said on Friday.
Adelie penguins, known for their waddling gait and a habit of nesting on stones, have long shown evidence of DDT in their fatty tissues, although not in enough concentration to hurt the birds, according to Heidi Geisz of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.
But researchers were surprised to see that the level of the pesticide in Adelies' fat had not declined, even after DDT was banned for exterior use in the 1970s in the United States and elsewhere.
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First noted in 1964, while the chemical was still widely used, the amount of DDT found in Adelie penguins rose in the 1970s and has stayed stable since then, Geisz said in a telephone interview.
In findings published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, Geisz and her colleagues noted that persistent organic pollutants like DDT accumulate and become concentrated in the Antarctic ecosystem.
"DDT, along with a lot of other of these organic contaminants, actually travel through the atmosphere ... toward the polar regions by a process of evaporation and then condensation in cooler climates," Geisz said, explaining this is how the pesticide got deposited in Antarctic glaciers.
DDT declined dramatically in Arctic wildlife over the last decade, while the amount of the chemical in Antarctic Adelies stayed stable, the study said.
DDT was easily detectable in glacier melt water, Geisz said.
FOOD CHAIN
Adelies feed off tiny creatures called krill that live in melted glacier water, and DDT is transmitted up the food chain directly to the penguins.
There is not enough of the chemical to harm the birds, but it is measurable in samples of penguin corpses and their abandoned eggs, Geisz said.
Some kinds of birds that ingest DDT, especially birds of prey like the American bald eagle, produce eggs with extremely thin shells which are easily crushed by adult birds. Geisz said this has not been demonstrated to be the case with sea birds.
A more pressing issue for the Adelie penguins that breed on the Antarctic Peninsula is encroaching climate change, she said. The peninsula, which stretches north toward South America, has been warming much faster than the rest of the continent.
Warming on the peninsula means "we see more snow and more moisture and these (Adelie) eggs end up getting soaked and frozen," Geisz said. "It allows opportunities for people like me to study the eggs, but it's not necessarily ideal for the penguins."
Originally developed as a powerful multi-species pesticide, DDT was used in World War Two to clear South Pacific islands of malaria-causing insects for U.S. troops and in Europe as a de-lousing powder. The United States banned the chemical in 1972. The World Health Organization approved it in 2006 for use indoors to fight malaria.
A very down to earth* kind of guy. I'm an environmental sociologist interested in establishing material and organizational sustainability worldwide. I'm always looking for interesting materials/technologies, inspiring ideas, or institutional examples of sustainability to inspire others to recognize their choices now. To be fatalistic about an unsustainable world is a sign of a captive mind, given all our options.
*(If "earth" is defined in a planetary sense, concerning comparative historical knowledge and interest in the past 10,000 years or so anywhere...) See both blogs.
3 comments:
1.yoonjung Kim
2.Human have possibility to overcome the environmental crisis
3. The world today is facing shortage of resources, especailly food, energy and water. Developed countreis consume a lot more resources than undeveloped countries. If undeveloped countries consume like developed countries as thier living standards go up, the earth will be out of its carrying capacity, it says. This article says that restrain of consumption rate of third-world countires is not the point. It focuses on restoring nomal consumption rate in developed contries. It also mentions that if we promote awareness of environmental problem and excercise political will in right way, there is hope for the sustainable future. I think that countries with rapidly growing economy should not be suspected as main cause of shortage of resources. The main cause is structure of capitalism which promotes consumption and leads people to think consuming much is well-being. People naturally pursues easy way of living and industries are usually tied closely with politic. therefore, reforming industries and educating people to spontaneously choose eco-friendly way will need some time. I hope we will not be too late.
--------------
January 2, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
What’s Your Consumption Factor?
By JARED DIAMOND
Los Angeles
TO mathematicians, 32 is an interesting number: it’s 2 raised to the fifth power, 2 times 2 times 2 times 2 times 2. To economists, 32 is even more special, because it measures the difference in lifestyles between the first world and the developing world. The average rates at which people consume resources like oil and metals, and produce wastes like plastics and greenhouse gases, are about 32 times higher in North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia than they are in the developing world. That factor of 32 has big consequences.
To understand them, consider our concern with world population. Today, there are more than 6.5 billion people, and that number may grow to around 9 billion within this half-century. Several decades ago, many people considered rising population to be the main challenge facing humanity. Now we realize that it matters only insofar as people consume and produce.
If most of the world’s 6.5 billion people were in cold storage and not metabolizing or consuming, they would create no resource problem. What really matters is total world consumption, the sum of all local consumptions, which is the product of local population times the local per capita consumption rate.
The estimated one billion people who live in developed countries have a relative per capita consumption rate of 32. Most of the world’s other 5.5 billion people constitute the developing world, with relative per capita consumption rates below 32, mostly down toward 1.
The population especially of the developing world is growing, and some people remain fixated on this. They note that populations of countries like Kenya are growing rapidly, and they say that’s a big problem. Yes, it is a problem for Kenya’s more than 30 million people, but it’s not a burden on the whole world, because Kenyans consume so little. (Their relative per capita rate is 1.) A real problem for the world is that each of us 300 million Americans consumes as much as 32 Kenyans. With 10 times the population, the United States consumes 320 times more resources than Kenya does.
People in the third world are aware of this difference in per capita consumption, although most of them couldn’t specify that it’s by a factor of 32. When they believe their chances of catching up to be hopeless, they sometimes get frustrated and angry, and some become terrorists, or tolerate or support terrorists. Since Sept. 11, 2001, it has become clear that the oceans that once protected the United States no longer do so. There will be more terrorist attacks against us and Europe, and perhaps against Japan and Australia, as long as that factorial difference of 32 in consumption rates persists.
People who consume little want to enjoy the high-consumption lifestyle. Governments of developing countries make an increase in living standards a primary goal of national policy. And tens of millions of people in the developing world seek the first-world lifestyle on their own, by emigrating, especially to the United States and Western Europe, Japan and Australia. Each such transfer of a person to a high-consumption country raises world consumption rates, even though most immigrants don’t succeed immediately in multiplying their consumption by 32.
Among the developing countries that are seeking to increase per capita consumption rates at home, China stands out. It has the world’s fastest growing economy, and there are 1.3 billion Chinese, four times the United States population. The world is already running out of resources, and it will do so even sooner if China achieves American-level consumption rates. Already, China is competing with us for oil and metals on world markets.
Per capita consumption rates in China are still about 11 times below ours, but let’s suppose they rise to our level. Let’s also make things easy by imagining that nothing else happens to increase world consumption — that is, no other country increases its consumption, all national populations (including China’s) remain unchanged and immigration ceases. China’s catching up alone would roughly double world consumption rates. Oil consumption would increase by 106 percent, for instance, and world metal consumption by 94 percent.
If India as well as China were to catch up, world consumption rates would triple. If the whole developing world were suddenly to catch up, world rates would increase elevenfold. It would be as if the world population ballooned to 72 billion people (retaining present consumption rates).
Some optimists claim that we could support a world with nine billion people. But I haven’t met anyone crazy enough to claim that we could support 72 billion. Yet we often promise developing countries that if they will only adopt good policies — for example, institute honest government and a free-market economy — they, too, will be able to enjoy a first-world lifestyle. This promise is impossible, a cruel hoax: we are having difficulty supporting a first-world lifestyle even now for only one billion people.
We Americans may think of China’s growing consumption as a problem. But the Chinese are only reaching for the consumption rate we already have. To tell them not to try would be futile.
The only approach that China and other developing countries will accept is to aim to make consumption rates and living standards more equal around the world. But the world doesn’t have enough resources to allow for raising China’s consumption rates, let alone those of the rest of the world, to our levels. Does this mean we’re headed for disaster?
No, we could have a stable outcome in which all countries converge on consumption rates considerably below the current highest levels. Americans might object: there is no way we would sacrifice our living standards for the benefit of people in the rest of the world. Nevertheless, whether we get there willingly or not, we shall soon have lower consumption rates, because our present rates are unsustainable.
Real sacrifice wouldn’t be required, however, because living standards are not tightly coupled to consumption rates. Much American consumption is wasteful and contributes little or nothing to quality of life. For example, per capita oil consumption in Western Europe is about half of ours, yet Western Europe’s standard of living is higher by any reasonable criterion, including life expectancy, health, infant mortality, access to medical care, financial security after retirement, vacation time, quality of public schools and support for the arts. Ask yourself whether Americans’ wasteful use of gasoline contributes positively to any of those measures.
Other aspects of our consumption are wasteful, too. Most of the world’s fisheries are still operated non-sustainably, and many have already collapsed or fallen to low yields — even though we know how to manage them in such a way as to preserve the environment and the fish supply. If we were to operate all fisheries sustainably, we could extract fish from the oceans at maximum historical rates and carry on indefinitely.
The same is true of forests: we already know how to log them sustainably, and if we did so worldwide, we could extract enough timber to meet the world’s wood and paper needs. Yet most forests are managed non-sustainably, with decreasing yields.
Just as it is certain that within most of our lifetimes we’ll be consuming less than we do now, it is also certain that per capita consumption rates in many developing countries will one day be more nearly equal to ours. These are desirable trends, not horrible prospects. In fact, we already know how to encourage the trends; the main thing lacking has been political will.
Fortunately, in the last year there have been encouraging signs. Australia held a recent election in which a large majority of voters reversed the head-in-the-sand political course their government had followed for a decade; the new government immediately supported the Kyoto Protocol on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Also in the last year, concern about climate change has increased greatly in the United States. Even in China, vigorous arguments about environmental policy are taking place, and public protests recently halted construction of a huge chemical plant near the center of Xiamen. Hence I am cautiously optimistic. The world has serious consumption problems, but we can solve them if we choose to do so.
Jared Diamond, a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, is the author of “Collapse” and “Guns, Germs and Steel.”
---------------------
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/opinion/02diamond.html?pagewanted=print
1. Madhabi Bhatta
2. An article from ecofeminist perspective!
3. While I was searching an article from the eccofeminism perspective, I got this article. This article is about the women and environment relationship in Kashmir. Article is written simple language of simple matter, but with micro analysis. How woman are suffered from environment degradation and how they are contributing to protect environment. According to article from their suffered of drinking water, fuel to cook and scarcity of daily life, women are becoming skillful to protect the environment. Also article explains the relationship of women and nature since the immemorial time. It argues both are dominated by the existing systems. Women work as equal their mail counterparts but get fewer wages. Women have no access to the resources. And author compares this subordinate situation of women I think this article is an example of ecofeminism.
Women are closer to nature and natural beauty than men. They can contribute better in preserving the precious resources thereby contributing a great deal towards the well-being of the entire humankind, writes Kawnser-ul-Yaqoob
God has created so many living and non-living beings. But the living beings, particularly human beings, intentionally are more responsible for environmental destruction than any other species. Importance was given to almost all cultures for environmental protection. So it is very much necessary to safeguard the environment as far as possible and it is our responsibility to handover safe environment to our future generations.
Women and nature
Woman is a part and parcel of environment. She contributes a lot in so many ways for the environmental protection. Women revolutions in developed countries are helping so much to protect the environment. The women, particularly from hilly region or rural areas, are the victims due to the age-old fatalism. So it is needless to say that these women should be educated to bring them out from these orthodox clutches. They should be provided with proper training to create suitable awareness and insight into the new demands in the physical and social environment.
When compared to men, women have more direct relationship with their immediate environment. Regularly they collect their own life re-quirements like fuel, water, food; like leaves, roots, fruits, fish etc. Their activities are also confined. Women tend to rear the cattle. They grow or collect grass for their domestic animals—particularly dairy ani-mals and birds. So, women have a close view of the animals as well as with the flora and fauna of that region by living with them.
Even in the past primitive society also, women had a good relationship with the nature. Only men used to hunt and kill the animals for food whereas women used to collect forest resources to meet their life requirements. Men also cut trees for preparing coal or for construction by seeing from the business point of view.
Women and water
Women act as suppliers and consumers of water. Women have more knowledge about the existence and quality of water available in the local environment. They carry water so many times in a day and it requires so much time and energy. As a result they feel responsible for using the water in an economical manner. So consumption of water at family level is more associated with the female folk in their daily life. Moreover, women are involved in preparing the food and related items. The water required in cooking, cleaning etc. is the concern of women.
Women and resources
Women use widely the forest resources. They buy articles made out of wood, wool, rock, shells, thorns or ivory etc. Just for fashion either on their clothing or jewellery. Decorative pieces prepared out of some spe-cies like snakes, rabbits, squirrels, iguana etc. Due to this, these may disappear from the environment. The awareness to avoid the capture and killing of these species for the sake of entertainment or luxury is necessary. Otherwise they will be out of sight and become extinct. Unless women deny the use of these things it is not possible to protect these species.
Even in the modern societies the use of some varieties of sanitary napkins, towels, cosmetics, creams and powders containing some poisonous mer-cury and hydro-quinines should be abandoned. Even the powder milk for the infants used is really threatening, leading to diarrohea due to the im-purity in unboiled water. Mothers need to be educated about all these negative consequences leading to health hazards.
Women and work
Majority of women work as labourers either in the agricultural farms, industries or mines even for lesser wages. They need training in sparing their time and materials in these fields and good economic return for the amount of work they do.
Women and society
Now women are entering into the gainful employment. That – they are looking after their job requirements besides fulfilling their family responsibilities. Moreover, they are contributing to their family income. The roles played traditionally by women are disintegrating and modifications are taking place. As a result the nature of work attended by women has changed drastically. The reasons for this are migration of men, green revolution, publicity of high yielding crops, mechanization, urbanization including industrialization leading to pollution, lessening the cultivable land and other natural resources etc. From this point of view also they need to be oriented towards these changing times.
Women and technical knowledge
Women are involved in collection of firewood, water, materials and engaged in cooking and meeting the requirements of family members for hours together in addition to their traditional responsibilities like rearing, caring and bearing children. Besides this they have to work in their own workplaces for longer durations. They get very little time in due to several difficulties. They need to be exposed to the several gadgets avail-able to save time and to spend their time in an effective manner to get more benefits. Several petty things take away the time of a housewife. These traditional means of cooking, water collection, grinding, firewood collection etc., need to be replaced by modern technological devices and non-conventional energy resources for their optimum use to improve their living and health conditions. For all these purposes technical knowl-edge is required which need to be provided for information, use and repair of these devices.
Women and population
Women can control population explosion through family welfare education. Standard of life can be improved only by limiting the chil-dren. Even today the status of women is decided on the number of male children they possess. The menstrual cycles, childbirths, early marriages, economic and social factors are responsible for population growth. Women need to be exposed to the various evil consequences of popula-tion growth and the need for small family by adopting various methods to control the birth of children as it is considered to be the main reason for environmental destruction as well as pollution.
There is an immediate need to plan programmes to create awareness among women to move further without causing environmen-tal destruction and to work for environmental construction, which was already affected, to develop socially, culturally, economically and industrially. They should be provided knowledge about the resources, their management, selection of materials, implementation, control and evalu-ation of different procedures and appropriate environmental technology should reach the ordinary women through various women’s organizations for environmental protection.
http://www.greaterkashmir.com/full_story.asp?Date=17_4_2007&ItemID=8&cat=12
(The author is a research scholar at the Department of Environmental Science, University of Kashmir. He can be mailed at kawnser_786@yahoo.com)
1. se kyoung, Jeoung
2. Pesticide DDT shows up in Antarctic penguins
3. As we all know, DDT is widley used in Korea 30-40 years ago to clean environment where we live. we sprayed it to humans directly sometimes to exterminate insects.
We never thought it would be so harmful to humans and environment.
Even though we banned DDT, it is still showing up in some animals in Antartica. It is so evident that chemicals accumulation is still going on. Chemicals travel trough food chain and they will reach up to us. Science and technology give us not only convenience, but also endless anxiety with fear.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The pesticide DDT, banned decades ago in much of the world, still shows up in penguins in Antarctica, probably due to the chemical's accumulation in melting glaciers, a sea bird expert said on Friday.
Adelie penguins, known for their waddling gait and a habit of nesting on stones, have long shown evidence of DDT in their fatty tissues, although not in enough concentration to hurt the birds, according to Heidi Geisz of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.
But researchers were surprised to see that the level of the pesticide in Adelies' fat had not declined, even after DDT was banned for exterior use in the 1970s in the United States and elsewhere.
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First noted in 1964, while the chemical was still widely used, the amount of DDT found in Adelie penguins rose in the 1970s and has stayed stable since then, Geisz said in a telephone interview.
In findings published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, Geisz and her colleagues noted that persistent organic pollutants like DDT accumulate and become concentrated in the Antarctic ecosystem.
"DDT, along with a lot of other of these organic contaminants, actually travel through the atmosphere ... toward the polar regions by a process of evaporation and then condensation in cooler climates," Geisz said, explaining this is how the pesticide got deposited in Antarctic glaciers.
DDT declined dramatically in Arctic wildlife over the last decade, while the amount of the chemical in Antarctic Adelies stayed stable, the study said.
DDT was easily detectable in glacier melt water, Geisz said.
FOOD CHAIN
Adelies feed off tiny creatures called krill that live in melted glacier water, and DDT is transmitted up the food chain directly to the penguins.
There is not enough of the chemical to harm the birds, but it is measurable in samples of penguin corpses and their abandoned eggs, Geisz said.
Some kinds of birds that ingest DDT, especially birds of prey like the American bald eagle, produce eggs with extremely thin shells which are easily crushed by adult birds. Geisz said this has not been demonstrated to be the case with sea birds.
A more pressing issue for the Adelie penguins that breed on the Antarctic Peninsula is encroaching climate change, she said. The peninsula, which stretches north toward South America, has been warming much faster than the rest of the continent.
Warming on the peninsula means "we see more snow and more moisture and these (Adelie) eggs end up getting soaked and frozen," Geisz said. "It allows opportunities for people like me to study the eggs, but it's not necessarily ideal for the penguins."
Originally developed as a powerful multi-species pesticide, DDT was used in World War Two to clear South Pacific islands of malaria-causing insects for U.S. troops and in Europe as a de-lousing powder. The United States banned the chemical in 1972. The World Health Organization approved it in 2006 for use indoors to fight malaria.
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