CC BY
21
UDC 504.06
ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS IN CANADA
Elena Galakhova
George Brown College Toronto, Canada
Abstract: The article presents an overview of environmental problems in Canada and the ways they are dealt with on individual and governmental level.
Key words: environmental issues, awareness, protection.
As environmental concerns, such as air and water pollution and resource depletion, grew as a result of increasing economic activity and a growing human population, so did concerns about the anthropogenic effects on the natural environment in relation to other issues such as health and well-being, poverty, and social and economic development. Global environmental change—resource degradation, desertification, water scarcity, rising sea levels, increasingly frequent natural disasters—is already profoundly affecting economic and political stability around the world. Population growth, increasing consumption and climate change are likely to intensify these pressures. The geopolitics of the twenty-first century may well be the geopolitics of scarcity—of land, of food, of water, of energy.
People in Canada are gradually becoming more aware of the urgent need to protect the environment. Growing awareness of environmental problems has resulted in more governmental regulations. Environmental law addresses the relationship between humans and the physical environment, and is an area of law with both domestic and international implications. It is a complex and interlocking body of treaties, conventions statutes, regulations, and common law that operates to regulate the interaction of humanity and the natural environment, toward the purpose of reducing the impacts of human activity. Environmental law draws from and is influenced by environmental principles, such as ecology, conservation, stewardship, responsibility, and sustainability.
Canada is blessed with an abundance of land, oceans and lakes. In contrast to other countries, especially those with developing economies, Canada's environment issues may seem trifling. The vast majority of Canadians enjoy fresh air and water. Yet are we living beyond our means, extracting more from our environment than is sustainable? What is the price of our prosperity on nature? What can we do better today to ensure future generations of Canadians have a healthy environment? As Canadians, it is our environment. It is our responsibility to steward and our responsibility to meet today's challenges.
Canadians are involved with many projects to protect fragile ecosystems and stop further environmental destruction. Some projects are individual efforts and some are carried out through Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) such as World Wildlife Federation and Greenpeace. Still, environmental education has to start at home. Educate and practice, that is the only way it can be inculcated into the psyche of people. We all have to contribute to it, not only the government. Individuals are directly rewarded for exploiting the environment, but the costs of this exploitation are shared among the larger current and future population. So the change has to come in the way people start thinking about it.
Many of us believe that we should protect the environment for ethical reasons, thinking that we have a responsibility to preserve the ecosystem for future generations and that animals have a right to live. But we can also give dollars and cents reasons for environmental action by quantifying the benefits a healthy environment provides for mankind. These benefits are of four
kinds: the direct provision of resources; the regulation of natural systems; aeshetic reasons; and recreational opportunities.
Climate change is perhaps the most obvious and highest-profile environmental issue today, whose effects can be shown to hurt us economically. However, other environmental problems also have clear economic and social costs.
Species extinction is reducing the genetic diversity of the planet, putting us at greater risk of catastrophic declines in the health of certain ecosystems (such as rainforests). This in turn makes the whole planet less resilient to change, potentially hurting our own species in the future.
Resource depletion at unsustainable rates means that future generations of humans will have less material to work with to build and maintain their civilization.
In poorer countries - and in Canada's north - poverty caused by drier and warmer climates and reduced wildlife is leading to social stress that may result in violence directed at wealthier people.
Over-fishing and damage to coastal and reef environments are leading to a potentially catastrophic decline in the amount of fish available to feed people worldwide.
Invasive plants and animals are hurting agriculture and aquaculture.
Air pollution and poisoning from heavy metals and other mining and manufacturing waste is a direct threat to human health.
Environmental law in Canada applies to businesses across virtually all sectors of the economy and all regions of the country. The federal and ten provincial governments, as well as the three territorial governments, are active in the creation and evolution of environmental law to meet the changing environmental challenges of the day, such as: climate change, toxic substances management, waste reduction, urban renewal through brown fields redevelopment, and the facilitation of environmental assessments of infrastructure and renewable energy projects.
Canadian environmental law will continue to evolve to keep pace with the times. Water management challenges, adaption to climate change, and the interconnection of environmental regulation and global trade, promise to be the issues of the immediate future. A large and diversified country, with a significant industrial base, a wealth of natural resources in mining, forestry and fisheries, large expanse of agricultural lands, coastal frontage on three oceans, arctic and subarctic territories, Canada is sensitive to virtually the full range of environmental issues facing the planet. Canadians are now as environmentally aware as most other advanced nations, but our dependence on natural resources as the primary driver of our economy means that we continue to exploit our forests, seas and lands in ways that worry many of us, although for most Canadians the equation of "environment versus economy" will still usually be resolved in favour of the economy.
The negative effects of our exploitation can be mitigated in many ways: in the oceans, through sustainable fisheries and avoiding harmful trawling practices; in the forests, by avoiding clearcutting, and mandatory replanting policies; in mining, through mandatory soil remediation and strict rules for tailings ponds; in oil and gas extraction through carbon capture technologies which are currently under development. There are immediate costs to all of these technologies and best practices; however, it has been proven time and time again that the long-term costs of fixing environmental problems after they have happened is far greater than that of mitigating them at the outset.
Canada has never been a leader in developing best practices for the environmental impact of our natural resource industries, but we are gradually improving, and the education and advocacy work of many of the charities is pushing us in the right direction.
List of References:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment_Canada, Accessed on December 6, 2016.
2. http://www.acc.com/legalresources/quickcounsel/elic_rjs.cfm, Accessed on December 4, 2016.
3. http://www.blakes.com/pdf/EnvLawOntCan.pdf, Accessed on November 13, 2016.
4. http://www.tc2.ca/pdf/H3_Environmental.pdf, Accessed on December 23, 2011.
URBANIZATION PROBLEMS IN KINGSTON
Natalie Davis
Green Island high school Jamaica, Kingstone
Abstract: Urbanization is the process by which cities and towns develop and grow into larger areas. It includes the movement of people from rural to urban areas as well as movements among towns and cities. As will now be discussed, this process is a popular phenomenon that has not only dominated Jamaica, but other developing and more developed countries of the world.
Key words: urbanization, rural and urban areas.
Empirical data suggests that urbanization has been on the rise in the small island territory of Jamaica. In Jamaica, Kingston has been identified as the city with the largest urban concentration. Such high population growth rates mean increased reliance on the natural environment, particularly in the urban area where density is most significant.
Even though cities are considered as the 'engines' of economic development, failure to manage the impacts of rapid urbanization provides a threat to the health of human beings, as well as environmental quality and urban productivity.
According to Davis-Mattis [3], approximately two thirds of Jamaica's population live in coastal towns and cities. High and rapid levels of urbanization have led to major problems such as traffic congestion resulting from poor infrastructure, contributing to environmental pollution and urban decay. Moreover, inadequate social services and poor housing are consequences of overpopulation and high population densities, often leading to the proliferation of squatters in major cities.
This scenario is often times intensified when high housing prices force people who are in the lower income strata away from the formal land market and towards illegal squatter settlements frequently situated in forbidden, environmentally sensitive areas; usually state-owned, yet seldom monitored. Bernstein [1] argues that compared to other urbanized lands, these areas are usually most vulnerable to natural and anthropogenic hazards. Research has shown that deforestation for residential purposes along with 'slash and burn' farming by agricultural squatters in watershed areas have led to the degradation of 17 out of the 26 existing watersheds in the island; eventually leading to a reduction in fresh water resources.
This can also be attributed to poor land management practices and inadequate institutional arrangements by the state. Tinidigarukayo [5] adds that rapid urban growth along with the inadequate provision of housing facilities has resulted in the increasing presence of informal settlements along gullies and on river banks in Jamaica. Clarke [2] describes an unsightly 'rash of huts' appearing along the flanks of the lower part of the Sandy Gully - one of the main drainage systems implemented in the Kingston Metropolitan Area (K.M.A.). Squatters are then faced with the challenge of proper garbage and sewage disposal as the majority of these shacks do not have access to proper disposal facilities. This then leads to waste being disposed in gullies or nearby water channels, as this method would seem to be a feasible way of getting rid
209
