Environment and development

The world environment suffered dearly in the last fifty years or more from the fast growing industrial activities in the world. Industrial disasters as the ‘Chernobyl’ nuclear reactor meltdown which led to exposing thousands of people in Ukraine and its neighbouring states to the nuclear radiations as a result of malfunction of the machines. Also the scientific discovery of the thinning of the ozone layer and its fatal outcomes on people, animals, and plants from being exposed directly to harmful radiation from the sun in the southern sphere states like Australia and southern America. And many other disasters related to pollution led to the degradation of the world environment. The world pollution became an international issue because like wild life, the pollution travels across borders without restrictions. It could affect many countries at same time as the examples that I already mentioned. This situation became the concern of the international community with more scientific studies suggesting that we are going through a global warming of the planet with it an alarming rise in sea water levels. Most recently in Cancun climate summit, the negotiations were held to find solutions to world environmental issues and save the planet from global warming. The UN pushed hard to get an agreement from the world emerging economies like India, Brazil, and China to cut their emissions but failed, however, an agreement on the creation of green climate fund with more than $100 billion a year promised to be raised by 2020 from the Copenhagen summit a year ago. Another important agreement was produced in Cancun Summit, a deal for developing countries to receive an aid to stop them burning and logging forests and prevent the destruction of the rain forests in tropical states like Brazil. The failure of Copenhagen Summit nearly undermined the Cancun talks because of the tensions about the emissions cuts.

Many NGO’s were invited into the climate change debate and confronted states like Japan, Norway, and Iceland for their continuo’s exploitation of the maritime resources, they still abusing the seas by over fishing. As the result of reckless industrial approach from some companies during last few years led to more disasters like what happened in Mexico Bay this year, oil spillage gone for months after the explosion of an off shore oil plant belonging to British Petroleum. It caused all kinds of damages, it was bad. The fear of a repeat of these disasters, made the international awareness of the ecological foot print of human on nature grew. However, not much has been done to tackle the environmental issues on large scale until the 1992 Rio conference on environment. It was the first world summit conference to discuss that matter led by the United Nation (UNCED). An international movement against the industrial polluting economies like the US, China, Japan, and many others. These countries agreed to make cuts on their Carbon Dioxide emissions and to move their economies towards more sustainable development. What it is meant by the concept of sustainable development stated by Bruntland Commission in 1987 is “the development that meets the need of the present without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet there own needs” (Baylis & Smith, 2008: p. 355). However, lot of critics came to this concept or disagreement between developed and undeveloped countries. The reasons for this are the cuts of carbon emissions quotas. Another head of states meeting but this time it was held in Johannesburg South Africa, the world summit on sustainable development (WSSD) in 2002. The negotiations that took place between states were intense due to the huge pressure on this meeting to come out with good results. Groups negotiations, Diplomats, ministers, leaders, and NGO’s all participated in that meeting to find an equal solution to issue. However, that meeting did not live to its expectations, and leaders met again in Copenhagen in 2008 (Baylis & Smith, 2008: p.354).

However, single strong developed countries are doing better in their cuts of the CO2 emissions for example Germany. It launched an international project for the renewable energy. It’s called Desertec and will involve many countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MINA) region also the European partners. It will cost over 400 billion Euros and will generate 15% of the euro zone need of energy in the short term, going to 50% for long term. All that energy going to be clean energy produced from solar panels and Aeolian plants in the Sahara Desert. The most important about this project is the bilateral negotiation between Germany and the involved states, Algeria as a very important piece of this project from its strategic location in the middle of the North African states and its proximity to Europe have just agreed to be part of this project. By an invitation from the German chancellor Merkle, the Algerian president travelled to Germany last week to finalise the negotiations on the project after more than two years of long discussions and two opposite bilateral head of state visits, the two countries came to an agreement.

read more about the Desertec project and the Cancun Summit at:

http://www.desertec.org.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cancun-climate-change-conference-2010.