Environmental Problems And Sustainable Use Of Natural Resources

In environmental problems and sustainable use of natural resources, significant imbalances exist in practically all major environmental areas. Our services in environmental consulting consist of being able to identify these environmental problems and improve the sustainable uses of the resources.

Water represents one of the priority aspects of environmental matters. There are very severe problems in terms of water scarcity for human consumption, water quality and pollution of water resources.

There are countries that face a worrisome and natural disaster situation, such as Chile, where desertification affects more than 60% of the territory and produces palpable drops in agricultural production. If that trend continues and there is no Naturalizer to help the situation, Chile is heading to be a desert.

A Kind Of Little Awareness

We’re truly astonished by the little awareness of these natural disasters. Instead of being in the first or second place of political and civic attention, the issue of the natural disaster is marginalized. This shows that we still suffer from many political limitations.

In several countries, the confluence between the natural disasters or alteration of the water cycle and watersheds, the loss of forests or another native flora and the advance of climate change generates enormous ecological disasters.

There are areas that go through recurrent droughts and others suffer from unforeseen floods. These and other effects hit mainly peasants and indigenous people. There must be a kind of Naturalizer to assist such ugly circumstances, even in this modern 21 century

In some affected spot there are just fewer resources in capital or Naturalizer to deal with those natural disasters exploitation impacts and, therefore, when they are hit, they contribute even more to leaving them in a situation of poverty or vulnerability. It is because of these perverse links between different types of environmental deterioration that I believe that peasants and family farmers are in much more risky conditions.

To make matters worse, to further complicate the situation, governments have appealed to reduce environmental controls. The measures are added to cut the mechanisms of information and environmental participation, they want to lighten the environmental impact assessments or even to exonerate different works of that requirement and the locals' organizations are persecuted.

The myth is fostered that environmental controls impede development and flexibilities of all kinds are imposed. Then, the state of the environment deteriorates and, at the same time, our citizen tools to face everything that is increasingly limited, and the State, far from strengthening itself in protecting the common good, shrinks even more.

What Are The Consequences Of This Natural Resources Situation For Families, Organizations?

The situation of small farmers, especially those who practice Agroecology, is still very delicate. In all countries, whether under conservative or progressive presidencies, the recent economic booms were not used. There were many times when these states had a lot of money from the natural resources and did not use it to promote a more democratic, less polluting, more sovereign agricultural conversion.

On the other hand, a large part of the state funds from natural resources were going to promote more mining and oil extractivism, and the proportionally less that was devoted to agriculture ended up promoting monocultures and Agro exports.

Hardly supported the organic production, many agro-ecological experiences have managed to survive in spite of everything, and even some have proliferated. But almost always it has been by the push of the own agriculturists, by alliances with groups of responsible consumers, or because they found some niche of the exporting market.

The State did not actually support the recovery of traditional knowledge or the generation of new scientific information or even technological applications for Agroecology. On the contrary, most of the work in science and technology that is devoted to further promoting transgenic varieties, as happened in the Southern Cone countries.

Increasing Levels Of Water Consumption

The problem includes very high and increasing levels of water consumption per capita; high levels of inefficiency in its use; very low percentage of wastewater treatment; a very small percentage of reuse and severely contaminated water bodies.

Soil and waste is another priority area from the point of view of environmental policy. Particularly severe are the following problems:

·         Lack of identification of sources of generation and the flow of hazardous waste.
·         Great insufficiency of infrastructure for the management and final disposal of waste that could lead to disasters.

Biodiversity is yet another major problem that has to do with the loss of vegetation cover (forests, primarily) at very fast rates, as well as with the deterioration of many of the ecosystems and their flora species because of the exploitation of our natural resources out there.

.

Air Problems in air quality are faced in a high number of urban and industrial areas. Sometimes there are impacts on health. Management capacity in this area, however, has been improving in recent years, mainly with respect to the emissions reduction of large generators, verification, and monitoring in terms of fixed sources.

Renewable Energy And Energy Efficiency

The growing demand for energy and the limitations of the current installed capacity to supply it, as well as the need to diversify sources of energy supply, make renewable energies and energy efficiency two very important items for the coming years, On the other hand, they offer a high potential for development.

Risk, Noise, And Vibrations From The Exploitation Of Natural Resources

The environmental natural disasters and the need to prevent impacts on health and ecosystems are becoming more important. It is associated, however, primarily with high-risk economic activities.

Change and sustainable use of natural resources

There must be a change in production, many of the items that are made of metals today can also be made from plastics, e.g., car bodies. If less oil is consumed in the course of the energy transition, there is still a loophole for a while, because this saved oil can be used to produce plastics.

Finally, some of the natural resources such as the world's oil reserves are coming to an end. Saudi Arabia that has become infinitely rich with their oil, have long since realized that the natural resources wealth of their dominion is over and are now investing in forward-looking industries! Every other nation must begin to look the other way like Saudi Arabia and also improve the sustainability of these natural resources.