The Global Environmental Development Platform

  The average rainfall of the plains of Europe is 57.4 centimeters per year. In the mountainous regions, it is over 125 centimeters. Also along the western slope of the Rocky Mountains in the United States, the precipitation is abundant, reaching a total of about 340 centimeters a year in localities. While the interior of the United States, it is much lighter with a record of sometimes 40 centimeters a year in some states. The rainiest regions of the world are probably the lower slopes of the Himalayas. The village of Cherapunji in India, south of the main body of the Himalayas has an annual average rainfall of about 1,082 centimeters. A record breaking twelve month rainfall of 2,646.12 centimeters occurred at Cherapunji from August 1860-July 1861. Also, in August 1841, no less than 3,800 centimeters of rain fell in a five day period is the equivalent of almost four years of rain fall in the state of New York .  The heavy rainfall in the tropics is due not so much as to condensation of

On a hot summer day, a town, city or region is warmed by the rays of the sun. The temperature of the air over this town, city or region rises above the surrounding countryside. The warm air rises and its place is taken by cooler air. The cooler air is warmed in its turn. Gradually, the rising air gets cooler. Finally, it reaches the saturation point. The water vapor in the air then condenses and a cloud is formed.  When the clouds are full of condensed #water vapour, the sky fills with #clouds, which become heavier and darker. Soon after, drops of #rain come splashing down on the ground and #trees, and buildings. If the weather is really cold, snow or a mixture of snow and rain called #sleet, falls instead. At other times, the #moisture may freeze completely to form pellets or even balls of #ice called hail. The process described above is known as #precipitation. Rain, #snow, sleet and hail are various forms of precipitation-liquid or solid #water coming from high in the #atmosphere. T

 In Africa, right now the sun is really high up in the sky and the weather is getting unbearably hot as we have entered the dry season. It’s amazing how on one side of the planet it could be so hot and at the same time, on the other side of the planet it can be terribly cold.  Anyway, there is an abundance of radiant energy or solar heat coming from the sun right at this moment streaming through the atmosphere and heating the earth’s surface thereby increasing atmospheric temperatures. This solar energy is a renewable energy resource and can be classified as a source of green energy.  Now, what is solar energy? Solar energy is radiant light and heat from the sun which can be harnessed using a range of technologies such as solar heating, photovoltaics, solar thermal energy, solar architecture, molten salt power plants and artificial photosynthesis. So, in other words, solar energy is created using energy which has been generated by the sun.  Solar energy is a renewable energy system. An

  Every good government and subsequently good governance will ultimately end up in peace, progress, prosperity, advancement and finally development of the people and society at large. Regardless of the type of rule the government is based upon, the fact remains that a leader who is unselfish and considerate, who refuses to be enticed by frivolous and profligate measures and pleasures, and the immediate need to gratify them at the expense of the welfare of  his subjects, will run the affairs of the state with equity and justice. In such cases, development in all ramifications of the society will be inevitable and attainable. This will be achievable because there is a balance in the dispensation of power, authority and justice. Social and economic transformation leads to socio-economic development. Economically, wealth and natural resources are evenly distributed and equally fair. Scenarios where leaders of countries especially in Africa ‘stash away’ heavy amount of cash running into bil

The development of a society, country or nation means that there is a balance in all facets of society, integrated to ensure transformation and sustainable growth. Government on the other hand, is a term which broadly understood means the ordering of a group or community by a central organization or it may refer to central organization itself. Thus, we may speak of a government of a club, private association or a church as well as the government or state or bodies politic. But when narrowed to its political meaning, government refers to the management or administration of the state. And for the purpose of this blog post, we would look at it from this angle.  The findings of anthropology suggest that the origins of the governments are tribal and monarchic. Primitive societies are generally based on familial relationships and authority is often times execised either by a man who is a patriarch or by a woman,  who is a matriarch, recognized by the others as the leader. Until the last two

 Countries with the largest economies and consumer patterns in the world today, often have the most serious solid wastes problem. Household refuse, commercial rubbish, industrial wastes and contraction debris total more than 700,000 metric tonnes daily in the United States alone.  Among the major methods of solid wastes disposal are open dumps, sanitary landfills, incineration, ocean dumping, feeding garbage to swine and composting. Seepage  of rain water through these wastes in dump and land fills may result in pollution of underground water. Incineration pollutes the air. Ocean dumping damages ecosystems in parts of the sea over a lengthy period of time, and the African environment is characterized by the above mentioned. In smaller towns and cities in most developing countries in the continent, you can find on every street and even along the roads, solid wastes litters. A lot of people just dump household refuse and solid wastes directly on the streets and even on the roads. Open du

  The next category of pollution we are going to be looking at or considering this time around is land misuse and land pollution. A lot of  current environmental problems have been caused or aggravated by the careless use of land and natural resources.  Overgrazing Of ranch-land has led to erosion. Draining and dredging wetlands has also led to the disappearance of coastal wildlife. Dams which are structures erected to obstruct the flow of water solely for the purpose of generating electricity prevents rivers from carrying sediments to the ocean and as a result beaches are disappearing and are being degraded.  In times past, strip mining carried out in the United States has been less expensive, faster and more efficient than underground mining. But this activity has transformed large pacts of land in Pennsylvania, Ohio,Virginia, Kentucky, and other states into a maze of deep pits and huge soil mounds. Once the land has been altered and exposed by strip miners, it is ugly and vulnerable

  Air pollution can be detected, measured and analyzed using a number of methods. First of all, in order to detect gases, a sample of air can be analyzed chemically. Electronic devices make rapid and continuous monitoring. The degree of visibility is another indication of pollution.  The Ringelmann chart can be easily used to determine the quantity of smoke in the air. This chart bears a series of numbered shadings ranging from zero which is white, then to five, which is black. An observer simply matches the smokiness of the sky with the shading on the chart that corresponds most closely to what he sees. Major areas around the world have established monitoring systems that provide readings of pollution levels at various places within these cities.  A global network of monitoring stations has thus been established to this effect. This has made extensive use of ground weather stations, earth satellites, computing, the internet and social media to help identify potentially dangerous pollu

  Particulate matter causes the frequent painting of houses, cleaning of clothes and washing of cars. Particulate matter, nitrogen oxide and sulfur oxide are all contributing factors to decreased visibility.  This however, presents a hazard to operators of aircraft, automobiles and boats. A study revealed that levels of harmful microscopic particulate matter known as PM 2.5 and the pollutant which is smaller than PM 2.5 micrometers in diameter is considered particularly dangerous as it can lodge deep into the lungs and pass onto other organs and the blood stream, causing serious health risks.  The effects of air pollution on weathers and climate aren’t far fetched. Scientists have definitely established a relationship between air pollution and weather. Each can affect the other in numerous ways. Wind and temperatures for instance affect the quantities and extent of pollutants in the air. Strong winds are air currents which may scatter pollutants in both vertical and horizontal directio

The effects of air pollution are wide and aren’t far fetched. People, animals, plant life and even inert materials can and are affected by this demise. History tells that in October 1948, a stagnant fog heavy with pollution blanketed a small industrial town of Donora, Pennsylvania.The fog lasted for four days, and by the time it had cleared, six thousand of the town’s fourteen thousand people were sick and twenty had died. Four years later, a killer smog in London had caused an estimated four thousand deaths. In 1970, however, more than eight thousand people in Tokyo, Japan needed medical treatment for eye, nose, and throat irritations when heavy white smog containing sulfurous acid covered the city for five days. The most serious and immediate menace of air pollution lies in its physical effects on human beings even though it is quite difficult to access the long term health effects of air pollution. Yet there’s no doubt that ailments such as emphysema, chronic bronchitis, bronchia

In the past decade, China with the largest economy in the world has seen the rise of acute carbon emissions in the atmosphere. With the advancement of technology, major cities in China, like Hong Kong and Beijing have been heavily plagued with smog and the culture of wearing nose masks has since been the norm long before the Corona virus pandemic hit the globe. In Nigeria, Warri, a major oil producing city has been also plagued with smog in recent times as most mornings, the air can be seen to be thick and dense, making buildings hardly visible against a backdrop of thick smog especially during the wet season.  However, like water bodies, the atmosphere can cleanse itself as long as it is not overloaded and overwhelmed with pollutants produced in large quantities and concentrations. Cities often accumulate pollutants both because they produce them in such large amounts and because cities are often located in river valleys along base or on level areas beside mountains. Most of these

 The pollutants of air are  numerous and this is as a result of byproducts of an advanced technological society. As long as man has lived in cities, he has and will continue to pollute the air. Major cities around the globe must now strive to deal with dangerously rising levels of air pollution. With the advent of population migration and growth; urbanization, which is the agglomeration of people in space, the rate of the acquisition of automobiles for instance, has quadrupled over the past century, that is from the 1950’s up till now. And as such, the rate of air pollution has also quadrupled. Noted also, smog from these cities in recent times especially before the Covid-19 pandemic, drifted into many sub-urban and rural areas where it has been fed by cars, incinerators, and heating and generating plants. Urban air pollution was once considered a problem of merely smoke in the air and the main source of the smoke obviously was industry which burned great quantities of coal, oil and

 #Heat is an industrial water pollutant. Electric generating plants, nuclear power plants and many other manufacturing operations require enormous amount of water for cooling. Water needed for factory operations is drawn from lakes or rivers. Afterwards, the hot water is discharged back into the same lake or river, and if this water is hot enough to raise average temperatures in a large volume of the stream or lake, this can radically upset the ecosystem. Plants and animals adapted to a certain temperature are affected and may be unable to survive when the temperature rises a degree or two above the upper limit of that range. In most cases, as in gas flaring, temperatures are raised so high that fish and other aquatic mammals migrate to calmer and cooler waters. The result is a drastic reduction of population of these animals in that region, and subsequently the economics of that region is also brutally affected in terms of fishing and fish trading. For instance, the rivers in the rura

Industrial pollution is  a menace to the aquatic ecosystem. Most factories discharge three or four times more oxygen demanding wastes than sewers and they dump poisons into the water as well. Despite the shift from the industrial era to a more integrated approach as regards knowledge and the advancement of technology, this has and can be seen to remedy some of the impacts of industrial wastes. However, some sources may simply have been eliminated. The average wastes gotten from the modern sulphate, pulp and paper process is less than one tenth of what it was from the sulfite process formerly used in paper mills. So in other words, technology has contributed largely to industrial processes to this regard. Still, new and complex chemical processes are on a frequent basis developed and have increased the possibility of releasing dangerous chemical pollutants that are hard to detect and control.  Most industries are always over eager to introduce new chemicals and materials into their pro

When a town grows into a city, or when many towns and cities are built along the same river, the #ecosystem is overwhelmed by the large amount of #wastes. So #sewage treatment becomes absolutely necessary. Modern sewage technology shows an understanding and application of part of the #aquatic ecosystem. Sewage treatment plants for instance, utilize the same microorganisms that serve as decomposers in natural bodies of water. But as #urban growth and #population have continued to increase, it has become apparent that sewage treatment technology is only partly in tune with the ecosystem. However, the nitrates, phosphates and other nutrients released from the organic matter by the #microorganisms in the sewage treatment plants are passed on through the ecosystem where they stimulate the growth of #algae. Thus, the end result is #eutrophication. Algae overgrowth has been a major factor, for instance, in the break down of the ecosystem in some of North America’s lakes such as the #Lake Erie

In some #African countries where oil is produced on a very large scale, Nigeria, for instance, environmental and human rights activist organizations at non-governmental level have taken the initiative within their framework and capacity to curb and fight against oil spills in water bodies in rural communities, where oil exploration and drilling activities are and have been at its peak. These human rights and non-profit organizations whose actions have been geared towards curbing the excesses of environmental pollution and degradation, have been able to a minute extent ensure clean up of these oil polluted areas, and seek compensation and also reparation for the affected indigenes and defunct communities. Nevertheless, despite these measures adopted in these regions, the gruesome effects of oil #pollution can still be seen and felt. The indigenes have been forced to evacuate and abandon these coastal regions because they can no longer farm their lands for food and fish their rivers for

The first real concern with water pollution came about in the late 19th century. Then, the industrial Revolution at the time brought about an immense growth of towns and cities which resulted in urbanization. The common practice then and which is still seen in many indigenous regions of the developing world like Africa and Asia, was to dump sewage into the nearest stream, and this subsequently turned many rivers into cesspools. Thus, much of the cities’ and towns’ water were drawn from these same rivers and this resulted in great epidemics of cholera, typhoid and other water borne diseases.  London’s history provides a classic example. The sewage level turned the River Thames into a mass of filth, and twenty thousand Londoners died of cholera outbreaks in 1849 and 1853 respectively. Also, at the same time, typhoid epidemics hit many cities in the United States. Circumstantial evidence indicated that these were transmitted through polluted drinking water. But there was no real understa

Sustainability means meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future to meet their needs. Environmental sustainability therefore can be defined as the responsible interaction with the environment to avoid depletion or degradation of natural resources which allows for long term environmental quality. Pollution of the environment as can be seen from the impending factors from the previous article I wrote, assumes diverse forms and can be categorized into four major classes which are water pollution, air pollution, land pollution and noise pollution. These however, represent serious potential threats to environmental quality or they show, and convene the problems and complexities of anticipating and avoiding undesirable human impacts on the environment. Water pollution is very dangerous and poses a threat to human, acquatic, animal, and plant life. Several times each day, we turn a handle to produce a flow of clean water. By pressing or turning another ha

Today is #worldenvironmentday. There was #earthday celebrated on April 22 amidst the lockdown brought on by the Covid-19 virus pandemic. Now, we are marking World Environment Day in the midst of another uproar and protest in America and all round the world because of the racist and prejudiced killing of George Floyd, a black man by a white cop and his colleagues who looked on as he brutally took the life of another human being. I wept as I watched the video on Twitter, Instagram and Yahoo News. How can people be so unfeeling to kill and murder just because you are armed and  wearing a uniform ? And worst still, because he is black? I still don’t get it. This is so beyond reasoning, and I would call it what it is....satanic! Anyway, the whole world is arising in protest to the injustice done by a white cop to a black man, a move that should have taken place a long time ago before now as the situation regarding racial discrimination and injustice has eaten so deep into the American sys

Development can be accrued to various factors which include political stability, religious harmony and social integration; cultural development and socio-economic development which stems from a well rounded, and aggressively pursued and diversified economy. Other factors include a well managed, conserved and protected environment. But in cases where a region, city or country is heavily polluted and degraded, even though the economy is developed as a result of industrialization and acute urbanization, there is still a crutch in the ideology of #environmental sustainability. In other words, no matter how well developed a country is, the overall effect of pollution is largely detrimental to the sustainability of her environment. First and foremost, pollution is simply the accumulation of something where it is not wanted. A pollutant may also not be a pollutant if it is where it is wanted, depending on the context in which it is used or it occurs. But in this case, we would look at pollu

Today is Earth Day. It was created in the US by late former democratic Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson and by 1990, Earth day had gone global, heralding a call to millions of people in more than 140 countries to take up environmental issues and turn them into a movement world wide. Like I have said on occasions like this, now is the time to consider our actions as regards the earth we live in and our environment. We should take this time to reflect soberly and be thankful first of all that we have a place we can call home. Let's be thankful also for the air we breathe, the natural environment which includes land, hills, mountains, oceans and seas; rivers, streams and lake. The game reserves and national parks, the list goes on and on. But as we reflect, let’s also remember that the environment and earth is under duress and extreme pressure from the ills of land, air and water pollution and other forms of natural hazards like hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis.  We have seen in

My heart breaks as I continue to hear disturbing news about the rising number of infections and subsequently deaths of people infected with the Corona virus around the world. I sincerely sympathize with people who have lost loved ones to this deadly disease. The severity of the situation hit me today as I stumbled across a short video on instagram showing nurses in ICU in New York, on their knees praying, and crying out to God for mercy, and His divine power to heal those afflicted with this highly infectious disease. My heart broke and my eyes glistened with tears, as I watched this heartbreaking scenario. It then dawned on me that if we don't rise and do something quickly about this pandemic, humanity might become extinct. God forbid! But  what can we do now? I keep wondering.  Yes, its good to wash or sanitize your hands. It's also good to keep your hands away from your face because the gateway to your lungs, where the Corona virus wants to get to, is through your nose or n

As I write this, I am literally dripping in sweat. Why? You may ask.. it’s  the dry season here in Nigeria and subsequently most parts of Western, Eastern and Northern Africa. Nevertheless and despite the fact that we do experience a lot of heat at this time of the year, this is not normal.  Temperatures have hiked feverishly and can be measured at between 37 to 45 degrees and this shows that the sun is high up in the sky and literally burning hot. Well, as I have been saying for a while now, we with our own hands have brought on this demise by own making. First of all, there are major factors which have contributed to this,  and we all know what they are: #air pollution, indiscriminate  removal of vegetation cover as a result of urbanization; and gas flaring, the result of oil drilling and refining. Air pollution as a result of the release of carbon dioxide and  lead oxide emissions into the atmosphere from old and over used vehicles is one major factor. Secondly, bush burning, relea