Category: Uncategorized

Would Modern ICT-Based Civilization Collapse As Previous Ones.

Advances of science, the transfer and use of technology require not only common languages but also effective communication and immediate transfer, validation and use of knowledge. These requirements are imperative for bringing about global, or at least regional, sustainably-based technological civilization. Though knowledge in itself has expanded enormously we are facing an ever increasing, if not accelerating, gaps between where knowledge is produced and where knowledge is needed.
Failure to bridge and narrow these gaps is likely to cause collapse because of expanding majority of outsiders that are more and more marginalized by the severe requirements from the minority that have unlimited access to knowledge.

This was the very reason for the collapse of many several previous civilizations, e.g. ancient Egyptian, roman, Islamic-Arabic, ….. https://fatarana.wordpress.com/2008/12/25/arabic-science-the-language/

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Would China’s New Silk Road Become A Reality?

China’s future vision for increasing economic and trade interactions with the Middle East, Europe and Africa is enormous. If this vision would become a reality there would be global tectonic shifts on several fronts. However, for such vision to become true security and safety issues need to be resolved particularly in the Middle East region.

http://thediplomat.com/2014/05/chinas-new-silk-road-vision-revealed/
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North Africa Has Much of Africa’s Ground Water Resources

The dry deserts of North Africa have much of Africa’s groundwater resources. Since such waters are of fossil origin they should be managed and used in the most possible sustainable manner. Strategies and policies are needed for effective and economic utilization of such water.

http://www.dw.de/for-much-of-africa-water-resources-are-available/a-15917857

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Facts and Values are Drivers of Humans But Why Science and Politics still don’t Mix?

It is not new that science and politics don’t mix, and there are increasing gaps in many societies between facts and values because of the different paths of historical evolution, limited exchanges in micro-cultures and also between major civilizations. Steven Pinker, professor of psychology at Harvard University, recently wrote an essay for the New Republic in defense of science. As is the case everywhere around the world, science is under attack for its arrogance, vulgarity and narrowness of vision. But is this true? If not why? What are the limits of science and politics? Who has the right to decide this? Above all what are the consequences if science and politics run in conflict? When, how and where this takes place? These are important, if not essential, questions but the answers are not simple or straightforward and the debate will go on for generations.

Why is this happening? Pinker asks. Because, he says, science is intruding on the humanities, disciplines lacking in vitality or any real purpose of their own, and the intrusion is resented. Far from deriding science as a campaign to diminish and oversimplify — to reduce beauty to brain chemistry, say, or ethics to natural selection — the humanities should welcome science as a source of new inspiration: “Surely our conceptions of politics, culture, and morality have much to learn from our best understanding of the physical universe and of our makeup as a species.”

Science is judged by quality and has its own limits. However, it is always expecting respect, as is the case for values. Quality has “scientific” instruments for assessment but the limits of science are described by the distinction between facts and values. Values have other “cultural” frames to be judged upon and assessed, even economic and environmental issues are finding their way into values. Here, comes a continuous dilemma and paradox, science is practiced and done by “minorities” though its content “facts” is still shaped by the needs of the society, at least in societies that recognize the importance of science. It is, also, true that politics seek help from science whenever is necessary. This isn’t to deny that science “facts” can shed light on “values”, make moral values intelligible in physical terms, it can explain how certain moral instincts might confer an evolutionary advantage, or why they might persist. It can show that the supposed empirical basis for some moral values is simply false. Values, on the other hand, are practiced by majorities in societies, if not by everyone, and they have their own “codes of conduct” which get support by political parties and have more legitimate status through elections and political systems. Values have, therefore, enormous momentum in many societies especially where science is week with has little support.

“Though the scientific facts do not by themselves dictate values,” Pinker goes on, “they certainly hem in the possibilities.” He’s right about this — but the second point, though interesting, is much less important than the first. Science can’t dictate values. That’s what matters. And because it can’t dictate values, it can’t dictate courses of action.

Science is always seeking respect especially when it acts beyond the limits set by politics. Climate science for example, as viewed by non-experts is a far-flung family of loosely related disciplines, which resulted in a set of costly and controversial policy proposals. This is not strange because of the extent and dimensions of the threats and as many climate scientists require urgent measures to cut greenhouse-gas emissions. Still there is criticism that The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which will release its fifth assessment report on global warming next year, is an advocacy organization rather than a neutral compiler of scientific evidence. But who would invent appropriate solutions without having the knowledge and how-how to decide how, why, where and when? What to do about climate change is indeed not only a political question and if so where were the politicians? What do they want? What are their arguments? Who would take the responsibility when things go wrong? “Business as usual” still is requiring science to be cautious and do not mix with politics.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-08-20/why-science-and-politics-don-t-mix

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Air Quality – The Southern Hemi-sphere has the World Cleanest Air

The accelerating urbanization in the world is bringing an increasing degradation in air quality (http://www.scgh.com/green-news/the-cleanest-and-the-most-polluted-cities/). While this is not reflected in life expectancy (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy) yet, it is definitely causing emerging new health threats to the world population, as 70% will be living in cities by 2050. The life expectancy of humans on the Earth is likely to gradually decrease because of such threats and can very well show up in future statistics of the coming decades. What regards consumption of natural resources there are no definite answer on What is Enough? or How enough is enough? (http://www.mnn.com/leaderboard/stories/meet-the-woman-who-elevated-conservation-photography-to-a-whole-new-level). Facts on the role of urbanization on air quality, i.e. sources/types of pollution, are given in a document by United Nations Environment Program (http://www.unep.org/urban_environment/PDFs/handbook.pdf).

What is interesting and many of us may not know is that the world cleanest air is indeed mostly available in the Southern Hemi-sphere because of three reasons: (1) most of the land in the Northern Hemi-sphere is very much populated; (2) major parts of emission of atmospheric pollution is produced in the Northern Hemi-sphere; and (3) the atmospheric mixing of air between the northern and southern hemi-spheres is quite limited. The cleanest areas in the Northern Hemi-sphere are either above the troposphere, i.e. at elevated altitudes, or far away from emission areas, i.e. quite near in the Arctic region and/or quite near to the Arctic.

 http://www.travelandleisure.com/slideshows/the-worlds-cleanest-air

 

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Beach Quality – Top 15 Clearest Waters in the World

Clear, clean waters and healthy air in fresh, quite and relaxing environment are among essential features of high quality tourism. Many more extra enjoyable wishes of exotic, healthy, fresh and delicious food make your relaxing holidays unforgettable memory in your life.

Escape commercialized tourist and spend days in healthiest and purest marine life, “blue river” that it’s clean enough to drink, entire river water from the glaciers and snowfields, making it of the purest quality. Relax on “white beaches” that truly lives up to their names, as pure as being remote, walk along powdery white sand and swim in crystal clear waters with ideal conditions for kite-boarding. Experience beauty that cannot be captured even in the most cinematographic movies with amazing marine life and a huge amount of amazing, deep ocean fish.

http://www.therichest.com/expensive-lifestyle/location/15-clearest-waters-in-the-world-to-swim-in-before-you-die/

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Urbanization and Waste Management – Impacts on Conservation and Protection of Water Resources

Different forms of solid waste have diverse negative impacts on quality of natural waters. All humans, either directly or indirectly, produce garbage from household or/and waste and pollution from work places, i.e. private and public sectors. So, we all make it and we all hate it.

Surface and groundwaters, on various combinations and levels, are important parts of water resources that support the national economies and social developments around the world. In China for example, over 400 cities exploit groundwater and many of them use groundwater as the only source of supply. With this a series of problems emerge gradually just as river waters have been over-used and polluted in many parts of the world, so have groundwater. The governance of groundwater is becoming very urgent after years of researches on the nature and pollution mechanism of contaminants in the groundwater (also coupled interactions between surface and groundwater), i.e. pollution sources, the fate and transport of chemicals and organic pollutants. This in addition to increasing knowledge on landfills, leaking sewers, oil storage tanks, pesticides, fertilizer and septic tanks (http://www.intechopen.com/books/organic-pollutants-monitoring-risk-and-treatment/the-investigation-and-assessment-on-groundwater-organic-pollution). Some aspects on groundwater contamination and pollution in Canada are given at  (https://www.ec.gc.ca/eau-water/default.asp?lang=En&n=6A7FB7B2-1), new threats are also emerging from production and processing of oil sands (or tar sands). More about ground-water contamination and related threats in cities and many rural homes, that are dependent on the use of groundwater for drinking and other household purposes, are given at (http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/environment-book/groundwatercontamination.html).

In this context, Europe has indeed the best waste performing countries in the world in terms of e.g. lowest percentage of landfills, highest benefits from recycling and energy gain from waste. Some examples are Estonia  (http://www.zerowasteeurope.eu/2014/04/and-the-best-waste-performing-country-in-europe-is-estonia/); The Netherlands (http://www.iamexpat.nl/read-and-discuss/expat-page/news/netherlands-has-the-best-waste-management-in-europe); and Sweden (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAe4fVtPsCs&feature=youtu.be).

USA produces more garbage per person (230 000 000 tons every year) than any other country on the planet, it has biggest mega landfills and it is still lacking behind what regards recycling and waste management.

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Canada – Emergence of “Toxic” Lakes Because of Tar Sands Industries

The emerging global shift from light oil to heavy oil will bring with it new chain of environmental threats in terms of increasing emissions of carbon dioxide, severe degradation of surface water and ground-water qualities as well as damage to aquatic life and bio-diversity.

The so-called Tar Sand (http://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oljesand) has severe negative impacts on  climate, natural water quality and aquatic life if protection and conservation strategies are not properly implemented in association with mining and processing.

http://www.livescience.com/49004-environmentalists-fear-tar-sands-lake-toxicity-lobbyist-video.html

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LIMA CLIMATE CHANGE 2014-CONFERENCE – Political Responses & Achievements Since Discovery of Climate Change

Science is usually in advance of politics and technology and the implementation of both is usually, if not totally, associated with clear interests. Sometimes, not very often, politics and technology team up immediately whenever common and mutual interests are apparent especially with support of economic and/or power related advantages.

The history of the scientific discovery of climate change began early 19th century with various theories and arguments about possible natural and man-made drivers. In late 19th century and since 1960-1970 the warming effect of human emissions of greenhouse gases, in particular carbon dioxide, became more and more convincing. By 1990, scientific research on climate change expanded enormously with rich data explaining causal relations, links with historic and palaeo-climatic data with refined and validated numerical climate-change models. Climate change can be best described as change, significant and lasting, in statistical distribution of spatio-temporal weather pattern. Time periods of such changes can range from decades up to millions of years. The changes can be in average weather conditions or in the distribution of weather around the average.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_science)

The enormous and accelerating pressures from the scientific community supported by huge convincing scientific data, observations and models resuled in political realization of the effects and impacts of global warming (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_global_warming). Though the evolution of the scientific discovery of climate change, unlike other scientific discoveries, took a long journey to develop still the political road map for realization of global warming, and implementation of mitigation actions, was still more complex. This is due to numerous factors that arise from the global economy’s interdependence on carbon dioxide and because it is directly implicated in global warming. Global warming is non-traditional environmental challenge as the impacts are global, relatively irreversible in terms of short-periods of time, i.e. because of the long residence-time in the atmosphere, act directly and indirectly not only on weather patterns but the global water cycle and have wide-range of impacts on the functioning and metabolisms of global ecosystems and biodiversity. Global warming is one of the most important man-made effects with considerable impacts on the sustainability of all life forms on our planet.

The UN Climate Change Conference opens today in Lima, Peru, and will continue until 12 December. The Conference includes the 20th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 20) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 10th session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP 10). Three subsidiary bodies will also convene: the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI), the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), and the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP).

The document given below describes the political responses and achievements since 1992 where the first major global political engagement took place. The international political response to climate change began with the adoption of the “UN Framework Convention on Climate Change” UNFCCC in 1992, which sets out a framework for action aimed at stabilizing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs) to avoid “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” The Lima conference will consider agenda items related, inter alia, to finance, mitigation, adaptation and technology. The COP will also hear a report from the ADP concerning progress made during the third year of its mandate to develop “a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties” by 2015 to enter into force no later than 2020.

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/14a0462ec4cdc2a7

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Technology and Innovation for Rural Sustainability

Appropriate and sustainable rural technologies are very rare as most of the global attention, driven by economical interests, is focused on urbanization. Such technologies are very poorly needed because of several reasons. They are, also, imperative for promoting successful long-term and large-scale sustainable urbanization. This is, even, essential in agricultural regions where rural communities are major parts of the national socio-economic structure, which is the case in many developing countries in particular Africa. This is at least necessary in the transition periods prior to large-scale and long-term transformation to urbanized societies where gradual, appropriate and sustainable integration of rural regions is necessary.

Urbanization has caused an accelerating drain of un-favored groups to mega and large cities (http://www.academia.edu/847075/Mexico_City._The_marginal_communities_social_and_ethnic_segregation_of_the_native_population). The random and rapid expansion of urbanized regions has promoted an ever accelerating pile-up of slum-communities in many regions around the world (http://www.schooljotter.com/showpage.php?id=158173) which indeed is not sustainable both from the economic and environmental perspective.

Some parts of the problem are associated with the negative impacts from global education, research and technology driven-policies around the world by being supported by national and international institutes and organizations including the United Nations and World Bank. Management of research, education and development programs fails to involve people from the developing countries to contribute in solving problems and difficulties in their native countries or at least to find partners from the developed countries willing to participate in solving the enormous problems and difficulties in this respect.

Fortunately, the global community started to recognize such problems and to take steps and  efforts, though limited in extent, for achieving successful socio-economic development that is very much related to reducing poverty and the associated impacts of environment and climatic threats. An innovative example “Ecological System Designs for the Indigenous Community of Maruata, Michoacan, Mexico” is given here where researchers from the developing countries are demonstrating how to bring about successful ecological designs for living better, cheaper and ecologically sustainable.

file:///Users/farid/Desktop/Indigenous%20Community%20of%20Maruata,%20Mexico%20(Design%20Example).webarchive

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Best Beaches, Water Quality and Wellbeing – Information, Pictures and Criteria.

Water quality is central for wellbeing of humans or at least for protection of health and preservation of quality of all forms of life. Water resources are not only an economic and industrial resource and the uses of water don’t stop for indoor household activities. Indeed, the urbanization of water as forced by economic, industrial and indoor household activities is forcing an ever-accelerating promotion of “production and consumption”. On global long-term perspective, this is posing an ever increasing degradation of the quality of natural water resources with severe negative impacts on the quality of life not only what regards inland freshwater water bodies but, also, all maritime coastal and offshore waters. Conservation and protection of the global water resources is a global long-term investment for many generations to come.

“Sustain-earth.com” will continue the describe the dimensions and threats of the ongoing urbanization of water resources where demonstrations will be given to the existing unlimited needs for taking in consideration the role of water for the wellbeing of humans in terms of health and recreation as well as conservation and protection of all forms of life on the planet.

Access and affordability of good water quality for recreation is among growing needs where the pressures and competition on water resources are enormous. Best Beaches in the world are very expessive and not easily accessible. Compact information and pictures of the world’s best beaches are given here in terms of criteria, weather, water, sand, facilities, access, visitor numbers, ….. etc : http://www.bugbog.com/beaches/best_beaches.html

We give few examples on efforts made for raising public awareness on the existing needs. The US “Guide to Finding a Clean Beach”: How to find out if a beach is tested for pollution and what authorities do if they find it; finding help online and at the local or state health departments; avoiding polluted beaches; ……. etc: “http://www.nrdc.org/water/oceans/ttw/guide.asp”. According to CNN 10% of water samples collected from U.S. beaches failed to meet the government benchmark for swimmer safety. It’s an icky thought, especially considering the popularity of several of the failing beaches included in the Natural Resources Defense Council’s “Testing the Waters”: http://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/25/travel/beaches-water-quality-report/

For the UK, find out how clean the water is on beaches, in other bathing in England and Wales, and if there is a problem with pollution: https://www.gov.uk/quality-of-local-bathing-water. For Canada, Toronto has some of the best beaches in the world, this is verified by the Blue Flag Program. This internationally recognized program awards “blue flags” is directed to communities committed to maintaining high standards for water quality: http://app.toronto.ca/tpha/beaches.html

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Urbanization and Future Impacts of Water Treatment on Natural Waters

Without proper water treatment healthy life in out cities wouldn’t be possible. To further couple the importance of water treatment to other sectors in the society we need some background information. This is described at http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_treatment

Also, how drinking water is made and how water treatment plants function is explained in:

With this background information and with the expected prognoses that 70% of world population will be gradually moving to cities during the twenty first century it is not clear how water treatment plant would cope with the increasing waste that is generated from human consumption, i.e. household, agriculture and industry. Unlike solid waste, which is subject to sorting in some parts of the world, wasted water from urbanized areas carry an increasing number and amounts of pollutants in their end products, i.e. effluents and sludge. Though water treatment plants may be effective to provide good quality of water, wastewater treatment plants however are not as effective in removing whatever exist in wastewater. This means that the net effect of urbanization is an increasing production and injection of waste and pollution that is delivered to natural aquatic water systems. This would, of course, provide large-scale and long-term threats on ecological water, and life quality, and will have negative feedback effects on “raw” water that will be later used in water treatment plants.

In summary we have an accelerating internal urbanization of water that generates waste and pollution as end products to be injected and delivered to the main natural global water cycle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Role of Human-Computer Interaction – From Awareness and Education to Sustainability

WWW (World Wide Web) is a system of interlinked hypertext documents, intended to provide global and effective communication systems through the Internet. Webpages can be viewed for their content of text, videos, and other multimedia where hyperlinks allow the navigation between different contents. The inventor of WWW, Tim Berners-Lee, realized in 1989 that his proposal for a more effective CERN communication system could be implemented throughout the world through hypertext “to link and access information of various kinds as a web of nodes in which the user can browse at will”. This was jointly done in 1990 with Robert Cailliau.

Douglas Engelbart already in 1968 demonstrated the invention of “human-computer interaction” where “The Mother of All Demos” retrospectively illustrated the complete computer hardware and software system of all known fundamental elements of modern personal computing. It was the first to publicly demonstrate all features, elements and capabilities of modern computers as communication and information-retrieval machines where the previous idea of Vannevar Bush for a Memex was turned into reality. Memex was visioned by Vannevar Bush, in 1945, that it could implement what is known today by hypertext with the aim to help humanity to have a collective memory and to avoid the use of scientific discoveries for destruction and war, probably an early starting point for sustainability.

Hypertext, including tables, images and other presentational content forms, is displayed on a computer display and other smart devices (mobiles, tablets, …..) with interaction to other text which the reader can immediately, or progressively at multiple levels, access via hyperlinks. An innovation of extreme importance for effectively and globally promoting communication, with high speed never known anywhere expect the speed of light, in all sectors and on all levels with tectonic changes and shifts within and between know and unknown boarders. Apart from economic, scientific and technical importance; populations around the world can easily access and afford sharing information, also for professional to produce and market products and services. Human-computer interactions are now advancing with unprecedented importance for public awareness and education on all levels especially for empowering individuals, groups and association in a wide spectra of new activities for engagement and shaping socio-economic sustainability on micro-levels, at any time and in regions and remote places that were never reached before. What we though was virtual yesterday is in fact very real today.

Since the birth of WWW an accelerating interest in human-computer interactions in all sectors of modern societies has emerged with tectonic changes in the flora of social media, public awareness and educational tools such as blogs and MOOCs “Massive Open Online Courses” focusing on Sustainability on different levels, specialities and content. Blogs and MOOCs are internet based and generally free of charge a matter of increasing importance for achieving socio-economic sustainability. They don’t have any entry requirements and are open to anyone anywhere in the world with an internet connection. MOOCs are linked to universities, may lead to certificates/diplomas and some universities give packages of MOOCs leading to degrees but this may be subject to fees.

https://www.mooc-list.com/tags/sustainability; is a general link with MOOC-list on sustainability issues with technical information, short specifications and descriptions of the courses. Some examples are given below:

https://www.coursera.org/course/susdev provides an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of sustainable development. It describes the complex interactions between the world economy and the Earth’s physical environment. Ecological processes and constraints significantly shape the patterns of economic development, demography, and wealth and poverty. At the same time, human activities change the physical environments, increasingly in dangerous ways.

http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20140511172841978 is a free MOOC course on “The age of sustainable development” that gives students an understanding of the key challenges and pathways to sustainable development – that is, economic development that is also socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable.

https://open.sap.com/course/sbi1; Conducting business in more sustainable ways is becoming increasingly relevant today and a “must-have” in the future. The sustainability megatrend is driven by a growing population, accelerating urbanization, resource intensity, government regulation, climate change, and – most importantly – by the fact that consumers are increasingly demanding healthy, affordable, as well as socially and environmentally responsible products.

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/sustainability-society-and-you; it provides the knowledge and skills to do this by investigating sustainability from multiple angles and exploring what small steps you can take to have a real impact upon all our future. It gives an introduction to the values and principles associated with sustainability and some of the knowledge and understanding required to make sustainable decisions in personal and professional life.

http://50plus20.org/archives/2952; is a Collaborative MOOC on Responsibility, Sustainability and Ethics for Business and Leadership. The emerging model of offering Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) could pose a major threat to traditional model of management education with some estimating that up to 60% of traditional teaching could be disrupted or in part replace by MOOC offerings. Early adopters of online learning platforms will however find a limited choice of material and courses focused on the broad topic of “Sustainability, Ethics and Responsibility in Business and Leadership”.

Http://sustain-earth.com will continue reporting on sustainability and emerging global trends.

 

 

 

 

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Sustain-Earth in Arabic on Facebook Now – الحفاظ علي الارض” علي صفحات الفيسبوك الآن”

Sustain-Earth with access to arabic text is available now on Facebook.

الحفاظ علي الآرض” هو موقع للتواصل الإجتماعي وموجوده الآن علي الفيسبوك و باللغه العربيه و عليه سوف تتوافر طرق التواصل بين المهنيين بعضهم ببعض و كذلك بينهم و بين افراد المجتمع و ذلك لتحقيق التقدم الدائم و المستمر في منطقه الشرق الآوسط و شمال آفريقيا و الدول الآخري الناطقه باللغه العريبه. هذا و تجري الآن كل الإستعدادات لتوفير العمل بالآليات المناسبه. وعلي الراغبيين في المشاركه الإتصال بنا.

https://www.facebook.com/SustainEarthNow

 

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Increasing Popularity of ResearchGate – ICT and the Architecture of Social Media

ResearchGate is a “Facebook for researchers”. Contributions by researchers through profiles – whether it’s a dataset, a conference paper or a journal article – make dissemination of research, global communication and progress happen faster. Contributing in ResearchGate generates free DOI “Digital Object Identifier” for the research added to your profile.

On Wednesday, August 13, 2014 ResearchGate celebrated five million members sharing their scientific output, knowledge and expertise free of charge. It is becoming a major resource for “Open Access”, free sharing of publications and Transfer-of-Knowledge, in particular for early stage researchers lacking resources to establish themselves in the academic world. It is, also, a window for marketing universities and research institutions, see the involvement of Uppsala University https://www.researchgate.net/institution/Uppsala_University/members?page=38

In the first 50 months in the company’s history two million publications in total were uploaded on profiles. Today two million publications every month are being uploaded. In the first months after ResearchGate launched the feature 100 datasets every day were uploaded, today the upload is 700. Last year, there were 300 conference papers uploaded daily. This number has increased fivefold; currently uploads are 1500 conference papers daily. Discussions on addressed questions are not peer-reviewed and quality can vary.

Appropriate and effective coupling of education, science and technology to society and market needs is still required for improving the architecture of Social Media, in particular what regards filling the communication gaps in all sectors and on all levels. Improved ICT-instruments for enhancing the architecture of Social Media are imperative to strengthen the communication between researchers (public and private sectors), politicians and the public in general. In this context, BLOGS provide suitable platforms for improving the architecture of Social Media. See for example http://sustain-earth.com

https://news.researchgate.net/

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Lessons to be learned – Why Million Latrines Won’t Solve Africa’s Sanitation

Sanitation is a major problem in Africa and has, in fact, severe negative impacts on water quality, public health, tourism, eco- and animal production, and sustainable socio-economic developments in general. A local market in Port Harcourt in Nigeria, shown here, gives an example of the scale of sanitation problems that can be found in different parts of Africa.

The millennium development goals are now only four years away from the deadline. More than 70% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa is still without adequate sanitation, in 200 years just half of sub-Saharan African population will hopefully have access to safe private toilets.

Many technologies designed to solve problems are not developed in Africa, they are parachuted into Africa. There some work, most don’t; why do they fail to work in local Africa context; explanations are given in the article below (see the link). Lesson to be learned should be simple: know the area; know the people. Talking and listening to the people on the ground gives the answers needed for long-lasting and sustainable moves out of poverty, also policies required on how to educate people about sanitation and hygiene and to bring about changes in behavior. Resistance to using a latrine may include beliefs that one might be possessed by demons, lose magical powers or live a shorter life. Some believe a toilet is meant only for wealthy people or that, if somebody feeds you, you should in turn defecate in their field.

However, there are tested approaches and many are hoping that they can bring similar results to Africa. WaterAid is adapting Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) in West Africa. First conceived in Bangladesh, it is a concept that has been sweeping across south Asia with impressive results. The concept is based on an understanding that the people themselves have the solutions and are best able to determine which interventions will enable them to attain a self-defined, collective destiny. Empowering local communities with knowledge emanated from them to solve their own problems is the best way to improve health across the continent in a much more sustainable manner.

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/jan/21/nigeria-sanitation-local-solutions

 

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Warning About Fish – Don’t Eat Fish Unless You Know The Origin?

Unfortunately, there are growing global fear about the quality of seafood and fish that are either wild in polluted waters or farmed in toxic waters. Such unfit fish for eating, i.e. with high levels of toxic pollutants, is available in the market as control instruments are either ineffective or non-existing.

For different reasons the water quality where fish is grown is facing considerable pollution threats because of acute water shortages, water supplies contaminated by sewage, industrial waste and agricultural runoff that includes pesticides. These pollution threats are accelerating because of increasing pressures on water resources and unavailable/limited regulations for fish farming in many regions around the world. Farmers, for example, have coped with the toxic waters by mixing illegal veterinary drugs and pesticides into fish feed, which helps keep their stocks alive yet leaves poisonous and carcinogenic residues in seafood. Many people started to work with fish faring without enough knowledge and in areas with little or no control. This introduces enormous health threats to consumers where environmental degradation has become a food safety problem. Indeed, the long-term risks of consuming contaminated seafood could lead to higher rates of cancer and liver disease and other afflictions. “Sustain-earth.com” will follow these issues and give further information and details on these issues.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/15/world/asia/15fish.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

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Modern-Day Silk Road Connecting China to Europe!

The new ‘silk road’, a rail link from China’s factories to heart of Europe

The new “silk road”, a rail link from China’s factories to heart of Europe. It is one of the world’s longest railways – an approximately 11,000-kilometre “modern-day silk road” that traverses Russia and Kazakhstan to link a megacity in the heart of China with a key commercial hub in western Germany.

See more at:

http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2014/03/30/new-silk-road-rail-link-chinas-factories-heart-europe/

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