Page 156 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

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Sustainable Development and Environmental Reform
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IT is also faced with challenges, especially in the developing countries,
such as:
• If new technology may not be available for all, in return it may cre-
ate new divisions between the haves and have nots, i.e. developing
countries get equal access to a new world of possibilities through
technology.
• It can face barriers not directly related to the technology itself, such as:
– Illiteracy in general
– Computer illiteracy
– Differing levels of technical and educational abilities of users.

Information technologies can help promote the concept of Environmental
Awareness (EA) that might increase people’s interest in the environment.
People’s response to improving their environment depends on the depth of
their perception on environmental problems, and their willingness to act in
favor of that. Participatory environmental awareness, such as bottom-up
approaches, helps people to identify problems that concern them, under-
stand how to solve these problems, and encourage them to be involved in
the planning and implementation stages. To make participatory EA a suc-
cess, an efficient information process is required as a tool. Information tech-
nology is the tool that matches the needs of modern times; however, it is
faced with several challenges in developing countries.
Public environmental awareness develops gradually. The government
cannot take the major role in this process, as it is controlled and directed
mainly by the public. The required role of the government, NGOs, and edu-
cated individuals is to find efficient and creative means to reach the public
through information technology.

4.5 Environmental Reform

Environmental degradation is the exhaustion of the world’s natural resources:
land, air, water, soil, etc. It occurs due to crimes committed by humans
against nature. Individuals are disposing of wastes that pollute the environ-
ment at rates exceeding the wastes’ rate of decomposition or dissipation and
are overusing the renewable resources such as agricultural soils, forest trees,
ocean fisheries, etc. at rates exceeding their natural abilities to renew them-
selves. Therefore, the environment’s capacity to withstand the negative
impacts due to human activities has diminished and environmental degra-
dation has become a threatening issue.
To most investors overexploitation of natural resources is more profitable
in the short run, due to cheap means of disposing of wastes, avoiding the costs
of waste treatment and the excluding of social losses in cost calculations.
However, in the long run natural resources will be depleted and the losses