Hamid Gehad Humadi* and Sind Shamel Omer *
*Razaza & West Euphrates Research Unit, College of Science
Key words: sustainability, culture, forest, solar energy
Introduction:
A search about the exact meaning of the word “sustainability” in websites has become trickier during the last 20 years. Thousands of books, papers, etc., were published each year. In our country we keep talking about this word on an academic level, but we still need to change that to human behavior. Sustainability with time has started to become a culture. We really need a sustainable community. Sustainability now is a style of life in different countries. It is now everywhere, in agricultural practice, building houses, designing streets and so on.
Karbala Agriculture: A Successful Experiment in Agricultural Investment in the Desert
https://www.mawazin.net/Details.aspx?jimare=240491
What about today?
Nowadays, it is not easy to talk about the future and ignore this word. Countries always try to keep a healthy environment and with sustainability, this goal could be achieved. The fast development during the last century caused huge damage to the environment. The consequent results led to a negative impact on the economy. Companies have tried to solve the problem and make life easier by consuming materials and plants. With time, the one who’ll pay for the over use of natural resources, will be our planet. A clear and affordable program was essential to make balance, making our life easier without destroying our environment.
A better lifestyle is the first thing we need deal with if we want to reach our goal of “a quiet, safe and renewable environment”. At first, we should state that it is not easy to keep going in development without giving feedback from time to time. If we stop a while, we can see the difference. During Covid 19 pandemic disease, when everything was closed for a couple of days, a huge change was observed in our planet. The air pollution decreased to a level never expected before, which in turn, affected the air quality. It is a normal situation when millions and millions of cars stop working and some thousands of factories take a compulsory rest. Of course, forests, agricultural land and each plant in the worlds felt better. Also, we haven’t seen fish, sea creatures and ocean animals near the beaches in a long time, in such a huge amount. We are also sure that the microbial community in soil also changed as a result of a constant change in the environment, when human activities were stopped for a while. A lot of things about the environment had to be explained to the community. When people started to know and understand the problems related with the stress on the environment, no matter if the people or companies were the cause, the solution will come soon.
Sustainability as a solution
Sustainability represents a good solution, but needs to be a culture. If people do not deeply see the whole picture, it is not easy to react with what environmental organizations are trying to do. To reach this point, which is to reduce the undesirable human activities on the environment is a big challenge. Money sometimes can solve the problem, when a special program about sustainability gets enough support to start. As well as, a sense of responsibility should start to grow. The word sustainability and its derivatives should be spoken about everywhere, it should be taught to kids in the school, at the universities and talked about in different media. Universities should encourage student to focus on their studies in this term, and postgraduate studies need to support any project in fields related to sustainability.
From forest to everywhere
Plants are the starting point. The first time the term “sustainability” was used in Germany more than 200 years ago. They used the term sustainability to refer to the efforts that are done to keep the number of trees in forests at the same level. To achieve that the number of trees cut should be no more than what forests can reproduce naturally. From old civilization till now, talking about the importance of plants has never stopped. Also, when looking at history, we found that a lot of fighting was due to suitable land for living. Plants are highly related to building civilization and we always talk about our green land. Increasing forest land and reducing deforestation is the first step in saving plants from unfair agricultural practices. Forests reduce carbon dioxide, produce oxygen and sources for a lot of plant products. Reduction in carbon dioxide helps in treating global warming. Modern agriculture practice can also help. In modern farming and agriculture, the amount of water used is determined precisely, so that there is no loss of water, as an example. As well as, using new techniques like hydroponic, aquaponic or vertical farming will help to reduce the amount of water consumed, and also keeps soil degradation at a minimum after extensive use for agricultural purposes. The demand for food is increasing year after year because of the exponential growth of world population. One of the solutions now scientists talk about, in addition to agricultural modern practice, was feeding habit. There are a lot of alternative food sources, which have highly nutritional value and are easy to provide. Fungi, as an example, used for thousands of years as food, can be used as an alternative source for edible proteins. There are different types of fungi with high nutritional value, and are easy to grow and the majority of them are safe to eat. Foods that are originally from the sea and oceans, also represent a good source of food. Hence, the solution is not far from us, but we need to deal with it in a responsible way.
Reforestation, not deforestation.
https://www.thinkwood.com/sustainable-architecture-design/sustainable-forestry
Energy highly demanded
Energy, in any form, is highly related to sustainability. The increasing demand for cheap source of energy makes people focus on fossil fuel. This type of energy showed a terrible effect on the environment. Each year the air pollution increases, as well as global warming. Searching for new types of energy and encouraging it within a society is a good way to reduce contamination. The sun is one of the most promising sources of energy, especially in our country, with clear skies and the sun rising for multiple hours during the day. The use of solar energy still has not reached a good point in our country, but the good thing is now we can see solar cell are being installed on some houses during these few months. Also, a promising project of constructing 300-MW solar panels in Karbala desert is currently in progress.
Finally
At which time should we start? In fact, we have already started. In this article we just talked briefly about sustainability, and this article is aimed to make the term easier to deal with. No doubt, the road is not paved, but everything needs a lot of patience. Hopefully one day the effects of sustainability will be clear to see everywhere.
Karbala Solar Project
https://www.intellinews.com/300-mw-solar-energy-project-underway-in-iraq-s-karbala-desert-393890/
Reference:
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- Kuhlman, T., & Farrington, J. (2010). What is sustainability? Sustainability, 2(11), 3436-3448.
- Otto, S. What means sustainability and sustainable development? ÖkologischesWirtschaften 2010, 4, 35–38.
- Rosen MA (2018) Issues, concepts and applications for sustainability. Glocalism J Cult Polit Innov 3:1–21.
- Shearman, R. (1990). The meaning and ethics of sustainability. Environmental management, 14, 1-8.
- Throsby, D. (1997). Sustainability and culture some theoretical issues. International journal of cultural policy, 4(1), 7-19.
- Wiersum, K. F. (1995). 200 years of sustainability in forestry: Lessons from history. Environmental management, 19, 321-329.
Hamid Gehad Humadi Sind Shamel Omer
