Essay Example on Making Earth is a better place Rapid Advances in Sciences and Technology

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Making Earth is a better place Rapid advances in sciences and technology has brought the world to a brink where traditional beliefs are pondered upon and replaced by systematic scientific approach and understanding With these quantum leaps the present day world is still grappling with several issues like population explosion Global organizations like United Nations World Health Organization and major NHOs are striving continuously to restore this balance and make Earth a better place to live This requires a concerted effort from all the social strata and hence necessitates understanding the underlying cause of these problems Today's problems tomorrow s agenda The current water food and energy securities and exerting an unsustainable pressure on the existing resources This demand is expected to rise by 30 50 in the next two decades further lengthening the gap between production and consumption 1 Food crisis around the globe The world population has increased significantly by 63 in the last 5 decades In contrast the land under agriculture has increased by a meagre 9 Though practices like sustainable intensification have been carried out to increased the crop productivity per square unit of land the gap between population and food available continues to increase threatening the world to the brink of increasing the cost on food crops Additionally cotton cultivation for fibres floriculture rapid urbanization and the discovery of first generation biofuels from food crops has further increased the pressure on arable land Poor and low income countries are worst affected by this scenario leading to severe problems of malnutrition and onset of associated diseases 2 Climate change


Over several years wide spread and abrupt climatic changes have been recorded throughout the world The recent analyses from the data acquired over the period of 50 years show a warming trend of 1 C 100 years 3 The decade between 1995 and 2014 recorded 525 000 deaths due to extreme weather events These disasters could accelerate if the global warming exceeds 20C 4 Rapid industrialization and increased dependence of human beings on energy has single handedly resulted in the huge depreciation of climatic conditions and the resultant calamities Environmentalists around the world are already ringing the alarm bells to issue warnings against the upcoming dangers and hence massive programs have been undertaken to reduce the CO2 generation and mitigation of the existing CO2 5 Energy in security The industrial revolution which started in the 18th century has seen a massive surge in the past century owing the discovery of oil fields and development of colossal machines dependent on them An interesting fact is though the global oil production has increased to 98 mbd the increase is a result of increased efficiency of oil rigs


This implies that though the production capacity has increased no new wells have been discovered Hence the threat of depletion in the global oil reserves still looms over the world edging for the hunt of different alternative sources of energy 6 The water crisis Water is essential resource at the core of processing of almost all the goods and services like food energy and policies urbanization and trade globalization are largely influenced by the global demand of water 7 Out of the total water available on Earth only 2 5 is in freshwater form of which only 21 is available for human use This makes water a limited resource to be used judiciously The world is already facing a global water deficit due to imbalanced demand and finite supply and hence restoration of the balance is necessary 8 The underlying fact is these issues are not unique in their aspect and are connected to each other by a complex matrix forming the water food energy nexus with climate the final vertex The nexus can be more elaborately explained with the figure 11 Taking into consideration the vertex energy rapid industrialization has led to a tremendous increase in the consumption of energy which in turn has led to increased CO2 emissions These emissions have affected the global climatic conditions which in turn have led to unexpected turns in monsoon and drought conditions Consequently rainfall has become unpredictable creating severe dry and wet draught in many places The drought conditions in turn have affected the food production leading to food crisis Sustainable agriculture has been undertaken to increase the crop yield which is highly dependent on fertilizer input Production of these fertilizers is again industry dependent and hence energy consuming To break this vicious cycle there is a dire need for an alternative which is independent of the all the above factors Biological routes are being highly explored in search of these alternatives and are considered to be the Holy Grail for the ultimate option Biological processes are rapidly replacing chemical processes due their advantages being eco friendly and highly productive


The discovery of antibiotics from bacteria revolutionized the entire field of medicines in 1928 10 Incorporation of enzymes in to washing detergents is another example of increasing the efficiency of detergents without the addition of chemicals is yet another example of application of biotechnology in our everyday life 11 Microbial organisms like bacteria and fungi are highly exploited in the biotechnological industries for those purposes However these systems still face the limitation as they are dependent on organic carbon for growth and could fail in case of contamination A lucrative option for these problems is to harness the potential of photosynthesis and reduce the dependency on organic carbons


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