Global Issues: Water Crisis

Water Crisis

“Clean, safe drinking water is scarce. Today, nearly 1 billion people in the developing world don't have access to it. Yet, we take it for granted, we waste it, and we even pay too much to drink it from little plastic bottles.
Water is the foundation of life. And still today, all around the world, far too many people spend their entire day searching for it.” (Continue reading...)

▪ Water Crisis Causes
 
▪ Pollution: Shanghai, with its fancy cafes, glitzy shopping malls and organic health food shops, is emblematic of improving quality of life for China’s urban middle class. Yet while the city’s veil of smog has lifted slightly in recent years, its water pollution crisis continues unabated – 85% of the water in the city’s major rivers was undrinkable in 2015, according to official standards, and 56.4% was unfit for any purpose.
(Read more)

▪ Groundwater overdraft: Groundwater overdraft occurs when groundwater use exceeds the amount of recharge into an aquifer, which leads to a decline in groundwater level. This condition is occurring in an increasing number of groundwater basins throughout California, and is affecting the state in many ways.
(Read more)

▪ Population growth: Water is a key element of life for everyone on Earth. As the world’s population grows, the demand for water mounts and the pressure on finite water resources intensifies. Climate change, which is also closely tied to population growth, will also lead to even greater pressures on the availability of water resources.
(Read more)

▪ Water privatization: The process of water privatization in Chile, which began in 1981 under General Pinochet, established a model for water management that strengthened private water rights, adopted a market-based allocation system and reduced state oversight. That model became emblematic of neoliberal reforms heavily promoted by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
These reforms fundamentally changed the way water is valued and managed globally. No longer a mere necessity for human survival, water has become an object of international financial speculation and experts predict that “blue gold” will soon become the most important physical commodity worldwide, dwarfing oil and precious metals.
(Read more)

▪ Bad insfrastructure: Failure to replace and upgrade our country’s water infrastructure poses a severe risk to both the quality and quantity of the country’s water supplies.
(Read more)

▪ Water misuse and overuse: “The big cities like New York, Chicago and San Francisco, consume massive amounts of water daily due to their massive populations concentrated in one area. New York City, for instance, consumed 1007.2 million gallons of water per day in 2009 (NYC Government). This is 125.8 gallons per person per day. To put this amount in comparison, most people living in Africa only use around 5.28 gallons per day (Water for Africa). Therefore, the average American living in NYC is using 25 times more water than the average public who is living in Africa. In no economy is this comparison acceptable.”
(Read more)

Why Water from charity: water on Vimeo.

▪ Diseases in relation with inadequate water supply: These diseases result from the lack of adequate water supply for human use. The pathogens are passed on faecal-orally from humans to humans or by contact with contaminated surfaces.
▪ List

▪ Ten countries most in need of clean water: The goal of World Water Day is to raise awareness about the water crisis that is happening in our world. We need to educate ourselves on where the crisis is taking place and then we need to do our best to make it so that there will never be a need for another World Water Day.
(Read more)


▪ Natural insfrastructure could help solving Brazilian water crisis: Serious water crisis have plagued Brazil’s major cities in recent years. Severe pollution in Rio de Janeiro’s Guanabara Bay is jeopardizing sailing and other water sports at the upcoming Olympic Games.
(Read More)

▪ An Approach to solve the water problem


▪ Water Facts
By BluePlanet 
By OneDrop

▪ Save Water: How scarcity & misuse is threatening our planet  

Global Issues: Energy Crisis

Energy Crisis

The energy crisis is the concern that the world’s demands on the limited natural resources that are used to power industrial society are diminishing as the demand rises. These natural resources are in limited supply. While they do occur naturally, it can take hundreds of thousands of years to replenish the stores.

 

World energy consumption has been rising at a conerning rate since the mid 1970s. The reliance on oil presents a problem as this form of fuelruns out, the energy crisis worsens. Although rates of increase in energy use have been declining, the industrialization, agricultural development and rapidly growing populations of developing countries will need much more energy. However to bring the developing countries' energy use up to that of industrialized countries by the year 2025 would require an increase in the current global energy use by a factor of five. The planetary ecosystem could not stand this, especially if the increases were based on non-renewable fossil fuels. The current threats of global warming and acidification of the environment also tend to preclude even a doubling of energy use based on the present pattern of energy supply.
(More info)

▪ Energy Crises Causes 
There are many different causes of energy crisis like:


▪ Overconsumption:
Overconsumption is a situation where resource use has outpaced the sustainable capacity of the ecosystem. A prolonged pattern of overconsumption leads to environmental degradation and the eventual loss of resource bases.
(Read more)



▪ Overpopulation: Over the last half century the population of the world has exploded. At the time of writing there are seven billion people on the planet and this number is projected to grow in a short period of time.
(Read more)



▪ Poor infrastructure: Aging infrastructure of power generating equipment is yet another reason for energy shortage. Most of the energy producing firms keep on using outdated equipment that restricts the production of energy. It is the responsibility of utilities to keep on upgrading the infrastructure and set a high standard of performance.
(Read more)

▪ Energy poverty: More than 1.3 billion people – almost a quarter of humanity – have no electricity.This means they have no light in the evening, limited access to radio and modern communications, inadequate education and health facilities, and not enough power for their work and businesses.
Worldwide, more than 3 billion people depend on dirty solid fuels to meet their most basic energy need, cooking. At least 2.5 billion cook with biomass (i.e. wood, dung and agricultural residues), and over half a billion cook with coal.
(Read more)

▪ Poor governance: “The current energy crisis, though also a global problem, has become a critical socio-economic issue for Pakistan and is rooted in the country’s poor governance”.
(Read more)





▪ Unexplored renewable energy options: Renewable energy still remains unused is most of the countries. Most of the energy comes from non-renewable sources like coal. It still remains the top choice to produce energy
(Read more)

▪ Wastage of energy:  Without paying much attention, we use a lot of energy each day — from charging electronics to watching TV. In fact, in 2014, the average U.S. residential household consumed 10,982 kWh of electricity and spent around $2,200 annually on utility bills. Luckily, households can lower this amount up to 25 percent by being more proactive with energy conservation tips.
(Read more and check some tips to avoid the wastage of energy)


▪ Poor distribution system: Our electrical grid is being stretched to the brink. The U.S. is making itself less resilient against catastrophic failure from a major weather event or terror attack every day.
(Read more)


▪ Major accidents and natural calamities: In the spring of 2010, drought devastated China’s southwest, reducing the flow of major rivers and slashing hydroelectric power generation dramatically, upping China’s demand for energy inputs and putting pressure on global fuel prices.
In 2011, a magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami raged a dual attack on Japan – destroying much of northern Japan’s energy infrastructure and devastating four nuclear plants and Fukushima – forcing Japan to up its imports of oil, coal and natural gas and causing several countries worldwide to cease nuclear development altogether.
Despite different causes and countries, the impacts both natural disasters have had on global energy are enormous.
(Read more)

▪ Wars and attacks: The Heritage team simulated the effects on world oil supplies, demand, and prices after a major terrorist attack on oil exports from Saudi Arabia and resulting disruption of oil shipping lanes between the Middle East and major Asian economies. Analyst...  measured the effects of these disruptions on the U.S. economy and found:
(Read more)

▪ A Crises of Energy

▪ Renewable Energy 

Global Issues: Education Worldwide

Education Worldwide

Education can be thought of as the transmission of the values and accumulated knowledge of a society. In this sense, it is equivalent to what social scientists term socialization or enculturation. (Read more)

▪ Actual World Situation 

As a result of poverty and marginalization, more than 72 million children around the world remain unschooled.
Sub-Saharan Africa is the most affected area with over 32 million children of primary school age remaining uneducated. (Read more)

▪ Latest Human Development Report

▪ Causes of Lack of Education 

▪ A lack of founding for education: 
The amount of total aid that’s allocated to education has decreased in each of the past six years, and education aid is 4% lower than it was in 2009. (Read more)

▪ Poverty: For many of the poorest families, school remains too expensive and children are forced to stay at home doing chores or work themselves. Families remain locked in a cycle of poverty that goes on for generations.
(Read more)

▪ War: Almost 50 million children and young people living in conflict areas are out of school, more than half of them primary age, and reports of attacks on education are rising, according to figures published on Friday.
(Read more)

▪ Exclusion of children with disabilities: Governments in Australia, New Zealand and the UK are failing children with disabilities by not providing necessary learning support and by allowing issues to permeate without intervening.
Schools are deliberately disregarding disability standards through rejecting school places, denying the opportunity of access to activities and offering minimal, if any, support to children with disabilities.
(Read more)

▪ Gender Inequality: “Only around 30 per cent of all girls worldwide have made it to secondary education and more than 66 per cent of all university students are male"
(Read more)

▪ Natural Disasters: Natural disasters, such as floods and typhoons, forced 4.5 million people around the world to leave their homes in the first half of 2017 .
They included hundreds of thousands of children whose education has been stopped or disrupted due to schools being severely damaged or destroyed by the extreme weather conditions.
(Read more)

 ▪ Child Labor: In India, from the population growth, there are more and more people in the country who are illiterate and are in a state of poverty. This leads to child labour. Further, there are more than sixty million children in India who are working under child labour.
(Read more)

▪ Lack of Sanitation: A broader concern is that the absence of school latrines potentially exposes pubescent-age girls to every-day threats of verbal and physical harassment at school, with potential consequences for female educational attainment.
(Read more)



▪ Population Growth: “The rapid population growth estimated at 3.5 per cent per annum is putting pressure on the existing resources and facilities. We need to do something to control this population growth. It is our duty, all of us, to advocate for lower population growth,”
(Read more)

Cultural Immersion: Buenos Aires (Argentina)

▪ The country (Argentina)

Flag of Argentina

Argentina is an immense country located in the southern part of South America. Is also the eighth largest coutry in the world and  the second largest country in South America after Brazil. Argentina is a federal republic, there have been several democratically elected presidents after many years of political disturbance.  In 1810, Napoleon’s forces conquered all majos Spanish cities in Spain and the Argentine people were empowered to take control of their country and declared independence in 1816. (Read more)

Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is the capital of Argetina, is situated on the shore of the Rio de La Plata, 150 miles from the Atlentic Ocean . Buenos Aires is one of the most important city in Argentina and is also the most populous cities,  as well as the national centre of industry, commerce, culture, technology and politics.  Buenos Aires is the point of consumption,  the city has a varied economy, which helps it mantain a degree of stability in Argentina. (Read more)


▪ Tourist spots

▪ Recoleta Cemetery
Recoleta Cemetery or “ City of  the Dead”is one of the most famous tourist attractions in Buenos Aires. Located at the top of the hilly Plaza Francia. Rather than being overly macabre, the first thing you will notice is the beauty of thetombs with over 6.400 of them built in differents styles. Many are unquestionably works of art.
(Read more)


▪ The Water Company 
The Water Company Palace in Buenos Aires is one of the most remarkable buildings in the city. The building was designed as a water pimping station in 1877 by Swedish Argentine architect Carlos Nystromer, and completed in 1894. The palace is located in the city’s elegant Recoleta neighborhood . (Read more)




▪ The Rose Garden "El Rosedal" 
If you diceded to visit Buenos Aires in October, November, March or April, head directly to the most beautiful garden “ El Rosedal” , created by the landscaper Carlos Thays  in Palermo, wich is so picturesque it looks like something out of painting by Monet. (Read more)

▪ Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes

Within walking distance of Recoleta Cemitery, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes is located on Avenida Del Libertador. The museum offers free admission, for art lovers the museum is an wonderland. The collection extend across 30 rooms of and three floors, showcasing international art from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. (Read more) 

▪ San Telmo Market

This beautiful and colorful full of people Sunday street fair draws over 12,000 people each week. In the San Telmo Market you can found artwork, knick knacks, antiques and other treasures laid out along the pedestrian street. Visitors also can watch the street performers. (Read more)

▪ Palermo

Palermo is the largest neighborhood in Buenos Aires and is divided into three parts Alto Palermo, Palermo Chico and Palermo Viejo. Alto Palermo is is known for the museums and parks, Palermo Chico is known for the extravagant  mansions and Palermo Viejo is were visitors encounter the most colorful and local flair. (Read more)

▪ Cuisine

▪ Dulche de leche
Some Argenthinians would argue that dulce de leche from a spoon is a meal itself. The Dulce the leche is made from caramelized milk and sugar sauce. This sweety usually accompanies desserts such as flan. Another possibility  is “Dulce de leche-flavor helado”.  (Read more)

▪ Choripan 
Choripan is a cheap and  cherrful street food it, choripan is usually served  as an entree at an asado (barbecue). This sausage sandwish where chorizo os sausage teams up with pan or bread is an ideal snack for travelers. You can also slather it in chimichurri, a spicy sauce made from orégano, parsley, garlic, chili, flakes, and red wine vinegar or salsa criolla, a tomato, onion and red bell pepper variant.  (Read more)

▪ Empanada 
Empanada is one of the most popular foods in Argentina. Argentina is all about empanada. You won’t walk a block without encoutering some sort of establishment that sells the “coveted handheld pocket of Love”.Empanadas is made whit wheat flour and beef ( some places use beef or chicken) but you can also found a sweet version with Dulce de leche. (Read more)


▪ Mate Tea
The Argentine mate tea originated in northem Argentina by the Guarani indigenous culture. Mate has natural caffeine that helps you awake while quenching thrist and suppresing your appetite. Mate tea leaf is quite strong, mate is normally drank in groups ora t least one other person. Although one can drink it alone.This tradition has created a mate culture all over Argentina, where there is never wrong moment to drink a mate. (Read more)

▪ Submarino

Submarino is the Argentine version of  hot chocolate. If you are looking for something delicious and sweet, visit old style coffeeshops and ask for a submarino.  You will be delivered a glass of warm milk with an entire chocolate bar either or the side or melting inside. (Read more)

▪ Malbec Wine

 Acceptable at any occasion, Malbec is the most famous drink in Argentina, the majority of Malbec  grapes are grown in Mendoza, but you can find it in other regions. Normally Malbec is  served with steaks and pastas. (Read more)

▪ Music

▪ Tango

Tango is na Argentine heritage musical genre, was born in Buenos Aires  when  the city was receiving ships full of European immigrants. Argetina gave birth to a musical menger firstly to the fast rhythm of the  milonga, and then to the tango. These drums, flutes and guitars were later replaced by the piano, the violin and the bandonion, the three  basic instruments of tango. (Read more)

▪ Cost of Living

Full of culture, good food and beautiful buildings Buenos Aires is a melting pot  of various cultures and cuisines, but can also be an expensive city to live. Housing will be the biggest expense for who want to live in the city. (Read more)

Source: www.numbeo.com

▪ Climate

The climate in Buenos Aires is temperate, Argentina’s high season is during the summer months of October trought March and during the winter month of July, during this time tourism in Buenos Aires is at its peak and prices will be as well. So the best time to visit is in October. (Read more)

▪  Habits

Buenos Aires is a city made up of very different cultures, which is largesly resulted from successive waves of immigration. Nonetheless, Argentines share strong habits and hobbies that bring together and contribute to shape  the country identity. (Read more )



▪ Extra

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