The importance of environmental protection has never been more pressing. The planet provides us with the essentials for survival—air, water, food, and shelter. Yet, despite the overwhelming evidence of the need to protect our environment, widespread education and policy enforcement remain inadequate.
This article explores the significance of educating people about the environment, the consequences of neglect, and the policies necessary to preserve our planet for current and future generations.
Many research papers, news reports, articles, and books illuminate the significance of protecting and conserving the environment for present and future generations.
The environment gives humans a home, food, protection, healing, relief and possibilities.
Why should people be educated or compelled to protect the very essence of their existence when the importance of trees, rivers, oceans, air, land, and all elements of the environment is well known?
Although Article 14 of the United Republic of Tanzania’s Constitution guarantees the right to life, courts have interpreted this to include the right to a clean and healthy environment free from diseases that cause death or permanent disabilities.
If water becomes polluted, it becomes poisonous to aquatic animals, castles, and humans. This makes it unfit for human use and activities such as irrigation in farms.
If air becomes polluted, it can be a killer, causing respiratory disease, damaging the Ozone layer, etc. The same applies to land pollution.
Need to Educate People on Environment Protection
I assume we have all seen the warning on cigarette packages and every cigarette flyer and poster: “uvutaji wa sigara ni hatari kwa afya yako,” concluded and capitalised to express the importance of the message. The question is, do people stop selling cigarettes and buy them?
Also, Read: Suffering in the DR Congo: The Fate of Complex Conflict and Poverty Against Environment
Again, it is clear that bleaching of skin and hair is dangerous for human health; it damages body cells and makes the body vulnerable to diseases like cancer, complications during surgery, skin burns, etc. Does it stop people from manufacturing cosmetics and selling and buying them?
Some people make a fortune out of destroying the environment. They get profits and get richer. Driven by self-interest and ego, the unrestricted human mind can even destroy itself or one of its kind.
Enforcement of environmental protection policy is necessary, specifically designed to deal with these people.
The Environmental Management Act (EMA) of 2004 significantly ensures pollution control and public/individual participation. Even though Enforcement is not as effective as it should be, at least it reduces the big risks that could strike and destroy the planet at once.
Some people may argue that industrial activities do more harm than individuals who cut down trees for wood and construction, and they cause harm to society.
The degree of destruction is different, but still, destruction is destruction; industrial chemicals discharged into the water source kill, and so are human poo and pee if not carefully disposed of.
Other people believe that developed countries have destroyed much and that developing countries should not intervene when pursuing development strategies that harm the environment.
The truth is we have only one home, the earth, which is where we all reside. To destroy the earth will not be revenge but arrogance, as the Swahili says, “mtoto akinyea mkono, utaukata?“
Chapter 19 of the East African Treaty is specifically designed to ensure sustainable use and proper management of the environment. Environmental pollution will affect the entire planet and make the East African region vulnerable and disastrous.
Assuming everyone knows the hazardous effects of polluting the environment is ignorance since some destruction was recently discovered through scientific findings.
How many people know if there is something in the sky called the Ozone layer, and who knows the role it plays in human society and the environment at large?
Some people have no idea if their daily social or economic activities have detrimental outcomes. Some of the environmental impacts may not appear as early as we expect, but at least they should know that ” in every action, there is a reaction.”
Giving education without follow-up, plans, policies, and laws can be useless since we have seen the warnings on cigarette packages and the impacts of cosmetics products; however, people choose to destroy themselves.
The National Environmental Policy (NEP) of 1997, among other things, includes public awareness and environmental planning to ensure the campaigns are designed to reach every single person.
International environmental conferences, to which governments send delegates to represent and learn, are useless if, first, people are not enlightened on the environmental issues that need urgent and radical intervention.
Second, individual and community responsibility (articles 9, 27, and 69, URT) must be taken, and last, intervention policies and laws must be enforced and regulated.
