Sustainable Development: Prospect and Practice of Parallel
Honorable judges and dear audience, I am Liao Zhenyu from Qingdao No.9 High School. Privileged to reveal my work, I hope I can get your appreciation. Today, my topic is Sustainable Development, Parallel of Prospect and Practice.
1934, black storm in the United States made millions of people displaced.
1960, tsunami happened in Chili destroyed at least 3 cities and shocked the whole world.
1976, earthquake in Tangshan killed 240 thousand people.
In the past decade, about 2.7 billion people were seriously influenced by climate disasters, which also made 300 thousand citizens lose their lives and caused 363 billion dollars loss in economy in 2010. Every hour, three species disappear on the earth and they never come back; and every minute, 7 thousand square meters of rainforest is felled for the requirement of industry and agriculture.
Nowadays, environmental issue becomes one of the grimmest problems in the world. The population expansion and the high ratio of senior citizens, the decreasing available recourses and irrational utilization of the energy make up a most serious situation we’ve never faced before. Besides, humans’ pollution results in the worsening of the environment and the diseases spreading around the world put the earth into a big trouble. One degree Celsius increase of the earth will cause a lot more terrible diseases, and 6 degree Celsius may leads to the human extinction. The Earth is in great danger, and if we don’t take any measures, it will be hard to imagine what the Earth will be like in the future.
In 1972, the United Nations Human Environment Conference was held in Stockhome. The leaders of the world came up with the concept of Sustainable Development. It’s defined as the Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. This decision drew the whole world’s attention, and it is believed that the Earth will be saved by the joint efforts of all mankind.
Since the great consensus was accomplished, people from all over the world have tried a lot to achieve this goal. The delegates from different countries have strived to reach and sign agreements such as the Earth Charter and the Agenda 21st which help not only developed countries but developing countries improve their environment. At the same time, many countries are trying their best to make a balance between environmental protection and development. We can easily imagine how beautiful the earth will be if we keep doing the same things around the world.
As the earth is facing so many challenges, how shall we deal with this situation? As far as I am concerned, it’s necessary to build a system of cooperation among the developed and developing countries. Governments need to make plans to reduce their emission of carbon dioxide, while the United Nations ought to supervise the implementation of the compositions. Last but not least, as high school students, we also have many things to do.
If every one of us can use both sides of just one piece of paper, 5 thousand citizens can save at least 1cubic meter of wood and 100 cubic meters of water. If all citizens of our country can stop wasting a piece of paper, more than one million threes will be avoided being felled. If we can screw a water tap for a whole night, we can rescue a child of Africa from thirst to death by providing him or her one-day water consumption. And if we keep doing this for a month, the water we saved can prolong 52 days of an adult’s life. Cut off the mains of the standby electric equipments in your home for three days, the electricity you thrift can help a poor student in mountainous regions study at night for a week. Reduce secondary search on the Internet for one time, and the energy we saved is enough to boil a pot of water.
We are holding the future of the world in hands. “Stop destroying it before everything is too late.” If we try hard enough in joint efforts, I believe Sustainable Development will no more just be a dream.
That’s all I want to say. Thank you.