Global Citizenship Education and Water Pollution

Introduction

Everyone have their affairs to care about in our lives especially work, family relationships, friends but at the same time our earth needs our care. Earth is a home not only for us humans but also billions of organisms like animals and plants, as time goes by, human activities such as the manufacturing industry, agriculture and urban development had bring negative impact to our environment and we are affected too. As global citizens we have our own roles and responsibility to keep our environment save from pollution, so that we can live on this earth in a harmonic and peaceful manner and continue to achieve our goals in life. The main objective of this essay is to carry forward on how to fulfil our duties as a global citizen and to discuss the environmental pollution issue that our earth is suffering.

Water pollution

Global Citizenship Education (GCED) is an education implemented by UNESCO aimed to develop skills of all age learners to build up values that promote a more peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, secure and sustainable society. GCED created a database such as the GCED Clearinghouse which facilitate information sharing and resources to encourage all age learners to understand and enhance knowledge for GCED.

GCED help all age learners to realize and learn that how decisions made by other people affects our lives and therefore emphasize that our own decisions too will impact others too. The three domains of learning which includes cognitive, socio-emotional and behavioural. By being more cognitive, learners are more concerned in acquiring knowledge and understands issues happened globally, thus learner feel connected to the world and enable to communicate and share their ideas in this community economically and politically. In simple words, learners has an understanding of how the world works. Through nurturing cognitive skill into learners, the process of thinking and reasoning activity are more active into tackling into global water pollution issue. Learners are aware of the issue and consequences of water pollution through information on the social media, therefore they do not involved themselves into worsen the pollution but think of ways to reduce water pollution. For example, they could pay attention to topics of water pollution from the United Nations Environment Programme.

GCED also emphasize on socio-emotional skills in learners, nurturing their own personal respect and respect for others, wherever they are. So that they are able to live together with others respectfully and peacefully in this common humanity, most importantly respects and values diversity. Learners which are self-respect and the sense of respect to others is more willing to act to make the world a more equitable and sustainable place. Learners are willing to discuss topics of water pollution with others and engaged themselves into group discussions into addressing the water-related conflicts and disasters. Through group discussions, individual can realize that the water pollution issue is concerned by everyone and is on an alarming state. Ways and ideas to tackle water pollution is shared out among themselves and also participate themselves in activities that show support in conserving and saving our water, for example joining the Cleanseas campaign to commit themselves into reducing their plastic footprints at the ocean.

Behaviour is the range of action and mannerism of an individual. Learners with correct behavioural skills are able to perform responsibly in any kind of engagement at the local, national and global levels. Thus they are more actively involved in the development of a more peaceful and sustainable world. This can encourage and build up learner’s confidence in participating themselves in the community at a range of levels, from local to the global. Furthermore learners can make a difference by committing themselves into volunteer jobs such as the Cleanseas campaign and also share this experience to the social media as a response to save our water. Social media influencer such as Jon Kortajarena is a great inspiration and example for us in saving the environment, he is a great advocate for fighting the use of plastic.

Ways to Resolve Water Pollution

Water bodies are being degraded by human activities that harm and endanger our ecosystem. Although water is fundamental and essential to life on our planet, we are still neglect this precious resource and place it under threat. If we want to keep our water clean, there is many ways and things we can do to help.

Reduce the usage of plastic. The articles from https://www.oceanicsociety.org show that in year 2012, it was estimated that about 165 million tons of plastic have end up at our ocean. Thus efforts to reduce the usage and promote recycling of this product have occurred. In some business, plastic product such as plastic bottles and plastic bags are banned. Some supermarkets encouraged their customer to bring their own tote bag for storing their own groceries. Fast food chain are banning the use of plastic straws. All this effort are aimed to reduce plastics product into our water bodies.

The World Health Organization estimates that 663 million people are unable to access to clean drinking water. Water pollution has increased the scarcity of water and more population on this world was suffering an impact from it. This is why it is so crucial to optimize the water treatment processes. Water treatment is a process that improves the water quality to make it acceptable to be end-used, it may be used for drinking, industrial water supply, agricultural and including being safely returned to the environment.

Although water is a renewable resource, we must be reminded it is not necessary to waste water. Why? If water is use excessively without conservation, that means it is used quicker than nature can replenish it, the ecosystem may be in danger. Always check if there is any leakage of water from our household, leakage of water can be a sign of waste and excessive use. Plan our usage of water smartly it can both save our environment and save our money. Encourage agriculture farmers to capture and store their own water by building their own ponds for example to store rainwater.

Industrial waste is the unwanted by-product of the industrial processes. Unfortunately with the lack of enforcement in treating the unwanted waste, most of this unwanted by product are ended up in our water bodies. Industrial company should segregate their industrial waste accordingly for example bio-degradable waste, hazardous waste and solid non-hazardous waste. All this waste must be managed properly for decomposition according to the Environment Quality Regulations (Scheduled Waste) 2005 implemented by Malaysia Department of Environment (DOE).

Conclusion

With our fast-changing and globalised world, opportunities for young people like us are plentiful so do the challenges. In order to embrace the golden opportunities and challenges we encounter, it is necessary skills and values which help us in solving problems, making decisions, think critically and communicate ideas within a group. But through GCED, learners was reminded that it is important to also take care and save our environment.

Through the learning processes of being a global citizen, we are able to instil good qualities values inside us and enable us to cope with the challenges and requirements we face and a good example we are facing right now is water pollution.

References

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