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Minamata Disease
Minamata is the name of Japanese city in which the disease is named after. Minamata disease was a neurological syndrome caused by severe mercury poisoning. It was caused by the release of Methylmercury in the industrial wastewater from Chisso Corporation's Chemical Factory. March 2001 2,265 had been confirmed to have the disease of whom 1,784 had died. -
The UN Convention of The Law of The Sea
The Law of the Sea Convention defines the rights and responsibilities of nations with respect to their use of the world's oceans, this helps establish the guidelines needed for the environment, business and management of marine resources. This helps provide a ceiling so that overfishing and destruction of marine life is not possible. This also allows a certain degree of security to each countries waters and helps protect the local marine life. -
World Population Has Reached 3 Billion
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Rachel Carson's Silent Spring
This book documented the detrimental effects on the environment of the indiscriminate use of pesticides. She accused the chemical industry of spreading disinformation. This had a huge impact on the environmental movement and became the rallying point for the new social movement in the 1960's. This book also aided in the campaign to ban/limit the usage of DDT (Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) throughout the US and hopefully the whole world. -
James Lovelock's Gaia Theory
Gaia is a hypothesis that suggests that organisms co-evolve with their environment and can adjust to whatever the condition's may be which maintain and perpetuate the conditions of life. (Ocean salinity, Oxygen in the atmosphere, Global temp). Similar to the idea of Ecocentrism. This provided a new way of thinking which may have helped people to have a more varied viewpoint. -
The Club of Rome
The Club of Rome is a global think tank that deals with a variety of international issues. They describe themselves as "a group of world citizens, sharing a common concern for the future of humanity." This was a good description to help inspire others who may feel like ordinary citizens to take up arms and bring forth ideas to contribute to helping the environment that we all live in. -
Stockholm Conference
The UN held a conference in Stockholm and the final declaration of the conference was an environmental manifesto that was a forceful statement of the finite nature of Earth's resources and the necessity for humanity to safeguard them. This conference was also responsible for the creation of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) -
World Population Has Reached 4 Billion
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Bhopal
Bhopal is a gas leak that occurred in India and is considered the worlds worst industrial disaster. The total death toll was 3,787 however an additional 3,900 were severely injured and have permanent disabilities. This was a constant reminder to the higher authorities that industrial plants have the potential to produce mass damage to the environment around it if just a small problem such as a leak was to occur. -
Sinking the Rainbow Warrior
This was a bombing operation by the French Foreign Intelligence Services. The ship was going to protest against the French nuclear testing and was named Green Peace. Two french agents were captured and charged with man slaughter and sentenced to 10 years in prison. This then fueled the community to bind together, and to further push the stop of nuclear testing. -
Chernobyl Disaster
Chernobyl disaster was a catastrophic nuclear accident and was a level 7 event (maximum) there has only been one other level 7 being Fukushima in 2011. The estimated death toll was around 4,000 people. This showed that nuclear energy has some deadly effects as well as the barrels of toxic waste that it produces as an excess from the reaction used to obtain energy. -
World Population Has Reached 5 Billion
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UN Earth (Rio) Summit
This was a major UN conference held in Rio. 172 Governments participated with an additional 116 sending their heads of state. Issues that were discussed are: Systematic scrutiny of patterns of production, Alternative energy sources, New reliance on public transportation and the growing usage and supply of water. -
Agenda 21
Agenda 21 is a non-binary, voluntarily implemented action plan of the United Nations with regard to sustainable development. It is a product of the World Earth Summit. However the government intended that the people in each of the communities would bind together and make a collaborative effort to make a better environment for everyone. -
Our Common Failure (Agenda 21)
The road marked out by Agenda 21 accepted on 20th of May 1998. 5 years through the project of the conversion of natural areas to Agricultural land a problem was met, and that was this conversion was going at a rate too slow for the economy and if boosted the population will see an increase. It was concluded that an investment in the social system (The people) was necessary if they were to use full technological potential. This proved to be useful as this helped the economy drastically. -
World Population Has Reached 6 Billion
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Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development
At this World Summit the voice of the younger generations were heard . The leaders agreed that from that point that through the plan of implementation they would take more action and commit more responsibility to each other as world leaders. This was necessary In order to bring about a change towards poverty and improve human development. -
Kyoto Climate Change Protocol
The Kyoto Protocol is an attempt to reach a new international settlement on greenhouse gas emissions. The main success was that the leaders agreed in a statement on climate change which was "the vision" to have a reduction of at least 50% in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. -
An Inconvenient truth
American documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" was a method of campaigning to help educated civilians about global warming. The developers have been credited with successfully doing this as well as reenergizing the environmental movement. Even some schools have used the documentary to help educated their pupils. Was effective as it was easily accessible information and could be watched all around the world. -
Copenhagen COP 15
COP 15 was a climate change conference which was held in Copenhagen. It was a high level event and close to 115 world leaders attended the high level segment, making it the biggest gathering of world leaders ever (outside of the UN HQ). This proved useful as important messages and Ideas were conveyed to a large and powerful audience, this insured a change to current operations.
