I. General Features of the Problem
Nowadays it is
man's vital activity that defines the Earth's environmental conditions. The course of
historic development shows that that initially there was no concern with the developing
industries and facilities intended to process natural resources. It looked out as if
nature was quite capable of managing independently those undesirable changes that
technological progress was bringing about. Intuitively it was assumed that the process of
negative factors accretion in the environment had been governed by linear law. However,
the development of industries, communications, energetic, as well as intensive progress of
production in the countries where such industries had not existed before, showed that
these processes had been actually growing exponentially; a comparison with the conditions
of an explosion would be quite in place here. Furthermore, because of an ever-growing
scale of pollution there have arisen certain links whose interplay affects some of the
environmental components as these are being polluted. Indeed, "acid" rains may
come out as a result of atmospheric pollution, such rains affecting the water and soil.
This, in turn, will have a negative impact on economy. In other words, the same
exponential relationship is observed to exist while assessing the ecological safety of
nature from harmful impacts on it in different fields of human activity. Hence, even
qualitative assessments show that the Earth's environment has been polluted to such a
degree that time is not far when many processes may turn irreversible. The Fund has been
accumulating the necessary initial data so to create the databank for structural analysis
of environment, even though this field often encounters serious troubles because of the
lack of data on many countries.
As the world ecological situation
shows, it is impossible to protect a single country from the noxious impacts of man's
productional activity. The disaster at the Chernobyl Atomic Power Station, fires on the
Amazon River, devastating inundations in Europe and Asia, etc., have also affected the
global ecological situation insofar as no single country can maintain safe ecology within
its territory. The only logical conclusion from the above is that noxious impacts on
ecology can be fought successfully only on international scale, each country strictly
following the legal provisions which, as a rule, are based on the UN recommendations.
The cost estimates of projects, as
well as of separate facilities implemented to ensure the required level of ecological
safety, prove that these are rather expensive. One of the way outs of this difficulty may
lie in international specialization in manufacture of means of environment protection.
Such actions will naturally require the coordination of efforts of the manufacturing
countries and adoption of common legal regulations. Another vital feature of the questions
under consideration consists in that any environmental protective system must be built on
complex approach. Obviously, any trials to protect separate components of environments
(eg, soil, water or atmosphere) will fail to achieve a success. It should be noted here
that the existing technical means not always meet the modern requirements and fail to
withstand the ever-growing danger of ecological catastrophe. This dictates the necessity
to develop new approaches in designing ecology-protection means, using the latest
achievements in science and technology. The aforesaid can be summarized in few statements:
a) The Program must take into account the present day
level of environmental pollution and possible, avalanche-like occurrence of unfavorable
factors in the near future.
b) The Program must take into account the interests of the majority of
the community countries and be largely constructed on UN recommendations and provisions
that are common for legislation of all countries.
c) The Program must provide complex solution of the
environment-protection task, such task being based on the advanced concepts of
contemporary science and technology.
d) The Program must provide for the coordination of efforts of some
countries and their specialization in the manufacture of technical means needed to
increase the level of ecological safety.
Being based on
these positions, principles of formation of the International Program "Protection of
the Earth Environment" have been determined. The International Program contains the
information on proposals of some organizations of Russia and other countries on creation
of methods and means of ecological safety level increase. It is necessary to note, that
this list of projects constantly replenishes and, in the near future, will be essentially
expanded. Structurally the Program (except for the present unit) includes positions of
target orientation: data on objects which should be ecologically protected, existing and
new principles and methods put in a basis of offered means of environment protection.
Alongside the contextual part of the
Program (the main provisions can be seen in Table 1), it embodies also the information on
expected results, use of scientific-technological and production potential of the country,
utilization of recoverable resources, etc. A mechanism to realize the Program according to
which state-commercial management will be applied to implement the ecological system is
proposed. Parallel with this it is supposed to organize a broad international cooperation
with participation of Trustee Funds of the Tsyalkovsky Moscow State Aviation Technological
University (MSATU) of different countries.
The proposed Program should be
regarded as a trial of systematized approach to the organization of international
ecological safety of the Earth with realization of a number of means for complex
settlement of the task.
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