Sustainable Development

Growing populations and industrialization have made environmental pollution a big problem around the world!

In this picture, you can see a "gohoto" woman who goes door-to-door buying plastic bottles and all kind of containers to recycle them. In Rep of Benin, we have thousands of women who do this recycling job.

Cleaning up the trash of a "throw away," consumer society, in addition to its industrial waste, is technologically challenging! 

As I told my students, environmental degradation is not unique to the 21st century. 

The Roman Empire, for example, deforested large expanses of Africa and western Asia, and later Westerners have decimated or eliminated countless animals and plant species! 

The Thames River, which intersects London, was used as the main sewage dump for one of the largest cities in the world! The stench from the river was so terrible that members of Parliament could smell the pollution from their open windows!

In the mid-twentieth century, the river emptying into Lake Erie from Cleveland, Ohio, was so polluted from industrial waste that it actually caught fire!!

Driven by poverty many poor countries in the poor South have accepted chemical and industries that have not been accepted in the rich northern nations.

We must call for stricter regulations or the outright banning of such operations! 

Risks of long-term health problems and pollution or starvation of our families....are these the only choices left..

A poor South which already struggles with rapid population growth, high unemployment, and the need for EDUCATION, people fleeing the countryside in search of a greener side, in search of better lives in urban areas, or emigrate,....often illegally to seek jobs...

We need to find solutions to our environmental problems. We need to adopt a national system of soil and water conservation!! 


We need to fight for environmental protection, poverty reduction and human development. We need to mobilize the students worldwide on issues of sustainable development.