Why Do We Need Eco Schools?
The environment is vital for us to survive. It provides the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, the land we walk on and the materials we build our houses from.
Our world is changing all the time. Some changes are small, like a new litterbin being put in the playground and some changes, like global warming, are huge. Just as there are different size scales, there are also different time scales of change. Some changes happen very quickly and others take phenomenally long periods of time to change. Many parts of the environment have been badly used by human beings and need to be taken care of instead.
Lets take a look at some of the things that are affecting the whole world.
Air Pollution
Air pollution happens naturally when forest fires release gases into the air or when volcanoes erupt. However, much of today’s air pollution comes from vehicles and the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and gas for energy. Dumfries and Galloway is a rural region and many of us are dependent on vehicles to get from home to shops, school and visit friends and family. Most families in this region have a car or use the bus or trains to get around. Many of you may have been on a plane on holiday. People have come to take transportation for granted but all this travelling makes a lot of air pollution.
Global warming
The world is warming up again and it is warming up quickly. The IPCC – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - is a group of scientists from all over the world and they have discovered through many experiments that human beings are speeding up climate change because of air pollution. A warmer earth will change the rain and snow that falls on Scotland and throughout the world, may lead to the sea level rising and may cause droughts and storms to become more frequent and more serious.
Climate Change Is Normal
The Earth is a dynamic system that is constantly changing. We only have to look outside to see how the weather changes every day. Climate is the weather systems that occur in an area over a long time. The Scottish climate is becoming warmer and drier in the summer and colder and wetter in the winter.
Some changes, as we have discussed take a very long time, so we must consider them in a ‘geological time frame’. Over geological timeframes the earth does heat up and cool down. The last warm period in our part of the world was the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) or Medieval Climate Optimum. This time of unusually warm climate in the North Atlantic region lasted from about the tenth century to the fourteenth century around one thousand (1,000) years ago.
This warm period was followed by a cool period ‘The Little Ice Age’. There are no agreed dates for this cool period but it may have began in the 13th century and was not over until the 19th century. During this cold time the river Thames froze and the people of London wore very warm clothes and had festivals on the ice. If it was that cold in London, it must have been very cold in Scotland too!
Deforestation
A serious environmental problem for the whole world is the deforestation of tropical rainforest
Map of the Rainforests in the World
(From: http://www.srl.caltech.edu/personnel/krubal/rainforest/Edit560s6/www/where.html) 
The majority of forest in our part of the world, the northern hemisphere, was cut down (deforested) many years ago when agriculture and industry used much of the wood. In Scotland there is very little woodland remaining compared to what there once was. You have probably noticed that much of the land in Dumfries and Galloway is grassy fields used for farming. Maybe you live on a farm?
The tropical rainforests are very important for the variety of plants and animals that make the rainforests their home. Rainforests help fight air pollution too. Plants use carbon dioxide and produce oxygen, which is good news for us and the whole planet. Unfortunately, people are chopping down the rainforests. They may chop trees down so that they can plant crops and farm or they may sell the wood for a lot of money. The wood can be used to make paper, furniture or houses, we use a lot of wood. The problem is that trees are very old and it can take hundreds of years for the rainforest to grow up.
Biodiversity
Another problem is that plants and animals around the world are becoming fewer and fewer, even extinct, when their homes are disturbed. Rainforests have the biggest number of different kinds of plants and animals anywhere in the world and are very important. Here in Scotland there have been some big changes. There used to be bears and wolfs but they no longer live here. In Dumfries and Galloway there are changes to the plants and animals that live here now too. Many that used to live here don’t now, but some, like the Red Kite, have come back. You can learn more about biodiversity in the Biodiversity Eco-topic.
Population
It’s not just the environment that is changing. Human population is rising rather quickly.
Graph showing Human Population from 10,000BC to 2000
(From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth)
Graph Showing World Population Increase Since 1950
(From: http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/world.html)
There is a big difference in the world and even in countries, between rich people and poor people. We are very rich compared to billions of people who have no clean water to drink or fresh fruit to eat, never mind no shoes or paper to draw on!
The thing is, with more and more people needing food, water and medicine and wanting nice clothes and cars we humans use up more of the environment’s natural resources and make more waste.
Although most of these problems seem to be physical things, it comes from our attitudes and view towards our environment and each other. Eco Schools is all about learning how to take care of the environment, each other and ourselves.
Agenda 21
These problems are recognised all over the world and there have been some really big meetings about it. In 1992 at Rio de Janerio in South America, there was a big meeting called the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, better known as the Earth Summit.
At this meeting the causes, problems and possible answers to the problems were discussed. It is a very complicated subject. At the meeting there were people from 172 different countries, 1,600 non-governmental organisations, scientists from around the world and an amazing 450,000 visitors. One of the main things produced from the meeting was a big action plan called ‘Agenda 21’. This massive action plan is 500pages long and is made up of 40chapters. Agenda 21 gives guidance to our governments on the environment and on development. It is because of Agenda 21 that Eco Schools exists!