Internationalization, education and technological innovation: three key factors to improve the quality of the environment and public health

Abstract

The environment and the health of mankind are subject to strong pressures from pollutants. The ambition of a better quality of life is often frustrated by the increase in emissions as a result of the increasing consumption of resources and energy to satisfy the growth of the world’s population and its expectations for socioeconomic development. At times, problems take on a planetary dimension, the best known example being greenhouse gas emission, with the resulting effects of climate change. Pollution highlights our failure to provide adequate education, which is essential if we are to become fully aware of problems and actively seek sustainable solutions. To this end, it is essential to set up an extended environmental and health education program in all communities that will accompany younger generations from the beginning of their education in order to make them conscious players in protecting the environment and their own health. The size of the problems requires that a joint effort be made at an international level in the political realm and in the scientific-cultural realm in order to share experiences and sensitivity and to seek joint solutions. It is necessary to assign an increasingly important role to scientific and technological innovation which, in the last century, from Marconi to Einstein to Fleming, to the most recent innovations in the fields of genomics and microchips, has allowed humanity to achieve a rate of growth of wellbeing never previously seen in its thousands of years of history. This innovation must rationally be entrusted with our expectations to provide a practical solution to the problems of pollution that threaten our everyday lives and the survival of the planet. This text discusses the types of progress most eagerly awaited in the fields of water supply, wastewater treatment, atmospheric pollution and waste disposal.