Tag: universe

By Peter Wales, 15, England

Around 340BC, Greek philosopher and Polymath Aristotle discovered the Earth to be in fact spherical, not flat as was the common opinion of the day (Greek evidence for the Earth’s shape and spin, 2024). This however, did not keep him from a newfound idea that Earth, of ‘high mass’ was at the centre of the known Universe (Kenny and Amadio, 2024). Similarly, in a modern day of technology and an abundance of newfound knowledge concerning the Universe and its many secrets, along with the modernisation of our daily lives, life on our planet has adapted and thrived. Yet, like Aristotle, we have drawn our eyes away from the startlingly obvious reality that our Earth is indeed not perfect or invincible. Through neglect and ignorance, we have driven our planet’s oceans and land into a place of Armageddon, likely to not only destroy the human race, but the Earth itself.

To deal with such fundamental issues, the United Nations devised seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), of which 14 and 15 concern life below water and on land. Although these are a useful starting point, there are some underlying flaws. Firstly, however accurate and desirable these goals might be, they have not been enforced, leading to minimal action being taken in many cases. The main culprits are first world countries which should indeed be tasked in leading such action. I believe that the goals which are set at each COP summit every year must be individualised according to each country’s economic and environmental position. Furthermore, the goals set must aim to be achieved within four years, leading to smaller, more achievable goals, more progress, and less chance for governments to let their burden be passed onto the successive government. 

In relation to both SDG 14 and 15, there must be steps taken to make global improvement more achievable. One such step could be addressing the issue of unregulated large bodies of water, since almost sixty percent of freshwater bodies on our planet are transboundary (United Nations, 2023), meaning they are not managed by one country alone, leading to potential harmful activity in the absence of cooperation and standardised regulation. Cases such as deep sea mining, which directly harms the seabed, and ‘sea dumping’, where marine litter is deliberately or accidentally released into the seas or ocean, are a growing problem. A solution to this could be allocating unowned bodies of water to governments with the stability, capital and willingness to regulate them. 

Our Earth has been home to life for almost 4.3 billion years (Koppes, 2022), an anomaly in the Universe, a blip of life. Surely it is our task to protect what life there is, to not only ensure our own survival, but the survival of all species which inhabit our great planet and have done for millennia before us.

References

Greek evidence for the Earth’s shape and spin. (2024). IOPSpark. https://spark.iop.org/greek-evidence-earths-shape-and-spin

Kenny, A. J.P. and Amadio, Anselm H. (2024, September 10). Aristotle. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aristotle 

Koppes, S. (2022, September 19). The origin of life on Earth, explained | University of  Chicago News. News.uchicago.edu. https://news.uchicago.edu/explainer/origin-life-earth-explained#when

United Nations. (2023). Transboundary Waters. UN-Water. https://www.unwater.org/water-facts/transboundary-waters