Our writing process for the environmental ethics report involved three of us covering topics we had previously used for the first assignment as well as two of us investigating public opinion and ethics. The topics of the treatment of the marine environment, quality of our waterways and pollution by plastics were investigated by Josh, Christina and myself (respectively). With each of us coming up with a discussion, conclusions and recommendations regarding our chosen environmental topics.
Finding our conclusions
We researched the issues related to our topics, and chose the larger and more serious problems to talk about. Some of the conclusions we found were:
- The treatment of the marine environment involved issues related to the illegal dumping of fish and the use of deep sea trawling techniques, both of which lead to the over-fishing of many marine species.
- The water quality of our waterways involved issues related to pollution caused by agricultural nutrients and the effects this had on fish which spend parts of their life cycles in fresh water sources.
- The pollution caused by plastics involved issues caused by the growing amount of pollution and the effect this has on marine life and people who consume contaminated seafood.
Public opinion played a large part in finding ways to improve these issues, most people seemed to have similar ideas on how the problems could be reduced. Our research also helped us to find solutions which other countries have tried or solutions presented by other studies. Some of these suggestions were:
- Lowering quotas for fishermen, tighter controls on fishing practices and grants/subsidies for alternative fishing methods. With each of these solutions leading to less over fishing.
- Implementation of less intensive farming practices, stricter farming regulations, restricting access to areas where contamination could occur and the rebuilding of wetlands. With each of these helping to improve the quality of our freshwater areas.
- Improvement of current recycling infrastructure, fines for companies and individuals who contribute to pollution, packaging restrictions and government funding for alternative forms of packaging. With each of these contributing to less pollution and reduced health problems for marine life and fans of seafood.
Thoughts on our conclusions and recommendations
Through our research done in this assignment and sharing our topics with each other, I've discovered how many environmental issues there currently are and how little is being done about them. They are largely being ignored under the assumption that something is being done about them however after reading about the amount of pollution, we know how bad things are. Our recommendations wouldn't be too difficult to implement and I hope that soon similar solutions are implemented to being the recovery of our environment.
4 comments:
I think our team worked quite well together it all ran pretty smoothly with no conflicts. Good job with the editing of it. I found the ethical sides of it to be rather challenging but we I reckon we got there in the end.
There are definitely issues out there beyond the scope of the report. All you have to do is look at the survey - Everybody had something to say in the written comments about something else. Climate change was the big one.
Feel really lucky I decided to do this paper over summer school, the topic was on point for me and what I am passionate about so helped really made it easy to research and enjoyable to write up about. Learnt heaps about the other topics I hadn't researched as well, from everyone else. Great team, worked well together, but agree with you on the ethical front Josh was a bit hard to work with but I think we got there in the end.
I really like how your post is clearly set out with the headings and bullet points. It makes it a lot easier to read. Although calling assignment 2 enjoyable isn’t quite the word I’d use haha. But we got there in the end, and you did a fantastic job doing the overall editing of the report.
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