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Environmental protection in Ukraine

For many centuries the people who lived on our planet before us had been trying to make their life easier and more comfortable. They thought that resources of the Earth were endless. They used those resources without thinking about the generations that would come after them. Our ancestors chopped down the forests, killed animals that lived there and invented machines and instruments that polluted the water, the air and the soil.

In the 19th century the word "ecology" was born, but the idea of environmental protection was not clear yet, and did not seem urgent for either the majority of the governments or common people. People still considered themselves "lords and kings of nature" and used its riches only as consumers.

In the 20th century, the rapid growth of science and technology resulted in an increasing negative effect on the biosphere of the Earth. Huge industrial enterprises pollute the air we breathe, the water we drink and the land which gives us bread, vegetables and fruit. Their discharge of dust and gas into the atmosphere returns to the Earth in the form of acid rains. It also destroys the ozone layer of the Earth and causes "greenhouse effect". It effects forests, rivers, crops and people's health. This leads to the reduc­tion of the life-span of man. People die younger because of cancer, AIDS and other diseases which are directly connected with the polluted environment they live in. Many species of animals and birds face extinction due to the pollution of the biosphere.

The world's oceans are in danger too. They are filled with poisonous industrial and nuclear waste, chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The Aral Sea in Russia is already dead, the Mediterranean and the North Sea are slowly dying.

The worst situation with air pollution is in big overpopulated cities. In Cairo and Mexico City, for example, breathing is equivalent to smoking 2 packs of cigarettes a day. The big industrial cities in Ukraine like Zaporizhiya, Donetsk, Kharkiv and some others have the same situation.

Another threat for the environment are nuclear power stations like Chernobyl. In April 1986 that nuclear power plant just north-west of Kyiv suffered the worst nuclear accident in history: dozens died immediately, tens of thousands were evacuated, while the long-term effects to human life are difficult to calculate. A large part of Ukraine, Russia and Byelorussia was polluted by radioactive substances. Great damage was done to their economy, nature and people's health. The problem of Chernobyl has not been solved yet because of the economic difficulties that Ukraine is having now. The power plant was closed on December 15,2000.

Nowadays people of Ukraine, like most people in developed countries, realize that without solving environmental problems, the life of the future generations will be in real danger. Many people join the Green Party of Ukraine to unite their efforts to save the planet where we live, to make our world healthier and more beautiful.