Skylar Miller – Undergraduate - Mathmatics/Statistics
Acid Rain in Coastal China
The acidification of rainwater is a growing environmental issue, particularly in cities with increased urbanization. This is largely due to increased chemical pollution from industrial factories. Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides are the biggest culprits, because of the atmospheric conversion of these molecules into sulfuric and nitric acid. This has led to the decreased pH of rainwater to below 5, with pH as low as 3.72 reported in Shenzhen. Acid rain has detrimental effects on earth’s ecosystem, including aquatic and terrestrial environments, as well as vegetation. Furthermore, it has adverse effects on human health, especially when the acid is breathed in. In the past 30 years, China has become the third largest region to suffer from acid rain, after North America and Central Europe. This paper will focus on three large coastal cities, Shenzhen, Beijing, and Shanghai. Whereas southern cities, such as Shenzhen, are mostly concerned with sulfuric acid, northern cities, such as Beijing, see more nitric acid. Over time, many policies have sought to address this crisis, such as the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan (APPCAP) in 2013, but some attempts at clean air policies, such as ammonia emission, have left China with worsening acid rain. However, even though progress has been slow, China has begun to decrease sulfur emissions and there is hope for cleaner air in the future.
Thomas Hadrys – Undergraduate - Environmental Science
The Ganges: The Most Polluted River in the World
The Ganges River is the most polluted river in the world that is not only sacred to Hindu beliefs since before British colonization but also the main water source for more than 500 million people. The river flows from the Himalayas across northern India as the Anges River until it approaches the Bangladesh border. There have been multiple attempts to clean up the river with command-and-control policies that have not always worked. The largest pollutant in the river is human waste from improper sewage systems. The industrialization of India ever since the British Raj started polluting the river and continuing until today where many companies are still polluting the river as many of the regulations are not doing enough to prevent the current problem. Industry and agriculture have been the largest polluters of the river. India’s current solutions have been command and control policies limiting the amount of waste being allowed into the river however, similar to United States policies regarding pollution in water, however these policies have not worked for India. Many solutions have currently been proposed to improve the quality of the river from implementing policies at the local level to prevent pollution from entering the river for example. Industrialization and the lack of efficient regulations have caused the over pollution of the river.
Daniel Horner – Undergraduate - Geography and International Affairs
The Mirage of Imagined Waters in Algeria
Algeria is among the planet’s most water stressed countries. Few places are more acutely aware of this fact than the community of In-Salah which sits deep in the Sahara nearly 1200 km south of the capital of Algiers. In March 2015, violence erupted because of sustained protests against the Algerian petrochemical company Sonatrach’s successful drilling of a test well in the Anhet Basin to extract shale gas. Since 2015, the debate on fracking has become central contest between the Algerian government and the Hirak opposition movement. Unsurprisingly, the fracking conversation is intimately tied with the country’s debate on water scarcity. This paper argues that water is positioned as a central image by both sides of the fracking debate. The Hirak protesters and their predecessors marching on Sodoum square have created signs and chants centered on the fragility of the environment. They messaged with posters at sit ins and over social media an imaginary of polluted Saharan aquifers. A set of actors within the Algerian Government, foreign policy think tanks, and economic institutions have centered on themes of the need for capital influx to unlock oceans of water for the Algerian people. One key fixation of this narrative is a focus on desalination as a potential solution to Algeria’s water scarcity. This paper argues that high tech water imaginaries create a permission structure where the dire scarcity in the country becomes the reason the country needs to develop the fracking industry despite the risks it poses to the existing aquifer.