Chapter 908 225 Sustainable Development
Resource-intensive industries can also be called land-intensive industries. Obviously, this industry type involves industries that rely on land and related resources, and the most Typical examples are agriculture and mining.
East Africa is a typical agricultural and mining country. Needless to say about agriculture, the mining industry has expanded rapidly with the expansion of East Africa’s land area, especially in the central and southern regions of East Africa, forming a large number of industries due to mineral resources. The rising city.
With the development of economic cooperation with Germany and Austria, the export volume of mineral resources in East Africa has also begun to increase year by year. However, agriculture is okay. Because of the backwardness of East Africa's chemical industry, agriculture is still dominated by organic agriculture. The development of mineral resources has seriously polluted land and rivers.
Take the city of Kabwe as an example. Don’t underestimate that Kabwe is just an unknown city. In fact, in its previous life, Kabwe was one of the ten most polluted cities in the world.
The dominant minerals in Kabwe City are lead and zinc. During the mining process, they will cause serious heavy metal pollution, which is almost irreversible. However, human demand for lead and zinc is indispensable, so companies like Kabwe City This lead and zinc production area cannot be directly stagnated in East Africa. Instead, production must be increased to meet the needs of electric power, military industry, metallurgy, chemical industry and other industries.
“Our government cannot turn a blind eye to the prevention and control of industrial pollution, blindly pursue production efficiency, and ignore environmental problems, especially those in inland areas.” Ernst specifically emphasized at the government meeting.
“The development of mineral resources will produce a large amount of pollution, which are solid, liquid and gas in order.”
“It is indeed difficult to prevent and control gas pollution, but the problem of solid and liquid pollution , must be solved smoothly, after all, the mining industry produces a large amount of slag and harmful substances, which pollutes the land and rivers the most. "
“This is even more important than agriculture. Although agriculture also has a great impact on ecology, agriculture itself is part of the ecosystem and has a substitution effect, while the impact of mining on ecology is almost negative. If we do not pay attention Regarding this problem, in the next 50 or 60 years, many cities will be in direct decline either due to resource depletion or ecological problems.”
"Of course, it doesn't sound very serious. After all, cities can be redeveloped and rise when they decline. But the accompanying pollution of land and rivers is completely different. These cities and surrounding areas will become the future of East Africa. A patch on the ground that is difficult to heal Scar.”
“Although East Africa’s land resources are rich, they are also limited. This is true for any country and region in the world. For example, if the land around the Nile River cannot survive due to pollution, then the country of Egypt will not survive. Basically, it exists in name only. "
"Of course, we in East Africa cannot compare with Egypt after all. The little land that can be developed and utilized in Egypt cannot even be compared with the Northern Province of East Africa. But by the same token, the scale of our industry is not comparable to that of Egypt. ”
In the final analysis. Environmental management is similar to the sanitation of a room. Every day, the owner of the room will produce all kinds of domestic garbage. The diligent people will clean up the garbage and throw it into the trash can downstairs every day, while the sloppy people will keep accumulating it. , didn’t start cleaning until I couldn’t hold it anymore.
Ernst can’t tell the pros and cons of the two models. After all, the rooms are all clean in the end, but the hard-working people live in a clean house every day, while the sloppy people “ Bear with it for a while” before cleaning.
The main purpose of this meeting is actually the management of waste slag and waste rock. The method is not difficult. To sum up, it is centralized storage. These four words.
The first thing to consider is definitely to stay away from rivers and cultivated land, followed by residential areas, in areas that are difficult to use and will not have a serious impact on the ecology.
And the slag may not have secondary use value. The mineral smelting technology in the 19th century was quite backward. Maybe there are resources in the abandoned slag that have not been extracted, and they may be reused after technological advancement in the future. .
After talking about the mining industry, the topic returns to agriculture, a resource-intensive industry. In the final analysis, agriculture has the largest impact and coverage area. After all, mineral resources with economic value are not found everywhere, but agriculture does. Everywhere, even deserts can develop some special small-scale agriculture.
For agriculture, it is a commonplace issue, including water system management, farmland development, and market connection. As the saying goes, cheap grain hurts farmers, but this may not be the case in East Africa. Because of collective farming, national assets are damaged. Therefore, agricultural development must naturally meet the needs of the international market, and this is inseparable from mechanization, crop selection, chemical fertilizers and aspects of pesticide production.
The general direction of mechanization has long been determined, and the selection of crops will naturally give priority to the transition to cash crop cultivation, with the focus on the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
With the development of economic cooperation between East Africa and Germany, Austria and other countries, the development trend of the chemical industry in East Africa has become clear, but the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides must be cautious.
Ernst is naturally not a tout of "green agriculture" in Africa in his previous life. Magic weapons such as chemical fertilizers and pesticides to increase production should still be used. Not only that, East Africa also needs to vigorously develop "agricultural genetic engineering."
However, the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, especially pesticides, obviously cannot be blind. In this regard, Ernst proposed three key principles: "safety, sustainability, and reasonable dosage."
Some pesticides are not just pesticides, they may also threaten people. After all, countries were not strict about these pesticides in the 19th century.
All of this naturally requires East African scientific researchers to conduct experiments first, determine the side effects, and then selectively promote it on a large scale.
If there is less pollution, there will be less pollution. In this way, although East Africa will do more things than other countries, it will have little impact on the overall economy of East Africa.
Pollution is yours, just like health is yours. The capitalists ran away. In the future, governments will still have to work hard to rectify environmental problems. No one can escape this difficulty.
And East Africa should pay more attention to this point. East Africa is one of the countries with the largest non-ferrous metal reserves in the world. Mineral resources are still concentrated in inland areas, so environmental issues cannot be taken lightly.
Pollution in coastal areas will drift to other sea areas along the ocean currents. Even because of the issue of maritime sovereignty, if you don't pollute, other countries will also pollute.
Obviously, the country that will pollute the Indian Ocean the most in the future will be India, so Ernst dumped garbage into the sea without any psychological burden.
As the meeting ended, the East African government began a new round of work, especially the re-planning and management of mines and ore refineries.
The key point is the storage and management of slag, as well as the key protection of the river environment in the mining area. This is actually very easy. After the slag storage is solved, the pollution of the river will basically be reduced, unless it is some liquid Source of pollution, there is nothing we can do about it.
Cities with slightly better conditions can only simply sediment and filter polluted water bodies before discharging them into rivers, lakes and seas, but this also greatly reduces the pressure on East Africa's inland rivers.
This series of work does bring some troubles to the industrial and agricultural production in East Africa, but it is not a big problem. After all, the economic main body in East Africa is public ownership. If it is a private enterprise, it may have complaints. After all, it needs to arrange more manpower and increase production processes. For East African companies, it is natural to do whatever the government says, and there is no problem with execution.
(End of this chapter)