UNamur / Master in organism biology and ecology
The translation of this testimony was generated automatically by a translation program. Thanks for your understanding.
I am currently working in a lab at the University of Namur, in Biology department, where we are concerned about how the environment can affect organisms and how these organisms can cope with new environmental conditions in order to acclimate, adapt and evolved in a changing environment. When drastic environmental changes occur organisms can have difficulties to face that new environmental conditions, leading to a decrease of survival but also a decrease of individuals that survive till the reproductive age.
Few years ago I started to progressively change the way I consume in order to minimise my impact on the environment :
- living in highly isolated building
- consuming local, seasonal and organic food by doing the most of our groceries in a farmer’s cooperative
- reducing food and goods consumption packed in plastic
- thinking about my traveling habits
Even if these actions seem easy to achieve, we are still facing difficulties. One of them is the difficulty to consume like that when you don’t have the opportunity to go to a farmer’s market or cooperative (because it’s far or it is closed early). Even if you have access to it, you realize that plastic and paper are used everywhere (you go to the butcher, you have plastic, you go to the bakery you have paper,…)
I think that if we really want to give the opportunity to the population to consume in a clever way with no rise of expenses we need political decisions at our country level but also at the european level in order to standardize rules. The ban of plastics in supermarckets for food that do not need it (fruits and vegetables), force them to develop bulk food access, ban the use of straws everywhere in Europe, increase taxes to non organic food production, etc…
Here are only few examples of what can be done concerning food consumption but there are plenty of other sectors where politics can have pressure through their political decisions (increasing isolation of belgian houses, promoting the use of public transports by increasing access and reducing their costs, using fuel taxes in renewables energies development, developing green zones in our overpopulated country to promote biodiversity, ban all chemical products having potential adverse effects on health (not exclusively human health), etc.
It is urgent that our country and Europe take actions to promote a better way of consumption and limit climate change and biodiversity loss.
Originally posted 2018-07-21 07:07:55.