The surrounding around any existing substance is defined as its environment. The environment is an integral part of man’s existence on this earth and therefore great care should be taken to ensure that the environment is in a pretty good condition. Governments the world over have put in place serious measure to ensure proper environmental assessment so as to have safe existence. Over the years, there has been a great negligence top the environment which has since caused many negative results.
Environmental experts lament that environmental degradation has serious implications especially on the lives of the elderly and children. An environmental expert by the name Dr. Phillip Landrigan states that there are over 80000 chemicals which children today are exposed to. Most of these chemicals he says are those developed from the weapons of mass destruction used in world war two around 70 years ago. He moves forward to state that although medicinal science has succeeded in bringing down the rate of infectious diseases, there is an asthma epidemic and an overall doubling of the hypospadias defect in boys. Cancer has also increased majorly over the last three decades. He attributes this to environmental degradation.
This been the sad state of events, there is therefore need for acute and serious form of environmental assessment. The big question that comes forth when one thinks of this issue is, ‘What to consider essential to include in environmental assessment?’ I will address this question putting a lot of weight on the environmental influence on children and the elderly. This two groups are the worst hit by the ordeal reason been their systems are not much adapted to rapid change of environmental conditions but they still have to live under same conditions. The children and the elderly below five years of age and above fifty-five years of age respectively, have a lower tolerance and lower immunity while dealing with sickness caused mostly by environmental pollution.
To the children this is so because their bodies have not yet developed self-immunity to that can protect them, contrary to this, the elderly have an immunity that has gradually grown over the years and can therefore not protect them any more. They are therefore termed as the vulnerable in the community. Any kind of environmental degradation affects them more. Therefore, their plight is what I would personally consider if at all I was given a chance to take on the environmental assessment.
Environmental assessment is done to ensure that a certain proposal or project has the best interest of the people at heart. This implies that, during the formulation of a project, the concerned parties should bare in mind what are the effects or the implications of the project on or before completion on the environment. This should put into concern the natural, social and economic implications. It is evident that they should not be discussed in isolation at all costs so as to have a healthy environment in the long run. According to context, the social aspect of environmental assessment should carry more consideration. This is because it directly touches on the lives of the people living in a particular community, here we find the subject of our discussion who are the vulnerable in the community.
Any project should therefore be very well assessed and the possible implications to the social environment are determined, this will therefore help to assess the worthiness of the project, it is very unfair to authorize a project which will cause much negative implications to the environment. This will increase the number of illness in the community as the elderly and children with weak immunity will succumb to the development. Low life expectancy should be anticipated in this case and increased death rates will be normality. Environmental assessment should therefore be put in place in due time to help evade this problems and to protect the vulnerable in the community.