OUR ENVIRONMENT, THEIR ENVIRONMENTS AND THE SUSTAINABILITY OF OUR ENVIRONMENT (Review Completed - Accepted)
Environmentalists concentrate their efforts in seeing to it that sustainability is assured in the natural environment. The paper attempts to bring into the consciousness of environmentalist that a number of other environments exist that are in constant interactions with the natural environment and whose sustainability must also be assured in the overall interest of the sustainability of the natural environment. These other environments, are the man-made environments of socio-economic built and political/governmental environments. There is also the spiritual environment which humankind evolved with as a spiritual being.
Humankind must be in good standing in this spiritual environment to access the appropriate values that will enable them to assure sustainability in the natural and man-made environments. It is such values that will enable them to eschew all activities that border on corruption and violence, which are the bane of our environments.
This paper underscores the special importance of the natural environment, which is discussed as our environment – the environment of special interest to the environmentalists. It also highlights the importance of the man-made environments as their environments and the ways the activities in these man-made environments affect the natural environment. The paper discusses the efforts of human beings in managing the natural environment. It also highlights the challenges humankind is facing in this area. The paper is concluded with an admonition that humankind should endeavour to access the time-honoured values, without which no humankind can attain outstanding success, talk less of making community or nation attain sustainability of whatever type
Keywords: Built Environment, Natural Environment, Political/Governmental Environment, Socio-Economic Environment, Spiritual Environment
NIGERIA’S QUEST FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN THE 21ST CENTURY: THE IMPERATIVE OF A MULTIFACETED APPROACH TO TACKLING THE NATION’S CHALLENGES (Review Completed - Accepted)
The occasion of Nigeria’s 100 years of existence as a nation, provides a useful opportunity to appraise the challenges of the country in not only the natural environment, but also in the man-made environments of socio-economic, built and political governmental environments, as well as the spiritual environment. This appraisal is done in this paper, which also offers suggestions on how to go about tackling the multifarious challenges, using the multidisciplinary approach that will involve specialist researchers, as well as accommodating contributions of knowledgeable people. The paper also examines how some of these challenges impact others, by giving rise to them or worsening them. Examples of such challenges include those of godliness, education, leadership, corruption, right values and appropriate attitudes. The paper concludes by recommending that the challenges of the nation must be given priority attention and fixed, as a first step before taking further steps towards moving the country forward, in our bid to attain sustainable development of the country
Keywords: Built Environment, Multifarious Challenges, Natural Environment, Nigerian Nation, Political/Governmental Environment, Socio-Economic Environment, Spiritual Environment