Over two thirds of Earth’s surface is covered by water; less than a third is taken up by land. As Earth’s population continues to grow, people are putting ever-increasing pressure on the planet’s water resources. In a sense, oceans, rivers, and other inland waters are being “squeezed” by human activities not so they take up less room, but so their quality is reduced. Poorer water quality means water pollution.
Pollution is a human problem because it is a relatively recent development in the planet’s history: before the 19th century Industrial Revolution, people lived more in harmony with their immediate environment. As industrialization has spread around the globe, so the problem of pollution has spread with it.
When Earth’s population was much smaller, no one believed pollution would ever present a serious problem. It was once popularly believed that the oceans were far too big to pollute. Today, with around 7 billion people on the planet, it has become apparent that there are limits. Pollution is one of the signs that humans have exceeded those limits.
Pollution from toxic chemicals threatens life on this planet. Every ocean and every continent, from the tropics to the once-pristine Polar Regions, is contaminated. Throughout the world, human use of water and bad planning have led to drier and polluted rivers, lakes, and groundwater resources with dramatic effects on the natural ecosystems. Nigeria’s vast freshwater resources are among those most affected by environmental stress imposed by human population growth, urbanization, and industrialization.
Disposal and management of wastes in Nigeria present serious environmental problems. The usual methods of waste disposal in the country are: land filling, dumpsites, land spreads, water disposal, and incineration. Each of these methods has serious environmental implications because of their potential to pollute and contaminate underground and surface water bodies in the country.
Major cities in Nigeria face serious water pollution crises, in which lack of environmental control of water-dependent activities (including domestic, agricultural, and industrial) play an important part. Fish and marine resources in the country face total collapse or extinction, due to over-fishing and destruction of marine life and natural habitats by pollution of water bodies.
Unregulated and excessive use of pesticides for fishing and the deliberate disposal and dumping of toxic and hazardous wastes into water bodies are significant causes of massive fish kills and loss of aquatic life and habitats in the country.
The protection of water quality and aquatic ecosystem as a vulnerable resource, essential to sustain life, development and environment is of utmost importance to prevent further pollution and degradation of Nigeria’s freshwater resources.
There is no easy way to solve water pollution; if there were, it wouldn’t be so much of a problem. Broadly speaking, there are three different things that can help to tackle the problem. There is education, laws, and economics and they work together as a team.
Integrating operational measures for safeguarding adequate levels of protection of endemic habitats remains a major challenge. There is therefore a need to examine in tandem the entire range of uses to which freshwater is put, and to design services which neither squander precious resources nor fail to respect other, competing and complementary water needs.
AKIN-ADETORO ADEDASOLA
References:
Adeyemo, O. K. (n.d.). Home Page. Retrieved March 7, 2018, from SpringerLink: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/B:ENVR.0000031357.89548.fb
Woodford, C. (2017, June 4). Home page. Retrieved March 7, 2018, from ExplainthatStuff: http://www.explainthatstuff.com/waterpollution.html
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