The ABCs of Sustainable Development Goals and Sudan’s situation XIII

Goal 12: Ensuring responsible consumption and production

By Dr. Hassan Humeida

Kiel, Germany: The twelfth goal of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals until 2030 seeks to create a balance between consumption and production on a global scale.

This is happening in an era in which people’s need for essential products increases with the increase in the world’s population, according to the increase in consumption in a horizontal line.

This trend is not compatible with the requirements of modern societies to secure their livelihood.

It is not compatible either with the old product if its form, quantity, quality, and ways of rationalizing it are not reformulated to meet the global population explosion expected by 2050 in many parts of the world.

People may have felt the futility of the “Responsible Consumption and Production” goal that takes and does not give and is embodied in global consumption, which also has limited wealth and resources.

However, there is a great responsibility, mainly for organizations whose future mission – within years – is to confront the shortage in the first place of human requirements necessary for life. These include for instance pure drinking water, and food rich in essential substances for the body.

All this is happening at a time when human beings, wherever they are, are facing the greatest challenges of the era: global climate change, global warming, and increasing land and sea average temperatures.

This requires not only the efforts of organizations concerned with human affairs and their lives, but also the efforts of researchers, experts, and reference scientific and technological institutions, to work towards drawing a road map that leads, in the era of resource and wealth wars, to appropriate solutions regarding rational production and consumption for all peoples of the world, especially drinking water and agricultural products necessary for humans and animals.

If we take, for example, production in two different sectors, agricultural and animal production (including the fish sector), we find that there is waste in the local and global product related to the lack of machinery and equipment necessary for production, especially in many poor countries.

In addition, the energy needed for production, including cultivation, harvesting, storage and marketing, is not available.

The same thing applies to animal and fish production, due to the lack of suitable feed for growth or fattening, and the lack of energy for transport, preservation and refrigeration, required to ensure the product reaches the markets in a manner consistent with the basics of quality and safety required for food suitable for humans.

Many high-quality products, especially grains, legumes, vegetables, fruits and fruits, do not leave the production areas in many poor countries after the harvest seasons as appropriate transport methods are not available.

This concerns mainly products that are picked not ripe to be cooked in a short period of time – The transport and storage times before they are marketed.

They are often exposed to the effects of weather, such as heat, cold, or high humidity, which affects their quality, from better to worse, during their transportation or throughout the distance from their production areas to markets or export ports and airports.

Both local and international productions are linked to packaging on their way to markets and consumers. This results in tons of product residue or waste after consumption.

Product waste is one of the biggest problems that is widespread more in rich countries than in poor ones.

In rich countries, qualitative or partial consumption of products prevails, especially food consumption, while complete consumption of foodstuffs prevails in poor countries.

However, rich and poor countries converge in the amount of waste produced after consumption, represented in many different materials, such as paper, cardboard, plastic, glass, aluminum, and other packaging materials.

At the same time, they differ in the ability of rich countries to collect and recycle waste to benefit from its materials, so that they can be used again.

This saves a lot of money for countries that care about this aspect, and at the same time reduces the environmental risks that can result from the accumulation of waste, a severe harm to all living entities, including humans, wherever they are.

In a simplified form, the place where such waste is accumulated is a breeding ground for insects and rodents, a shelter for the growth of microbes and the reproduction of germs, and an environment suitable for the presence and spread of deadly diseases in both the animal and human environment.

Various types of waste also represent an environmental threat to water sources, farms and forests, which represents a greater danger to the organisms that live in it that mistakenly consume it as food, swallow it and sometimes die because of I (birds or cows for example) Others are caught in it and do not find a way out. (Dolphins and whales, for instance).

Rational production and consumption are not limited to agricultural and animal products. They also include rationalization in the use of other products, such as energy of all kinds, especially fossil energy sources, which increase average temperatures on Earth and exacerbate the global climate crisis, by increasing the percentage of man-made carbon dioxide and its potential in the outer layer of the Earth.

There is also the need for rationalizing production and consumption of clothing and manufacturing materials from various raw materials.

Even consumption in tourist areas plays an important role in the issue of rationalizing use and consumption in an era in which the user or consumer is not aware of the extent of the impact of imposition on dealing with products, and how this paves the way for the depletion of resources and wealth and impacts the future generations.

These generation await their share of what is currently consumed without care, every day, in all countries. Every consumer product has a quantity or percentage that is measured mathematically and known scientifically.

Looking at the comparative statistics of global production and consumption until 2023, we find that more than 14% of agricultural products are not used after harvest.

Every year, a third of food products spoil globally – estimated at more than $1.3 billion – due to the lack of energy sources, harvesting capabilities, or means of transport to consuming markets. Moreover, more than 17% of food products suitable for human use are thrown away. Plastic waste, which was about 1.5 million tons until 1950, reached about 370 million tons worldwide in 2020.

About 80% of this harmful waste is not recycled, and is distributed in various places, harming the environment of living organisms. In the era and society of excessive consumption and throwing of packaging products, it is estimated that every minute the world produces about one million plastic bottles that are thrown away after their use.

Currently, electronic waste constitutes the largest environmental problem. Produced in industrialized countries, it is not repaired when it breaks down for the slightest reasons. It is rather thrown away in the poor countries that have open-air dumps and incinerators for materials that are more dangerous and harmful to all living organisms and their environments, including humans.

It is not uncommon for this waste to settle in the ground, in fresh and salt water sources, or in forests and natural reserves. When this waste is burned in primitive ways that are not compatible with the basics of environmental health and living organisms, it pollutes the air and it becomes a primary cause of the occurrence of many cancers, especially lung cancer, well ahead of the effects of smoking.

Numbers indicate that, globally, about 7.3 kilograms of electronic waste were produced per person in 2019, but only 1.7 kilograms of it was recycled per person.

All this is happening in our modern world, in an era of limited wealth and resources, a time of climate change, and increasing global population.

Production and consumption in Sudan:

Sudan plays an important role in producing and providing many productive materials to local, regional and global consumers.

neighborhood and global markets.

Many people in different countries depend on Sudan’s agricultural and animal products – meat, grains, legumes, vegetables, fruits and spices.

Sudan is known for its importance to global markets in the production and marketing of Arabic gum, senna, hibiscus and sesame that are used not only in food processing, but also in medical and pharmaceutical products and precision manufacturing.

Sudan also has many water resources that place it at the forefront of countries that produce fish for self-sufficiency and for global markets. In addition, conditions are suitable for fish production through fish farms, a neglected sector that can generate revenues from the water that Sudan’s skies provide in every rainy season.

This paves the way for local sufficiency first, and then for exporting the surplus to neighboring countries at advantageous prices.

The same applies to the expansion of the cultivation and production of vegetables, fruits, medicinal herbs and many products in germination and development houses outside the rainy season.

In addition to all of this, there are other riches that the land of Sudan exudes to overflow. They include fresh drinking water in times of climate change, global warming, and the era of water wars.

Sudan also has the advantage of underground mineral treasures at a time when the world is about to abandon the use of fossil energy that exacerbates the global climate crisis, with the increase in the percentage of carbon dioxide gas, which leads to global warming in the Earth’s outer atmosphere- so far, a global average of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Regarding consumption in Sudan, it is necessary to reconsider the import of products that do not meet the standards for local consumption, especially vehicles, furniture, textiles, clothing… The use of plastic products must also be considered in an agricultural and pastoral country, such as Sudan, with multiple water resources.

These products end up into waste that is not recycled and represent a latent environmental danger that spreads across farms, pastures, and forests, eventually covering even the tops of trees (plastic bags for example), or taking the lives of livestock and animals that live in the water, which they mistake for food.

Regarding the point “Waste, methods of collecting it, ways to recycle it, and the possibility of benefiting from it,” there must be alternative methods that are friendly to the environment and its living organisms and shelters, and that solve the problem completely, so that this harmful waste does not harmfully impact residents and visitors in homes, streets and roads.

The role of transportation also comes into play in the consumption network, as it requires the development of plans to make distances shorter, and to be convenient for travel and movement in the regions, and without hardship and trouble for the people.

What does it currently take to reach the goal of “responsible consumption and production” in Sudan? The basis is to establish a lasting peace that the citizens can enjoy after having been warred, displaced, and plundered.

This war, which has been raging so far for nearly a year, is truly an injustice to the peaceful citizens of Sudan who did not give up absolute peacefulness even in his last revolutions to change for the better.

The people have demanded a rational democratic system of government, based on freedom, peace and justice, in a revolution that was a model for the revolutions known for their type of aggression and absolute violence. The world is still busy with other wars, ignoring Sudan’s all-out war.

Now we are on the cusp of hot summer in a country where average temperature exceeds 48 degrees Celsius in the shade. This is a fact that, if not addressed properly, would destroy the lives of trees, humans, and animals alike. The occurrence of a massive famine in Sudan in the circumstances of this war by next summer means the occurrence of a massive famine in more than one neighboring country.

The international community now has a choice: to help Sudan put an end to this war, which has begun to take on the character of “a global scandal in protecting human dignity, rights, and property,” or to prepare to face other future challenges.

These include widespread African famines that will be added to the stock of wars, climate change, clandestine emigration to Western countries, human trafficking and organized crime in “host” countries.

A reminder to the warring parties in Sudan: If the first and last goal of this war is democracy as a system of government, then it is unreasonable and cannot be marketed to a people aware of democratic system of government with this approach.

After the bitterness of injustice, oppression, humiliation and humiliation that the people of Sudan have lived in this war, they will not accept, for the rest of their lives and time, anyone who is unfair to them.

The good faith has been abused, and the Sudanese people have now learned the lesson through three times: the time of jihadism, the time of rescue, and the time of the Janjaweed.

Everyone who has a job other than governance should hold it. The Sudanese citizens will inevitably elect candidates with their own votes, not with the votes of other people.

E-mail: hassan_humeida@yahoo.de