Management Business
Climate change is not something that will happen in the future; it is already here according a Guardian story on climate change. According to the story, a greater proportion of international disasters are now related to climate. And climate change is just one of the environmental issues facing the world.
Environmental Issues and their Impact
What exactly are environmental issues and how do these specifically affect people? The answer to these questions can be quite revealing (and shocking) to many. Below is an overview:
- Global Warming: Increased emission of Carbon Dioxide and other hot gases into the environment is the perceived culprit in the climate change and consequent disasters. Climate change can not only result in such direct disasters as hurricanes and long winters but also affect agriculture and food availability.
- Loss of Biodiversity: It is biodiversity in the form of numerous organisms that makes life on the world sustainable. Organisms make the soil fit for cultivation, destroy pests and maintain climate, among other things. Killing these organisms by destroying forests and other such practices can make life on the planet very different and difficult.
- Water and Air Pollution: Persistent organic pollutants and toxic materials such as pesticides and industrial wastes can accumulate in living tissues disrupting endocrine systems, suppressing immunity functions and causing reproductive and developmental changes. And the pollutants can travel long distances crossing international borders through air, water and migratory species.
- Land Degradation: Unsustainable felling of trees and exploitation of water can lead to desertification of presently habitable regions while destruction of mangroves and other practices can lead to erosion of coastal areas.
It will be obvious from the above that life on earth will be a very different proposal in the future if current human practices continue unchecked. The situation will be aggravated when the non-renewable energy sources such as oil get exhausted without any sustainable energy sources replacing them.
Environment Protection Initiatives
Governments and leaders have begun to recognize how serious the situation is and many initiatives are being taken. The Copenhagen Economic conference focused on environmental issues, for example. However, political compulsions and inadequate resources and projects are hampering sufficiently forceful action.
The initiatives include:
IBM buys master data management business
Initiate clients include North Dakota, Alberta health departments
IBM Corp. will increase its footprint in the health information technology space with the purchase of Initiate Systems Inc. The financial terms were not disclosed.
Initiate provides master data management software solutions for information sharing among health care and government organizations. Its clients include the Alberta Ministry of Health and Wellness, Calgary Health Region and the North Dakota Department of Health and Human Services.
For North Dakota, Initiate helped create a single view of each individual served through the state’s Medicaid and child welfare services. Previously, the data was dispersed throughout numerous programs.
“Bringing together data from separate systems managed by hospitals, doctors' offices and payers is a daunting task. Initiate has helped clients meet this challenge at more than 2,400 health care sites, over 40 health information exchanges and multiple government health systems around the world,” IBM officials said in news release Feb. 3.
Initiate Systems, based in Chicago, is privately held and is reported to have more than 300 employees.
Headquartered in Armonk, N.Y., IBM ranks No. 18 on Washington Technology’s 2009 Top 100 list of of the largest federal prime contractors.