MILITARY PHARMACY AND MEDICINE

© Military Pharmacy and Medicine • 2012 • 4 • 101 – 104 Review articleAnother area of action that could contributeto the safety of long-term progress is the fightagainst poverty. It may be divided into the followingsections:• • providing the poor with sustainable access tothe means of supporting their basic needs;••facilitating integration of sustainable accessto the means of support with environmentalprotection.Changing the consumption model, which is abroad topic and its problems are mentioned innumerous chapters of Agenda 21, serves thoseareas. They are primarily located in the chaptersrelated to the use of energy, transport, wasteas well as economic instruments and transferof technologies. The areas of action include thefollowing:• • balancing the models of consumption andproduction,••undertaking appropriate policies and economicstrategies by individual countries inorder to eliminate the imbalanced consumptionmodels. The goals of the former areainclude the following:••promoting a model of consumption and production,which would not lead to ecologicaldamage and fulfill the needs of humanity,••achieving better understanding of the roleof consumption in the process of sustainabledevelopment as well as introduction of morebalanced consumption models.Poverty and degradation of natural environmentare closely related. If poverty leads to ecologicalcrises, the majority of cases of sustained environmentaldegradation result from an imbalancedmodel of production and consumption. Therefore,in the coming years, governments togetherwith appropriate supporting organizationsshould strive to achieve broad goals, including:• • promotion of effective production processesand balanced consumption in the process ofeconomic growth, taking into considerationthe needs of the developing countries,••developing strategies of internal actions,which will allow for introduction of balancedproduction and consumption models,••strengthening the factors that support aproduction – consumption model consistentwith sustainable development and promotionof actions for transfer of environment-friendlytechnologies to developing countries.http://military.isl-journals.comThese goals pertain to the latter area of action.In several chapters, areas of action are directlyconformed to the security issues:••environment-safe application of biotechnology(16),••environment-safe utilization of toxic anddangerous chemicals, fighting illegal tradingof those chemicals (19),••environment-safe management of dangerouswaste••preventing illegal trade of dangerous materials(20),••environment-safe management of solid wasteand residues from wastewater treatment plans(21),••safe and environmentally friendly managementof radioactive waste (22),Biotechnology, as a combination of genetic engineering,biochemistry and microbiology, is anarea of intensely developing science, constitutinga compilation of methods of genetic engineering.Not all fundamental environmental problemsmay be solved using biotechnological processesto attain sustainable growth. The reality mustdiminish the expectations. However, biotechnologistsannounce expectations of great contributionsto, e.g. progress in health care, increase infood safety by introducing methods of sustainedand ecologically sustainable agriculture as wellas detoxication of dangerous waste. It should beaccompanied by general partnership betweencountries with rich biological resources, but lackingthe experience and investment funds necessaryfor utilization of those resources throughbiotechnological processes and countries withbiotechnological experience. This experiencerefers to the scope of transformation of biologicalresources in a manner, which would allowthem to contribute to sustainable development.Described areas of action promote the principlesof creating environmentally healthy uses forbiotechnology agreed upon by the internationalcommunity, in order to raise public confidenceand convince the community to support ecologicallysafe uses of biotechnology.General policy indicates, that chemicals can beused to meet the economic and social needs ofpeople around the world in a rational and largelysafe manner. However, there is still a lot to do toensure environmentally safe conduct with toxic101