Next Generation Diplomacy

By: Robert Kelly What is the current situation? Throughout Long Island, there are nearly 500,000 conventional cesspools and conventional septic systems releasing harmful contaminants into our water supply. Nitrogen is one of the most dangerous contaminants. Though nitrogen is a naturally occurring element, excessive and uncontrolled amounts of it can result in a surge of algal blooms, which poison our shellfish, kill ecosystems, and change the way we interact with the ocean for the worse.   Long Island's war against algae blooms has dated back to the mid-1980s. The surge in these blooms harms shellfish and other bottom dwellers by depriving them of the oxygen they need to survive or releasing many toxins that have the same effect and kill ecosystems. Another adverse impact of algae blooms is that they block essential nutrients and sun rays needed by plants such as eelgrass, causing them to die. Does this problem only affect oceanic communities, or is there more to the story? T...

By: Lawrence Liu   At first glance, water accessibility may not seem like a problem: walk into the kitchen, turn the tap, and boom, water. Right? Maybe for most, but for over a quarter of the population,1 going to get water every day might look like an hour-long trek to the nearest well/borehole. Even worse, others might have no choice but to drink water from ponds or puddles, which could be potentially lethal. On top of poor access to water, nearly half the population does not have proper access to sanitation, leading to the transmission of diseases, reducing social and economic development, and over a million deaths per year.1,2 The UN has seen the effects of lack of access to safe drinking water and sanitation and now recognizes them as fundamental human rights, calling for efforts to help countries in need. The problem of water scarcity has only gotten worse over time, as can be seen when looking at the past. In hunter-gatherer societies that existed tens of thousands of y...