Observation

This was a popular question among the candidates. Most of those who attempted the question performed well by correctly defining environmental hazards as disasters caused by nature or man which pose serious danger or risk to lives and properties of people in their environment. Some examples of environmental hazards that were given by the candidates included soil erosion, desert encroachment, drought, air pollution, water pollution, noise pollution, land pollution, flooding, oil spillage, earthquake, tsunami, nuclear disasters, volcanic eruption, landslide, windstorm, hurricane/tornadoes/typhoon, collapse of mines, bush fires and disease epidemic.
Some of the candidates could not explain ways of preventing desert encroachment. The required points were:

• afforestation
• irrigation
• creation of shelter belts
• cover cropping
• rotational/controlled grazing
• environmental education
• controlled lumbering
• legislation against indiscriminate bush burning.