How has biodiversity changed on earth in the last 150
years and what can we do to fix this trend in the next 150 years?
Over the past 150 years, abrasion has been increased immensely.
This is due to the unsustainable ecological practices we as global community
take part in. This negative change is predominantly evident through our habitat
loss is due to deforestation and urbanization, and other human activities.
However, as humans we cease to realize that biodiversity benefits humans in
many different ways. For example, many medicines are created from our natural
environment such as the Madagascan periwinkle for leukemia or willow for
aspirin. Other natural resources we continuously neglect to preserve are all of
the foods we consume. As the population exceedingly grows, we do not keep in
mind that the balance we should support for the next 150 years. However, there
are ways to fix the current direction we are progressing to. As simple actions such as, buying
organic foods to avoid pesticide usage, insulating homes to reduce unnecessary
heat loss and reduce fossil fuel consumption and pollution, and cycling or
walking or use public transport to reduce your carbon footprint. As a global
community, there are more drastic steps in changing this trend. This can be
done through the help of the UN Convention on Biological diversity as well as
the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. The pressure of global
trade can also be targeted to ensure that only the countries that treat their
environment properly can be benefited through the global economy. Instead of
taking advantage of our natural environments we should call attention to how
crucial our biodiversity really is and make it a “two way street” in every
action we undertake.
Erin, you can tell that your passion is the preserving and protecting the environment. Our human actions such as deforestation and urbanization has caused a significant decline in biodiversity and we as humans don't really care about the implications of our actions. Even though accumulation of little actions will improve the environment, our society is reluctant to change our ways. As you said, we need to make it a "two way street"
ReplyDeleteI believe that the key to our existence lies in our environment. We keep destroying and destroying when really we hardly know anything about what were doing to our environment. We don't even understand our environment!!!! Maybe the cure for cancer lied within one of the many now extinct organisms. We need to start realizing that when we affect our environment, we end up affecting ourselves in the long run.
ReplyDeleteIt's unfortunate that humans never realize a good thing until it's gone, hopefully this isn't the fate of our precious outdoors! this is certainly an issue which needs to be adressed by the whole world together, since we all share it. Great post!
ReplyDelete