Environmental Issues

According to the United Nations, the world is continuously losing species around the world, which could affect every human being. This is why this year, it launched the International Year of Biodiversity. This is after eight years, when the governments promised to the rate of loss by 2010 and nothing happened. According to the United Nations, the main reason is because human cities continue to expand, as well as farming and infrastructure. Angela Merkel tasked for an establishment of a new panel to gather further scientific research on the issue (Black, 2010).

This would make it seem to us that the issue of biodiversity crisis is already very critical. According to the United Nations, as the forests and wetlands get destroyed increasingly as well as other natural systems, humanity loses the benefits and services they get from these systems for free. Our world would lose the ability to purify the air and water, and we would not be protected against extreme weather events. We would not be able to obtain our basic necessities such as shelter and clothes, because we would not be able to gather the materials needed to build these.  It can be gleaned from scientists that the world is suffering from biodiversity crisis, especially since the extinctions of species are happening 1000 times more than the nature or background rate. According to them, the Earth is in the middle of a great extinction, the 6th time to be exact, as the first five extinctions took place from impacts of asteroids (Black, 2010).

As the human population increasingly burgeon, leading to parallel increase in infrastructure built, the damaging effects to the natural world is increasing too. The human population steadily raise their technological standard of living.  The nature is being brutally exploited to make way for various blend of artificial landscapes and villages. Human cities were created, consisting of housing developments, parking lots, roads, malls and other facilities without care for the nature (Fruitarian).

The effects of these technological changes lead to severe habitat loss and fragmentation of natural areas because of bulldozing, paving, dynamiting and other sorts of aggressive activities for the sake of human endeavors, without taking into consideration their effects to the nature. Another effect of the crisis is the introduction of alien communities into the communities. The natural communities are suffering severe damages as well from human actions such as overharvesting, using pesticides and herbicides extensively, raining acids and other pollutants and altering natures way of doing things such as mixing gasses in the air, or thinning the ultraviolet radiation when the terrestrial life is dependent on this (Fruitarian).

Sometimes, the disastrous effects are so immense that entire ecosystems are destroyed, producing mal impacts to the natural processes immediately and directly, and ultimately harming the people as well. For instance, when humans stripped the forest from a watershed, an instant effect of losing flood and erosion control leads to floods and other unfortunate events. Another example is when people simplify a landscape for their own purposes, turning forests to monocultures of corn, this causes a leakier system that wastes more energy, nutrients and topsoil because these elements slip away, and the system becomes weak in fighting against pests and other natural shocks (Fruitarian)

Although we can see that the extinction of some species are getting increasingly quicker, ecologists claim that this high rate would even increase tenfold if the threatened species actually disappear in the coming century. Furthermore, as people demand for more land, food and other resources, millions of species can be extinct already even if they still have not become identified and their purposes have not yet been determined. Also, the systems that result from the biodiversity crisis, which are mostly weak and malfunctioning, are not the systems that humans can rely for a robust future (Fruitarian).

Normal people do not care what happen to nature. All they think about is that they see beautiful landscapes according to their whimsical desires and tastes. They want to see tall buildings, they want to live easier lives through technological advances, and they want a lot of things that they though nature cannot provide. Normal people act this way because most of the time, they are disengaged from the workings of the natural world, since they are almost always cloistered their nicely built homes and office buildings, with no idea what is taking place on the outside, let along the environment. Most of them do not know what the wilderness look like anymore, since they are contended with their clipped lawns and pavements, cleaned and maintained using piped water and unorganic foods. People in the modern times do not find the need to see or just do not see that they rely heavily on the sustainability of plants, animals, insects, and microbes, and the cyclical process they stimulate (Fruitarian).

Solutions for the Biodiversity Crisis
The key to responding to the call for help of the biodiversity  and for our own preservation lies in recognizing the link of our survival with the survival of our nature and the different species sharing this nature with us. Plants, animals, insects and microbes must be recognized for their role in our human survival, and people must understand what their extinction means for the nature and what this means for own extinction. We must understand how each function and what their unique purposes are in contributing to the functioning of the ecosystems and we must comprehend what the consequences will be for the ecological services they provide if biodiversity continues to be threatened (Fruitarian).

Human must increase their awareness and knowledge of how the ecosystem functions and understand that this reflects the collective life activities of plants and animals, as well as microbes. Their activities and effects of their effects determine the functioning of the ecosystem.

A functioning eco system produces biological and chemical activities that characterize its type. A forest system that is functioning produces certain rates and quality of plants, carbon storage, and nutrient cycling. Once it stopped becoming functioning, all these activities would also cease or alter to different forms, to the detriment of those reliant upon these, most likely humans (Ecological Society of America, 1999).

Furthermore, humans must understand that although all organisms are important to the ecosystem, they each have their unique roles and the magnitude of their contributions to the functioning system varies as well. The species are divided into functional types based on what they can do, and what they contribute. Therefore, when thinking of how to sustain the life of biodiversity or the functioning of the system, it must be taken into consideration that other species cannot be compromised more than others, if there is not a way to maintain them all (Ecological Society of America, 1999).

Although technological and modern advances must not be curtailed, their impacts to the biodiversity system must be taken into consideration. When making changes or developments, it must be understood that some species are too important to lose, for they would affect the overall levels of ecosystem functioning. In fact, if species richness declines, so would the overall functionality of the system (Ecological Society of America, 1999).

Humans must be careful when they alter or transform the ecosystems into managed systems, they should take care not to have systems that contain only a few dominant species, when they have completely forsake the natural ecosystems that contained hundreds of species. It must be understood that at least one specie per functioning group is significant to ecosystem functioning. Humans must make sure that if there are developments or alterations to be made on the natural system or even if there are no changes to be made, that there is at least more than one of those species within the functional group. The extra may be useful for insuring against the loss of functioning during cases of disturbance, since it could compensate or replace the specie that got destroyed due to the disturbance. Moreover, to make sure that the crisis can be contained, people must increase their knowledge regarding the nature of an ecosystems response to the declining biodiversity is dependent on community composition (Ecological Society of America, 1999).

Although current research give us nothing on how to identify or predict in confidence how the loss of any particular specie can have on ecosystem process, the key to the biodiversity crisis is still to do more research and equip with normal human beings, all the knowledge just stated. This is because if they know what they are doing and what the consequences of their actions would be, they will be likely to think twice on abusing the ecosystem and biodiversity, especially if they understand the point that the survival of the nature and the species within would ultimately determine humanitys survival (Ecological Society of America, 1999).
The United Nations recognizes this solution early on. They are pursuing various ways to raise public awareness on the issue. The International Year of Biodiversity that UN decided to pursue this year presents a big opportunity for governments to do more for the cause of biodiversity. It is also something they can pursue determinedly to compensate for their failure with their plans for climate change in Copenhagen. Governments must put in their agenda how to halt the increasingly fast extinction of species.  Other organizations, most especially those with environmental causes are running special programs every year for this purpose (Black, 2010).