Environmental Issues

Present research paper elaborates on human impacts on natural environment, focusing on major negative consequences it brings. The dialectical link is searched between anthropogenic activities and the state of habitats, species and ecosystems, as well, as resulting problems for human activities, such as agriculture, tourism etc. The thesis is defended that uncontrolled anthropogenic threat to nature results in negative consequences for humanity in general.

Human Impact on Natural World
Natural environment has a crucial role in the life of all people, because we use it as an energy source, food supply, source of medicines, sources for industrial production etc. In this way, maintaining ecological diversity is a primary precondition for developing effective economy and well-being in human societies.

Until recently, human activities had a positive impact on nature, because they did not disrupt its functioning. However, nowadays the human imprint on nature is increasingly negative. One of the reasons for such a change is that intensive and technological agriculture replaced traditional farming (Kiers et al. 321). This is accompanied by huge and irreversible changes to landscape and species habitat. Another factor is mass tourism in the areas, where people formerly did not interfere in natural ecological balance. Transport, energy and industry in general resulted in negative anthropogenic consequences for water basins through constructing canals and dams, changing natural mountain landscapes etc.

The uncontrolled utilization of forest resources also results in the irreversible changes to biodiversity, leads to soil erosion and many related effects. Certain direct manifestations of natural environments degradation may be mentioned among which the most threatening is fragmentation and reduction of the habitats and landscapes.

The main components of such changes are such types of humane expansion, as urbanization, agriculture, recreation, industrialization and resulting disappearance of natural habitats, landscapes etc. The direct consequences of such process are abundant including the decrease of biodiversity, the reduction of genetic diversity and impoverished gene pool, long-standing ecological crisis, resulting in natural cataclysms and climate change (White 2006). The impact is systemic, because the crisis of one habitat impacts other habitats through migration seasonal change, adaptation patterns transformation etc. Such negative implications are aggravated by the fact that human interventions are short-term, which prevents nature from restoring its balance through long-term processes the contact between different habitats is broken.

Fauna and flora are under threat with more species extincting or being on the verge of extinction due to human negative impact. All this is accompanied by deteriorating water quality and habitat loss. Moreover, negative human impact is evident in the case of marine ecosystems, where gas and oil production, fishery results in irreversible changes to habitats and general ecosystem stability (Heath 1446).

Human ecological behavior is irrational, because such types of activity as agriculture is directly dependent upon the preservation of ecological stability and balance. The future levels of production are likely to decrease due to negative impact on soil, fragmentation of wildlife and habitats as a result of uncontrolled patterns of agriculture production. Among basic causes of such situation is drainage of wetlands, destruction of hedgerows, uncontrolled use of fertilizers and various pesticides, threatening floral and fauna. The same may be said about negative human impact of energy production, fishery, transport and infrastructure construction, tourist recreation on changing natural balance. (Smith, Roheim, Crowder, Halpern et al. 2010). To guarantee sustainable development planet-wide humanity should develop and implement moral principles, compatible with coexistence with natural world.