comes about due to erosion and decline of the quality of the natural environment. It is caused directly or indirectly by anthropogenic activities that extract various environmental resources at a faster rate than they are replaced, and thus depleting them. On this regard, degradation means damage or reduction in quality of environmental features, primarily influenced by human activities. Some natural events such as landslides and earthquakes may also degrade the nature of our environments.
Causes of Environmental Degradation
A. Overpopulation and Over-exploitation of Resources
As the human population keeps on enlarging, there is a lot of pressure on the utilization of natural resources. This often causes over-exploitation of the natural resources, and contributes to environmental erosion. According to a study by the UNEP Global Environment Outlook, excessive human consumption of the naturally occurring non-renewable resources can outstrip available resources in the near future and remarkably destroys the environment during extraction and utilization. Overpopulation simply means more pollution and fast extraction of natural resources compared to how they are being replaced.
B. Ruinous Agricultural Practices
Intensive agricultural practices have led to the decline in quality of most of our natural environments. Majority of farmers resort to converting forests and grasslands to croplands which reduces the quality of natural forests and vegetation cover. The pressure to convert lands into resource areas for producing priced foods, crops, and livestock rearing has increasingly led to the depreciation of natural environments such as forests, wildlife and fertile lands.
C. Landfills
One of the calamitous effects of landfills is the destruction of nearby environmental health together with its ecosystems. The landfills discharge various kinds of chemicals on the land adjacent to forest, various natural habitats, and water systems such as underground and surface water which makes the environment unappealing to the survival of trees, vegetations, animal and humans.
D. Increase in Deforestation
The act of deforestation (cutting down of trees) has impacted on the world in terms of depreciating the natural environment and wildlife. It has also impacted on humans on the account of changes in environmental support processes such as weather conditions. Some of the reasons for deforestation include farming, construction, settlement, mining, or other economic purposes. For more than one hundrend years, the number of trees on the planet has plummeted, resulting in devastating consequences such as biodiversity loss, soil erosion, species extinction, global warming, and interference with the water cycle.
E. Environmental Pollution
Most of the planet’s natural environments have been destroyed and a large portion is under huge threat due to the toxic substances and chemicals emitted from fossil fuel combustions, industrial wastes, and homemade utilities among other industry processed materials such as plastics. Land, air, and water pollution pose long-term cumulative impacts on the quality of the natural environments in which they occur.