Human Impacts On Environment: Deforestation And Overgrazing

Environmental impact of agriculture

Discuss about the Human Impacts on Environment for Deforestation and Overgrazing.

The following are the environmental impacts of agriculture.

Land degradation in any form is a major worry that is jeopardizing the sustainability of agriculture. But the agricultural activities by humans like, cattle rearing, deforestation, overgrazing, the rise of the waterbed along the river are a major contributing factor for exposing the soil to water erosion (Ili?, Krsti? & Jovanovi? 2017, p . 41). The use of nitrogen during cultivation pollutes the water and endangers the biodiversity in the water. The pollution affects humans too making their water unfit for human consumption.

Over the years the forests have lost their affluence due to increase in population demanding wood and fuel, indiscriminate building sites and forest fires (Ili?, Krsti? & Jovanovi? 2017, p . 41).

And finally, agricultural wastes and byproducts have been well packaged, the burning of these by-products increases the volume of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide emissions which causes respiratory problems for animals and even humans beings (Ili?, Krsti? & Jovanovi? 2017, p . 41).Furthermore, the continued use of fertilizers and pesticide has a big effect on the ecology of a country through air pollutions.

• Air pollution

The air we breathe is a very important factor to our survival, unfortunately, the air is polluted. The main pollutants of air include particulate matter, PAHs, lead, ground-level ozone, heavy metals, sulphur dioxide, benzene, carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide (Bergstra, Brunekreef & Burdorf 2018, p. 1).

• Water pollution

The World Health Organisation (WHO) reported that about one-sixth of the entire world’s population, meaning 1.1 billion people, have limited access to safe water (Chen, Kahn, Liu & Wang 2018, p. 468). Water is mainly polluted by industrial discharged effluents, sewage water. And rainwater gets polluted by agriculture or households (Ashraf et al, 2010). These cause damage to human health and the environment.

• Land or solid waste pollution

Solid waste is a major crisis in the world today. Mismanagement of solid waste is the main cause of our environmental disaster. Filling landmines with solid heavy metal without any precautions are some of the ways solid waste is adding to the environmental disaster (Dauren, Daniya, Saltanat,  Gulnura & Aliya 2018, p. 83). Some of the worst solid waste pollutants are the coal and uranium mines. Uranium, in some parts of the world, is dumped in open sites without any kind of pretreatment. Given their radioactive nature, uranium pollutes a large area rendering it useless for decades. In large cities around the world, particulate matter is the major cause of the environmental disaster.

Pollution

Pollution of the environment is largely a human recognition problem, the faster people realise the problem the sooner it can be fixed.

Forests spread and cover more than a third of the land surface and provide a natural resource for the ecosystem in general. The direct causes of deforestation are.

• Expansion of farmland

Deforestation can be directly associated with the growing need for farming land. Agricultural land is quickly expanding and is said to be the leading cause of deforestation (Devaraju, De Noblet-Ducoudré, Quesada & Bala 2018, p. 3811). Tropical forests are a hive for low-income people living below the poverty line and to satisfy their need for food, they resort to farming which has caused about 60% of all tropical forest deforestation.

• Forests and Plantations

Forests and plantations are supposed to reduce deforestation. Basically, it is planting trees. But, the fact that these plantations get rid of timber in natural forests eventually lead not to less but more deforestation. Furthermore, plantations can increase deforestation by creating roads that make the forest accessible for farming or other cultivators (Manchego, Hildebrandt, Cueva, Espinosa, Stimm & Günter 2017, p. 6).

• Fires

 Fires are a fast and efficient way for clearing large portions of forest for permanent agriculture and shifting. In the worng hands, fire can be a major cause of deforestation.

Other causes of deforestation are mining, overgrazing, logging and fuelwood, the role of the military or war and tourism (Atsuhiro, Tomo’omi, Hironari, Hatsuki, Tetsuya & Masayuki 2017, p. 2901).

On the environment, deforestation has several effects, loss of water sources and flooding, it can lead to climate change, loss of habitat and reduced biodiversity and socio-economic consequences.

Strategies to tackle the deforestation problem should require cooperation and goodwill. Successful installation of these strategies demands stakeholders involvement, management plans and government participation. 

The Unparalleled growth of human population growth since the industrial revolution has brought a large effect on the environment and non-human species. Population explosion is a situation whereby the overall population of a single species has grown past the capacity of its habitat (Marcus 2016, p. 28).

The effects of human overpopulation are numerous;

• Increase in air and water pollution.

As the human population grows, so does the rate of deforestation. The tree that would then help reduce the rates of air pollution through photosynthesis are not able to so anymore (Marcus 2016, p. 28). The gases that are produced are trapped in the atmosphere and eroding the ozone layer. Air pollution is not the only effect of overpopulation, water is also a danger of overpopulation. As previously, an increase in population demands an increase in factories which leads to all kinds of pollutions including water pollution.

• Deforestation

Deforestation

Forests are a major part of our natural lives, they are essential to balancing ecology and sustaining life. But with the increase of people comes the need for space and forests are cut down to carter for the human need for space (Conn 2015, p. 129).

• Depletion of the Ozone layer

The ozone layer protects us from the harmful rays of the sun. But in recent years the ozone layer has been threatened by CFCs which contained solvents that eroded the ozone layer. For this reason, CFCs were banned in many countries (Conn 2015, p. 129). Scientists have recently discovered that there are other emissions by humans that also contribute to the erosion of the ozone layer.

Industries and households emit solid waste. Solid waste has a potential effect on the environment and human health. Uncontrolled dangerous wastes from mixing industries have a great health hazard to human health. Accidents involving toxic wastes can result in spillage. A specific hazard is the cluster of heavy metals in the food chain, an issue that illuminates the relationship between solid wastes and liquid industrial effluents containing heavy metals discharged to a drainage/sewerage system and /or open dumping sites of municipal solid wastes and the wastes discharged thereby maintains a vicious cycle of the exact same problems (Lee, Jung, Park,Ryu, Kim, Ha, Kim, Yi & Yoon 2015, p. 15).

The chemical breakdown of garbage is a cause of environmental pollution. Garbage and solid waste are collected in landfills. But due to a quick growing rate of urbanization, most places are not properly evaluated prior to their usage. The main problem is the gases released from the decomposing solid waste. For example, methane is a by-product of anaerobic respiration by bacteria (Bigum, Damgaard, Scheutz, & Christensen 2017, p. 251). These bacteria are mostly found thriving in landfills that are exposed to moisture. Another issue with these gases is their continued effect on the ozone layer which leads to the greenhouse effect and climate change.

 In developed countries, this problem has been solved by the use of dense clay deposits at the bottom of the landfill. Paired with sheeting-type liners that prevent infiltration into the soil around, the solid waste is pressured to evaporate rather than infiltrate. That said solid waste management should be improved to prevent adverse effects on the environment and human health. 

The main causes of acid rain are natural causes and human causes. Natural causes include emissions from volcanoes, biological factors that occur in wetlands and under oceans that release acid rain gases into the environment. Human causes include burning coal, using oil and natural gases to produce electricity or to cook produce sulphur, oxides of both carbon and nitrogen. Mix these with water vapour and rainwater and you have a weak sulphuric acid mix that falls back as acid rain (Perino & Talavera 2014, p. 108).

Overpopulation

To the environment acid rain is dangerous. To aquatic life, acid rain can prevent the eggs of certain organisms such as fish, from hatching. This reduces the number of that species which leads to improper population ratio in the ecosystem.

Vegetation is also affected by the increased levels of acid in the soil. The acid dissolves the nutrients in the soil slowing plant growth, poisoning plants, slowing photosynthesis and letting organisms invade through broken branches (Zhang et al. 2017, p. 524).

Acid rain can also affect human health causing respiratory issues, dry mouth and toxins that when ingested can cause severe damage to human health by causing kidney problems even brain damage. Acid rain also has economic influences, for example, airlines spend a lot of resources repairing corrosive damage caused by acid rain. In addition, bridges get dissolved and corroded by acid rain leading to their collapse. Another effect is its ability to dissolve stone and buildings, it reacts with the minerals to form a powdery substance that can be washed away (Zhang, Hu, Wang, Zhou & Huang 2018, p. 441).

• Effects of ozone depletion on animal health

An increased penetration of UV rays is predicted to have a major effect on human and animal health including eye disease, skin cancer and infectious disease. UV radiation has been proven to harm the cornea and the lens. In light-skinned individuals, it is predicted to cause non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC) and other forms of skin cancer (Ghose 2015, p. 10).

• Effects on aquatic ecologies

More than 30& of the entire world’s protein consumption comes from the ocean. It has been predicted that an increase in UV radiation in the ocean will majorly affect the productivity of the seas. For instance, an increase in UV exposure in the tropical and sub-tropical waters will affect the spread of phytoplankton which forms the base of the food chain (Ghose 2015, p. 10). The most serious effect might be reduced reproductive cycle and suppressed larval development.

• Effects on climate change

The degradation of the ozone layer and climate change are linked in many ways although this degradation is not the main cause of climate change. In fact, the climate change caused by the degradation of the ozone layer varies with the altitude of the area in which the degradation occurred.

 The ozone layer degradation has been seen to increase the erosion of the troposphere, added to the emission from the ground, it, therefore, contributes to the greenhouse effect (Wu & Polvani 2017, p. 6433). That said, when compared to the greenhouse gasses from the ground, the impacts of ozone degradation are hard to accurately calculate.

Industrial and Household waste

Human genetic engineering depends heavily on science. With the assistance of genetic engineering, scientists can change the genome arrangement and cure some diseases that are caused by genetic mutations. The diseases treated by genetic engineering are diabetes, cystic fibrosis among other diseases. Another threatening disease that scientists are attempting to treat using genetic engineering is Severe Combined Immunodeficiency, which shows that genetic engineering has the ability to improve the quality of living.

• Effects on Environment

Although the advantages of genetic engineering are numerous (Fasani, Manara, Martini, Furini & DalCorso 2018, p. 1201), there are still some questions that need to be answered. For example, newly created organisms pose a problem to the environment, it is not easy to predict the impact a new genetically engineered organism will have on its new habitat. An accident involving a virus can lead to a more resilient version which when released to the environment can cause a serious epidemic and health hazard.

• Effects on Human health

Given that human genetic engineering uses viruses as their delivery mechanism, it is still unknown where the targeted genes are placed. This can lead to a misplacement where they fail to replace the affected gene and instead replace a wrong one. Such an incident can lead to a new health condition or a disease (Fuller, Brester & Boland 2018, p. 600). Furthermore, as the bad genes are replaced with functional genes, humans will have a diversity in their genome making them vulnerable to a virus of any kind or a disease of any form. It could also create unknown outcomes or side effect.

Ecological succession is the procedural and slow replacement of a community by another community over a given period of time. It is the procedure of changing the composition of an ecosystem over time. Put it simply, it is the process of redevelopment of an ecosystem by nature (Boerema, Geerts, Oosterlee, Temmerman & Meire 2016, p. 710). 

The process of ecological succession is as follows:

This is the sudden development of a bare area (an area without any sort of life). It is the first step of ecological succession. Nudation is mostly caused by natural occurrences, for example, topographic- landslide, soil erosion, climatic or biotic- for example, forest fires, disease epidemics.

The next step is the invasion, which is the successful inhabitation of an area. It takes place in three steps, migration, ecesis (successful establishment of a species in a bare area) and aggression.

Other steps are competition and co-action (the competition created by a large number of species in a limited area ), reaction (the influencing of the ecosystem by the species living on it) and stabilization (the community stabilizes for a long time) (Boerema, Geerts, Oosterlee, Temmerman & Meire 2016, p. 710)..

Ecological succession is divided into three types, primary succession, secondary succession and gap phase succession.

New species are known to move towards a climax community which is the final result of the succession and stay undisturbed until acted upon y environmental change. Succession is mostly known to involve on a large scale, high plants or animals, but it can also happen in the microbiological world as well.

Biodiversity increases an ecosystem stability. Meaning, where there is a great biodiversity the ecology is more stable.

• Types of biodiversity

Species diversity. This is defined as the number and the abundance of a species in an environment. To determine accurately species diversity, species richness and relative abundance are required. Species richness is the number id all the individual species and relative abundance is the number of the individuals within the species (Pires, Srivastava, Marino, Macdonald, Figueiredo?barros & Farjalla 2018, p. 1203).

• Genetic diversity. This is the measure of how much differences are there in the genes of the species. A good example is the gene encoding the degree of hair colour in humans.

Ecological diversity. This is the diversity in the ecological system of the environment. It includes both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and also takes into account the biological diversity like different niches, tropical levels and ecological processes (Pires, Srivastava, Marino, Macdonald, Figueiredo?barros & Farjalla 2018, p. 1203).

As stated previously, biodiversity is important to maintaining a stable ecosystem. Ecosystem stability is the ability of an environment to keep a steady state. The bigger the biodiversity in an area the more diverse the ecosystem, therefore, a slight change in any condition forces the species to adapt. That is why most ecosystems require a mechanism put in place to return it to a steady state after a disturbance has occurred.

Population growth is one of the key driving factors for environmental degradation which directly affects the well-being of human beings as well as other living things that depend on the environment for survival. The world’s population today stands at 6.9 billion people and researchers suggest that this population is expected to be 7.5 billion people by 2050 which will depend on the fertility and mortality rate. The primary factor which has contributed significantly to rapid population growth over the years is low mortality rate due to improved health services. As the population continues to grow day by day, the ecosystem which supports human life is continuing to be degraded by human activities such as farming, construction, and industrialization. Population growth, poverty, and environmental degradation are inter-linked such that they enforce each other (Kirby 2011, p 57).

Among the problems that are affecting people in the society today is poverty. It is due to this reason the United Nations listed eradication of poverty and hunger as the first goal in the Millennium Development Goals. Both poverty and rapid population growth are the main factors that have contributed to environmental degradation more so in the developing countries. First of all, population growth affects the environment in that as people increase, it means that there will be overconsumption of immediate resources so as to sustain human life. As the process continues, the natural resources available will eventually be over-utilized and as a result, it may not be able to support human life in the future (Chin 2017, p 397). Population increase means building of more houses, increase in farming activities to provide food, and construction of roads. As these human activities increases, people will cut trees to build houses; they will destroy forests to create space for more houses and farming. The dire consequences of these human activities to the environment are pollution, deforestation, famine and drought.  In most of the developing countries, people depend on the available resources such and water for their livelihood. Through activities such as farming and fishing, human beings are able to get their daily bread and meet their financial needs. However due to the increasing human population today, there has been overconsumption of these resources which has resulted in poverty. According to Orenstein (2014), the countries which have high populations are poor compared to where the population is a bit low.

According to the report given by the United Nations Environment Programme of 2007, the consumption of available resources by the human beings is beyond the available resources. Poverty forces people to engage in more agricultural activities. In the process, they end up cutting trees which will then lead to drought and famine. Another factor that has led to environmental degradation is climate change. For the last 150 years, people have been cutting down trees and burning fossil fuels for energy. The effects of these activities are now being experienced in the form of global warming since there are no more trees to absorb carbon dioxide from the air naturally. As people continue to overuse natural resources without thinking about the consequences, the world is at risk of suffering from the results of global warming. People and animals are suffering from rising temperatures, inadequate rainfall, and drought and, hunger (Kirby 2011, p 97). 

Generally speaking, as the human population continues to increase rapidly, the more consumption of natural resources will increase. The issue of population growth, environmental degradation, and resources depletion has been an issue of great concern for so many years. The growing population has put a lot of strain on the environment as there is increased demand for food, housing and energy. Poverty and growing population have been blamed as the leading factors which have contributed on the natural resources which many people depend on for survival. Every day people are cutting trees to burn charcoal or create more land for farming. And as a result, this has led to deforestation, air pollution, and desertification. The following are some of the ways which growing population has impacted the natural resources (Eia.gov, 2018)

As the world’s population continue to grow every day, more and more trees are being cut down to build houses. When trees are cleared to meet human needs people forget that they still need these trees to prevent air pollution through the process of photosynthesis. One of the issues that have been bothering the world today global warming. Global warming is as a result of air pollution due to human activities and scientists and environmentalists have agreed that it is the greatest threat of human existence on the planet. On the other hand, water pollution is also another problem that has been caused by population growth. Increase in human population has led to the creation of more industries and increase in farming activities. Some of these industries dump waste products in water bodies which make it unfit for human consumption (Navrotsky2013, p 190). Additionally, use of farming chemicals near water catchment areas is also harmful. Polluted water is detrimental to animals which live in water but it is unfortunate that people have entirely forgotten the importance of conserving the environment. In some African countries and India where the population is very high, cases of air and water pollution are very high.

Trees are important natural resources in the world. Forests cover over 31% of the earth’s land surface and this shows that the world would have been an empty space without trees. Among the many roles that forests play are; prevention of soil erosion, balancing air circulation in the atmosphere, and conserving water. However, people continue to cut down trees to satisfy the human demands and this has led to deforestation. Continuous deforestation has led to more severe world problem such as drought and famine (NRDC, 2018).

Due to human activities, it is rare to find animal and plant species that were there some few years ago. Today, people are living and farming in areas that were considered to be specifically inhabitants of wild animals and plants. It is approximated that between 10,000 and 20,000 trees are used for medicinal purposes worldwide (Smith2013, p 107). Some natural places were considered sacred and others were used for recreational purposes. However, these places are continually being exhausted by people as they try to practice modern farming and other activities in order to meet their needs.

Over the last decades, concerns have intensified on the need to preserve the environment and natural resources. However, there are a few challenges that affect environmental management activities and they include ignorance among the citizens, inadequate capital, and lack of government support.

The UN Committee on World Food Security defines food security as a condition whereby people all over the world have access to quality and enough food that meets their daily needs for healthy living. With the current social, economic and environmental challenges that are being experienced in the world today, such as population growth, climate change, and increase in food prizes, achieving the goal of food security by the set deadline of 2030 may be difficult (Unicef.org, 2018).

End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture is the second goal of United Nations millennium development goals. The primary purpose of this goal is to ensure that everyone in the world can afford quality and enough food by 2030. To achieve this, the United Nations aims to use sustainable agriculture through the use of technology and promotion of small-scale farming. This goal mainly targets the developing countries in Africa and Asia whereby people are given equal access to land and through the support of the developed countries, people are introduced to sustainable food production systems. The fight against hunger has been going on for the last 15 years but despite the success of millennium development goal 2, more than 790 million people still lack access to food worldwide. The main cause of this challenge is that hunger is not only caused by food insecurity. Other factors such as political instability, population growth, and economic growth also influence food insecurity (Un.org, 2018). To achieve food security, there can be other means which can even be more important depending on the countries which are affected. For instance, in sub-Saharan Africa, change of diet, crop diversification, and change of income generating activities can significantly help fight hunger and malnutrition in these countries. The goal of hunger eradication through agriculture is partially misleading because continuous farming leads to environmental degradation. Therefore, the best way to fight hunger can be introducing alternative means of getting incomes to people so that they can afford to buy food to feed their families (Fan and Ramirez 2012, p 47).

In almost all human activities, energy is a necessity. Energy makes it possible for people to carry out their activities easily since it defines the existence of people, ecosystems, civilization, and industrialization. Energy can be found in different forms and can be transformed from one form to other using different technologies. People choose the type of energy they want to use depending on the resources that are available for their use. The most common sources of energy that are used are fossil fuels, solar, water, geothermal and biogas fuels. Energy sustainability involves all those activities that aim to provide energy to all people worldwide which will ensure that there will be energy conserved to serve the future generations.

Besides, these activities of energy production aim to use methods that do not degrade the environment using natural sources of energy which do not release harmful gases. With the rapid increase in population growth that is being experienced in the world currently, there is an increase in energy need to satisfy all the people (Briones Alonso, Cockx and Swinnen 2018, p 138). However, with increasing demand for energy, especially in developing countries where industrialization is taking place, the issue of achieving energy sustainability may be a bit challenging. In most of these countries, fossil fuels which are non-renewable sources are still being used as the primary sources of energy. The use of fossil fuels undermines the efforts to achieve sustainable energy since they emit gases that are harmful to the environment. Therefore, to achieve sustainable energy for now and the future generation, there is an emphasis on using non- fossil sources of energy such as biogas which help conserve the environment. Although transition towards sustainable energy has been a success in the most of the developed countries, the majority of the developing countries are still lagging behind. The primary challenge preventing these countries from achieving this milestone is the cost. This is because most of the developing countries and Asia lack capital to finance the installation of solar and wind firms (Hecht and Miller 2010, p 135).

Following the rapid population growth and industrialization in the world for the last few decades, there has been an increase in the waste products in most of the urban centers. The towns and cities have been filled with dirt due to lack of proper cleaning regulations. This has consequently led to the outbreak of health-related diseases like cholera more so in the developing countries. Although waste elimination may not be entirely feasible coming up with ways to dispose and recycle waste materials can help reduce the waste problems (Smith2013, p 97).  

Climate change, also commonly known as global warming is the rise of earth temperature over a long period of time. Evidence from researchers shows that over the last 140 years, the climate system on earth is warming due to factors such as air pollution (Dai 2010, p 46). Global warming is having severe and significant effects on our health, climate, and the environment. So often, people destroy the environment without knowing the harm they are causing. Unless we take the initiative to conserve the environment, through prevention of emission of harmful gases, these effects will continue to intensify and increasingly affect the whole planet (US EPA, 2018). The impact of climate change vary from one region to the other, in some areas, the sea is rising while others are experiencing extreme drought and heat waves. These effects are expected to intensify in future and as a result, the developing countries are likely to be more affected since they mostly depend on the natural environment for survival (Lerner and St. Pierre2009, p 112). Additionally, they lack adequate resources to cope with the climate change which leaves them to depend on the developed countries for donations. Climate change affects not only human life but also plants and animals which are also trying to survive in the changing environment. Many freshwater and marine species are now migrating to new places, as indigenous plants and animals continue to be at risk of extinction.

The impact of political, economic, socio-cultural, environmental and other external influences on the environment

Generally, all human activities affect the environment directly or indirectly. It is the role of any government to preserve the environment through setting laws and regulations for its citizens concerning the environmental conservation (Naudé 2010, p 417). The political settings define how people should practice farming, use water, and plant trees to prevent deforestation and further destruction of the environment. Therefore, environmental management systems largely depend on the political settings of a nation (Chin 2017, p. 514).

Conclusion

In conclusion, the issue of environment is very crucial that need to be addressed to prevent further effects. We all should take environmental conservation as a personal initiative since it affects all of us equally. Although a lot of damage has already occurred, it is not too late to prevent further damage. The developed countries should also try to assist the third world countries in Africa and Asia with resources to cope with climate change. This is because, in case of global warming, it will affect the whole planet and not only the mentioned regions. 

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