In recent years, there has been a significant decline in the diversity of plant and animal species across numerous countries. What are the potential causes of this issue? How can we mitigate it?
Attributes of the problem
- Denuding the planet is leading to habitat loss
- Industrial agriculture
- Industry set up
- Logging
- Creating housing and other activities
- Overexploitation and poaching
- Pollution and climate change
Panacea
- Sustainable development policy:
- use of green fuels/ ecofriendly farming techniques
- Recycling
- Strong environmental laws
- Espousing innovative methods: vertical farming/ cities
- Earmaking areas for wildlife and circumscribing any human intervention there
- Proscribing poaching and sale of banned animal parts, and using punitive methods to discourage such acts
- Create awareness among people about the ramifications of such a loss
The shrinking variety of flora and fauna has become a pressing concern for contemporary society. This can be attributed to several reasons, making it imperative to discover plausible mechanisms to surmount this jeopardizing challenge.
This catastrophic trend majorly is driven by the greed for economic progress, precipitating reckless abuse of nature - denuding of the planet to accommodate farming, factories, residential areas, and amenities, among others - and consequently, destroying micro-habitats and food chains. This disrupts local ecologies, causing disappearance of endemic plants and animals, and invasion by pioneer species of both. To corroborate, Amazon is a prominent example of this pattern, where indiscriminate deforestation is being carried in the name of development, which is pushing exotic plants and wildlife into extinction, only to be replaced by artificially-introduced species.
Moreover, the indiscriminate use of chemically-synthesized fertilizers and insecticides in agriculture, coupled with rampant emissions from industry, households and transporting is engendering distortions in climatic patterns, and global warming, turning environment incompatible for almost all forms of life, pushing many into extinction and prompting destruction of heterogeneity of living beings - affecting versatility of food chain, except humans.
It is critical to surmount this complication before it wreaks havoc. Although immediate panacea may not be available, prioritising concepts like vertical farming and vertical cities could pave way for not only rewilding of green buffers, reinvigorating wildlife but also mitigate predicaments, like rising global temperatures and pollution, facing the environment. Likewise, creating sanctuaries for animals and vegetation and circumscribing human intervention in those locations could help restore biodiversity to a great extent.
To recap, the hunger for rapid development has forced manipulation of the ecology, benefiting mankind but proving detrimental for other organisms and affecting their variety, but prudent steps involving innovative concepts can help resolve this imbroglio.
