Human activity is a major threat to the planet's biodiversity.
“For too long, we’ve been waging a senseless and suicidal war on nature. And it’s time to reset and reevaluate our relationship with nature,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres during the launch of a new UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report that lays out a program to address the climate crisis, biodiversity loss and pollution in an integrated way.
Human population growth thus far has been exponential, meaning that its growth rate stays the same regardless of population size. This makes the population grow faster and faster as it gets larger.
Populations may grow exponentially for some period, but they ultimately reach a carrying capacity when they become limited by resource availability. Humans, however, have continued to work around carrying capacity as they develop new technologies to help support the ever-growing population.
This threatens biodiversity because the more humans there are, the more this displaces other species and reduces species richness.
Some of the human-mediated causes of biodiversity loss include pollution, land- use change, and resource use exploitation and introduced species that humans may unintentionally, or intentionally, introduce into an ecosystem thereby outcompeting native organisms and displace them.
Habitat protection, preservation, and restoration is essential in protecting biodiversity. This ensures that the protected species have places to live that can support them.
Ultimately, saving one habitat can have a cascading effect, and help to protect an entire ecosystem.
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