How Far should Humans go to Protect the Environment?
How Far should Humans go to Protect the Environment?
Human beings have embraced unfolding environmental strategies concerning depleting biodiversity, both locally and globally. An environment is a commonplace where all living things and non-living things meet. However, the environment has undergone rapid degradation over the years caused by pollution. Therefore, to cub such vulnerability, humans have a role in protecting the environment from depletion. As such, human beings worldwide have witnessed challenging societal values depending on technology to alleviate the biodiversity from stress. The need to handle the biodiversity emergency, fundamental to environmental science, has prompted the development worldview, prompting merits to change to guarantee the progress from a development-oriented community to one that recognizes biochemical restrictions zeroed in on the prosperity of people and environmental preservation. Biodiversity assurance strategies center around people and their position on the planet. However, the human species must allow for the protection of all aspects of the environment. Therefore, this paper proposes essential human ethics, technological ideas, and conservation science geared towards sustaining and conserving “Mother Nature.”
According to Martin et al. (2016), environmental science has established improved patterns that aid elemental changes in merits recognizing the biochemical edges of human well-being and biodiversity conservation. Martin et al. (2016) continues to explore conservation science’s role in this modification that poses moral obstacles. The authors argue that economics and conservation can achieve an improved consonance and technology being part of the solution (Martin et al., 2016). However, environmental science has been a progressive pillar; machinery has focused worldwide principles on environmental protection amidst sustainability calamities. Martin et al. (2016) aver that the application of economics and environmental science offers improved compatibility for technology. Even so, the authors contend that technology should be applied as an ’emergency rescue.’ Martin et al. (2016) state that “…. Such a vision would help conservation science replace the pitfalls of techno-fix options by technological literacy, leaving the role of technology for the “emergency room” rather than using it as the default approach.”
Biodiversity conservativeness is an essential factor in protecting ‘Mother Nature,’ and biocentrists focus on moral factors when deciding components related to the environment (Vandenbergh, n.d.). The advocates for anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric agree that conserving nature is a vital goal for all people on earth for the respect of Mother Nature. Conservationists seek to protect endangered species since geographical features, endangered species, or habitats are under environmental stress. Vandenbergh (n.d.), states that;
“Proponents of both non-anthropocentric and anthropocentric stances can acknowledge the value of conservation. The former is due to the fact that either the individual organisms or habitats have value in themselves, while the latter is due to direct effect for human interests or indirect due to human enjoyment and enjoyment of special habitats.”
Seymour (2016) contends that human beings can conserve the environment by creating breeding programs to protect and maintain endangered species like dugong, minimizing greenhouse gases release and deforestation, and establishing habitats such as national parks and game reserves to protect the endangered animals. Seymour (2016) also discusses evolutionary psychology in her exploration of the human-nature relationship. She argues that evolutionary psychology has evolved through time to respond to ecological and social conditions in humanity’s environment. Therefore, such vision provides a meta-theory that settles the ancestral limits of development, personality, social, and cognitive psychology. The ultimate goal of human beings is to observe necessary precautions that facilitate the prevention of disease and protection of environmental health since improper commitment to ‘Mother Nature’ could lead to inauspicious effects such as climate change. She states that “…this has enabled broader understanding of various ways humans are connected to the natural environment…they share commonalities in terms of mutual or conjoint information and active research areas where similarities can occur” (Seymour, 2016).
Environmental justice means equal protection from environmental and public health dangers for all people regardless of sex, age, or gender (Costanza et al., 2017). Environmental justice conference like the Earth Summit in 1992 bestow to the liability and compensation that earth’s natural insufficiency deserve. Such bestowals are essential to separate hazards in the justice system. Precisely, Costanza et al. (2017) states that;
“Although initially, the concept may appear strongly anthropocentric, the types of detrimental effects encompassed within environmental justice include direct harm to humans, indirect detriment caused by damage to the environment, as well as damage to the environment itself (both habitats and inhabitants).”
Environmental justice has strong connections to systems of accomplishing natural conservation and, practically speaking, could incorporate various auxiliary tenets, including polluter pays prudent methodology and best accessible innovation. Although difficulties could emerge while attempting to resolve the issue of environmental justice because of the mind-boggling populace development the battle to give a protected living climate, safe drinking water, and clean air ought to be constant (Costanza et al., 2017).
On the other hand, there exist negative opinions directed towards environmental conservation. For example, in Manitoba, Ontario, timber is significantly reduced in some cases for salvage logging (Vanier et al., 2014). Furthermore, logging in the boreal cordilleran forests of Canada was an activity that the whole community relied on to manufacture wood products. Therefore, it is challenging to inform such populations that environmental conservation is more important than their current financial beings. Also, environmental protection focused on human beings alone is insufficient to cover every aspect of the environment. The National Research Council (2018) states that “This is because baseline and trend monitoring has proved ineffective as they require long-term stability of funding, insulation from political concerns, capacity to synthesis and store data, and an capability to transfer synthesized data repeatedly to users.”
Therefore, considering all the opinions explored in this essay, the environment has to be maintained in a habitable state for animals, plants, and human beings to rely on it and for the ecosystem to support a comfortable stay.
To conclude, human beings must be at the forefront to ensure a healthy environment that can sustain the current and future generations. The environmental factors that we live in daily are determinants of human health. As a result, this concept focuses on human beings to protect the environment and facilitate the employment of strategies such as technology, economics, and conservation science since they offer a theory that the environment ought to be viewed as an asset. Since it appears impossible to decide on the ethical and moral behaviors that could be a framework for achieving this goal, it is essential to incorporate the sense of conserving the ecosystem for humans’ sake.
References
Costanza, R., De Groot, R., Braat, L., Kubiszewski, I., Fioramonti, L., Sutton, P., … & Grasso, M. (2017). Twenty years of ecosystem services: how far have we come and how far do we still need to go?. Ecosystem services, 28, 1-16.
Martin, J. L., Maris, V., & Simberloff, D. S. (2016). The need to respect nature and its limits challenges society and conservation science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(22), 6105-6112.
National Research Council. “Strengths And Weaknesses Of Current Federal Environmental Research Programs.” Research to Protect, Restore, and Manage the Environment. National Academies Press (US), 2018.
Seymour, V. (2016). The human-nature relationship and its impact on health: A critical review. Frontiers in public health, 260.
Vandenbergh, M. P. (n.d.). Order without social norms: How personal norm activation can protect the environment. Nw. UL Rev., 99, 1101.
Venier, L. A., Thompson, I. D., Fleming, R., Malcolm, J., Aubin, I., Trofymow, J. A., … & Brandt, J. P. (2014). Effects of natural resource development on the terrestrial biodiversity of Canadian boreal forests. Environmental reviews, 22(4), 457-490.