There are few major environmental issues that people all over world worry about. Here below is information about each environmental issues:
- Climate change: Climate change means long-term changes in temperature and weather patterns, most of which are caused by humann actions like burning fossil fuels, cutting down trees and making things in factory. It causes world’s temperature to rise, ice caps to melt, sea levels to rise, extreme weather happens and ecosystems are upset. Climate change cause by human actions lead to greenhouse gas emission, especialy carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). The burning of fossil fuels to make energy, move people and goods and run factories is a big cause.
- Deforestation: Deforestation is a factor since trees take in CO2 and give off air. Climate change causes world temperatures to rise, which has effect, like rise in sea level, more frequent and stronger extreme weather eventts (such as hurricanes, droughts and heatwaves), changes to ecosystems and biodiversity and changes in how much food we can grow. It is clearing and removing of trees for variety of reasons, like farming, logging and building cities. It leads to loss of habitat and species and more greenhouse gases also soil erosion. It is also caused by other factors, like growth of farmland (like cattle ranching and large-scale soy and palm oil plantations), logging for wood and growth of cities. It destroys and breaks up forest environments, which means that plant and animal species no longer have a place to live. Deforestation makes climate change worse because trees store carbon and when they are cut down, they release CO2 into air. It also changes the way water moves around in area, causing soil erosion and makes natural resources and environmental services less available.
- Loss of Biodiversity: Loss of biodiversity is when number and types of plant and animal species in an environment go down. The things that cause it are ecosystem loss, pollution, climate changee, overfishing and invasive species. Losing biodiversity has big effects on environment, economy and society. Biodiversity is range of genes, species and ecosystems that make up life on Earth. The rate of biodiversity loss has sped up due to things like habitat damage, pollution, climate change, overuse of natural resources and introduction of invasive species. The loss has big effects on ecosystems because each species is important for keeping things in order and making sure they work. The loss of variety makes ecosystems less stable, breaks food chains, affects pollination and spread of seeds and hurts people’s health by making it harder for them to get to natural resources and possible sources of medicine.
- Pollution: Pollution comes in many forms, air pollution (cause by car emissions, industrial processes and burning of fossil fuels), water pollution (caused by industrial discharged, agricultural runoff and improper waste disposal) and soil pollution (cause by chemical contaminants). Pollution hurts people’s health, environment and variety of life on Earth. It happens when harmful chemicals are put into environment, which hurts living things and ecosystems.
- Air pollution comes from burning of fossil fuels, industrial emissions and car exhaust. It causes respiratory diseases, smog and changes to the climate. Water pollution happens when things like chemicals, heavy metals and untreated sewage get into water bodies and hurt marine life, lower the quality of water and put people’s health at risk. Soil pollution can be caused by use of pesticides, disposal of industrial waste and mining. This can hurt agricultural output and health of ecosystems.
- Water Scarcity: Scarcity of water happens when amount of water needed in an area is more than what is available. It is caused by things like growing population, too much consumption, pollution and changes in temperature. When there isn’t enough water, it hurts farmland, industry and people’s health, this lead to conflicts and social unrest in places. When more people want water than there is available, there is water shortage. It is caused by things like growing population, wasteful ways of using water, pollution and changes in way rain and snow fall due to climate change. When there isn’t enough water, farmland, industry and communities all suffer. This leads to lower crop yields, economic losses and fights over water. In some places, there no enough water available, which makes it hard for people to get clean drinking water and use toilets.
- Overpopulation: Overpopulation is when there are more people living in certain place than environment can support. It puts stress on natural resources, destroys habitats, makes waste worse and makes more people want food, water and energy. It happens when number of people in certain place is greater than what environment can support. Rapid population growth puts strain on land, water and energy supplies. It causes habitat loss, pollution, deforestation and competition for scarce resources. Overpopulation can make poverty, lack of food and social unrest worse.
- Land Degradation: Land degradation is when quality and output of land gets worse because of things people do, like cutting down trees, overgrazing, bad farming practises and building cities. It makes deserts, cause land erosion making farm less productive. It is loss of quality and usefulness of land, which often caused by people. Land pollution is caused by cutting down trees, overgrazing, bad farming methods (like using too many chemical fertilizers and pesticides), urbanization and mining. It causes soil erosion, desertification (when fertile land turns into a desert), loss of soil nutrient and less food production. Degrading land affects food security, biodiversity and way of life of people who live off land.
- Waste Management: Improper waste management, like using wrong recycling and disposal methods, leads to pollution, contaminated land and water and destruction of habitats. Hazardous materials and lack of recycle acilities make it hard to deal with the growing amount of electronic waste.
Pollution and degradation of environment are caused by how trash is handled. Plastics, electronic trash and dangerous materials can pollute soil, water and ecosystems if they are not recycled enough or thrown away in wrong way. The growing amount of electrical waste is problem because it has toxic parts and there isn’t a good system for recycling it. Effective waste management includes recycling, composting and safe ways to get rid of trash that are easy on the earth.
To solve environmental problems, people all over the world need to work together on things like sustainable development, energy conservation, use renewable energy, reduce pollution and promote environment friendly laws and way of living.
All of these environmental problems are link and solving them will require a comprehensive plan that includes sustainable development, conservation, policy changes, technology advances and individual and group actions to promote environmental stewardship.
