Biodiversity vs. human population growth

The continued increase in human population is having negative effect on our planet's biodiversity. The equation is pretty simple - more people need more space to build houses and industries and this means reduced habitats for many plant and animal species.

Habitat loss due to increase in human population is not the only reason for the ongoing biodiversity loss. People are also the main factor behind other environmental issues that have direct impact on biodiversity loss such as climate change, pollution and deforestation.

Human population growth wouldn't have been accompanied with such big biodiversity loss if people were to care more about our environment, and our planet in general. We take everything for granted and this is really our biggest problem.

People forget that we cannot survive without animals and plants and that the nature has created this perfect mechanism of dependence among all species in our planet. To nature every species count (from smallest to biggest), to humans not so much. We believe everything exists only to serve our needs and this is the attitude that could get us in serious trouble.

People need to become much more aware of the current environmental issues, they need to realize that our environment is degrading rapidly, and that we cannot survive all alone, without ecosystems rich with plants and animals.

Biodiversity loss cannot be stopped without the appropriate action on global level, and for action on global level to take place we first need to ensure the unity of this world. Sadly, world leaders only seem to be united when there is economy on line, and environmental issues are still way down on their political agenda. Just take a look at climate talks that have so far resulted in one big nothing in terms of contributing to global decrease in greenhouse gas emissions.

Animals and plants need more protected areas where they can live in peace without human interference. This will be hard to achieve given the constant growth in human population but this task is by no means impossible. But in order to achieve this some things will have to change, more precisely we’ll have to develop global environmental conscience.

The value of clean, healthy environment rich with many animal and plant species is priceless and the sooner we realize this the better because our future wellbeing heavily depends on it.