Being a typical Nigerian, we are faced with a lot of challenges in our everyday life. The hustle and bustle to survive despite the challenges we face has been a constant trauma. Whenever we hear “we are the source of our problem” trust me, it is so underrated. Nigeria is one of the most populated countries with over a 90million people living in abstract poverty. Due to the high level of poverty, a lot of people are illiterates and are unaware of their actions and how it affects the environment.
FACTORS THAT DRIVE BIODIVERSITY
The major factors that drive biodiversity loss are habitat
change, such as deforestation, overexploitation
of natural resources, pollution; particularly by excessive fertilizer
use leading to excessive levels of nutrients in soil and water, excess emission of harmful gases into the environment from cars, machines, etc.
Recent changes in climate have had significant impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems in certain regions. As climate change becomes more severe, the harmful impacts on the ecosystem have begun to outweigh its possible benefits, such as a longer growing season, in most regions of the world. Climate change is expected to increase the risks of extinction, floods, droughts, population declines, and disease outbreaks. Many drivers affecting biodiversity are stronger today than they were in the past because of how busy and overpopulated our activities of today have been
DEFORESTATION
Deforestation refers to the decrease in forest areas across the world that are lost for other uses such as agricultural croplands, urbanization, or mining activities. An increase in population due to lack of family planning has greatly accelerated deforestation and has negatively affected our natural ecosystem, biodiversity, and climate. Expansion of agriculture caused nearly 80% of deforestation together with the construction of infrastructures such as roads, dams, together with mining activities, and urbanization.
EFFECTS OF DEFORESTATION
Deforestation has a lot of consequences that posed serious problems to the ecosystem. Such problems include;
· It has rendered some rare and fragile species homeless.
Such species such as mammals to birds, insects, amphibians, or plants live in the forest.80% of the earth’s land animals and plants live in the forest. By destroying the forest, human activities are putting the entire ecosystem in danger by creating natural imbalances and putting life at threat. Trees provide shades and colder temperatures for animals. Inability to find such comfort in the forest has resulted in extinction in such endangered species that depends solely on the forest
· It affects local people and their means of livelihood
Some people solely depend on the forest for survival and use them to hunt and gather raw products for their small-scale agriculture processes. However, what happens in our world today is that most bid businesses today get these lands and use them for other ends thereby disrupting local people’s lives.
· If deforestation is not stopped or limited, it may lead to food insecurity in the nearest future.
· Deforestation also weakens and degrades the soil,
· This will affects and contributes to climate change
OVEREXPLOITATION
Overexploitation or overfishing is the removal of marine living resources to levels that are too low for sustaining a viable population. This will eventually lead to resource depletion and put a lot of threatened and endangered sea species at risk of extinction. The disappearance of habitants of habitats is essential for flora and fauna and therefore, the extinction of species.
AIR POLLUTION FROM CARS AND OTHER MACHINES
Due to overpopulation, the use of cars and other types of machinery has become so rampant, and this has increased the emission of toxic gas into the environment. The emission of carbon monoxide has a huge impact on the environment. When carbon monoxide is emitted into the atmosphere, it affects the number of greenhouse gases that are linked to climate changes and global warming. These gases emitted by factories and vehicles can also cause acid rain that will in turn harm the forest. This means land and sea temperature increases changing ecosystems. Other causes that influences biodiversity are;
The use of chlorofluorocarbons as propellants in aerosol sprays can damage the ozone layer with potentially serious consequences for human well-being, advertisement boards along highways can spoil natural landscapes; the countryside may be littered with beer cans and plastic wrappings; oil spills can destroy animal life and make farming impossible; dumping of industrial residues and garbage into the sea or rivers can make them useless for swimming and other recreational activities and destroy fish life. The list of possible problems is very long. These problems have gained very special prominence during the last fifty years. An important reason for this is that as the scale of economic activity has increased, its potentially harmful side effects on the environment have also grown, often more than proportionately.
CONCLUSION
It is very important to be aware of the dangers of our actions and how they would affect the ecosystem. Implementation of laws that governs a lot of these actions should be encouraged. Encouraging family planning should be adopted to reduce the likely occurrence of overpopulation.
GIFTED