Deforestation contributes to environmental problems around the world.
Environmental problems around the world are caused by exploding population growth, poverty, the wasteful use of natural resources, poor environmental accounting and ecological ignorance. These five categories are useful ways of understanding the causes. For example, once you understand that the world's population is growing at an unsustainable rate, you can understand the connection between the population and the resources required of the Earth to sustain the population.
Population Growth
Population growth is one of the most significant causes of environmental problems. Humans require energy, space and resources to survive. According to the Clean Water Action Council, population growth is the biggest threat to the environment. The human population is rising beyond the Earth's ability to regenerate. Population growth leads to scarce sources of water in places around the world, along with scarce cropland, declining fisheries and forests and species extinction.
Poverty
Poverty is a significant cause of environmental problems. Poor nations often engage in land resource stripping just to "survive or pay off debts," according to the website Global Issues. For example, deforestation leads to increasingly devastated land. Forests in these nations are damaged exponentially because timber companies, agricultural businesses and local populations use forest resources for survival.
Wasteful Use of Resources
The practice of wasting valuable resources by human beings contributes to environmental problems. For example, leaving lights on when you are away from home unnecessarily uses energy. Many environmental preservationists recommend switching to fluorescent lighting, as opposed to incandescent lighting. Incandescent lights are considered inefficient, as 10 percent of the electricity results in light. The rest results in heat.
Poor Environmental Accounting
Environmental accounting is the accounting for "any costs and benefits that arise from changes to a firm's products or processes, where the change also involves a change in environmental impacts," according to James Boyd, author of "The Benefits of Improved Environmental Accounting: An Economic Framework to Identify Priorities." When a business manufactures a product, for example, it often uses raw material that comes from the natural environment. Poor accounting results when businesses do not fully measure and understand the environmental damage done during the course of business. Improved accounting helps businesses understand the impact of their work on the environment.
Ecological Ignorance
The fifth cause of environmental problems is ecological ignorance, or the failure to understand the effects of human behavior on the relationship between the environment and living things. A simple example is deforestation. Humans beings, plants and animals rely on the oxygen produced by forests for survival. Deforestation is an example of ecological ignorance when a logging company, for example, destroy trees without understanding the real world impact on living beings in the area.
