How to Conserve? Assessing Impact of Climate Change and Practicing Sustainability

Last Updated: January 01, 2023

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The natural resources are deteriorated and depleted, natural landscapes are destroyed and this has acted as the wake-up call for the human civilization to incorporate effective nature conservation practices. While the world is facing the alarming consequences of climate change, only various conservation efforts play a pivotal role in protecting, managing and conserving environment to make our Earth habitable.

Constant human intervention, increasing population, development projects, human-environment interaction leads to environmental degradation. The environment replenishes its resources at their own constant rate but when the exploitation of resources is at faster pace than its replenishment, this often has irreversible and extreme effects on environment leading to its resources depletion.

Climate Change

Climate change is one of most prominent concern of today’s world. The rise in temperature, increasing sea level, melting of ice, extreme weather events like drought, floods, irregular rainfalls have various impacts on the environment as well as human beings. The climate crisis that our planet is facing is real and disastrous.

The burning of fossil fuels, high rate of deforestation, emission of Green House Gases, rapid industrialization, pollution etc are major causes hastening the impacts of climate change. The more quicker the climate change takes place, the tedious and expensive is its adaptation process.

Impacts of Climate Change

Climate change has undeniably created huge impact on the environment around us. The rise in temperature, species extinction, prolonged droughts, incidence of wildfires, irregular rainfall, melting of glaciers and more health risks are some of the prominent impact of climate change that has caused imbalance in the ecosystem.

The existence and survival of different plants and animals is affected by the climatic conditions around them and their habitat. While all the other species are affected, humans also face the same magnitude and scale of climate crisis. It has affected people’s livelihood, exacerbated different health risks and hindered their economic growth.

Conservation and climate change

Increasing concern and understanding of human civilization on the adverse climate change effects and its future consequences has greatly influenced conservation efforts all over the world. The changes governed by climate change has led to the introduction of new planning and conservation approaches.

Leading conservation while keeping the impacts of climate change in check has been a recent focus of the countries for smooth operation of environmental conservation. Climate actions and climate-smart conservation has been on the major focus in order to conserve environment whilst addressing current climate change threats and limiting the green house gases emission in the environment. 

Nature Conservation

Nature conservation involves the protection of natural resources from its depletion and degradation through the wise and sustainable use of these resources. Conservation of nature plays a vital role for  maintaining ecological balance. Nature is the basis of existence of humans on earth as humans depend on nature for its all its necessities like food, air, shelter, water and other resources.

Nature conservation is mainly focused on the conservation efforts of the natural resources like air, water, fuels and variety of species, their habitat from causes like deforestation, over harvesting, exploitation of natural resources and climate change in order to maintain the diversity of nature and create a world where people and nature live in harmony with each other.

Purpose of Nature Conservation

The major purpose of nature conservation is to ensure the longevity of different natural resources, wildlife and humans in earth. Conservation efforts helps to achieve sustainability, build a healthy and resilient environment and slows down the detrimental effects of human civilization growth, deforestation, global warming as well as mitigating effects of climate change.

Natural resources

Natural resources like air, water, soil, varieties of  flora and fauna, coal, oil, forests, minerals etc. are found in our planet. They are classified into two types as Exhaustible and Non-exhaustible natural resources. Exhaustible natural resources are those which are finite and can be exhausted from the planet by its over use and consumption like fossil fuels, minerals whereas inexhaustible resources are those resources which are not limited  and cannot be used up completely like air, sunlight.

Conservation of Natural resources

The exploitation and depletion of the natural resources are at its peak due to unsustainable and over-consumption of these resources by humans, thus creating a huge impact and scarcity in the biodiversity. Conservation of these natural resources is a must so that they are available for the use and consumption for future generations.

Thus, conservation of natural resources is possible by minimizing the use of non- exhaustible resources, discovering and using alternative sources of fossil fuels, protection of soil, water and air quality, maximizing the use of renewable resources, reducing, re-using and recycling of the natural resources.

Conservation of Water

Water is the vital resource for sustaining life of plants, animals, humans and regulating hydrological cycle in the nature. The contamination and inefficient of use of water resources leads to its scarcity and increased wastage. Thus water conservation can be carried out by reducing water pollution, rain water harvesting, rational ground water use and reducing use of water resources.

Conservation of Energy

Energy conservation refers to the use of renewable forms of energy like wind and solar energy and promoting the use of alternative sources of energy. Fossil fuels, coals, minerals are exhaustible in nature thus the shift to clean energy sources helps in conservation of energy as well as reduce the green house gases emission thus benefiting the climate change mitigation measures.

Sustainability

Sustainability is a long-term goal whose main focus is the wise and responsible use of the resources by present generation and making sure the resources availability for future generations to satiate their needs. Sustainability is an approach followed in order to improve the earth’s natural environment and human’s quality of life.

Climate Change and practicing sustainability

Climate change is one of the major challenge in the way to practice sustainability. Climate change results in loss of habitats of different species, loss in biodiversity, degraded water and air quality thus making it difficult to achieve sustainability. In order to practice sustainability, different climate actions needs to be incorporated to address the major impacts of climate change.

The failure of implementing climate action is the great risk for hindering the development of the countries. Emissions of GHG is majorly contributed by developed countries which is major cause of climate change. But developing countries are more vulnerable to climate crisis and less able to adapt to changing climates thus hindering their development process.

However, practicing sustainability is also a measure to build the resilient communities able to cope with the climate risks and reduce their vulnerability to climate change impacts. Sustainability also requires the reduction in the carbon footprint and proper policies integrated at national level to address major climate change issues.

Conclusion: How to Conserve? Action Against Climate Change

Earth is the only habitable planet and it is our major concern to protect the earth’s environment, maintain its ecological biodiversity, address its major environmental issues and combat the climate crisis our planet is facing. Life of human beings apart from the natural environment is impossible. Thus, conservation and preservation of the nature is very crucial.

Conservation efforts in order to balance the nature and human population reflects the basis for the environmental sustainability. Thus, the major practices to conserve environment and practice sustainability involves taking necessary climate actions, use of alternative source of energy, maximizing use of renewable resources, practicing people led conservation and follow the principle of 3Rs- Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.