Why environmental protection is important

Central to the design of the National Environmental Legacy Act Legacy Act or Act is the collection of baseline data about natural resources, the definition of the nature and quality of the environmental legacy to be preserved, and ongoing monitoring to ensure preservation of the desired legacy.

None of these are simple tasks, and they have been made infinitely more complicated by the accelerated pace of anthropogenic change, which has resulted in both shifting and already-shifted baselines. The pitfall of shifting baselines is that environmental degradation often goes unrecognized by successive generations, which may not appreciate the degraded state of what they perceive as a pristine and functional ecosystem.

The shifting-baselines phenomenon poses several major challenges to designing an effective Legacy Act. First, if we fail to consider historical environmental conditions and set conservation goals based on already-shifted baselines, we may constrain — even doom — the resource legacy we seek to transfer. Second, resource management decisions that fail to address gradual environmental change may subtly shift baselines, diminish the environmental legacy, and eventually push ecosystems to the brink.

Finally, accelerated anthropogenic change ensures that some baselines will shift irreversibly, and in some cases, new, transformed ecosystems will emerge and stabilize within foreseeable generations. Failure to understand and address these challenges in ways more sophisticated than the traditional metrics of species counts, acreage amounts, and pollutant levels could doom Legacy Act.

To preserve the options available to future generations, an effective legacy act must consider the legacy of ecological functions, processes, services, and their interactions, as well as the ability of ecosystems to absorb and adapt to change.

Over the past four decades, environmental law has evolved into a legal system of statutes, regulations, guidelines, requirements, policies, and case-specific judicial and administrative interpretations that address a wide-ranging set of environmental issues and concerns [6]. These laws and requirements address not only the natural environment, including the air, water, and land, but also how humans interact with that natural environment and ecological systems.

In addition, this system of environmental laws involves multiple layers of regulatory controls, since not only the federal government, but also state and local levels of government, have imposed interrelated and sometimes overlapping environmental requirements. This legal system is complex in itself and is made even more challenging by the difficulty of the interdisciplinary subject matter to be regulated health, safety, and environment and the quickly evolving scientific and technical issues typically presented in environmental cases.

Environmental laws and policies are predominantly goal-oriented [7]. Standards, principles and procedures for the protection of the environment are often instrumental to achieve, say, the conservation of fragile ecosystems and endangered species, the preservation of fresh water and other natural resources, the restoration of contaminated soils as well as the stratospheric ozone layer, and the protection of human health.

This goal oriented feature is evident in national as well as international law. It is apparent also when legal approaches to managing environmental problems are compared with economic or market-based instruments, such as emission trading, environmental taxes and voluntary agreements and codes of conduct. National statutes and international treaties, standards, instruments and procedures are assessed with these underlying objectives in mind, and mainly analyzed in terms of effectiveness and achievability of the set objectives.

Even sustainable development, as an overarching societal objective with obvious environmental connotations, reflects this goal-oriented conception of environmental law and policy. Yet, environmental law also involves priorities, conflicts and clashes of interests — and concerns for justice and fairness. In fact, any drafting, negotiation, adoption, application and enforcement of environmental laws—indeed comprehending environmental law in general—induces justice considerations, i.

Although well established concepts in environmental law, whether based on custom or statutes, appear neutral on their face, a closer study, or simply placing them in a context, may reveal disproportionate burdening or restricting effects for certain groups or categories when these concepts are applied.

It may also show how certain interests or subjects are ignored or demeaned. Such concerns are indeed raised in local as well as global contexts, and they also include structural issues, such as gender, class, ethnicity and — on a global scale — North—South relations. International environmental law is notoriously uncertain in relation to the normative content of its norms [8].

There are many factors which contribute to this state of affairs, one of them, for example, being the method of international law making, which in many cases is based on the principle of the balancing of the interests of all interested parties, such as the management and apportionment of rights in relation to international watercourses and the responsibility of States for environmental damage, which relies to a certain degree on this principle.

Other factors, which play a significant role in environmental norm-setting, are the competing interests and differentiation in the legal position of developed and developing States, i.

Policy makers responding to these demands increasingly understand that environmental protection must be addressed in a holistic and expansive manner [9]. Local problems cannot be separated from national, regional, or even global conditions. As a result, the interface of domestic both national and local and international environmental law has rapidly expanded. Such an evolution corresponds to the physical reality of a biosphere composed of interdependent elements that do not recognize political boundaries and the increasingly transnational character of the human activities that harm nature and its processes.

Internationalization of markets and the emergence of a global civil society present new opportunities as well as new challenges. Overconsumption threatens to exhaust living and nonliving resources, whereas rising greenhouse gas emissions detrimentally modify the global climate. New problems resulting from technology and changes in the nature or scope of human activities are constantly being identified, such as the introduction of unprocessed endocrine-disrupting pharmaceuticals into fresh water.

As a consequence, there is a constant need to develop and revise the national and international legal framework. The geographic scope of environmental law is global, but so are its interdisciplinary requirements. Beyond such obvious topics as water law and endangered species legislation, laws and policies concerning energy, trade, investment, transportation, and consumer protection also affect environmental conditions. At the center of the problems, impacts, and solutions are individuals with rights guaranteed by national and international law.

The relevance of economics for the evaluation and design of environmental policy has numerous dimensions [10]. Some relate to the basis for environmental decision making, e. First, environmental resources, amenities, and quality have economic value.

Second, while markets are useful in providing society with goods and services in general, there are serious market imperfections what some describe as market failures that justify government intervention to protect the environment. If we all do our part, and work towards reducing our negative environmental impact, we will benefit ourselves.

This would allow us to rebuild a healthy relationship with nature. A cleaner environment would also reduce the health problems humans face, including lungs diseases, heart attacks, infections, and cancer caused by the pollutants existing in our environment.

Content Creators. Why It's Important to Protect our Environment. Recent Posts See All. Post not marked as liked. It provides humanity with food and shelter, among numerous other things contributing to human survival. However, it also provides for the existence of the plant and animal worlds. Therefore, it is important to protect and conserve our natural resources including air, water, and forest in order to maintain the overall health of our environment as all these resources are at some risk today.

Water has become increasingly short in supply as the human population soars. An abundant of safe, clean water is a necessary for all life.

By protecting rivers and their related ecosystems as well as searching for new sources of water, even in the form of preserving trees in the jungle and rocks in the rivers, we can assure ourselves of a substantial supply of this crucial substance in the future while still protecting important fish and wildlife habitat.

We are aware of the natural disasters that are occurring such as landslides, soil erosion and floods but more seriousness is the short supply of water. Why, are all these things happening? We are not taking up our duty. We are not looking after the beautiful creation of God. Together, let us save our land and our people. Man made global warming is the biggest scam in the history of mankind to fulfil his greediness with the uncontrolled excessive use of fossil fuels.

Nuclear exploration and unnecessary excessive use of artificial goods with the advent of the standard of living. They act as guidance for judges and decision-makers, giving laws shape and meaning. Environmental sustainability is the responsibility to conserve natural resources and protect global ecosystems to support health and wellbeing, now and in the future. However, it actually refers to four distinct areas: human, social, economic and environmental — known as the four pillars of sustainability.

Human sustainability aims to maintain and improve the human capital in society. One of the major goals of environmental science is to understand and to solve environmental problems.

In order to accomplish this goal, scientists study two main types of interactions between humans and their environment. One area of focus is on how we use natural resources, such as water and plants. The field of environmental science can be divided into three main goals, which are to learn how the natural world works, to understand how we as humans interact with the environment, and also to determine how we affect the environment. The goal of environmental education is to develop a world population that is aware of, and concerned about, the environmental and its associated problems, and which has the knowledge, skills, attitudes, motivations and commitment to work individually and collectively towards solutions of current problems and the ….

Humans impact the physical environment in many ways: overpopulation, pollution, burning fossil fuels, and deforestation. Changes like these have triggered climate change, soil erosion, poor air quality, and undrinkable water.

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Ben Davis May 5,