The natural environment is a combination of elements of natural origin surrounding various living organisms and determining the conditions of their existence. The theoretical basis for the study and protection of the human environment is ecology. This subject is included in the list of compulsory schools.
The natural environment is the home for all life on earth
Now a whole system of measures is functioning, aimed at ensuring harmonious interaction, guaranteeing the conservation, reproduction and rational use of resources.
They often talk about the protection of natural resources of the environment. This narrower concept is more often focused on preserving a person’s habitat and improving its quality. Caring for the human environment is understandable: as a biological species, it needs a certain quality of abiotic factors, and how a heterotrophic creature depends on the biotic component of ecosystems.
In turn, it has a greater impact on its habitat than other organisms. It intensified as the number of people increased. The development of civilization has also led to negative consequences.
Planet of people
The weakening of man's dependence on the environment gave rise to the illusion of the endless wealth of nature and the impunity of saturating it with the waste of his life. Conscious of himself as the “king of nature” and the “crown of creation”, he constantly violated environmental laws that act objectively, regardless of his will.
The increase in the scale of violations caused the negative consequences of anthropogenic impacts, and when it became obvious, people realized that the natural environment is what needs to be protected.
The main principle of using resources
This is not to say that the idea of conserving natural resources is something new. On the contrary, even before our era there were situations when forests, game animals, and other resources were taken under protection. True, the previous environmental protection measures were local in nature and could in no way be regarded as the emergence of a nature conservation system. Even in the first half of the 20th century, when the need for nature conservation was already recognized by scientists, the situation did not change.
Only in the 60-70s of the twentieth century, people realized that the main principle of conservation of nature and the use of resources should be compliance with environmental laws. It was at this time that there was an increase in public interest in the ecosystem approach and recognition of the leading role of living matter in the biosphere.
Resource Approach
There is no doubt that the formed belief in the correctness of the Vernadsky biosphere concept, enriched by a systematic approach to environmental facilities, played a decisive role in this. However, today we are not ready to solve the problems of nature conservation at this level, therefore, a resource-based approach is being implemented in practice.
Usually, resources are understood as natural formations that are used by a living organism (in this case, a person) to carry out its life activities.
Inexhaustible and exhaustible wealth
Resources can be divided into two types. Inexhaustible resources include solar radiation, the internal energy of the Earth, the strength of the tides. Among inexhaustible resources there are those that are subject to anthropogenic impact. These are climatic resources determined by geophysical processes in the atmosphere.
However, in the middle of the XX century. people began to influence them (changes in heat transfer, gas composition, etc.), and, therefore, on climate.This group includes water resources, which people also have an impact on: redistribution of water on the surface of the planet, change in its physical and chemical properties. As you can see, even in cases where the quantitative indicators of these resources on a global scale do not cause alarm, their quality and local distribution require human control.
Exhaustible resources include those that are either not able to recover, or do it extremely slowly. In particular, these are minerals and substances that emerged as a product of the activity of organisms of past geological eras - coal and oil. These are non-renewable resources that cannot arise in the modern era, since the environmental conditions on the planet have changed, so they require economical use.
A large group of resources is renewable. These are some of the biomineral substances - peat, sapropel. The basis of this group is all biotic resources. When using them, the speed of their reproduction should be taken into account.
Of course, such a classification is relative, and renewable resources can be destroyed. This happened with some species of plants and animals that have now disappeared from the face of the Earth as a result of human extermination.
The combination of global and regional approaches
It should be remembered that all components of the natural environment surrounding a person are interconnected, therefore, only an integrated approach can bring success. Another important principle is the combination of global and regional approaches to environmental issues.
This is due to the scale of human economic activity, with the fundamental need to change the direction of economic development, to make it sustainable, while observing environmental laws. On this basis, specific environmental management problems at the state level should be addressed.
Regulatory framework
The state of the environment and natural resources largely depends on the organization of their use. The regulation is based on legislation and other regulatory acts. At the international level, multilateral agreements operate in which the states that have signed these documents participate. Examples include the UN Convention on Climate Change, the Convention on Biological Diversity, created in 1992 and signed by representatives of 179 states. These documents address global environmental issues.
There are many regional agreements aimed at protecting nature. The countries of the Baltic Sea region have signed the "Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment". It takes into account the geography, hydrology and economic characteristics of the region. Marine natural environment is the habitat and life of plants and animals, which is why it also needs protection.
Russia has signed bilateral agreements on the nature of the North with Canada, the United States of America, and Finland. At the international level, the issue of the need to develop international environmental laws is increasingly being raised. This path is promising, since the borders between states do not coincide with the natural ones, and all natural processes take place regardless of the will of the people.