Poverty and Its Effects in the Environment

Jesse | Published on Aug 26, 2009

With all the emergence of the state-of-the-art information and communication technologies (ICTs) such as cellular phones and high-speed computers, I highly believe that people around the world are somewhat already aware enough of the environmental havocs that are happening nowadays. I believe that they already know what they ought to do and that, what they should do is to take actions to prevent, if not to stop, these phenomena. However, if this is what I believe in, how come we don’t experience a great restoration of our Mother Earth until now? Stated otherwise, how come it is the other way around? Without surrendering my belief, I must say that there is something that hinders humankind in their moves to recondition their only home in the vastness of the universe. That something, without a doubt, is but poverty…the main suspect that greatly affects the environment.

Poverty is termed as deprivation, or a lack of access to food, shelter and safe drinking water. It is the state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of support. It is then the state of being poor, the lack of the means of providing material needs or comforts. With these definitions, we can say that poverty is the insufficiency of human’s basic needs (which include money) as well as his/her needs for contentment. We may then imply that in a situation where insufficiency of resources is present, people tend to do things that they don’t normally do for subsistence. In the long run, these “non-normal” things would possibly become usual if not be averted so soon.

In relation to reality, these “non-normal” things that became normal are the harmful steps that we do to nature. Activities such as logging and construction of deadly waste-producing factories are the best examples of these. They became as usual as they are for the reason that humans depend on them too much. Humans believe these things would bring them lots of bucks in their pockets for sustaining their basic needs. They believe its products would lead them to a new world full of ease and coziness. Yes, what they believed in fortunately became true. But in spite of this, even though they realize the fact that as they head towards what they deem to be a utopia, they are gradually being pulled down to hell at the same time, they don’t mind it and continue to do as if nothing had threatened their very existence. They disregard that what they do bear a lot of negativities. They disregard the fact that logging would lead to the alarming loss of flora and fauna which may become cures for certain diseases such as the AIDS which is incurable so far. They ignore that the factories they build would pollute the rivers and groundwater which would eventually result to the shortage of potable water. They just think of ways and means to get themselves away of the poverty they are presently experiencing.

On the other hand, excessive hunting, using of inorganic pesticides, burning of forests, dynamite fishing and the like, bear possibilities of becoming normal if intensively patronized. These are somehow the results as well of poverty and the things that greatly shape our environment in a distorted figure. If humans would continue doing these acts for the reason that these are the lone solutions of uplifting their social statuses, then the world would turn into its ugliest form. Extinction of plant and animal species would happen, soils, air and water would be severely contaminated, and global warming would be a serious threat to each and every one of us.

Stating these points would let us conclude that poverty is the root of the prime activities that cause detriment to the environment. It has been the greatest contributor of our nature’s deterioration and the agent that terribly distracts the once quiet and harmonious cycles of Mother Earth. It seems like in our attempt to heal the wounds of our natural world, the first step to take must be the “evaporation” of poverty. That is the heart of all harm; hence, it must be the one to be shut down first. However, knowing the fact that our natural resources are limited and that we, human beings are competitive in nature, striving to satisfy ourselves, this easy-to-say solution is undeniably an impossible-to-do thing.