“Nature strongly matters to me”
How many people would sign this sentence? Well, some people would, but probably not everyone. More than 54% of the world’s population lives in an urban environment and by 2050 it will already be more than 66%. These people live far away from nature, they eat food that grew on agricultural fields far from cities and they wear clothes that are made from plastic. One doesn’t even have to live in a big city to part away from nature. In this modern world nature has lost its meaning and importance for the human kind. We are grown up. We don’t need nature anymore. This sentence probably hurts every conservationist, but it is how a lot of people feel today and it is what makes nature conservation so difficult. But nature is still very important for all of us.
Nature matters for everyone, regardless of the place where they live, the food they eat or the clothes they wear. Nature is everything and everything is nature. Without nature, none of us would exist. It’s because we highly depend on it and we are a part of it.
With every breath you take, you inhale oxygen. Ever thought about where this oxygen comes from? It doesn’t magically appear. Oxygen is produced by nature, more precisely, oxygen comes from plants, algae and sometimes bacteria which use water and carbon dioxide to synthesize sugar. In the process, the plants release oxygen as a waste product and thereby keep us humans breathing. About half of the world’s oxygen comes from phytoplankton, tiny organisms living in the water of our oceans. The other half is produced by plants on land. By trees, ferns, grasses and everything that is green. Without these photoautotrophs or “light eaters” which is how organisms that do photosynthesis are called, humans and most other species would have never been able to develop and wouldn’t be able to survive in the future. To say it shortly, plants and more widely nature is the base of human life on earth.
But nature does not only provide us with the air that we breath, even though this is by far the most important feature, it provides us with so much more. Let’s look at what we eat. Most of our food comes from agricultural fields and out of stables, which are domesticated and human-influence nature. This nature on land provide us with our daily food. In addition, each year more than 80 million tons of fish are captured out of the oceans and more than 11 million tons from inland waters. What we eat is not the only service we get from nature.
Another important service we receive from nature is pollination. Ever wondered why the strawberries or cucumbers you are eating exists? They exist because the flowers of the plant that produced it, were pollinated by a pollinator. A pollinator can be every animal visiting different flowers to collect pollen and play the intermediate between flowers love. The most famous one is probably the honeybee, but also mammals, spiders, ants, birds and even lizards can be pollinators. All these pollinators are part of nature. The vegetables and fruits we eat might grow on agricultural fields which are built by humans but without pollination, we could never harvest vegetables and fruits.
Besides oxygen and food, is there more that nature provides us with? Yes, there is much more. Nature does not only provide us with what we need to exist, it also gives us what we need to survive: protection. Coral reefs and mangroves protect coasts from erosion caused by high tides and storms. In times of a changing climate and increasing numbers of extreme weather events coastal protection becomes more and more important. In this case, nature protects the land that many people live on. In a different way, plants can protect humankind against diseases as they are the main ingredients of medicines. Medicines based on substances from marine animals like sponges and tunicates were found to efficiently heal tumours. Nature can clearly save our life.
As you can see, nature is so much more than the tree in your garden. It’s the air we breathe, the food we eat, the air we breathe, the barriers protecting us, the drugs healing us.
Even in a big city you’ll find nature. Nature is the butterfly that visits your balcony, the bird that nests under your roof and the little flower that grows next to a big street. Nature and green areas are highly appreciated by people living in cities. People can peacefully appreciate the peacefulness of greeneries and rest away from the city high pace.
For all these reasons, everyone should care about protecting nature. And they should protect it quickly, because wildlife is disappearing very quickly. Coral reefs are endangered due to climate change, rain forests are burning to give room to crops, bees and other pollinators are the victims of pesticides and fishes are taken out of the ocean. All this destruction to provide enough resources for an increasing population hungry of consuming and make money.
The truth is that without nature, human kind does not have a future on this planet. We have to handle nature with respect and use it in a decent and sustainable way. Otherwise we won’t be able to provide anyone with resources in the future because we just won’t have any resources anymore. This is why nature matters for everyone and why we have to keep it alive, just like nature keeps us alive.
