The term “environment” refers to the surroundings and the influence surroundings have on living things.
Surroundings include the living and the nonliving things.
Thus environment includes land, water, atmosphere, and living things.
In the environment, human beings are taken to be the center because they influence the environment and in turn it influences them.
Simply environment includes everything surrounding us including ourselves.
THE COMPONENTS OF ENVIRONMENT
Our environment is often divided into three components.
These are the physical, the living, and the cultural environment.
- The Physical Environment It consist of air, water, soil and rocks.
- The living Part of the Environment; The second component is the habitat which is the home of living things (all living things). The habitat provide conditions necessary for life to prosper. The various creatures depend on each other for survival E.g. animals depends on plants for foods, plants depends on insect for pollination and dispersal.
- The Cultural Environment. The cultural or human environment is unique for two ways
- People are part of the living environment
People are capable of influencing each and every other part of the environment
- Homes, industries, ports, transport and communication
- Their capability for agriculture
- Their capability to conserve or destroy the environment.
THE ENVIRONMENT AS A SYSTEM
The environment is made up of independent components and processes, hence what is part of the environment can relate to something else. The destruction of one of these mean damaging a lot of others E.g. If we destroy a forest;
- We destroy habitats for so many other creatures.
- We are destroying natural cycles which involve the production or consumption of gases for sustaining life.
Therefore we should note that the environment is a big system of parts, in which none can work alone.
The environment is important for the following aspects.
- General life support
- The environment contains ingredients essential for live, health and human welfare
- Supply of raw materials and energy necessary for production and consumption.
- Absorption of the waste products of the social and economic activities. This absorption is done through air, soil or water.
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS AND MANAGEMENT.
Environment problems refer to the issue of harmful processes which are introduced or natural occurrences to the environment and make it unsafe for the users.
Environment management: Refer to the solution of controlling or conserving or caring for the environment for the future use.
The main environmental problems facing the environment are,
- Pollution, these includes Air, Water, Soil, and Noise pollution
- Environment hazards which include, Floods, Drought, Desertification, Famine and loss of Biodiversity both plants and animal (flora and fauna)
- Global warming
- Global climatic change.
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