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Nature can be defined as everything excluding man-made things that surround us including trees, plants, animals, the environment and everything that is not man-made. Everything that is provided to us by natural means is included in nature. Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. It ranges in scale from the subatomic elements to the cosmic products. Nature plays an important role in human life and provides us with some essential elements of life such as food, water, air etc. Today nature is classified in a broad sense of geology as well as wildlife around us. Nature also includes natural environment or wilderness–wild animals, rocks, forest, beaches, and in general things that have not been substantially altered by human intervention, or which persist despite human intervention i.e. human has no role in its existence in a simple manner.
The word nature is derived from the Latin word "Natura", or "essential qualities, innate disposition", and in ancient times, literally meant "birth". Natura was a Latin translation of the Greek word physis, which originally related to the intrinsic characteristics that plants, animals, and other features of the world that development of their own accord. A lot of things surrounding humans are included in nature. Within the various uses of the word today, "nature" often refers to geology and wildlife. Nature may refer to the general realm of various types of living plants and animals, and in some cases to the processes associated with inanimate objects – the way that particular types of things exist and change of their own accord, such as the weather and geology of the Earth, and the matter and energy of which all these things are composed.
Development can be defined as the systematic use of science and technology to meet specific human demands and objectives and also includes in the process of adding improvement and up gradation to the existing sources. The world’s need for food, water, energy and minerals is growing day by day because of growing population and human greed. These demands combined with population growth, unchecked development and climate change are putting even more pressure on the natural environment. To meet our future needs, we have to make smarter decisions now about how we protect, manage, and develop our lands and waters.
Development is a natural phenomenon, even nature supports the development and every natural thing develops. Humans develop from a child to a grown man, small plants develop into big trees and so on, and the basic idea is that nature is not opposed to the developmental process, in fact in the favour of development provided the developmental process is carried out at a sustained level without harming other resources. Today humans have explored much of the available natural area in place our mountains, deserts, plains, oceans and rivers for the developmental purpose and constantly carrying out activities like mining, infrastructure development, building and cutting forests which poses a great threat to our natural environment. Nature supports development but not at the cost of other resources, today human is recklessly depleting all the resources to carry out developmental process and there is an urgent need have a check on these activities before it gets too late.
Nature and development are two different branches but still linked to each other very closely. Our every developmental process is closely linked to our natural environment. Development and the environment have traditionally been managed separately, but from past few years, researchers are constantly working out on how these both can be reconciled to increase prosperity and protect the planet at the same time. Development and nature have traditionally been handled by separate academic disciplines, separate government agencies, and separate laws and policies but rapid developmental activities in the past few years and constant degradation of our natural environment have forced to find out a solution to carry out the developmental process in such a manner that it doesn’t hamper our nature.
Development planners always assume that the natural assets that development depends upon are in-exhaustible and will always be there for use on the other hand conservationists are often preoccupied with minimizing the negative impacts of development on nature or putting it off-limits to people. Hence there was felt a need to combine both the aspects to find a neutral way out so that there is a considerable amount of development without compromising on our nature.
It has been witnessed that the economic development often goes forward at the expense of nature’s ability to provide people with goods and services. Twenty per cent of the forest area worldwide has been deforested by loggers, farmers, and ranchers, which are posing a great threat to the capacity of the lungs of our planet. It is getting really difficult to recycle carbon dioxide into oxygen, clean our air, and regulate regional and global climate. Major rivers these days are facing environmental challenges such as water pollution and toxic-laden sentiments due to rapid industrialization and their unchecked disposing of their waste into rivers and this, in turn, jeopardize recreation activities for humans. Several other activities like mining, cutting of forest, burning of fuels etc. are posing a great threat to our environment and also leading to pollution and depletion of the natural resources.
With the rapid process of development, we are neglecting the harmful effects of our activities on nature. In order to increase profits a lot of industrialists are neglecting various environmental laws and are only concerned with making their profits. The need of the hour is to practice some nature-friendly techniques so that developmental process carries on without compromising our natural environment. Citizen's long-term vision and multi-generational values have created a high quality of life and livability in the towns that is remarkably unique and beautiful. But the matter of concern is that our region is changing. Due to rapid development and a lot of people moving from rural to urban area, this has created a lot of rush in major cities as result the cities are coming up with new residents every day which is leading to axing of trees and overutilization of natural resources thus increasing pressure on natural areas, wildlife habitat, clean rivers, and streams. There is a major need to find out innovative ways to balance development and growth with conservation and livability.
Not only increasing urbanization poses a threat to our environment, but rapid industrialization is yet another major issue. Industries often discharge various waste in the form of smoke which is generally toxic in nature from their chimneys and also discharges their fluid waste into the rivers which are again toxic in nature and pollutes our river sources. Government have made policies for these industries to treat their waste but in order to maximize their profits these people neglect these laws and go on polluting the environment. There is a need to strictly adhere to these laws and concerned authorities should keep a regular check on the compliance of the laws and penalize those who are not following these laws and repeated defaulters should be banned from carrying on with their process.
People need to be made aware of the harmful effects of degrading the environment and should be encouraged to adopt environment-friendly techniques. Using nature-friendly development practices protects our natural assets as we grow by reducing the harmful impact of development on natural our resources. Also called green or low impact development, nature-friendly development practices help to maintain the pace of environment without compromising the nature.
It is very important to adopt nature-friendly practices to conserve the natural systems and hydrologic resources. It is very important to maintain our environment and it is the duty of each and every human to perform his duty towards environment protection. Our environment provides us with clean and fresh air, water, food and fruits etc. so it becomes our duty to act as its saviour. We all can contribute towards saving our nature in one way or the other, at the community level as well as personal level. Some ways include:
Conclusion
Global climate is changing and, at the same time, our natural assets are dwindling. These two trends are on a collision course and it is high time to wake up. Our nature is providing us with major needs for sustenance and in turn, polluting and depleting it is unfair. It is our social duty to act towards conserving our nature and natural resources. Economic development often goes forward at the expense of nature’s ability to provide people with goods and services but we have to find a way to strike a balance between the two. Nature is not opposed to development if carried out in a systematic manner. Need today is to realize that degrading our natural environment is our own loss and find ways to carry out the developmental process without harming our nature. It is important to make decisions that could change the way we develop important natural areas, and the nature conservancy has to develop the science to enable governments, companies, and communities to use and share space, protect natural areas, improve resource management, and invest more wisely for a sustainable future.
