Challenges of protecting the environment - Essay Example

This is because, the protection of the environment must come at the expense of normal way of life, considering that the normal way of life for the people, other than the environmentalists, is defined by going about their business, with little regard to how their activities will impact on their environment. Therefore, for example, a farmer goes about his normal business of farming and breeding animals with the aim of ensuring the high productivity of his crops and animals. In this respect, the farmer must use a variety of pesticides and insecticides to protect the crops and animals against the adverse effects of diseases and pests that damages crops and causes illnesses to the animals, eventually lowering productivity.

While doing this, the farmer is less conscious of the effects the pesticides and the insecticides are going to have on the environment, until the adverse effects starts appearing inform of the hens brooding but producing no chicks, the inability to raise any pigs because the “young ones survived only a few days”, as well as lack of pollination and fruits, coupled with “browned and withered vegetation as though swept by fire “(29). Further, lack of understanding and insight in regards to who is the true owner of the environment and its space is another major challenge to the protection of the environment.

Before human enlightenment, the land and other natural resources belonged to the plants and animals, and man only occupied a small space of the entire environment, with plants and animals occupying the rest of the space. However, after the human enlightenment, “we put houses here and barns there. And then we went nuts, building garden condos with pools and office complexes with parking garages” (Quindlen, 34). The fact that humans have refused to understand it is the plants and animals that rightfully own the whole space, while humans are just meant to occupy a fraction of it as it was in the