Why is conservation of Natural Resources important?
Natural resources are the resources which are present in our environment in the renewable or non-renewable forms and which helps in fulfilling the human needs. There are different natural resources such as; forests, water, air, fossil fuels like coal, diesel, petrol, sunlight, rivers, oceans, wildlife, minerals, nutrients, land masses etc. These can be classified into renewable & non-renewable resources or biotic and abiotic resources. But today these resources are depleting due to the human greediness and over-consumption of natural resources. Natural resources are getting extinct due to the large scale construction of industries and housing units on the nature areas which are fulfilled with so many natural resources. Also setting up of mining industries & forest produce based factories in the forest land is leading to a large-scale depletion of natural resources. Natural resources like the water of rivers, lakes & oceans are getting polluted by the contamination of harmful wastes from the factories established at riverbanks which add harmful chemicals & effluents in the fresh river water leading towards depletion of oceans & lakes connected with that river. Natural resource of soil or land is getting depleted due to the soil erosion by water or wind agents which dominate because of human industrial activities of development in wild areas. Most of the minerals & nutrient resources are also on the edge of extinction due to excessive exploitation of these minerals by humans from the earth’s core by mining processes. Fossil fuels like those of natural gas, petroleum, coal & fuels like diesel or petrol etc. also have a threat of becoming less due to over-exploitation of these fossil fuels & due to increasing number of vehicles day by day which run with these fuels.
Conservation of natural resources is very much important for us so that their quantity should remain constant & they should be available for future use by our next generations. Also, natural resources should be conserved to look after the sustainable rate of development throughout the world otherwise the natural resource rich regions would take the huge lead against the resource-poor regions or from regions with less number of natural resources. Conservation of natural resources is also important as some of the natural resources like those of fossil fuels & fresh water are of limited quantity or they are of non-renewable nature i.e. they cannot be regenerated if once they get used up. For example coal, petrol, diesel etc. are the non-renewable resources which if once get used up cannot be regenerated because they take millions of years for development. Also, the natural resources are present over the earth in very limited quantities, so we have to use them in conservation manner but not in a commercial manner. Also, the conservation of natural resources would decrease the pressure on biodiversity & on different ecosystems of living organisms based on these natural resources. Depletion of natural resources at these high rates will lead to the death of many wildlife species & vegetation as they cannot sustain their life without the natural resources & get extinct. If the natural resources are consumed with the same depleting rates than there is a huge shortage of these in near future & our future generations will blame us for this depletion of natural resources. By conserving the natural resources we not only conserve wildlife & ecosystems but also conserve our future needs & generations. By conservation of natural resources like forest masses, we can also save our earth from various forest-related hazards such as deforestation, global warming, soil or land erosion, global climate change etc. Someone has said rightly that, “nature has everything to fulfil human needs but do not have anything to fulfil human greed”. In the end, it can be said that conservation of natural resources is the grass root level problem & if it is cured than many other environmental problems would be solved ultimately.
