Fundamentally we all depend on nature; and ecosystems provide us with the opportunity to describe, understand, and fit in with nature. Food, water, timber, and genetic resources; regulating services such as the climate, floods, diseases, and water quality; cultural services such as recreation, aesthetic enjoyment, and spiritual fulfillment are some of the goods and services provided by ecosystems. Due to increased development activities and greater consumption of natural resources, ecosystems are under pressures than ever before.
Today, human activities have such an impact on ecosystems that the impact of human activities on the Earth’s atmospheric, biospheric, geologic and hydrologic systems is causing climate change and related disasters, while triggering the loss of biodiversity, etc. We can see all these changes everywhere including Sri Lanka which is ranked as one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change impact in the world.
How do natural ecosystems work?
Natural ecosystems are balanced systems. This means the interactions between the different organisms that make up an ecosystem contribute to a certain stability. For example, in grassland ecosystems in Sri Lanka, spotted deer consume grass, but also feed the soil with their droppings, which allows the grass to grow back and creates some sort of balance. Still, this doesn’t mean an ecosystem, even a healthy one, is static. In reality, ecosystems are constantly evolving as they are based on dynamic natural processes that are constantly changing.
What is an ecosystem?
The simplest definition of an ecosystem is that it is a community or group of living organisms that live in and interact with each other in a specific environment. For instance, tropical forests are ecosystems made up of living beings such as trees, plants, animals, insects and micro-organisms that are in constant interaction between themselves and that are affected by other physical factors like the sun and temperature, or chemical components such as oxygen and nutrients.
We won’t have a society if we destroy the environment
Margaret Mead
Environment is no one’s property to destroy; it’s everyone’s responsibility to protect
Mohith Agadi
We don’t have to sacrifice a strong economy for a healthy environment
Dennis Weaver
A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people
Franklin D. Roosevelt
What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?
Henry David Thoreau
Saving our planet, lifting people out of poverty, advancing economic growth… these are one and the same fight. We must connect the dots between climate change, water scarcity, energy shortages, global health, food security and women’s empowerment. Solutions to one problem must be solutions for all
Ban Ki-moon
If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos
E. O. Wilson
What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another
Chris Maser
Our planet’s alarm is going off, and it is time to wake up and take action!
Leonardo DiCaprio
To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed
Theodore Roosevelt
Sooner or later, we will have to recognise that the Earth has rights, too, to live without pollution. What mankind must know is that human beings cannot live without Mother Earth, but the planet can live without humans
Evo Morales
Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed
Mahatma Gandhi
It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment
Ansel Adams
The most important thing about global warming is this. Whether humans are responsible for the bulk of climate change is going to be left to the scientists, but it’s all of our responsibility to leave this planet in better shape for the future generations than we found it
Mike Huckabee
The only way forward, if we are going to improve the quality of the environment, is to get everybody involved
