If we talk about environmental problem, most people think of deforestation, polluted water, or air pollution, which impact living condition of people in society. Solution to these problems are campaigns promoting no backyard burning, replacement planting, or instilling conscience in youth to participate in various forms of environmental conservation, which focus on the problem and solution but overlooking the main reason for these environmental problems.
Main reasons for environmental problems;
- Increasing Population
The main reason for environmental problem is human’s actvity. Increasing population also means higher demand for resources such as shelter, land for agriculture, mineral, energy source, water, and food. When available resources are not sufficient, the environment is destroyed to meet the demands, which are fundamental factors for living.
- Economic Expansion
Economic expansion creates problem of unsustainable resource utilization because economic growth causes living standard to change. For example, increase in demand of facilities for oneself. Currently, you can see that each family may have many cars to meet the demand of family members, which resulted in environmental impacts such as air pollution, noise pollution, vibration. As well as other demands that cause environmental impact due to no replacement after exhausted such as deforestation, water resource utilization, and others.
- Technological Advancement
Advanced technology promotes easier resource utilization. There are also modern agricultural tools relating to production such as application of chemical fertilizer and insecticide leaving residue that may disperse into water source causing polluted water problem that is difficult to solve.
- Natural Disaster
Some of environmental problems due to natural disasters such as forest fire, flood, earthquake, volcanic eruption are caused by human.
From the main reasons of environmental problem, we can see that most of them are impacts from human’s actvity, whether it is increasing population, economic growth, technological advancement, and environmental problem due to natural disaster, which some are also due to human’s activity. Therefore, to find solution for environmental problems, apart from using various methods, preventing the problem by focusing on human’s activity is also important method that should be done in parallel.