NATURE UNDER ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS
Yes, significant destruction of nature is primarily driven by
industrialization, urbanization, and resource consumption associated with
economic growth. Activities like mining, deforestation, and fossil fuel
combustion have caused major habitat loss and climate change, with natural
capital falling by 40% per capita since 1992.
Economic Development on Nature:
Resource Depletion: Increased industrial output relies on extracting
non-renewable resources, leading to habitat fragmentation and overfishing.
Pollution and Climate Change: Industrialization increases pollution, such
as high air pollution levels reducing lifespan, and fuels greenhouse gas
emissions leading to global warming.
Land Use Change: Roughly 70% of Earth's land surface has been altered by
human activity, with massive biodiversity loss due to agricultural
expansion and urban development.
Biodiversity Loss: Current extinction rates are 100 to 1,000 times higher
than the natural baseline, largely driven by human economic activity.
However, the relationship is complex; while early-stage development causes
significant degradation, higher incomes and technology (e.g., green
technology) can eventually allow for better environmental protection and
mitigation.
2 From extinctions to deforestation, humanity is paying the ultimate
price for allowing the global economy to undervalue nature and natural
resources.
Not only has the world been underinvesting in protecting biodiversity for
too long, but many economic activities are also actively damaging it,
something which should be considered wholesale theft of valuable shared
assets.
The destruction of nature defrauds countries and society, jeopardizing the
resources that currently generate around half of global GDP, or an
estimated US$44 trillion. The impact of losing wild pollinators, marine
fisheries, and timber from tropical forests – just a fraction of ecosystem
services – could reduce global GDP by an estimated $2.7 trillion annually
by 2030.
The economics of our current relationship with nature is bleak. The seminal
Dasgupta report on the economics of biodiversity found that our demands on
nature now exceed nature’s capacity to supply them, putting biodiversity
under huge pressure, and future generations at "extreme risk".
To maximize deterrents against abusing nature and recognize its costly
consequences, countries must urgently outlaw the destruction and
degradation of nature. Prosecuting the theft of natural capital as we would
any other financial crime would force a global rethink in how nature is
valued, grounded in legal and economic accountability that acknowledges
healthy ecosystems as a cornerstone of our collective well-being.
As a starting point, the definition of natural asset classes, such as land,
must be expanded in to include ecosystem services beyond the “owner” of the
land asset to capture its wider impact on all stakeholders. Considering
nature – and all its diverse ecosystem services that fall under an
organization’s responsible management – an asset class alongside real
estate, cash, bonds, and equity would help embed environmental degradation
and biodiversity loss as a material risk to businesses and investments.
"The destruction of nature defrauds countries and society, jeopardizing the
resources that currently generate around half of global GDP, or an
estimated US$44 trillion."
At the same time, it would position nature as an appreciating asset if
protected and sustainably managed. Legal interests, if extended beyond the
“owner” of the land, could include all parties with an interest in the
preservation of its value, including future generations.
Doing so would hold those causing harm to higher account and increase the
legal incentives for protecting nature. Incorporating nature fully as an
asset class would also send clear signals that investing in environmental
preservation is not a trade-off but rather a source of new and sustainable
benefits that result from protecting critical natural resources into the
future. Unlocking such incentives could therefore play a fundamental role
in achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, including
reducing poverty and protecting life on land and below water.
Such a shift is starting to take place. The UN General Assembly voted
positively on a resolution to see an Advisory Opinion from the
International Criminal Court of Justice (ICJ) on countries’ obligations to
address climate change signals consequences for inaction, and bolder
climate action.
Last year, the human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment
was formally recognized by the UN General Assembly (UNGA), raising
expectations of governments and businesses alike to respect, protect and
fulfil this right. The European Union is now considering proposals to fine
companies at least 10 percent of their turnover and ban them from accessing
public funding for environmental crimes like pollution from shipping. These
initiatives are coherent with a draft Directive on Corporate Sustainability
set to be adopted this year, which will make human rights and environmental
due diligence mandatory, and introduce civil liabilities for non-compliant
large companies operating in the 27 member states.
The fight against wildlife poaching has also come a long way. Previously
deterred often by only meagre fines, illegal poaching is now increasingly
linked to and prosecuted as a crime of illegal trafficking and subject to
far wider and more serious legal deterrents, including imprisonment.
A number of initiatives and mechanisms are emerging to increasingly educate
decision-makers about the responsibilities and liabilities they have to the
planet’s natural resources. For example, the Taskforce on Nature-related
Financial Disclosures (TNFD) is developing a framework to enable companies
to gauge – and report on – their business impact and dependency on nature,
thereby elucidating nature-related financial risks.
The fight against wildlife crime has progressed, with poaching is now
increasingly linked to and prosecuted as a crime of illegal trafficking and
subject to more serious penalties.
Meanwhile, other movements are continuing to create momentum towards a
revaluation of nature and the risks of its destruction. The Stop Ecocide
Foundation is engaging with intergovernmental processes towards making the
wanton destruction of nature at a long-term, widespread scale an
international crime.
Movements to advocate for nature’s right to exist, thrive, and regenerate
could have a myriad of positive impacts to slow biodiversity loss across
the world. For example, campaigners are calling for the North Sea to be
given legal rights to force consideration of the impact of off-shore oil
rigs and wind farms on climate change and biodiversity loss. Multiple
countries around the world have already started to take steps in this
direction in their legal recognition of the rights of nature.
The UN Development Programme (UNDP), through its BIOFIN initiative, is also
working with more than 40 countries to develop national biodiversity
finance plans, offering 150 viable mechanisms from which governments can
choose to protect and invest in nature without economic trade-offs. This
includes repurposing nature-harming subsidies to incentivize
nature-positive initiatives with greater equity.
Efforts towards greater accountability are in progress, but a unified push
is needed from governments, global agencies, civil society, and non-profits
to transform the value we place on nature–and shift our perception of the
cost of its damage. Material, enforceable liability for the theft or
destruction of our natural assets can be a significant lever for change in
favour of a sustainable future on a healthy planet. {{UNDP}}
3 Scientists assert that human activity has pushed the earth into a
sixth mass extinction event. The loss of biodiversity has been attributed
in particular to human overpopulation, continued human population growth
and overconsumption of natural resources by the world's wealthy. A 2020
report by the World Wildlife Fund found that human activity – specifically
overconsumption, population growth and intensive farming – has destroyed
68% of vertebrate wildlife since 1970. The Global Assessment Report on
Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, published by the United Nation's IPBES
in 2019, posits that roughly one million species of plants and animals face
extinction from anthropogenic causes, such as expanding human land use for
industrial agriculture and livestock rearing, along with overfishing.
Since the establishment of agriculture over 11,000 years ago, humans have
altered roughly 70% of the Earth's land surface, with the global biomass of
vegetation being reduced by half, and terrestrial animal communities seeing
a decline in biodiversity greater than 20% on average. A 2021 study says
that just 3% of the planet's terrestrial surface is ecologically and
faunally intact, meaning areas with healthy populations of native animal
species and little to no human footprint. Many of these intact ecosystems
were in areas inhabited by indigenous peoples. With 3.2 billion people
affected globally, degradation affects over 30% of the world's land area
and 40% of land in developing countries.
The implications of these losses for human livelihoods and wellbeing have
raised serious concerns. With regard to the agriculture sector for example,
The State of the World's Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture, published
by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in 2019,
states that "countries report that many species that contribute to vital
ecosystem services, including pollinators, the natural enemies of pests,
soil organisms and wild food species, are in decline as a consequence of
the destruction and degradation of habitats, overexploitation, pollution
and other threats" and that "key ecosystems that deliver numerous services
essential to food and agriculture, including supply of freshwater,
protection against hazards and provision of habitat for species such as
fish and pollinators, are declining."
Women's livelihoods, health, food and nutrition security, access to water
and energy, and coping abilities are all disproportionately affected by
environmental degradation. Environmental pressures and shocks, particularly
in rural areas, force women to deal with the aftermath, greatly increasing
their load of unpaid care work. Also, as limited natural resources grow
even scarcer due to climate change, women and girls must also walk further
to collect food, water or firewood, which heightens their risk of being
subjected to gender-based violence. This implies, for example, longer
journeys to get primary necessities and greater exposure to the risks of
human trafficking, rape, and sexual violence.
Ethiopia's move to fill the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam's reservoir
could reduce Nile flows by as much as 25% and devastate Egyptian farmlands.
One major component of environmental degradation is the depletion of the
resource of fresh water on Earth. Approximately only 2.5% of all of the
water on Earth is fresh water, with the rest being salt water. 69% of fresh
water is frozen in ice caps located on Antarctica and Greenland, so only
30% of the 2.5% of fresh water is available for consumption. Fresh water is
an exceptionally important resource, since life on Earth is ultimately
dependent on it. Water transports nutrients, minerals and chemicals within
the biosphere to all forms of life, sustains both plants and animals, and
molds the surface of the Earth with transportation and deposition of
materials.The current top three uses of fresh water account for 95% of its
consumption; approximately 85% is used for irrigation of farmland, golf
courses, and parks, 6% is used for domestic purposes such as indoor bathing
uses and outdoor garden and lawn use, and 4% is used for industrial
purposes such as processing, washing, and cooling in manufacturing centers.
Industrial and domestic sewage, pesticides, fertilizers, plankton blooms,
silt, oils, chemical residues, radioactive material, and other pollutants
are some of the most frequent water pollutants. These have a huge negative
impact on the water and can cause degradation in various levels.
Transpiration from plants can be affected by a rise in atmospheric CO2,
which can decrease their use of water, but can also raise their use of
water from possible increases of leaf area. Temperature rise can reduce the
snow season in the winter and increase the intensity of the melting snow
leading to peak runoff of this, affecting soil moisture, flood and drought
risks, and storage capacities depending on the area
Warmer winter temperatures cause a decrease in snowpack, which can result
in diminished water resources during summer. This is especially important
at mid-latitudes and in mountain regions that depend on glacial runoff to
replenish their river systems and groundwater supplies, making these areas
increasingly vulnerable to water shortages over time; an increase in
temperature will initially result in a rapid rise in water melting from
glaciers in the summer, followed by a retreat in glaciers and a decrease in
the melt and consequently the water supply every year as the size of these
glaciers get smaller and smaller.
Thermal expansion of water and increased melting of oceanic glaciers from
an increase in temperature gives way to a rise in sea level. This can
affect the freshwater supply to coastal areas as well. As river mouths and
deltas with higher salinity get pushed further inland, an intrusion of
saltwater results in an increase of salinity in reservoirs and aquifers.
Sea-level rise may also consequently be caused by a depletion of
groundwater, as climate change can affect the hydrologic cycle in a number
of ways. Uneven distributions of increased temperatures and increased
precipitation around the globe results in water surpluses and deficits, but
a global decrease in groundwater suggests a rise in sea level, even after
meltwater and thermal expansion were accounted for, which can provide
positive feedback to the problems sea-level rise causes to fresh-water
supply.
A rise in air temperature results in a rise in water temperature, which is
also very significant in water degradation as the water would become more
susceptible to bacterial growth. An increase in water temperature can also
affect ecosystems greatly because of a species' sensitivity to temperature,
and also by inducing changes in a body of water's self-purification system
from decreased amounts of dissolved oxygen in the water due to rises in
temperature.
4 While economic activities cannot be stopped as needs of growth,
one play can be to enforce the destroyers to retain and develop the nature
,by sharing in high percentage as expenses, towards the upliftments of
nature.
K Rajaram IRS LET BYGONE BE BEGONE; LET ARAVALLI AT LEAST BE PROTECTED AS
ABOVE 201225
On Sat, 20 Dec 2025 at 06:28, Markendeya Yeddanapudi <
[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
> --
> *Mar*
>
> Nature under Economic Attack
>
>
>
> Economics is the deadly war against nature. The human is dehumanized or
> monsterized, by creating the mechanized and feelings-less phantom, the
> economic man. The economic man has repudiated his membership in the
> Biosphere. He tries to behave like a machine following the Newtonian or
> Classical Physics. The fatal assault on nature is continuing all the 24
> hours of every day.
>
> The economic man mechanizes and commercializes every facet of life. The
> emotional bond with nature, the basic feature of the Biosphere, is lost for
> the human. He deliberately practices indifference, to the fact, that every
> economic activity harms and destroys nature. As a result the Biosphere is
> no longer the Ecosphere governed by Ecology, whose links are mainly
> emotional. Economics has taken license even to destroy the billions of
> geological processes of earth.
>
> I have not read the Judgment of the Supreme Court about the Aravalli
> Mountains. Does the Judgment really say that the first 100 meters of the
> Billion and Billion years old Aravalli is not part of the Aravalli? Every
> Mountain occupies the largest area at the ground level, while it tapers
> with height. If the base is licensed for economic destruction, my God the
> whole eco system of rivers, waterfalls, lakes, the diverse flora and fauna,
> the very monsoon rainfall system of Geography, are sentenced to death. What
> is the meaning of Bharatmata, when you destroy her with economics?
>
> Unfortunately the deadly tentacles of economics are increasing
> geometrically every day. We need to change the basic paradigm base of
> economics. It must be changed into the non Cartesian and emotional ecology.
> Actually education needs freedom from Rene Descartes.
>
> A life form is not a mechanical form. It is a form of emotions and
> feelings and like every life form, its basic feature is emotional
> communication and emotional bonding. The paradigmatic connecting base of
> perception and understanding of every life form is living earth and not the
> diseased and patient earth.
>
> Every life form must be studied as an emotional form with feelings and not
> as an engineering construction for economic resourcing.
>
> It will not be long, when nature imposes sanity on us with its violent
> remedies. The survivors of the violent remedies will be forced to realize
> and note the appalling paradigms of education which governed the human life.
>
> We and the other life forms are not machines. The life forms of the
> Biosphere are connected emotionally and symbiotically. They are not at war
> with each other and are not Darwining each other. Most important, we have
> to realize that science has taken to the perversion of killing nature.
> Understanding has to be feelings based and not mechanics based. The basic
> assumption of science that one must adopt the position of outsider of
> nature to know facts mechanically to be scientific must end. Intelligence
> must be emotional intelligence and not Cartesian intelligence. The genes
> are not selfish. They create emotional coordination resulting in the
> hormonal communications in the bloodstream that continuously enliven the
> cells.
>
> We are connected to nature by hundreds of connections. They function
> emotionally and cannot function mechanically.
>
> We have to pray for the emergence of a University that unchains itself
> from the mechanical paradigm. We need many Universities that study the
> emotional paradigmatic bases of understanding of every life form. Every
> subject must be reformed. Its mechanical base must be removed.
>
> The new paradigm must be that electromagnetism leads to consciousness and
> that consciousness leads to emotions. When we are fundamentally composed of
> atoms which consist of protons or the units of positive electricity and
> electrons, the units of negative electricity which create the photons that
> energize us with emotions, why should the study of electromagnetism refrain
> from the next step,Consciousness,emotions etc?
>
> YM Sarma
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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