Question

An evidence on topic how our dependence on nature changed

Answer 1

As the global human population continues to grow, so too does our impact on the environment. The ingenuity with which our species has harnessed natural resources to fulfill our needs is dazzling. Even as we tighten our grip on the environment, however, the escalating extent of anthropogenic actions destabilizes long-standing ecological balances (1, 2). The dangers of mining, refining, and fossil fuel consumption now extend beyond occupational or proximate risks to global climate change (3). Among a plethora of environmental problems, extreme climate events are intensifying (4, 5). Storms, droughts, and floods cause direct destruction, but also have pervasive repercussions on food security, infectious disease transmission, and economic stability that take their toll for many years. For example, within weeks of the catastrophic wind and flood damage from the 2016 Hurricane Matthew in Haiti, there was a dramatic surge in cholera, among other devastating repercussions (6, 7). In a world where 1% of the population possesses 50% of the wealth (8), those worst affected by extreme climatic events and the aftermath are also the least able to rebound.

Compounding the impact of natural disasters, our progressively more intimate interactions with fragmented environments (9) have given rise to an era of disease emergence and re-emergence at unprecedented rates, as exemplified by recent outbreaks of the Ebola and Zika viruses. Furthermore, globalization to an extent that includes the airline travel of over eight million people every day has enabled such disease outbreaks to disseminate rapidly and pose a threat far beyond their areas of origin (10). Addressing these challenges requires an understanding of coupled human–environment dynamics, whereby human activity modifies an environmental system (often detrimentally), and the resulting environmental repercussions then impact humans. In turn, these impacts can potentially spur a shift in human activity toward protection and restoration. For example, Lubchenco et al. (11) describe how overfishing has led to plummeting species diversity and abundance in ocean ecosystems. Recognizing these untenable practices, steps were taken to incentivize sustainable consumption that achieved the rebound of fish populations. Human–environment systems are not just complex and coupled, but also adaptive, in that human response to calamities can help restore environmental sustainability (12, 13). Sustainable and equitable solutions are required to address the interconnected challenges of protecting the health of the natural environment and protecting the health of human populations. Determining solutions that optimize trade-offs between short-term and long-term objectives of resource consumption and sustainability requires analyses of the multilayered interconnectedness of environmental, social, epidemiological, and political systems.

This collection of papers builds on recent momentum in the development and implementation of transdisciplinary collaborations that simultaneously consider human, nonhuman, and environmental health and the nonlinear relationships between them. The studies illustrate myriad applications of cross-sectoral approaches in coupled human–environment systems to solve public health and environmental conundrums. They underscore the importance of complex ecological interactions for these issues, as well as advance methodologies to integrate the complexity of human–environmental systems into analyses that underlie effective solutions.