There has been a lot of debate going around the world that indicates that humans are affecting the environment in a negative way but there are many studies and researches now coming to light that indicate that ecosystem alteration is also going to affect the human health in the future which will risk the lives of millions of people around the world.
Samuel Myers, a research scientist in the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard School of Public Health and colleagues in the HEAL consortium propose a new environmental health framework that focuses on the health effects of ecosystem alteration. The new research study will help in providing critical scientific evidence to inform policymaking in land use and conservation and public health.
Source by : .hsph
The new perspective paper was published in November 2013 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It was said that human activity is affecting all the Earth’s natural systems and that is altering the planet’s land cover, rivers and oceans, climate and the full range of complex ecological relationships and biogeochemical cycles that have long sustained life on Earth. These changes and their effects put in question the ability of the planet to provide for a human population that now exceeds 7 billion and along with exponentially growing demand for goods and services. The paper also claims that there are drastic changes that humans have made on the planet like cutting down roughly half of all the temperate and tropical forests and converting half of ice or desert free land for crops and farm animals.
