Quality of Life on Earth

Based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, our basic needs to survive include natural resources such as materials, water, energy and fertile land. But rapid growth of population on earth consume too much of these resources that resulted into serious damage. Among the damages that we have done to our mother earth includes changing of climate, shrinkage of fresh water reserves, fish stocks and forests as well as destroys of fertile land and extinction of species.

Many of these problems that might harm mankind’s survival on earth are results of mankind’s own actions such as increasing consumption of energy, water and raw materials, increasing production of waste and emissions and increasing usage of land. If we want to continue to survive on this planet, we should make a change to our lifestyles, by finding a sustainable way to continue living our lives without hurting the earth so that our natural resource base and fragile eco-system will be protected.

John (2012) stated that, “a child in the developed world consumes 30-50 times as much water as in the developing world; CO2 production, a proxy of energy use, can also be 50 times higher." (John, 2012) Therefore, consumption of natural resources of people in rich countries is more than those in the poor countries. People in rich countries treat natural resources as commodities. To them, fresh water, forests, fish, minerals and fossil fuels are resources that they own and control. Thus, they are using natural resources at a rate that will drain the planet in near future and making our planet inhospitable to everyone, the poorest people are especially affected by the over-consumption of natural resources because over-consumption causes poverty.

Another factor that causes poverty is overpopulation. Overpopulation means the situation of having large numbers of people sharing too few resources and too little space. As resources can only support a certain number of people, a high population density (the ratio of people to land area) pressures the sacred resources in the country. When population increases, there will be an increase in need for food, clothes and place to live. One of the statistical data done by UNICEF (2005) showed, “1 billion children live in poverty (1 in 2 children in the world). 640 million live without adequate shelter, 400 million have no access to safe water, and 270 million have no access to health services.” (UNICEF, 2005) When there is a shortage of these basic needs, poverty happens.